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Noel
Meyerhof is a "Grand Master", one of a small cadre of Earth's recognised geniuses, who has the insight to know what questions to ask Multivac. But a computer scientist is concerned that Meyerhof is acting erratically. As a known joke-teller, he has been discovered feeding jokes and riddles into
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By computer analysis, the characters in the story investigate the origin of humour, particularly why there seems to be no such thing as an original joke, except for puns. Every normal joke is something that was originally heard from someone else.
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The characters of the story conjecture that figuring this fact out makes humour useless as a tool, so the aliens will cease using it... And suddenly the characters of the story feel that they cannot recall any joke.
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This article is about the 1956 Isaac Asimov short story. For "someone who makes jokes", see
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The story was adapted as a 30 minute broadcast, read by
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Works originally published in
Infinity Science Fiction
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386:"Jokester by Isaac Asimov - BBC Radio 4 Extra"
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132:Learn how and when to remove this message
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