Bryce Walton 43 min read

A devoted domestic frets over her master's beauty ritual and fears being traded in for a newer model, because she is a machine, and in love.

Bryce Walton's 1955 story reveals its android housekeeper Alice through her anxious care for the vain Master Kelsey, in a poignant tale of servitude, obsolescence, and unattainable feeling. Sharp, sad social SF that turns a domestic scene into a study of love and disposability. Read it for a quietly affecting golden-age story about the inner life of a machine.

In its time

Published in 1955, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

43 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Paul Orban