Sales talk — Inside the Classic

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In Category - Other Worlds

Authors: Blomberg, Con, Morrow, Gray, 1934-2001 [Illustrator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2016 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Science fiction; Short stories; Virtual reality -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 7,524

Reading time 33 min

Text sections 1

For Sales talk — Inside the Classic, the stored edition analysis reports 7,524 words, 33 min estimated reading time, and 1 detected text section.

The text analysis averages about 19.2 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Science fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #51616

In Con Blomberg's 1959 story, a man confronts two smooth-talking salesmen peddling 'Electronic Living' (EL), a virtual-reality subscription. The narrative twists from a high-pressure sales pitch into a meta-theatrical performance, revealing the protagonist as an actor and the salesmen as fellow performers, all while questioning consumption and authenticity.

Editorial Edition Score 4.3/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg51616

Read the Text

They were standing out in front, looking just like a couple of door-to-door salesmen. And that's just what they were, even if they were called Electro Medical Consultants. Just a fancy name for salesmen.

They were very neat in appearance, just as good salesmen should be. Their hats looked new and so did their shoes.

"Ah, Mr. Gaines," said the yellow-haired one, sticking out his neatly manicured but definitely masculine hand, "I'm very happy to meet you, sir." His grin could only be described as sincerely boyish.

"Come in," I said, feeling like smiling back, so effectively pleasant were their grins. "Come in and sit down, won't you?"

So they came in, doffing their hats, and sat down in two chairs that I ordinarily didn't use. They seemed to know instinctively which was _my_ favorite chair. Oh, they were smooth!

"Now, Mr. Gaines," said the light-haired man, "perhaps I should start off with a little introduction all around and a short explanation of what Electronic Living can mean to you."

No one had mentioned EL up to that point, yet they knew without a doubt that I had correctly identified them. Talk about confidence--it was like a physical force in the room.

"I'm Jake Long and this is Arnie Blik," said the light-haired one, rising and gripping my hand with a warm, dry, just right handshake.

"Pleased to meet you," said Blik, gripping my hand in turn with an identical warm, dry, just right handshake.

"I'm going to ask you for a bit of your time," said Long, "and I certainly hope you can grant us a few minutes without too much inconvenience."

I murmured something about having plenty of time. That was a laugh, and he and I both knew it. I had so little to do, I almost welcomed them just for sheer entertainment value.

"Well, that's fine," said Long, "but rest assured we aren't going to try to waste any of your time. We intend to make it short and sweet, as they say." He did such a good job of keeping up the fiction of me being a busy man that I almost believed it myself.

"You probably know more about Electronic Living than I do," he said, and I felt for an instant that I did, "but we'll go over it anyway just so you understand me a little better. You'll remember back in 1958-1959 there was a lot of work done--or I should say a beginning made--in developing an electronic eye for people who had lost their eyesight. This was a start of Electronic Living in its crudest form. These early pioneers, using what little knowledge was available of the brain then, were actually able to insert a probe in the brain and enable the blind person to 'see' light. At first it was just the difference between light and dark, but after a while they did develop a kind of vision--and then finally, after much work, the system grew into actual electronic vision.

"This was, as I said, the start of Electronic Living because it advanced the basic premise that the brain can utilize outside electrical impulses for its own purposes. And of course it wasn't long before some experimenters had rigged up a human television receiver. What they did was set up a series of brain probes which were directly connected to a small television receiving apparatus, and the subject could then 'see' the broadcast image without the use of his eyes.

"Since this rough beginning, we at EL have done a lot of work, and we are now able to reproduce every sort of physical sensation known to man through electronic brain connections.

"And recently, as a further refinement, we have been able to capture internal brain voltages and use them to reproduce thoughtlike sensations. Unfortunately, these are still in the realm of strong emotions and not true thoughts, but they are extremely effective.

"Now, it is this combination of physical sensation voltages and internal brain voltages, when fed into your brain from a simple tape like this, that produces what we call Electronic Living."

With that he pulled a piece of tape out of his pocket as if producing an elephant from a thimble.

Arnie Blik hadn't said a word up to this point. He had hung on every word his partner uttered as though it were all new to him. Now he took up the song.

"May I ask if you've ever experienced Electric Living?" he asked.

"No," I said. I really had once or twice, but I figured it was none of his business.

"Ah. Well, if you have no objection, I'd like to use this Simulator here for a few minutes and give you a bare idea of what's going on in Electronic Living today."

Continue Reading →

The story opens with the narrator watching two men cross a courtyard toward his building: one carries a flat briefcase, the other a large square box containing 'the Sim.' The buzzer sounds, and he admits them with 'mixed feelings.' The men are Jake Long and Arnie Blik, Electro Medical Consultants—door-to-door salesmen for a service called Electronic Living (EL). Their polished patter, identical handshakes, and instinctive choice of the narrator's favorite chair establish a tone of practiced manipulation. The narrator, Gaines, is initially a passive observer, but the sales pitch quickly becomes a psychological duel.

The Sales Pitch as Psychological Warfare

The salesmen's technique is a study in calculated confidence. Long opens with a 'sincerely boyish' grin and a handshake that is 'warm, dry, just right.' They maintain the fiction that Gaines is a busy man, though he admits he has 'so little to do' that he welcomes them for entertainment. The pitch is not just about selling a product; it is about controlling the narrative. Long and Blik anticipate objections, mirror each other's gestures, and pivot when challenged. The narrator notes their 'slick, well-trained' demeanor, and the tension escalates when Gaines begins to argue against EL, only to realize Blik has subtly switched him to arguing against himself. The salesmen's confidence is 'like a physical force in the room,' and the scene becomes a battle of wits where the product itself is almost secondary.

A Reversal of Roles: The Actor and the Audience

Midway through, the story undercuts its own premise. After Gaines triumphantly rejects EL, the wall swings open and a man named Rommy enters, congratulating him on a 'perfect' performance. The narrator feels along the base of his skull for a transmitter 'encased in Natur-flesh.' Long and Blik, it emerges, are also actors; Rommy praises them as 'real actors' who 'felt it.' The sales pitch was a scripted scene, and Gaines's resistance was part of the act. This revelation reframes the entire encounter: the reader, like the narrator, has been watching a performance within a performance. The story's structure mirrors its subject—virtual reality—by blurring the line between authentic experience and staged simulation.

Consumption and the Commodification of Experience

The catalog subjects list 'Virtual reality -- Fiction' and 'Science fiction,' but the excerpts focus less on technology than on the economics of desire. Gaines's earlier argument that 'definitive consumership is the most vital thing' anticipates a world where experience itself is a product. EL subscribers, we learn, are 'down deep opposed to EL'—a paradox that suggests the service feeds on ambivalence. The story's title, 'Sales Talk,' points to the language of persuasion, but the excerpts show that language is also a commodity: the salesmen's scripted banter, the narrator's rehearsed defiance, and the director's satisfaction with a 'good job' all reduce human interaction to exchange value. The final twist—that the entire scene is a tape for EL subscribers—implies that even resistance can be packaged and sold.

Blomberg's story, published in 1959, anticipates later concerns about immersive media and the blurring of reality and performance. Readers should attend to the layered structure: the sales pitch, the meta-theatrical reveal, and the unresolved question of what EL actually does with its tapes. The excerpts do not disclose the full scope of the technology or its societal impact, but the story's strength lies in its tight focus on a single, tense encounter that keeps doubling back on itself.

That rainy afternoon, I kept thinking about the salesmen’s hollow performance long after closing the book. Their polished words lingered, oddly weightless. Later, while drying dishes, I stumbled onto A Toothache on Zenob — Reading Notes and found the same quiet unease about how we perform our own comforts. One story simply handed me to the other, like rooms sharing a wall.