Bluffing the Advance Scout: Difference between revisions

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== [[Literature]] ==

* "The Best Policy" by [[Randall Garrett]]: Alien advance scouts kidnap a human, stick him in a [[Lie Detector]], and order him to describe Earth. He manages to give them a description in which every sentence is [[Exact Words|technically true]], but the overall effect is a misleading picture of humans who possess [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|immense, even supernatural powers]], and the aliens are frightened off.

* "Ginger's Secret Weapons" by Peter Wingham, originally published in ''Story Teller'' magazine: A schoolboy named Ginger is abducted by froglike aliens, and uses the contents of his ~~pockets -- which~~ include itching powder, a [[Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball|small rubber ball]], and a [[Brats with Slingshots|slingshot]] ~~-- to~~ reduce them to a state where they're promising they'll go away and never return if he'll only just, please, leave them alone.

* "Ginger's Secret Weapons" by Peter Wingham, originally published in ''Story Teller'' magazine: A schoolboy named Ginger is abducted by froglike aliens, and uses the contents of his pockets—which include itching powder, a [[Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball|small rubber ball]], and a [[Brats with Slingshots|slingshot]]—to reduce them to a state where they're promising they'll go away and never return if he'll only just, please, leave them alone.

* ''The Demon Breed'' by [[James H. Schmitz]]: Aliens planning an invasion capture a remote scientific outpost to study what humanity is made of. The scientist at the outpost tries to sell them a story about humanity having secret mutant warlord protectors. This being a more dramatic take on the trope, the aliens don't immediately buy it, even though it was ''their'' theory in the first place, and it's up to the heroine to cause enough of the right kind of trouble to persuade them it's true.

** And inverted in ''Geest Gun'' by the same author: the advance recon party has come and ~~gone--finding~~ the world easy ~~pickings--and~~ the protagonists essentially have to blackmail the government into getting the fleet ready.

** And inverted in ''Geest Gun'' by the same author: the advance recon party has come and gone—finding the world easy pickings—and the protagonists essentially have to blackmail the government into getting the fleet ready.

* [[Spider Robinson]]'s ''[[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon]]'' story "The Guy With The Eyes": An alien is the advance scout for a race of extremely powerful aliens who plan to destroy the Earth. He comes up with the idea to render himself unconscious so the other aliens won't receive a transmission from him. Since he is exceptionally powerful himself, they'll conclude that humanity is too dangerous to attack and leave us alone.

* An inversion of sorts occurs in "Victory Unintentional" by [[Isaac Asimov]]: Humans send a team of highly advanced robots to negotiate with hostile aliens living on Jupiter. In order to be able to survive in the extremely high gravity, the robots have been built to be extremely strong and durable (the aliens themselves function more like deep sea fish and maintain their internal pressure the same as the outside in order to avoid being crushed). By the end of the story, the aliens surrender to humans, and after some confusion it's realised the humans never told them they were sending robots, leading them to assume that humans are a race of super-powered indestructible metallic beings.