[1] Originally published as a three-part serial called "...And Searching Mind" in Astounding Science-Fiction (March, April, May 1948), it was in fact a sequel to an earlier novelette, "With Folded Hands...", appearing in the same magazine in July of the previous year of 1947.

[4] The sequence tells the story of robots called humanoids, so perfect and efficient that human beings are left with nothing to do, and life is reduced to meaninglessness.

As laid out in the precursor story ("With Folded Hands..."), and reiterated in The Humanoids, the narrative unfolds thousands of years in the future when humankind has spread out and settled on planets throughout much of the galaxy.

He then used rhodomagnetics to build mechanicals known as "humanoids", perfect sleek black androids, all identical and all controlled by a central transmitter on Wing IV.

He is tasked with creating and overseeing deployment of a "rhodomagnetic bomb" to stave off an invasion by rival human colonists on a neighboring planetary system known as the Triplanet Powers.

The aged and feeble world president is easily outmaneuvered as his valued longtime military aide is revealed to be a humanoid in disguise.

Their new accommodations are palatial, but when Forester's wife Ruth complains of boredom, the humanoids respond by giving her a mind-erasing drug (euphoride) which leaves her chemically lobotomized but "happy".

After lengthy preparations, Forester and Jane resolve to teleport the many lightyears to Wing IV, hack into the central humanoid "electronic brain", and change or eliminate the Prime Directive.

Along the way, the initially skeptical Forester has come to accept that "paraphysics" is real enough and discovers its scientific basis: there is yet a third triad of elements (platinum, gold, mercury) responsible for "platinomagnetism".

But so have the humanoids (with the help of the disloyal Ironsmith) and they have now almost completed the successor to their first control grid on Wing IV: a new electronic brain based, not on rhodomagnetics, but on platinomagnetics, the underlying principle of all psychophysical, or paramechanical, phenomena.

He and Jane teleport about in their attempts to destroy the "platinum brain", but after three hair-raising near misses, Forester simultaneously learns that Ruth (her mind now restored) has left him for Ironsmith and, even more importantly, his new platinomagnetic powers cannot be used for "destructive" or "hateful" purposes.

He is joined by Mark White, now also a fellow enthusiast, and learns that Jane Carter is off to the Andromeda Galaxy to select new planets for colonization by humanity and their humanoid overlords.

In 1951, Williamson coined the word "psionics" for another story he wrote for Campbell, indicating an application for engineering (electronics) to harness the "psychic" potential of the human brain.

[5] The story is a warning that we should be careful not to let technology become so powerful that it controls us, and that we should not blindly accept the idea of a utopian society without thinking about what it might mean for the quality of human life.