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"Death Sentence" is a short story by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov , was a Russian-born United States author and professor of biochemistry, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books....
. It was first published in the November 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov
The Early Asimov

The Early Asimov, or Eleven Years of Trying is a 1972 collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov. Each story is accompanied by commentary by the author, who gives details about his life and his literary achievements in the period in which he wrote the story....
.

Theo Realo, an eccentric researcher, approaches a psychologist
Psychologist

"Psychologist" is an academic, occupational or professional title describing individuals who are either: * social scientists conducting research and/or teaching psychology in a college or university;...
 at Arcturus
Arcturus

|- bgcolor="#FFFAFA"| note : || H and K emission vary.Arcturus is the brightest star in the constellation Bo?tes. With a visual magnitude of -0.05, it is also the list of brightest stars in the night sky, after Sirius and Canopus ....
 university. His story is that he's spent many years on an obscure out-of-the-way planet and has found evidence that it once formed part of a now-lost Galactic Federation, based on psychology far more advanced than that now known.

Based on his reports, a research group visits the planet to explore it.






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"Death Sentence" is a short story by the American science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov , was a Russian-born United States author and professor of biochemistry, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books....
. It was first published in the November 1943 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1972 collection The Early Asimov
The Early Asimov

The Early Asimov, or Eleven Years of Trying is a 1972 collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov. Each story is accompanied by commentary by the author, who gives details about his life and his literary achievements in the period in which he wrote the story....
.

Theo Realo, an eccentric researcher, approaches a psychologist
Psychologist

"Psychologist" is an academic, occupational or professional title describing individuals who are either: * social scientists conducting research and/or teaching psychology in a college or university;...
 at Arcturus
Arcturus

|- bgcolor="#FFFAFA"| note : || H and K emission vary.Arcturus is the brightest star in the constellation Bo?tes. With a visual magnitude of -0.05, it is also the list of brightest stars in the night sky, after Sirius and Canopus ....
 university. His story is that he's spent many years on an obscure out-of-the-way planet and has found evidence that it once formed part of a now-lost Galactic Federation, based on psychology far more advanced than that now known.

Based on his reports, a research group visits the planet to explore it. They discover documents that date back many thousands of years and make a small start in examining them. But Realo insists that the ancient psychologists of the Galactic Federation also set up a world of positronic robot
Robot

A robot is a virtual or mechanical artificial agent. In practice, it is usually an Electromechanics which, by its appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has Intention or Agency of its own....
s for the purpose of letting them develop their own society and carry out their own research. Realo insists that he has been on this very planet, that the robot society still exists and that he let them examine his spaceship.

It is feared that the robots will develop hyperspace
Hyperspace

Hyperspace may refer to:* A Euclidean space of dimension greater than three * A space with non-Euclidean geometry* Minkowski space, a concept, often referred to by science fiction writers as hyperspace, that refers to the four-dimensional space-time of special relativity...
 travel themselves, which will pit them against the current Federation. The government will then have no choice but to attack and destroy them - so the robot world is effectively under a death sentence. Realo refuses to let this happen, and sets off to warn the robots. He plans to return to the city where he first met them — a city the robots called New York.