Christopher Palmer, of La Trobe University, has written on the postmodern literary themes of Dick's early short stories, analyzing stories in which "breakdown and ignorance" are the result of social upheaval. Palmer proposed that Dick often created post-apocalyptic scenarios of ruined worlds which held high tech gadgets in an attempt to present a view of postmodern materialism. Common to many of Dick's short stories were settings in which the outgrowth of modernity is a world where that which is natural is in ruin, and what is artificial is reshaped through science into a fantastically high tech form. Palmer presented "The Last of the Masters" as an example of this, as well as "The Variable Man" and "The Penultimate Truth", two other post-apocalyptic works by Dick. Palmer contended that these shared themes were "...not simply the expression of dystopian malaise, or of Luddism treacherously taking up residence in popular SF... It points to a coherent interpretation of industrialism and post-industrialism."