The Turning Wheel by Philip K. Dick Episode #126

Philip K. Dick | October 20, 2023

The Turning Wheel by Philip K. Dick Episode #126
Philip K. Dick

THE TURNING WHEEL

Episode #126 · Philip K. Dick · Narrated by Scott Miller

In a future where karma decides your next life, one frightened man discovers that the wheel of destiny is turning against him—and fast. But when he’s sent to investigate a forbidden cult, he finds a truth far more dangerous than death or rebirth.

What if reincarnation wasn’t a belief, but a government-regulated certainty? In Philip K. Dick’s “The Turning Wheel,” society is ruled by a religious caste system where every action determines your next life on the cosmic ladder. At the top are the Bards, holy arbiters of destiny. At the bottom, the despised “Technos”—giant, hairy Caucasian laborers believed to be spiritually inferior. Bard Sung-wu, proud and terrified, learns from a future-scanner that he has only eight months left before a horrible plague kills him and condemns his soul to be reborn as a carrion-eating insect. Desperate to change his fate, he is ordered to investigate a rumored cult—one that repairs machines, questions doctrine, and might just be rewriting destiny itself.

What he finds is not only heresy, but hope: a group of outcasts who reject the wheel entirely and offer him a chance at survival. But accepting their help could unravel the very structure of the world—and cost him his place among the “enlightened.” Is salvation worth spiritual treason, or are the Tinkerists right about everything the Bards fear?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) is one of the most influential voices in science fiction, known for exploring identity, paranoia, alternate realities, and the fragility of human belief. Though famous today for stories that inspired Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, and The Man in the High Castle, Dick spent most of his early career writing deeply imaginative short fiction for the same sci-fi magazines that shaped the Golden Age of the genre. His stories often question the systems we take for granted—governments, religions, corporations, even the nature of reality itself—and “The Turning Wheel” is one of his sharpest examinations of power disguised as spirituality.

Dick’s work remains timeless because it asks questions few writers dare to touch: Who decides truth? What if society is built on a lie? And what does it take for one ordinary person to break free? In this story, the answers come wrapped in prophecy, fear, heresy… and a pill-sized miracle hidden inside a rosary.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to The Turning Wheel by Philip K. Dick — a classic sci-fi tale of caste, karma, and rebellion. A vintage science fiction story that still provokes.