Title of a Sci-Fi short story

Cafe Society
1

I am looking for the title of a short Sci-Fi story that I read a long time ago. It was part on an anthology of stories by famous Sci-Fi authors, so I expect that the author is regarded as one of the top guys in the field.

The story is about first contact, an alien is being sent into exile and crash lands on a planet. A human ship has just discovered the planet and find the alien.

The humans and the alien are then playing lots of mind games and finally (I think) the alien wins and is able to leave the planet.

I remember the story to be hilariously funny, for instance, none of the humans want to be the first to speak to the alien, because whatever they say, it must be more memorable than “A small step for man…”, so they send some journalists to make first contact.

Any ideas?

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Moving thread from General Questions to Cafe Society.

3

Thank you!

4

It’s not this, is it? The plot is similar but doesn’t quite match up in a lot of the details.

“First Contact” by Murray Leinster

5

If it’s an older story maybe it’s by Eric Frank Russell. He wrote some real corkers.

6

Nope, not that one, thanks.

7

Thought of another tidbit I remembered: The main “bad” guy on the human side was a military guy who earned his stripes defending New York against the notorious homosexual brigade during the war or something like that.

Does that kind of humor ring a bell?

8

Something by Robert Sheckley, maybe? Though no particular title comes to mind.

9

Could be Sheckley, but I just read that he wrote over 400 short stories, so will be a pleasure to find out if it was him…