In light of the Santorum comment about smart people won’t vote for us, I am reminded of a story published in the late 40s early 50s satirizing A.E. van Vogt’s The World of null-A. It was about a null-P (null-Plato) philosophy with people ending as pets for intelligent Labradors (at least until they invented a machine that throws sticks). Now I can’t remember the title or the author (I think it may have been William Tenn or Mack Reynolds), so I turn to the dope to help me with identifying the story.
You pretty much had all the details. It seems you might be able to download it here - Null-P, by William Tenn
I’m on my phone, so can’t verify the link works, or whether it’s a legal download or not.
Thanks for the thread though - while searching I discovered City, by Clifford D. Simak. Now I’ve got to add that to my reading list.
Thanks.
When you’re that close to remembering the details of a science fiction, fantasy, or horror story, you can search on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi
Searching on “Null-P” and specifying “Fiction Titles” gets you the story immediately, while searching on “William Tenn” and specifying “Authors” gets you a list, only a few dozen items long, of all of his short stories.
Thanks guy, one thing I didn’t mention was that I read the story in French.
Ah well then.
The story you are looking for is Un systeme non-P.
It’s by the same author.
Bon day to thee.
And, again, you could have also found it by using the ISFDb. Put in “Null-P” and specify “Fiction Titles”. It would have lead you to the page for that story. On that page, you could have seen that one of the variant titles was “Un système non-P”. Clicking on that link gives you the page for all the appearances of that story in French.