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To Serve The Master
In a future society a mailman finds a decrepit robot and helps it to repair itself.
12 pages, Unknown Binding
First published February 1, 1956
1 person is currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Philip K. Dick
2,004 books22.4k followersPhilip Kindred Dick was a prolific American science fiction author whose work has had a lasting impact on literature, cinema, and popular culture. Known for his imaginative narratives and profound philosophical themes, Dick explored the nature of reality, the boundaries of human identity, and the impact of technology and authoritarianism on society. His stories often blurred the line between the real and the artificial, challenging readers to question their perceptions and beliefs.
Raised in California, Dick began writing professionally in the early 1950s, publishing short stories in various science fiction magazines. He quickly developed a distinctive voice within the genre, marked by a fusion of science fiction concepts with deep existential and psychological inquiry. Over his career, he authored 44 novels and more than 100 short stories, many of which have become classics in the field.
Recurring themes in Dick's work include alternate realities, simulations, corporate and government control, mental illness, and the nature of consciousness. His protagonists are frequently everyday individuals—often paranoid, uncertain, or troubled—caught in surreal and often dangerous circumstances that force them to question their environment and themselves. Works such as Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly reflect his fascination with perception and altered states of consciousness, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health struggles and drug use.
One of Dick’s most influential novels is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for Ridley Scott’s iconic film Blade Runner. The novel deals with the distinction between humans and artificial beings and asks profound questions about empathy, identity, and what it means to be alive. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, each reflecting key elements of his storytelling—uncertain realities, oppressive systems, and the search for truth. These adaptations have introduced his complex ideas to audiences well beyond the traditional readership of science fiction.
In the 1970s, Dick underwent a series of visionary and mystical experiences that had a significant influence on his later writings. He described receiving profound knowledge from an external, possibly divine, source and documented these events extensively in what became known as The Exegesis, a massive and often fragmented journal. These experiences inspired his later novels, most notably the VALIS trilogy, which mixes autobiography, theology, and metaphysics in a narrative that defies conventional structure and genre boundaries.
Throughout his life, Dick faced financial instability, health issues, and periods of personal turmoil, yet he remained a dedicated and relentless writer. Despite limited commercial success during his lifetime, his reputation grew steadily, and he came to be regarded as one of the most original voices in speculative fiction. His work has been celebrated for its ability to fuse philosophical depth with gripping storytelling and has influenced not only science fiction writers but also philosophers, filmmakers, and futurists.
Dick’s legacy continues to thrive in both literary and cinematic spheres. The themes he explored remain urgently relevant in the modern world, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with human identity and governance. The Philip K. Dick Award, named in his honor, is presented annually to distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. His writings have also inspired television series, academic studies, and countless homages across media.
Through his vivid imagination and unflinching inquiry into the nature of existence, Philip K. Dick redefined what science fiction could achieve. His work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a
Raised in California, Dick began writing professionally in the early 1950s, publishing short stories in various science fiction magazines. He quickly developed a distinctive voice within the genre, marked by a fusion of science fiction concepts with deep existential and psychological inquiry. Over his career, he authored 44 novels and more than 100 short stories, many of which have become classics in the field.
Recurring themes in Dick's work include alternate realities, simulations, corporate and government control, mental illness, and the nature of consciousness. His protagonists are frequently everyday individuals—often paranoid, uncertain, or troubled—caught in surreal and often dangerous circumstances that force them to question their environment and themselves. Works such as Ubik, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, and A Scanner Darkly reflect his fascination with perception and altered states of consciousness, often drawing from his own experiences with mental health struggles and drug use.
One of Dick’s most influential novels is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which served as the basis for Ridley Scott’s iconic film Blade Runner. The novel deals with the distinction between humans and artificial beings and asks profound questions about empathy, identity, and what it means to be alive. Other adaptations of his work include Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, each reflecting key elements of his storytelling—uncertain realities, oppressive systems, and the search for truth. These adaptations have introduced his complex ideas to audiences well beyond the traditional readership of science fiction.
In the 1970s, Dick underwent a series of visionary and mystical experiences that had a significant influence on his later writings. He described receiving profound knowledge from an external, possibly divine, source and documented these events extensively in what became known as The Exegesis, a massive and often fragmented journal. These experiences inspired his later novels, most notably the VALIS trilogy, which mixes autobiography, theology, and metaphysics in a narrative that defies conventional structure and genre boundaries.
Throughout his life, Dick faced financial instability, health issues, and periods of personal turmoil, yet he remained a dedicated and relentless writer. Despite limited commercial success during his lifetime, his reputation grew steadily, and he came to be regarded as one of the most original voices in speculative fiction. His work has been celebrated for its ability to fuse philosophical depth with gripping storytelling and has influenced not only science fiction writers but also philosophers, filmmakers, and futurists.
Dick’s legacy continues to thrive in both literary and cinematic spheres. The themes he explored remain urgently relevant in the modern world, particularly as technology increasingly intersects with human identity and governance. The Philip K. Dick Award, named in his honor, is presented annually to distinguished works of science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. His writings have also inspired television series, academic studies, and countless homages across media.
Through his vivid imagination and unflinching inquiry into the nature of existence, Philip K. Dick redefined what science fiction could achieve. His work continues to challenge and inspire, offering timeless insights into the human condition a
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 3, 2019
“To Serve the Master,” first published in Imagination (February 1956) is the sort of story that lingers in the memory. On the surface it is a simple dystopian take which take place after the war between humans and robots, but what we learn of the war’s origin seems to place blame on both sides, and makes us mourn for the loss of the utopian world they briefly shared.
It takes place in a dreary world ruled by giant “companies”—similar to Kornbluth and Pohl’s The Space Merchants (1952), filled with rigid rules and little leisure. It tells the story of a mailman named Applequist who finds an extraordinarily rare thing: a damaged robot still “alive,” left over from the human robot war. Although he knows it it forbidden, Applequist—directed by the robot—begins to repair him, and the two of them discuss the world before the war, a world of leisure for humans, and how the war came and changed that world forever.
But is the story Applequist receives from the robot the real one? It certainly differs from what his supervisor Hennessy tells him. Whatever the truth may be, Applequist must face a few grim realities before his tale is done.
January 10, 2019
Who Is Man and Who Is Master?
In his 1956 short story To Serve the Master, PKD once again plunges the reader into a post-bellum society, and again it is the robots that had had it out with the humans – at least, that’s what the humans say – and this time, the machines were defeated and annihilated from the face of the Earth. Talking about the face of the Earth, you won’t find many humans on it, either, because in the wake of nuclear destruction and contamination, people have now withdrawn into the bowels of the planet, living underneath the erstwhile big cities. Their life is not exactly a happy one, however, since they have to slave away at mindless jobs for big companies who now – even officially – run things.
When one day, Applequist, a postman, happens to find a robot, which is not even any more on its last legs, its nether-parts missing completely, but which has still enough life in it to want more, this will have major consequences. The robot tells Applequist that in fact, it was not the robots that tried to wrest power from the humans by waging war against them but that robots used to help people do needful but unpleasant work, thus giving them more leisure time for arts and literature, or simply for entertainment. After a while, though, a new group of people emerged, the so-called moralists who said that it was not right for people to remain idle and that work, especially manual work, was an integral part of human existence. It was, according to the robot, the moralists who fell out with the so-called leisurists, which finally led to the war, with the robots waiting on the sidelines. Applequist, who is a mere subaltern and as such has no right to any theoretical knowledge, presses the robot for the answers to his questions how robots came to disappear and how the war was caused, and the robot only gives these answers to enlist Applequist as a helper in its attempts to regenerate itself and to re-activate a robot assembly plant.
What makes To Serve the Master such an intriguing story is that as a reader you are basically in Applequist’s position in that you have no way of ascertaining which of the two versions of the story is right. Did the robots start to rebel against their masters, or was it some fanatical moralists who wanted to turn back the clock on the assumption that technology is evil? Applequist can either trust his superior, Jenkins, or the war-robot, and he decides in favour of the latter, presumably because his own experience in his society has made him come to the conclusion that
This is, indeed, a sentiment I can wholeheartedly subscribe to, seeing that moral rigorism is one of the worst attitudes – next to rigorous amorality– that one would like to find embedded in politics, although alas! one often does. Even though PKD was himself rather sceptical of technology, yet the moralists in To Serve the Master seem to think and act in the tradition of Puritans, for whom a life in uncomfortable misery is often proof of being morally upright. Still, had it not been for the leisure and the concomitant time for philosophizing that was provided by the robots’ taking over most kinds of work from humans, nobody would probably have had the time to cook up the moralist ideology, however little original it might be. At any rate, if the robot’s story of the war between the two human factions is truthful, it is certainly not void of irony.
The thing, however, is that even the representatives of Applequist’s society may be right – the robot, all things considered, seems very keen not only on regaining its own capacity to act but also on assembling other robots, quite as though it had a bone to pick.
The ending of the story is truly horrible and it definitely prevents us from identifying with either of the sides between which Applequist has to choose. So, who is the eponymous Master, and who wants, or has to serve him? Is it the robots, or the humans who rule? If I took a very cynical view, I’d say, on the basis of how ready Applequist is to believe the robot and to construe and interpret reality in accordance with whatever suits his wishes best – e.g. that most people in his community would like to see the robots return and help them build up a better world –, I would say that the Master, and a most wilful one at that, is the individual’s needs and wishes, which paint his world in particular colours and make him believe certain things and doubt others, this way determining his course of action. Maybe not always for the best.
In his 1956 short story To Serve the Master, PKD once again plunges the reader into a post-bellum society, and again it is the robots that had had it out with the humans – at least, that’s what the humans say – and this time, the machines were defeated and annihilated from the face of the Earth. Talking about the face of the Earth, you won’t find many humans on it, either, because in the wake of nuclear destruction and contamination, people have now withdrawn into the bowels of the planet, living underneath the erstwhile big cities. Their life is not exactly a happy one, however, since they have to slave away at mindless jobs for big companies who now – even officially – run things.
When one day, Applequist, a postman, happens to find a robot, which is not even any more on its last legs, its nether-parts missing completely, but which has still enough life in it to want more, this will have major consequences. The robot tells Applequist that in fact, it was not the robots that tried to wrest power from the humans by waging war against them but that robots used to help people do needful but unpleasant work, thus giving them more leisure time for arts and literature, or simply for entertainment. After a while, though, a new group of people emerged, the so-called moralists who said that it was not right for people to remain idle and that work, especially manual work, was an integral part of human existence. It was, according to the robot, the moralists who fell out with the so-called leisurists, which finally led to the war, with the robots waiting on the sidelines. Applequist, who is a mere subaltern and as such has no right to any theoretical knowledge, presses the robot for the answers to his questions how robots came to disappear and how the war was caused, and the robot only gives these answers to enlist Applequist as a helper in its attempts to regenerate itself and to re-activate a robot assembly plant.
What makes To Serve the Master such an intriguing story is that as a reader you are basically in Applequist’s position in that you have no way of ascertaining which of the two versions of the story is right. Did the robots start to rebel against their masters, or was it some fanatical moralists who wanted to turn back the clock on the assumption that technology is evil? Applequist can either trust his superior, Jenkins, or the war-robot, and he decides in favour of the latter, presumably because his own experience in his society has made him come to the conclusion that
”’[… t]he Moralists won, but nobody’s happy. […]’”
This is, indeed, a sentiment I can wholeheartedly subscribe to, seeing that moral rigorism is one of the worst attitudes – next to rigorous amorality– that one would like to find embedded in politics, although alas! one often does. Even though PKD was himself rather sceptical of technology, yet the moralists in To Serve the Master seem to think and act in the tradition of Puritans, for whom a life in uncomfortable misery is often proof of being morally upright. Still, had it not been for the leisure and the concomitant time for philosophizing that was provided by the robots’ taking over most kinds of work from humans, nobody would probably have had the time to cook up the moralist ideology, however little original it might be. At any rate, if the robot’s story of the war between the two human factions is truthful, it is certainly not void of irony.
The thing, however, is that even the representatives of Applequist’s society may be right – the robot, all things considered, seems very keen not only on regaining its own capacity to act but also on assembling other robots, quite as though it had a bone to pick.
The ending of the story is truly horrible and it definitely prevents us from identifying with either of the sides between which Applequist has to choose. So, who is the eponymous Master, and who wants, or has to serve him? Is it the robots, or the humans who rule? If I took a very cynical view, I’d say, on the basis of how ready Applequist is to believe the robot and to construe and interpret reality in accordance with whatever suits his wishes best – e.g. that most people in his community would like to see the robots return and help them build up a better world –, I would say that the Master, and a most wilful one at that, is the individual’s needs and wishes, which paint his world in particular colours and make him believe certain things and doubt others, this way determining his course of action. Maybe not always for the best.
May 2, 2015
This was part of the book Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities.
May 4, 2018
This story definitely influenced Frank Herbert's Dune series (specifically the Bulterian Jihad) NO ROBOTS ALLOWED!
May 5, 2025
Fine but the twist was predictable
April 26, 2020
Short but powerful. I like the conversations and the positions in this one.
May 16, 2024
good one. the twist isn't going to shock you too much, probably, but it's nicely handled & the ending is satisfyingly dark.
April 13, 2025
So who is the master? Do robots tell history truthfully? Do they obey Asimov's robot rules? Read and decide!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews