At 06:21 PM 5/23/97 BST, farah mendlesohn wrote:
>Just had a thought about "weight" stories. Maybe someone can help
>out as I can remember neither title nor author (as usual). There are a
>series of stories about a world in which a perfect form of power is
>invented. The inventor (Amalfi?) is cheated of his profits but dies with
>a smile on his face. The rest of the stories are about how the world
>adapts to the sudden availability of limitless power. In one story we
>see how the poor are forced to consume, living in mansions and
>wearing many clothes, eating as much as they can to keep the
>economy "growing". Only the rich get to avoid mass consumption. In
>the following story after the problem of overproduction is resolved,
>we meet a man so traumatised by his childhood poverty and the
>pressure to consume that despite the end of this need he cannot stop
>himself.
"The Man Who Ate The World", Fred Pohl
Neil Rest
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