There is something weird about human psychology!
I get an email invitation to join some social network site from some attractive female I've never heard of and, instead of just deleting it, I feel all warm and fuzzy and wonder how she got hear about me! Yes, I know it's completely stupid but I blame human psychology - it's somehow deeply flawed! I guess it's why spam still exists!
That plus the power of big numbers...all it takes is maybe 0.001% of the recipients of a spam message to rise to it, and it's well worthwhile.Originally Posted by Harryprice
To drift off-topic somewhat, this reminds me of a short SF story I read long ago, concerning a future in which Earth has just been accepted into the galactic civilisation. One human is allowed to go on a tour of the galaxy to write about his perceptions and publishes a book which becomes not just a best-seller on Earth, but also achieves modest success in the galaxy. The Earth authorities are highly miffed when they discover that the galactics like the book because it is so hilariously naive, but they swallow their pride when they discover that even a modest galaxy-wide success generates more income than the entire Earthly GDP...
Very good! Sounds like something Fred Pohl would write... can you remember the author?
Sorry, too long ago...
Oh well, never mind: there's so much good stuff being published these days there's no need to go back to the old stuff when we have Charles Stross, Neal Asher, Gwyneth Jones, Bruce Sterling, Iain M. Banks, Justina Robson and so many more {Greg Egan!} masterful and fun writers of cutting edge techno opera long view fiction with charm and strangeness enough to lift you into orbit !)
Fred Pohl...damn good!
And damn old! 90 but still writing. Actually won another Hugo this year - for best fan writer!
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