Service Call

1955 short story by Philip K. Dick

"Service Call" is a science fiction short story by American writer Philip K. Dick. It was first published in Science Fiction Stories, July 1955.

Plot

The plot centers on a man, Courtland, who one evening at his home is visited by a nervous and peculiar repairman. The repairman states he is answering a service call made from Courtland's address and wishes to repair some sort of appliance called a "swibble". Courtland is irritated by the disturbance. Having not made any appointment, nor having the slightest clue about swibbles, Courtland angrily sends the man away. Shortly later, Courtland gets curious about the man. He goes back to his door to see if he is still there. There is no sign of the man save for the crumpled service order on the ground. Courtland examines the paper to discover that the company the man works for will be founded 9 years in the future. Courtland phones his colleagues with an idea. The service man returns, confused and sure he has the correct address. Courtland and his colleagues discover the man works for an authoritarian bio-technology company from an alternate future.

External links

Service Call title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Philip K. Dick

Novels

Gather Yourselves Together (1950)
Voices from the Street (1952)
Solar Lottery (1954)
Mary and the Giant (1954)
The World Jones Made (1954)
Eye in the Sky (1955)
The Man Who Japed (1955)
A Time for George Stavros (1956)
Pilgrim on the Hill (1956)
The Broken Bubble (1956)
The Cosmic Puppets (1957)
Puttering About in a Small Land (1957)
Nicholas and the Higs (1958)
Time Out of Joint (1958)
In Milton Lumky Territory (1958)
Confessions of a Crap Artist (1959)
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1960)
Humpty Dumpty in Oakland (1960)
Vulcan's Hammer (1960)
Dr. Futurity (1960)
The Man in the High Castle (1961)
We Can Build You (1962)
Martian Time-Slip (1962)
Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb (1963)
The Game-Players of Titan (1963)
The Simulacra (1963)
The Crack in Space (1963)
Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964)
The Zap Gun (1964)
The Penultimate Truth (1964)
The Unteleported Man (1964)
The Ganymede Takeover (1965)
Counter-Clock World (1965)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1966)
Nick and the Glimmung (1966)
Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
Ubik (1966)
Galactic Pot-Healer (1968)
A Maze of Death (1968)
Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1969)
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974)
Deus Irae (1976)
Radio Free Albemuth (1976; published 1985)
A Scanner Darkly (1977)
VALIS (1981)
The Divine Invasion (1981)
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1982)
The Owl in Daylight (unfinished)

Collections

A Handful of Darkness (1955)
The Variable Man (1956)
The Preserving Machine (1969)
The Book of Philip K. Dick (1973)
The Best of Philip K. Dick (1977)
The Golden Man (1980)
Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities (1984)
I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon (1985)
The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick (1987)
Beyond Lies the Wub (1988)
The Dark Haired Girl (1989)
The Father-Thing (1989)
Second Variety (1989)
The Days of Perky Pat (1990)
The Little Black Box (1990)
The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford (1990)
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1990)
The Minority Report (1991)
Second Variety (1991)
The Eye of the Sibyl (1992)
The Philip K. Dick Reader (1997)
Minority Report (2002)
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (2002)
Paycheck (2004)
Vintage PKD (2006)
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick (2011)

Short stories

"Beyond Lies the Wub" (1952)
"The Gun" (1952)
"The Skull" (1952)
"The Little Movement" (1952)
"The Defenders" (1953)
"Mr. Spaceship" (1953)
"Piper in the Woods" (1953)
"Roog" (1953)
"The Infinites" (1953)
"Second Variety" (1953)
"Colony" (1953)
"The Cookie Lady" (1953)
"Impostor" (1953)
"Paycheck" (1953)
"The Preserving Machine" (1953)
"Expendable" (1953)
"The Indefatigable Frog" (1953)
"The Commuter" (1953)
"Out in the Garden" (1953)
"The Great C" (1953)
"The King of the Elves" (1953)
"The Trouble with Bubbles" (1953)
"The Variable Man" (1953)
"The Impossible Planet" (1953)
"Planet for Transients" (1953)
"The Builder" (1953)
"Tony and the Beetles" (1953)
"The Hanging Stranger" (1953)
"Prize Ship" (1954)
"Beyond the Door" (1954)
"The Crystal Crypt" (1954)
"The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" (1954)
"The Golden Man" (1954)
"Sales Pitch" (1954)
"Breakfast at Twilight" (1954)
"The Crawlers" (1954)
"Exhibit Piece" (1954)
"Adjustment Team" (1954)
"Shell Game" (1954)
"Meddler" (1954)
"A World of Talent" (1954)
"The Last of the Masters" (1954)
"Upon the Dull Earth" (1954)
"The Father-thing" (1954)
"Strange Eden" (1954)
"The Turning Wheel" (1954)
"Foster, You're Dead!" (1955)
"Human Is" (1955)
"War Veteran" (1955)
"Captive Market" (1955)
"Nanny" (1955)
"The Chromium Fence" (1955)
"Service Call" (1955)
"The Mold of Yancy" (1955)
"Autofac" (1955)
"Psi-man Heal My Child!" (1955)
"The Hood Maker" (1955)
"The Minority Report" (1956)
"Pay for the Printer" (1956)
"A Glass of Darkness" (1956)
"The Unreconstructed M" (1957)
"Null-O" (1958)
"Explorers We" (1959)
"Recall Mechanism" (1959)
"Fair Game" (1959)
"War Game" (1959)
"All We Marsmen" (1963)
"What'll We Do with Ragland Park?" (1963)
"The Days of Perky Pat" (1963)
"If There Were No Benny Cemoli" (1963)
"Waterspider" (1964)
"Novelty Act" (1964)
"Oh, to Be a Blobel!" (1964)
"The War with the Fnools" (1964)
"What the Dead Men Say" (1964)
"Orpheus with Clay Feet" (1964)
"Cantata 140" (1964)
"The Unteleported Man" (1964)
"The Little Black Box" (1964)
"Retreat Syndrome" (1965)
"Project Plowshare (later "The Zap Gun")" (1965)
"We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" (1966)
"Holy Quarrel" (1966)
"Faith of Our Fathers" (1967)
"Not by Its Cover" (1968)
"The Electric Ant" (1969)
"A. Lincoln, Simulacrum" (1969)
"The Pre-persons" (1974)
"A Little Something for Us Tempunauts" (1974)
"The Exit Door Leads In" (1979)
"Rautavaara's Case" (1980)
"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" (1980)
"The Eye of the Sibyl" (1987)
"Stability" (1987)

Adaptations

Films	Blade Runner (1982) Total Recall (1990) Barjo (1992) Screamers (1995) Impostor (2001) Minority Report (2002) Paycheck (2003) A Scanner Darkly (2006) Next (2007) Screamers: The Hunting (2009) Radio Free Albemuth (2010) The Adjustment Bureau (2011) Total Recall (2012) Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 2036: Nexus Dawn (2017) 2048: Nowhere to Run (2017) Blade Runner Black Out 2022 (2017)
TV series	Total Recall 2070 (1999) The Man in the High Castle (2015) Minority Report (2015) Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams (2017) Blade Runner: Black Lotus (2021)

Films

Blade Runner (1982)
Total Recall (1990)
Barjo (1992)
Screamers (1995)
Impostor (2001)
Minority Report (2002)
Paycheck (2003)
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Next (2007)
Screamers: The Hunting (2009)
Radio Free Albemuth (2010)
The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
Total Recall (2012)
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
- 2036: Nexus Dawn (2017)
- 2048: Nowhere to Run (2017)
- Blade Runner Black Out 2022 (2017)