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.

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:

★★★★★ “The Best Sci-fi podcast to date! I have listened to every sci-fi podcast I can find. This is by far the best and most consistent one I have come across. Great selection of stories and superb narration.”
— RLVader

★★★★★ “my favourite podcast of all time. great audio to great books ♡!”
— hipparchia72

Vintage science fiction. Professionally narrated. Carefully curated.