Pointed out to me in email

[james_davis_nicoll]

Canadian Supermanliness, parts one and two.

Comments

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

That is priceless!

One both amusing and sobering reaction therein:

[dewline.livejournal.com]

"Do POWs have any duty to tell plausible lies?"

Re: One both amusing and sobering reaction therein:

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I'm remembering a story -- I think it was Randall Garrett -- where a human is captured by an invading alien force with superior technology and an infallible lie detector. By extremely creative use of technically true statements, he manages to convince his interrogators that humans are some kind of transcendent beings of tremendous power, and the invasion is called off.

Re: One both amusing and sobering reaction therein:

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Which always reminds me of the (Asimov? Clark?) where the aliens interrogate a bunch of robots built to explore Jupiter, who never think to qualify that "there are 6 billion inhabitants of Earth" refers to humans, and "yes, we can withstand this pressure easily" does not.

Re: One both amusing and sobering reaction therein:

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Asimov's Victory Unintentional; and to be fair the robots occasionally fail at doors while on the jovian surface, so their high functioning stupidity is a running theme throughout the story.

Re: One both amusing and sobering reaction therein:

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

It was "The Best Policy" (1957).

Re: One both amusing and sobering reaction therein:

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

The same tactic was used in The High Crusade, with even Brother Parvus blending literal and metaphorical truth. (Humanity's first experiments into space travel began thousands of years before, at the Tower of Babel, for instance.)

-- Steve's trying to recall other such novels built around "lying by telling the truth".

Re: One both amusing and sobering reaction therein:

[(Anonymous)]

I have this suspicion that it came up somewhere in H. Beam Piper's work, as he made frequent use of an infallible lie detector. I sure can't recall where, though.

Re: One both amusing and sobering reaction therein:

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It got used in a number of places but the trial in Little Fuzzy may be what you are thinking of.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

It isn't that we are not humble. We just have a special sense of humour. Evidently the German didn't get it.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I believe Bodyguard of Lies has an anecdote about a German officer in WWI who responded to Allied leaflets accusing him of misappropriating resources meant for his men with a flurry of leaflets on the Allied lines proving his innocence.