The Snowball Effect

"The Snowball Effect" by Katherine MacLean is a science fiction story that looks at how groups grow using a university and a small sewing circle to show what it means. The president of the university wants to test the professor's ideas about how groups grow really fast, like a snowball getting bigger as it rolls. They start with a simple sewing circle, adding things to make people want to join and work for their own benefit. The sewing circle quickly turns into a huge company that starts to take over everything, showing how even small actions with the wrong intentions can turn into something nobody expected or wanted. The story makes you think about what drives people, how much power they want, and how complicated it is to live together in a society.