# Help me ID this funny Asimov short story
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [June 7, 2010, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225 "2010-06-07T02:13:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/1 "2010-06-07T02:13:25Z")
Three very tough, stumpy robots are sent as Earth’s ambassadors to a xenophobic, arrogant alien race that lives on a high-gravity world. The aliens are amazed at how hardy the robots are, and by the end of the robots’ visit have become quite respectful towards them. On the way home, the robots realize that they never actually mentioned that they weren’t human! The aliens’ misunderstanding will be to Earth’s advantage, however, so the robots decide that’s OK.
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### Author:  [@Kobalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobalt)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/2 "2010-06-07T02:54:37Z")
That would be “Victory Unintentional” published in 1942.
Wiki page here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory\_Unintentional](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Unintentional)
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/3 "2010-06-07T12:56:46Z")
This is one of the few Asimov robot stories that doesn’t fit into his overall Robot/Foundation universe. Late in his career he decided that the Robot stories and the Foundation stories should be put together and considered as being set in a single consistent universe. This story doesn’t fit though, since it has non-human intelligent beings in our galaxy, and that isn’t true in the Foundation series.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/4 "2010-06-07T13:53:52Z")
> [@Kobalt](#):
>
> That would be “Victory Unintentional” published in 1942.
>
> Wiki page here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory\_Unintentional](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Unintentional)
That’s the one - many thanks! I’m amazed he wrote that so early. As I remember it, it reads like it might’ve been written yesterday.
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### Author:  [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/5 "2010-06-07T16:54:21Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> This is one of the few Asimov robot stories that doesn’t fit into his overall Robot/Foundation universe. Late in his career he decided that the Robot stories and the Foundation stories should be put together and considered as being set in a single consistent universe.
Is that what happened? I read the first three Foundation books as a kid and never noticed the association with the robot universe, then read the later ones as an adult and they were linked. I’ve been wondering if I just hadn’t picked up on it, or if the link really wasn’t there.
> [@](#):
>
> This story doesn’t fit though, since it has non-human intelligent beings in our galaxy, and that isn’t true in the Foundation series.
In one of the last Foundation books (written by someone else–David Brin?) it was divulged that robots went out ahead of humans, wiping out possible threats, as well as making the planets hospitable to human colonization.
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/6 "2010-06-07T17:26:44Z")
Well, the reason the Foundation and Robot stories had no aliens is that the editor, Joseph Campbell, insisted that humans be superior to any aliens. So Asimov just didn’t include 'em.
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/7 "2010-06-07T17:34:01Z")
The planet in question was Jupiter, back when they didn’t realize the outer planets were gas giants. They thought Jupiter had a solid surface under maybe a thousand miles of atmosphere.
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### Author:  [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/8 "2010-06-07T17:47:25Z")
> [@Lumpy](#):
>
> …back when they didn’t realize the outer planets were gas giants.
Interesting. I thought this must be wrong when I read it, but it checks out. The story was written in 1942, and the term ‘gas giant’ was coined (also by a Science Fiction writer, James Blish) in 1952.
I thought that in the story it wasn’t necessarily a solid planetary surface that the aliens lived on so much as solid ‘floating islands’ buoyed up by denser liquid or gas, but that’s a nitpick. Whatever the specifcs, it’s a setup that’s quite improbable given Jovian conditions as we understand them now.
And Asimov did make much of the high pressure of the Jovian atmosphere. For one thing, that was the reason the robots were sent on the mission, because humans couldn’t survive down there.
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### Author:  [@lalenin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lalenin)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/9 "2010-06-07T18:48:24Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#):
>
> Well, the reason the Foundation and Robot stories had no aliens is that the editor, Joseph Campbell, insisted that humans be superior to any aliens. So Asimov just didn’t include 'em.
[John W. Campbell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell)
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### Author:  [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/10 "2010-06-07T19:03:04Z")
> [@chrisk](#):
>
> Interesting. I thought this must be wrong when I read it, but it checks out. The story was written in 1942, and the term ‘gas giant’ was coined (also by a Science Fiction writer, James Blish) in 1952.
Interesting point about the gas giants in science fiction: in C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, in the first novel Out of the Silent Planet, all the planets including Jupiter and Saturn are referred to by the inhabitants of Mars by names ending in -andra. But in the third book That Hideous Strength, the -andra ending is dropped from the names for Jupiter and Saturn. I wonder if this reflects Lewis’s knowledge about the nature of the outer planets at the times the novels were written.
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### Author:  [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/11 "2010-06-07T19:21:44Z")
> [@ZenBeam](#):
>
> In one of the last Foundation books (written by someone else–David Brin?) it was divulged that robots went out ahead of humans, wiping out possible threats, as well as making the planets hospitable to human colonization.
The lack of aliens was actually explained in one of Asimov’s books, Foundation and Earth. (The last proper Foundation book.)
The main character meets R. Daneel Olivaw in the moon, who reveals that there had been aliens out there, but he (and other robots working with him, in secret) was responsible for them not being there. ISTR this involving time manipulation, but it’s been a long time since I read the book, and I find no reference to that elsewhere, so I may be misremembering.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/12 "2010-06-07T19:23:15Z")
It was also a sequel of sorts to a previous story, “Not Final”. Humans were worried about the xenophobic Jovians coming to kick our butts, but the only spaceship hull strong enough to contain a Jovian atmosphere would be a forcefield, and a clever human theoretical physicist proves that such a forcefield would be impossible. He’s very proud of his theoretical work, declaring that any experimentalist would have probably have lost an arm in the process of coming to the same conclusion, that forcefield-hulled ships are impossible, and that’s final. The story ends with a one-armed experimentalist coming to visit the theorist in his forcefield-hulled ship.
> [@](#):
>
> This is one of the few Asimov robot stories that doesn’t fit into his overall Robot/Foundation universe. Late in his career he decided that the Robot stories and the Foundation stories should be put together and considered as being set in a single consistent universe. This story doesn’t fit though, since it has non-human intelligent beings in our galaxy, and that isn’t true in the Foundation series.
There were a good number of them, actually. Off the top of my head, there’s also “Sally”, “Let’s Get Together”, and the entire _Lucky Starr_ series (the former two being notable for featuring robots built without regard for the Three Laws).
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2010, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/13 "2010-06-07T19:56:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> It was also a sequel of sorts to a previous story, “Not Final”. Humans were worried about the xenophobic Jovians coming to kick our butts, but the only spaceship hull strong enough to contain a Jovian atmosphere would be a forcefield, and a clever human theoretical physicist proves that such a forcefield would be impossible. He’s very proud of his theoretical work, declaring that any experimentalist would have probably have lost an arm in the process of coming to the same conclusion, that forcefield-hulled ships are impossible, and that’s final. The story ends with a one-armed experimentalist coming to visit the theorist in his forcefield-hulled ship.
I was going to mention this. The theorist pointed out that a forcefield of sufficient strength wouldn’t be stable (“space won’t stand it!”); the experimentalist got around that by simply oscillating the field. It was erected then shut down then erected again in cycles so fast the atmosphere didn’t have time to escape.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2010, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/14 "2010-06-08T01:14:16Z")
Chronos, I’m not sure what you’re claiming. If you’re saying that “Sally” and “Let’s Get Together” contain aliens, that’s wrong. If you’re saying that these two stories became noncanonical at the point that the two series were combined, that’s true. It appears to me that the Lucky Starr books were never considered to be part of the same universe as the Robot series, so they didn’t become noncanonical at the point that the two series were combined because they were never canonical.
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### Author:  [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2010, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/15 "2010-06-08T04:34:12Z")
I came into this thread fully expecting another thread in which the OP was asking for “The Last Question”. Huh.
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### Author:  [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2010, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/16 "2010-06-08T04:59:45Z")
No … any OP is, by definition, the First Question of the thread.
And AC said “So, do any other dopers think that the premise of the Matrix is, like, totally bogus?”
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2010, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/17 "2010-06-08T05:36:21Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Chronos, I’m not sure what you’re claiming. If you’re saying that “Sally” and “Let’s Get Together” contain aliens, that’s wrong.
No, I’m just saying that they’re robot stories which clearly aren’t in the same continuity as _I, Robot_ / the Lije Bailey stories / _Foundation_. “Sally” and “Let’s Get Together” are out of the continuity by virtue of their lack of the Three Laws, and the Lucky Starr books are out by the virtue of having aliens.
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2010, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/18 "2010-06-08T10:04:34Z")
> [@lalenin](#):
>
> [John W. Campbell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell)
I _always_ do that. I have no idea why, but I always swap John and Joseph. I think talking about John Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces is probably funnier than Joseph Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction, though, knowing the two personalities.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2010, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/19 "2010-06-08T14:13:44Z")
The story “Campbell’s World” by Paul Di Filippo is about an alternate world in which Joseph Campbell becomes editor of _Astounding_ instead of John Campbell.
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [June 8, 2010, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-id-this-funny-asimov-short-story/542225/20 "2010-06-08T15:24:51Z")
Oooh. Do summarize, or tell me where I could find a copy.
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