Audience Reaction

By Robert F. Young

In Science Fiction, of the many things an author can do is to take an established trend and carry it on to extremities. Such stories are rarely good prophecy, since they cannot foresee other developments of the future which are most likely to modify the trend with which they are dealing. But such stories make good reading nonetheless, and can be delightfully unpleasant as in the present instance.

Robert F. Young was a Hugo nominated author known for his lyrical and sentimental prose. His work appeared in Amazing Stories, Fantastic Stories, Startling Stories, Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Galaxy Magazine, and Analog Science Fact & Fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781515445890

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Audience Reaction

by Robert F. Young

©2020 Positronic Publishing

Audience Reaction is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4589-0

Table of Contents

Audience Reaction

Audience Reaction

In Science Fiction, of the many things an author can do is to take an established trend and carry it on to extremities. Such stories are rarely good prophecy, since they cannot foresee other developments of the future which are most likely to modify the trend with which they are dealing. But such stories make good reading nonetheless, and can be delightfully unpleasant as in the present instance.

While the first mass-produced telempathy sets represented a tremendous jump in the evolution of mass-media, they were handicapped by a number of serious technical flaws. It is one of the paradoxes of our civilization that those very flaws led to a form of art Which remains unparalleled, even to this day. The first sets, for example, while they were able to focus the fictitious background and general narrative trend of