early story and Dick had not yet clarified his own world view..." Comparing this story to "The Last of the Masters", Barlow took note of Dick's commentary from The Golden Man collection ("...sometimes there lies a gulf between what is theoretically right and that which is practical.") and concluded that the story represented Dick's understanding of "the problems at the other extreme..." in politics. Where most of Dick's stories presented government in skeptical terms to warn the reader of potential abuse, "The Last of the Master" presented an argument for the utility of government. Barlow dissected the Anarchist League and "the contradictory nature of their organization" which patrolled a "poor and dirty" world, and juxtaposed this with the "opulent organization of the (state)". In particular, he highlighted dialogue by the robot master, Bors, as illustrating the importance of his leadership to the success of the micro-state. In the story, a conversation with a mechanic leads the robot to state, "You know I'm the only one who can keep all this together. I'm the only one who knows how to maintain a planned society, not a disorderly chaos! If it weren't for me, all this would collapse, and you'd have dust and ruins and weeds. The whole outside would come rushing in to take over!" Barlow concluded that while the story ended in triumph for the anarchists, the story did not go so far as to validate their society. "Dick does not vindicate them," writes Barlow, "keeping it clear that the robot had certainly accomplished something in that valley, though it had eventually gone too far." Spiritual allegory In a commentary made for the 1980 anthology, The Golden Man, Philip K. Dick briefly touched on several themes of the story, including the Christian allegory of the "suffering servant", manifested in the character of Bors. This was touched upon in the Dick biography Divine Invasions, by memoirist and biographer Lawrence Sutin. Drawing on Dick's commentary, Sutin sees Bors as part of a religious pattern in Dick's stories as a "Christ-like robot", and likens the robot to characters in other stories by Dick who suffer from illness. See also References Sources External links Anarchism and science fiction , containing an assessment of the story from an anarchist perspective 1954 short stories Anarchist fiction Novelettes Post-apocalyptic short stories Science fiction short stories Short stories by Philip K. Dick Works originally published in Orbit Science