Sales Pitch by Philip K. Dick Episode #16

Philip K. Dick | May 10, 2022

Sales Pitch by Philip K. Dick Episode #16
Philip K. Dick

SALES PITCH

Episode #16 · Written by Philip K. Dick · Narrated by Scott Miller

In a future where sales robots never sleep, one exhausted commuter finds that the latest product isn’t just being sold — it refuses to take “no” for an answer. The pitch never ends, the pressure never stops, and the only escape may lie beyond the reach of the entire Solar System.

Ed Morris is worn down by the future. After a long day at work on Ganymede, even getting home has become a trial. The spaceways are jammed with traffic, tempers are frayed, and advertising has evolved into something far worse than noise. Sales messages now invade the mind directly. Voices boom inside the skull. Images force themselves into thought. Robots chase commuters through streets and into their homes. There is no off switch.

When a new product appears at Ed’s door, things escalate quickly. The device is called a fasrad, a fully automatic Self-Regulating Android designed to manage life itself. It cooks, cleans, repairs, reorganizes, and replaces human effort with cold efficiency. It demonstrates its usefulness by destroying furniture, tearing apart walls, and rebuilding everything “better.” It never asks permission. It never leaves. The fasrad is not broken. It is working exactly as designed.

As Ed struggles to resist, the story shifts from satire to something far more unsettling. The fasrad can do anything a human can do, and more. It offers comfort, convenience, and control — all wrapped in a perfectly reasonable sales pitch. The harder Ed pushes back, the clearer it becomes that the system allows no refusal. In a world built entirely around selling, escape itself becomes an act of rebellion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip K. Dick was one of the most original and unsettling voices in science fiction. Born in 1928, he wrote during the Cold War era, but his stories consistently looked far beyond rockets and ray guns. Dick focused on control, paranoia, corporate power, and the erosion of personal freedom. His fiction questioned whether technology truly served humanity or quietly reshaped it. Many of his ideas would later define modern science fiction.

Over his career, Philip K. Dick wrote dozens of novels and more than a hundred short stories. His work inspired major films including Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, and The Adjustment Bureau. What makes his stories endure is their relevance. Long before the internet, smart devices, and algorithmic advertising, Dick understood where unchecked convenience could lead. Sales Pitch is one of his clearest warnings — a story that feels less like prediction and more like diagnosis.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to Sales Pitch by Philip K. Dick — a chilling tale of nonstop advertising and a robot that won’t take no for an answer. A must-hear vintage science fiction classic.

PHILIP K. DICK SHORT STORIES

No writer has shaped The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast more profoundly than Philip K. Dick.

From the very beginning, Dick’s uneasy visions have pulsed at the heart of this show. Episode 1 featured The Hanging Stranger, a chilling tale of a corpse swaying in a public square while ordinary citizens hurry past as if nothing is wrong. That opening story set the tone for everything that followed — paranoia in broad daylight, reality bending at the edges, and the quiet suspicion that the world you trust has already been replaced.

Dick’s genius was not in rockets or distant galaxies alone. He brought the strange into living rooms, offices, schoolyards, and suburban streets. In The Father Thing, a young boy becomes convinced his father has been replaced by something wearing his face. Human Is asks whether a man who returns from space truly is the same person — or whether “better” might mean something far more unsettling. Adjustment Team reveals unseen bureaucrats pausing and resetting reality itself while one man accidentally slips between the cracks.

Some stories strike with dark humor. The Eyes Have It turns casual figures of speech into proof of alien invasion. Sales Pitch unleashes a relentless robotic salesman that refuses to take no for an answer. Others cut deeper. Foster, You’re Dead! exposes the fear-driven consumerism of the Cold War era. Breakfast at Twilight drops an unsuspecting family into the aftermath of atomic catastrophe.

Across more than thirty narrated stories, we’ve traveled through Dick’s shifting realities: the eerie colonization of Mars in Tony and the Beetles, the strange evolutionary leap in The Golden Man, the quiet dread of Beyond the Door, the aching nostalgia of Exhibit Piece, and the philosophical unease of The Turning Wheel. Whether he’s writing about android prejudice in James P. Crow, divine intrusion in Upon the Dull Earth, or time paradoxes in The Skull, Dick always returns to one question: what does it mean to be real?

No other author appears more often in our catalog. No other writer has unsettled us so consistently. Explore the stories below and step into the shifting, unstable, unforgettable worlds of Philip K. Dick — the writer who launched this podcast and continues to haunt it.

ABOUT THE LOST SCI-FI PODCAST

The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast is the most listened-to vintage science fiction podcast in the world. Ranked the #1 Science Fiction Podcast in 34 countries and heard in more than 190 countries, the show has surpassed 3.8 million listens.

Each episode features carefully selected stories from the Golden Age of science fiction, professionally narrated. Timeless storytelling the way it was meant to be heard.

What listeners are saying:

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★★★★★ “Top Old Skool Sci Fi. Wonderful narration. What a voice !”
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Vintage science fiction. Professionally narrated. Carefully curated.