Souvenir by Philip K. Dick Episode #101

Philip K. Dick | September 17, 2023

Souvenir by Philip K. Dick Episode #101
Philip K. Dick

SOUVENIR

Episode #101 · Written by Philip K. Dick · Narrated by Scott Miller

When a long-lost human colony is rediscovered, the Galactic Relay expects easy assimilation. But one man’s proud defiance sparks a moral crisis that reaches across the stars.

For centuries, the Galaxy has searched for one lost world—Williamson’s World—the first human colony beyond the Solar System. When it’s finally rediscovered, the Galactic Relay sends Edward Rogers to welcome it back into the fold. But the society he finds is not the backward remnant he expected. Instead, it’s a thriving civilization built on self-sufficiency, artistry, and independence—a culture that has grown apart from the technocratic sameness that rules the rest of mankind.

To Rogers, this refusal to conform is unthinkable. To Gene Williamson and his people, submission would mean the death of their soul. Their quiet world becomes the center of a cosmic argument: is peace worth uniformity, and is survival worth surrendering your identity? The decision made on Williamson’s World—and the devastating order that follows—turns “Souvenir” into one of Philip K. Dick’s most haunting reflections on control, individuality, and the human cost of progress.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip K. Dick’s fiction has always lived on the razor’s edge between reality and ideology. From Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to The Minority Report, his stories question what it means to be human in systems that value obedience more than empathy. In “Souvenir,” that question becomes heartbreakingly literal. When peace demands annihilation, Dick shows that even the smallest act of defiance can echo through eternity.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to Souvenir by Philip K. Dick — a powerful vintage science fiction tale of freedom versus conformity and the terrible cost of preserving galactic peace.