The story was written for the twentieth anniversary of Asimov's first published story, "Marooned off Vesta", in the March 1939 issue of Amazing. The magazine reprinted the earlier story with the new one, and he feared that someone would write a letter stating that the earlier's writing was better, but no one did.[1] The story is also part of a loosely connected series of stories by Asimov about the supercomputer Multivac.