Project Gutenberg 2010-01-21 Public domain in the USA. 96 Stuart, William W. The Real Hard Sell Reading ease score: 85.6 (6th grade). Easy to read. Produced by Robert Cicconetti, David Wilson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net "The Real Hard Sell" by William W. Stuart is a science fiction story published in the early 1960s. Set in a futuristic world dominated by robots and automation, it explores themes of identity, personal dissatisfaction, and the nature of salesmanship. The narrative follows the internal struggles of Ben Tilman, a salesman navigating his professional and personal life in a society where human roles are increasingly supplanted by robots. The story centers on Ben, who experiences a deep sense of dissatisfaction despite having a stable job, a loving wife, and a young child. As he prepares for a housewarming party meant to showcase a new sales approach, he grapples with feelings of emptiness and unresolved tensions about his life choices. During the party, Ben reveals a unique sales pitch involving a fully-automated home—a decision that ultimately leads him to reassess his desire for a less technology-driven, more meaningful existence. The end of the story sees Ben rejecting the suffocating comfort of a robotic lifestyle, opting instead for a more authentic and engaged way of living with his family. (This is an automatically generated summary.) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31038/31038-h/images/cover61july.jpg en Science fiction Short stories Robots -- Fiction Sales personnel -- Fiction PS Text Science Fiction Browsing: Literature Browsing: Science-Fiction & Fantasy Browsing: Fiction 65390 65389 2024-10-13T08:40:45.150151 2023-09-13T12:44:28.900977 text/html text/html 63693 2010-01-21T14:06:48 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 69397 2010-01-21T14:06:48 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 application/zip 74313 2024-10-13T08:40:47.846149 application/epub+zip 73122 2024-10-13T08:40:45.795154 application/epub+zip 50819 2024-10-13T08:40:45.438258 application/epub+zip 160562 2024-10-13T08:40:49.449143 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 150116 2024-10-13T08:40:47.244146 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 81656 2022-09-14T09:44:45.926597 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 51692 51589 2024-10-13T08:40:44.946174 2023-09-13T12:44:28.733982 text/plain; charset=us-ascii text/plain 51635 2010-01-21T14:06:48 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 20579 2010-01-21T14:06:48 text/plain; charset=us-ascii application/zip 20095 2024-10-13T08:40:49.581141 application/rdf+xml 23430 2024-10-13T08:40:45.495144 image/jpeg 4298 2024-10-13T08:40:45.466164 image/jpeg 69767 2024-10-13T08:40:45.161156 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog