Anything You Can Do ...

"Anything You Can Do ..." by Randall Garrett is a science fiction novel written in the early 1960s. The story introduces readers to an alien being known as the Nipe, who finds himself crashing onto Earth after his spaceship sustains damage during interstellar travel. The narrative explores themes of survival, intelligence, and the complexities of communication between species, as the Nipe adapts to his new environment while confronting and overcoming various challenges. At the start of the novel, we meet the Nipe as his spaceship—a silver-pink, fish-like vessel—navigates perilously close to a yellow-white sun. After sustaining severe internal damage, the Nipe, a centipede-like creature, reflects on his predicament and the death of his brother, who he sacrificed for the sake of survival. His journey takes him to Earth, where he collides with Wang Kulichenko, a forest ranger, leading to tragic results. The opening sets the stage for a tale of cultural conflict and impending chaos, as the Nipe grapples with his identity as an interstellar being while facing the repercussions of his actions in an alien world. (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.