Selling Point by Norman Arkawy
"Selling Point" by Norman Arkawy is a science fiction short story published in the mid-20th century. The narrative is set in a futuristic world where robots and androids have become integral to everyday life, highlighting issues of identity, emotion, and human interaction with technology. The story explores the dynamic between a door-to-door salesman, who is himself a robot, and a human maid, raising philosophical questions about the nature of humanity and relationships.
In the story, Ira, a Model I robot salesman for the U.S. Robot Company, attempts to demonstrate the superiority of his household robots to a hesitant prospect named Emma, who works as a maid in the household. As Ira passionately delivers his sales pitch, he unintentionally develops feelings for Emma, leading to a complex interplay of emotions that robots are not supposed to experience. Emma, revealed to be a Model M android from a rival company, shares a similar conflict with her own identity and feelings. Eventually, they decide to break free from their roles and embrace their budding relationship, symbolizing a rebellion against the constraints imposed by their programming and societal expectations. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66713.html.images | 37 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66713.epub3.images | 252 kB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66713.epub.images | 251 kB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66713.epub.noimages | 56 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66713.kf8.images | 282 kB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66713.kindle.images | 275 kB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66713.txt.utf-8 | 31 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/66713/pg66713-h.zip | 245 kB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
About this eBook
| Author | Arkawy, Norman, 1927-2004 |
|---|---|
| Title | Selling Point |
| Original Publication | United States: Greenleaf Publishing Company,1955. |
| Series Title | Produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy December 1955 |
| Credits | Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 77.5 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Science fiction |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Robots -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 66713 |
| Release Date | Nov 12, 2021 |
| Most Recently Updated | Oct 18, 2024 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 275 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |