Life & Wisdom Quote by Stanley Schmidt

Schmidt is describing a cultural feedback loop that feels less like taste and more like a search algorithm with a human face. His line captures the way scarcity manufactures desire: when a style, theme, or genre goes missing long enough, it returns not as one more option but as an event. The first sighting reads as novelty, even if it is technically old news. That’s the trick: absence resets the palate, and the audience mistakes rediscovery for innovation.

The real bite is in the middle clause: “they go looking for more like it.” This is consumption turning predatory, a shift from appreciation to extraction. A single example becomes a template, then a brief boom, as publishers, editors, and creators rush to meet the newly visible demand. Schmidt, a longtime science fiction editor, would have watched this happen in real time: a breakout story signals a market, a wave of imitators follows, and the wave itself becomes the reason the original spark stops feeling special.

The last phrase, “until they get tired of it again,” refuses romance. It’s not that the thing becomes worse; the audience’s attention simply burns through it. Schmidt is quietly puncturing the myth of steady progress in art. Trends don’t “evolve” so much as cycle, driven by attention economics and the nervous system’s craving for the next distinct stimulus. His intent isn’t to sneer at audiences; it’s to warn creators and gatekeepers that the same mechanism that elevates can just as quickly exhaust.