The Snowball Effect

A sociology professor wants to prove his theories about organizational growth. He convinces a small sewing circle to recruit new members with promises of mutual benefit. The experiment works, and keeps working, long after he's lost control. What begins as an academic exercise transforms into a corporate empire, a self-perpetuating machine that begins swallowing society. MacLean's 1950s novella predicted the dark logic of network marketing, viral growth, and corporate consolidation decades before we had words for them. It's a sharp, unsettling story about how good intentions curdle into something monstrous, and how the systems we build to help us can outgrow our ability to understand them.