Anything You Can Do...

• Publisher:   Doubleday
• Number Of Pages:   192
• Publication Date:   1963
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   106277101X
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9781062771015

Randall Garrett's Anything You Can Do... is an old favorite. I read it when I was 12 or 13 and I have very fond memories of it. I picked up an old paperback of it a few days ago and read it on the train before and after a book signing. Unlike a lot of early favorites it holds up. It's a "first contact" novel - in this case, the first contact goes horribly wrong. But I don't want to give the impression it's an alien invasion story. It's as much about future society (it's set roughly 100 years hence) as anything else, and it's surprisingly on-target about a lot of things politically despite having been written 45 years ago. It's also somewhat gruesome, though not in a "splatterpunk" way (Garrett leaves a lot to the reader's imagination).

_Anything You Can Do_ was serialized in _Analog_ in 1962 under the pseudonym "Darrell T. Langart" and was published by Doubleday in 1963. A paperback edition was issued in 1969, using Randall Garrett's name for the first time. The novel weaves three subplots together: the psychology of a deadly but knowledgeable alien who has crash landed on Earth, a government project intended to manufacture a superman, and the relationship between a pair of twins. I remember that the serial left me with the feeling that the relationship between the twins was overly sketchy and vague. The book version adds a number of scenes and expositional passages that makes the relationship clearer and which ties it to the other two subplots more effectively.
Yet even in book form, this relationship is not completely satisfying. The problem is that we are told by others what the relationship is, but we never actually see it dramatized until the last scene of the novel.
Another weakness of the novel, as Avram Davidson noted back in 1963, is the setting. Garrett tries to give us a sense that the Earth is not the same as ours. The Siberian tundra is now a preserve for Martian pulp trees, New York has been wiped out and has been replaced with Government City and a game preserve, and inertialess cars have made ships and bridges obsolete. But these details are sketchy. We are never given the sights and sounds of the new world. Government City is at one point described as having the same burroughs as New York. We don't really _feel_ as though we are in a futuristic world.
Yet the novel has a number of strengths. One is Garrett's portrait of the Nipe, the alien who has great technological knowledge and near-perfect memory but whose behavior is superstitious and highly ritualistic. Another strength is the plot. By shifting from one subplot to another, Garrett manages to throw the reader a bit off-balance. He frequently does something unexpected. The action sequences are well handled, and the dialogue is crisp and snappy. The novel moves like a well-edited movie. If it is not a major piece of writing, it is a good piece of entertainment.

"Darrel T. Langart" is a pseudodonym (and anagram) of the late Randall Garrett. Considering the popularity of Garrett's "Lord Darcy" stories, someone really ought to reprint this. How do you deal with an alien who has a perfect memory, and therefore can never "unlearn" something he already knows -- who knows that humans are inferior? The solution is, of course, obvious ...

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