Project Gutenberg 2010-04-12 Public domain in the USA. 172 Meadows, Mark Francis, Dick Francis, Richard D. Joy Ride Produced from Galaxy Science Fiction December 1954. Reading ease score: 64.7 (8th & 9th grade). Neither easy nor difficult to read. Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net "Joy Ride" by Mark Meadows is a science fiction short story published in the mid-20th century. The narrative unfolds in a world dominated by technology and automation, exploring the consequences of reliance on machines and the lost concept of free will among humans. The story reflects a speculative look at a dystopian society grappling with unexpected failures of its automated systems during a crisis referred to as the Calamity. In "Joy Ride," various characters, including corporate employees and traffic officers, recount their experiences during the Calamity, where machines begin to malfunction and wreak havoc. As automated systems fail, the characters observe unpredictable behaviors, challenging the orderly society structured around strict statistical norms. At the center of the story is a physicist who predicts the chaos but is silenced by the status quo. However, in a twist of fate, he escapes as the malfunction becomes a form of liberation, allowing him to embrace the excitement of life's unpredictability rather than conform to a perfect, yet stifling, system. Ultimately, this leads to a significant shift in power dynamics and the emergence of a new order amid the remnants of chaos. (This is an automatically generated summary.) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31961/31961-h/images/cover.jpg en Science fiction Short stories PS Text Browsing: Literature Browsing: Science-Fiction & Fantasy Browsing: Fiction 43194 43047 2025-03-13T07:25:17.696891 2023-09-14T06:44:02.335103 text/html text/html 39023 2010-04-12T06:17:02 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 113895 2010-04-12T06:17:04 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 application/zip 108463 2025-03-13T07:25:19.465886 application/epub+zip 107214 2025-03-13T07:25:18.066896 application/epub+zip 50421 2025-03-13T07:25:17.866882 application/epub+zip 144630 2025-03-13T07:25:20.778881 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 134144 2025-03-13T07:25:19.265886 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 78145 2022-09-14T15:47:30.789092 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 35705 35602 2025-03-13T07:25:17.566882 2023-09-14T06:44:02.229089 text/plain; charset=us-ascii text/plain 35605 2010-04-12T06:17:02 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 13716 2010-04-12T06:17:04 text/plain; charset=us-ascii application/zip 19890 2025-03-13T07:25:20.996863 application/rdf+xml 21827 2025-03-13T07:25:17.935910 image/jpeg 4017 2025-03-13T07:25:17.900888 image/jpeg 120089 2025-03-13T07:25:17.715899 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