The Tercentenary Incident
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| Author | Isaac Asimov |
|---|---|
| Country |  USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | science fiction mystery short story |
| Released in | Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine |
| Publisher | Davis Publications |
| Media Type | Magazine |
| Released | August 1976 |
The Tercentary Incident is a science-fiction/mystery short story by Isaac Asimov. It was published first in the August 1976 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and reprinted in the collections The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories (1976) and The Complete Robot (1982).
Ellery Queen editor Frederic Dannay contacted Asimov in the fall of 1975 with a story proposal: the August 1976 issue, which would be on the stands during the United States Bicentennial, would include a contemporary mystery set in 1976 and a historical mystery set in 1876. He wanted a science fiction mystery set in 2076, and Asimov agreed to write one. Asimov's original title for the story was "Death at the Tercentenary", but when the story appeared he decided he liked Dannay's title better.
[edit] Plot
This story begins on 4 July 2076. The United States itself is no longer a sovereign country, but part of a Global Federation. The story details the speech of the 57th president, Hugo Allen Winkler, who is described by Secret Service agent Lawrence Edwards as a "vote-grabber, a promiser" who has failed to get anything done during his first term in office. The president is walking near the Washington Monument, and suddenly disappears. He reappears very shortly afterwards on a guarded stage and gives a stirring speech which is quite different from the kind he usually makes. Two years after that occurrence, Edwards talks to a government official named Janek, to whom he describes a possible murder weapon, a disintegrator. Edwards explains that a robot double of the president exists as a security measure, and then correctly surmises that it was not the robot double who had died, but the president himself. The robot had then taken office.
The concept of a robot taking political office in the guise of a human was also the theme of Asimov's 1946 story, "Evidence".
| The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories |
| The Prime of Life | Feminine Intuition | Waterclap | —That Thou art Mindful of Him | Stranger In Paradise | The Life and Times of Multivac | The Winnowing | The Bicentennial Man | Marching In | Old-fashioned | The Tercentenary Incident | Birth of a Notion |
| The Complete Robot |
| A Boy's Best Friend | Sally | Someday | Point of View | Think! | True Love | Robot AL-76 Goes Astray | Victory Unintentional | Stranger In Paradise | Light Verse | Segregationist | Robbie | Let's Get Together | Mirror Image | The Tercentenary Incident | First Law | Runaround | Reason | Catch that Rabbit | Liar! | Satisfaction Guaranteed | Lenny | Galley Slave | Little Lost Robot | Risk | Escape! | Evidence | The Evitable Conflict | Feminine Intuition | —That Thou art Mindful of Him | The Bicentennial Man |
