TY  - BOOK
AU  - Stuart,William W.
TI  - The Real Hard Sell
T2  - Produced from If: Worlds of Science Fiction, July 1961
AV  - PS 
PY  - 2010///
CY  - Salt Lake City, UT
PB  - Project Gutenberg
KW  - Science fiction
KW  - Short stories
KW  - Robots -- Fiction
KW  - Sales personnel -- Fiction
N1  - Release date is 2010-01-21; Produced by Robert Cicconetti, David Wilson and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net; Original publication data not identified
N2  - "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.)
UR  - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31038
ER  -