The odd thing in this world is that an eager-beaver type, with no original ideas, who mimes those in authority above him right to the last twist of necktie and scrape of chin, always gets noticed. Gets selected. Rises. In the banks, in insurance companies, big electric companies, missile-building firms, universities. He had seen them as assistant professors teaching some recondite subject - survey of heretical Christian sects of the fifth century - and simultaneously inching their path up with all their might and main. Everything but sending their wives over to the administration building as bait. . .

Philip K. Dick (2003 [1959]) Time Out of Joint. Londres: Gollancz. pp. 11-12