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dsgood - August 31st, 2009
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02:06 pm
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Definition: Garbageman Story
A science fiction writer learns that the percentage of garbage handlers in the American population is growing. By straight-line extrapolation, he comes up with a future in which all Americans fifteen and older are garbage handlers. Children between ages three and fourteen serve in press gangs which raid into Canada and Mexico.
The crisis: a diminishing supply of garbage puts the economy in danger.
The protagonist saves the day by inventing garbage-creating robots.
Too absurd to be published? In the 1950s, H. L. Gold bought a lot of these for Galaxy magazine. The only unlikely-to-see-print element here is the press gangs; 1950s American science fiction seldom acknowledged that the US wasn't the only North American country.
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