Anything You Can Do!

"Anything You Can Do!" by Randall Garrett is a science fiction novel written in the early 1960s. The story opens with an unusual alien creature, referred to as the Nipe, facing dire circumstances in its dying spaceship as it approaches Earth. The narrative also introduces Wang Kulichenko, a human forester who witnesses the crash landing of the Nipe's ship, setting the stage for an interspecies encounter fraught with tension and intrigue. The opening of the novel presents a dual perspective; on one hand, the Nipe navigates its perilous descent toward Earth while grappling with its inner struggles and survival instincts after losing its companion. On the other hand, we meet Wang, who is observing the strange craft and trying to report its presence. The juxtaposition of the alien's plight with Wang's curiosity hints at the larger conflict to come. As the story unfolds, the encounter between the human and alien species escalates, highlighting themes of survival, misunderstanding, and the notion of dominance in interstellar interactions. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Gordon Randall Phillip David Garrett was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was a contributor to Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He instructed Robert Silverberg in the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure science fiction, and collaborated with him on two novels about men from Earth disrupting a peaceful agrarian civilization on an alien planet.