"If you can't lick 'em, join 'em," is an old rule of politics and warfare. So when the various armies of Earth, divided as they were between suspicious nations, were unable to lick the single-minded invading Centrans who ruled a complacent galactic empire—they surrendered and decided to give their leonine conquerors everything humans could wholeheartedly grant. So they exported installment payments, loan sharks, communism, fascism, planned obsolescence, food fads, religious cults, and all the other delights we are so accustomed to on our home world. Out there among the orderly stars all these goodies were received with gaping jaws and open arms—until the Terrestrial tail was very soon wagging the Centran lion—and the military might of the conquerors faced the unprecedented problem of how to turn their glorious victory into a secure defeat if only their victims would let them!.
Author
Christopher Anvil was a pseudonym used by author Harry C. Crosby. He began publishing science fiction with the story "Cinderella, Inc." in the December 1952 issue of the science fiction magazine Imagination. By 1956, he had adopted his pseudonym and was being published in Astounding Magazine. Anvil's repeated appearances in Astounding/Analog were due in part to his ability to write to one of Campbell's preferred plots: alien opponents with superior firepower losing out to the superior intelligence or indomitable will of humans. A second factor is his stories are nearly always humorous throughout. Another was his characterization and manner of story crafting, where his protagonists slid from disaster to disaster with the best of intentions, and through exercise of fast thinking, managed to snatch victory somehow from the jaws of defeat.
