Changeling

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You may have noticed (assuming that you have read my robot stories and novels) that I have not had occasion to discuss the interaction of robots and aliens. In fact, at no point anywhere in my writing has any robot met any alien. In very few of my writings have human beings met aliens, in fact.

You may wonder why that is so, and you might suspect that the answer would be, “I don’t know. That’s just the way I write stories, I guess.” But if that is what you suspect, you are wrong. I will be glad to explain just why things are as they are.

The time is 1940…

In those days, it was common to describe “Galactic Federations” in which there were many, many planets, each with its own form of intelligent life. E. E. (“Doc”) Smith had started the fashion, and John W. Campbell had carried it on.

There was, however, a catch. Smith and Campbell, though wonderful people, were of northwest European extraction and they took it for granted that northwest Europeans and their descendants were the evolutionary crown and peak. Neither one was a racist in any evil sense, you understand. Both were as kind and as good as gold to everyone, but they knew they belonged to the racial aristocracy.

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