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Isaac's Universe #1
Isaac's Universe Volume One: The Diplomacy Guild
The first book in a stunning new future created by Isaac Asimov.
In the Milky Way galaxy of 1000 years hence, six vastly different starfaring races coexist under a precarious truce - a volatile peace that is threatened by the presence of the newcomers, the most recent addition to the galactic community...the species called Man.
Isaac's Universe: Only the innovative genius of Isaac Asimov could have conceived a cosmos so completely formed and intricately detailed - a brave new universe now brought spectacularly to life by five premier practitioners in the art of science fiction.
Contents:
Introduction by Isaac Asimov
They Hide We Seek by Robert Silverberg
The Diplomacy Guild by David Brin
Myryx by Robert Sheckley
The Burning Sky by Poul Anderson
Island of the Gods by Harry Turtledove
Cover art by Martin Andrews
In the Milky Way galaxy of 1000 years hence, six vastly different starfaring races coexist under a precarious truce - a volatile peace that is threatened by the presence of the newcomers, the most recent addition to the galactic community...the species called Man.
Isaac's Universe: Only the innovative genius of Isaac Asimov could have conceived a cosmos so completely formed and intricately detailed - a brave new universe now brought spectacularly to life by five premier practitioners in the art of science fiction.
Contents:
Introduction by Isaac Asimov
They Hide We Seek by Robert Silverberg
The Diplomacy Guild by David Brin
Myryx by Robert Sheckley
The Burning Sky by Poul Anderson
Island of the Gods by Harry Turtledove
Cover art by Martin Andrews
260 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
3 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Martin H. Greenberg
910 books163 followersMartin Harry Greenberg was an American academic and speculative fiction anthologist. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. In addition, he was a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel.
For the 1950s anthologist and publisher of Gnome Press, see Martin Greenberg.
For the 1950s anthologist and publisher of Gnome Press, see Martin Greenberg.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 13, 2022
This is the first of three anthologies edited by Greenberg that contained original stories by well-known science fiction authors based on a rather loose concept devised by Isaac Asimov. I didn't think it worked too well in reality, and thought the writers involved would have been much better off just writing their own ideas. Perhaps my expectations were too high... I remember rather liking the stories by David Brin and Robert Silverberg, disliking the ones by Harry Turtledove and Poul Anderson, and I can't remember the Robert Sheckley at all.
June 12, 2013
I first read these stories back in the summer of '91, and I didn't really remember anything of the specifics of them. Re-reading them now was almost like reading them for the first time, and I loved them.
They Hide, We Seek by Silverberg was excellent. Bold humans and bold, though slightly more timid aliens. A beautiful introduction to the series with four of the six starfaring races finding a hidden city of wonder in an out of the way corner of the galaxy. There is some nice science history to go with it as well.
Diplomacy Guild by David Brin is a cute little story about the difficulties of diplomacy among the races and also an open ended narrative of the dangers of unintended consequences. This was really the only story I kind of remembered.
Myryx by Robert Sheckley made me feel like I should have been high or really drunk for most of it. Consider it a story of not believing everything you see and hear.
The Burning Sky by Poul Anderson is a long short story, more like a novella. It deals with envy, redemption, personal and interspecies distrust, loyalty and jealousy.
Island of the Gods by Harry Turtledove was a delightful little narrative about cooperation and overcoming prejudice. Easily the funniest of the stories in the book.
They Hide, We Seek by Silverberg was excellent. Bold humans and bold, though slightly more timid aliens. A beautiful introduction to the series with four of the six starfaring races finding a hidden city of wonder in an out of the way corner of the galaxy. There is some nice science history to go with it as well.
Diplomacy Guild by David Brin is a cute little story about the difficulties of diplomacy among the races and also an open ended narrative of the dangers of unintended consequences. This was really the only story I kind of remembered.
Myryx by Robert Sheckley made me feel like I should have been high or really drunk for most of it. Consider it a story of not believing everything you see and hear.
The Burning Sky by Poul Anderson is a long short story, more like a novella. It deals with envy, redemption, personal and interspecies distrust, loyalty and jealousy.
Island of the Gods by Harry Turtledove was a delightful little narrative about cooperation and overcoming prejudice. Easily the funniest of the stories in the book.
January 23, 2023
Part of Isaac’s Universe Volume One
General
The setting is really cool. Alien organic genesis. Organic alien genesis?
Pg. 46-48
Drawing idea. MC is going into an unknown region that is invisible from the outside. There’s a kind of antechamber between the camouflage exterior and some interior.
“It was like walking through a wall. Inside, everything was different. He was standing in a kind of antechamber, an open space that curved off to either side at a wide angle. Behind him was the barren plain, still visible, and straight ahead of him, perhaps fifty meters ahead, lay a zone of absolute blackness, so dense and dark that it could well have been the outer boundary of the universe. The space between the invisible wall to his rear and the blackness ahead formed the antechamber, which was brightly lit by drifting clusters of glowfloats and cluttered everywhere with alien-looking instruments. It was full of Crotonites, too, who were staring at him with a look on their demonic bony faces that was surely the Crotonite equivalent of the most extreme astonishment.
Then, as his vision adapted to the low light level within the inner shield, he saw the city.
It was stunning beyond his comprehension. Low buildings, yes-Murry-Balff’s readouts
had been right about that. In a perfect state of preservation, absolutely new looking, and so totally strange in their architecture that he felt as though he had wandered into a land of dreams. Everything seems to melt and flow: domes became parapets, walls became balconies, windows turned to arches. All was fluid, and yet everything was fixed, wolid, eternal.
Unfamiliar colors teased his eyes. He could almost have believed that he was seeing in
some far corner of the spectrum, that these were the hues beyond violet, or perhaps the ones below red.”
Part of Isaac’s Universe Volume One: The Diplomacy Guild
General
The character Jirata (a winged alien whose society saw all other aliens as inferior) had his wings amputated to experience the apparent (to Jirata’s people) limitations of the non-winged aliens as part of an attempt of understanding and diplomatic tolerance. How could we, as a single species, amputate or alter our preconceptions to better understand our neighbors around the world. How much would we be willing to alter? Could we actually experience another culture with our personality intact? or do we need to completely remove ourselves to actually experience another person’s reality? If the experience is reintegrated into ourselves, how can we keep our memories and idioms from contaminating that experience of another?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neu...
General
The setting is really cool. Alien organic genesis. Organic alien genesis?
Pg. 46-48
Drawing idea. MC is going into an unknown region that is invisible from the outside. There’s a kind of antechamber between the camouflage exterior and some interior.
“It was like walking through a wall. Inside, everything was different. He was standing in a kind of antechamber, an open space that curved off to either side at a wide angle. Behind him was the barren plain, still visible, and straight ahead of him, perhaps fifty meters ahead, lay a zone of absolute blackness, so dense and dark that it could well have been the outer boundary of the universe. The space between the invisible wall to his rear and the blackness ahead formed the antechamber, which was brightly lit by drifting clusters of glowfloats and cluttered everywhere with alien-looking instruments. It was full of Crotonites, too, who were staring at him with a look on their demonic bony faces that was surely the Crotonite equivalent of the most extreme astonishment.
Then, as his vision adapted to the low light level within the inner shield, he saw the city.
It was stunning beyond his comprehension. Low buildings, yes-Murry-Balff’s readouts
had been right about that. In a perfect state of preservation, absolutely new looking, and so totally strange in their architecture that he felt as though he had wandered into a land of dreams. Everything seems to melt and flow: domes became parapets, walls became balconies, windows turned to arches. All was fluid, and yet everything was fixed, wolid, eternal.
Unfamiliar colors teased his eyes. He could almost have believed that he was seeing in
some far corner of the spectrum, that these were the hues beyond violet, or perhaps the ones below red.”
Part of Isaac’s Universe Volume One: The Diplomacy Guild
General
The character Jirata (a winged alien whose society saw all other aliens as inferior) had his wings amputated to experience the apparent (to Jirata’s people) limitations of the non-winged aliens as part of an attempt of understanding and diplomatic tolerance. How could we, as a single species, amputate or alter our preconceptions to better understand our neighbors around the world. How much would we be willing to alter? Could we actually experience another culture with our personality intact? or do we need to completely remove ourselves to actually experience another person’s reality? If the experience is reintegrated into ourselves, how can we keep our memories and idioms from contaminating that experience of another?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neu...
March 9, 2023
Asimov's short introduction to this book is a whirlwind. He talks about how guilty he feels for being so famous (tragic) while simultaneously explaining why he deserves his fame. He mentions all the efforts to attach his name to various projects as a way to give young, new writers the spotlight--in a book that features five writers who were already established in 1990, when this was published. Out of those five, the ones with the newest careers were David Brin and Harry Turtledove. The remaining three had been active for decades.
The premise is a fun one. Asimov built a playgoround of interstellar flight and interspecies interaction for other writers to play in. I'm a huge fan of being forced to work within parameters. That sounds like sarcasm, but it isn't. Some of the best books ever written were forced to be subtle by the societal situation they arose from. This isn't the same as that, but I think working around rules can generate great inspiration.
That being said, I thought this was just okay.
The best story for me, by a long shot, was Turtledove's fantastic Island of the Gods, featuring a well-balanced handling of six species, all with different bias towards one another. This one hit all the right notes for me, even featuring a likable AI.
David Brin's The Diplomacy Guild was my second place. Both of these were the shortest in the collection. Silverberg's They Hide, We Seek was the tamest, least edgy, most boring thing I've ever seen from him. Myryx by Robert Sheckley had a big portion of hallucinatory imagery that I just didn't care for. Fredrick Pohl's The Burning Sky left me frustrated. I really liked the ideas but it was way too long and the language use was fustrating as all hell. I was in a constant state of confusion.
Though not a long-lived idea, there were several more efforts in this series. I'll read them, but I'm not in a hurry.
The premise is a fun one. Asimov built a playgoround of interstellar flight and interspecies interaction for other writers to play in. I'm a huge fan of being forced to work within parameters. That sounds like sarcasm, but it isn't. Some of the best books ever written were forced to be subtle by the societal situation they arose from. This isn't the same as that, but I think working around rules can generate great inspiration.
That being said, I thought this was just okay.
The best story for me, by a long shot, was Turtledove's fantastic Island of the Gods, featuring a well-balanced handling of six species, all with different bias towards one another. This one hit all the right notes for me, even featuring a likable AI.
David Brin's The Diplomacy Guild was my second place. Both of these were the shortest in the collection. Silverberg's They Hide, We Seek was the tamest, least edgy, most boring thing I've ever seen from him. Myryx by Robert Sheckley had a big portion of hallucinatory imagery that I just didn't care for. Fredrick Pohl's The Burning Sky left me frustrated. I really liked the ideas but it was way too long and the language use was fustrating as all hell. I was in a constant state of confusion.
Though not a long-lived idea, there were several more efforts in this series. I'll read them, but I'm not in a hurry.
April 22, 2025
Ahh.... Almost perfectly what I look for in a book!
True SF, some would call it hard SF, where you've defined your milieu, with some real effort to guide the story as if it was reality. Ie. You have strange new things, worlds, alien life, even things we don't yet know how to do, but you can't write stuff we know to be impossible. Working to solve a puzzle of some sort, in this case, learning about ancient sites of a vanished race. I had to ding it a point, for there were a couple of bubbles on that last point: the first story, by Robert Silverberg depends on information gained in an impossible way (sonar doesn't work in a vacuum), & the last, by Harry Turtledove, wherein the author needs a refresher how-to on holograms. But overall, those dings make for far less detraction than much else that is out there.
This is sort of rigorous fiction I wish we would see more of
True SF, some would call it hard SF, where you've defined your milieu, with some real effort to guide the story as if it was reality. Ie. You have strange new things, worlds, alien life, even things we don't yet know how to do, but you can't write stuff we know to be impossible. Working to solve a puzzle of some sort, in this case, learning about ancient sites of a vanished race. I had to ding it a point, for there were a couple of bubbles on that last point: the first story, by Robert Silverberg depends on information gained in an impossible way (sonar doesn't work in a vacuum), & the last, by Harry Turtledove, wherein the author needs a refresher how-to on holograms. But overall, those dings make for far less detraction than much else that is out there.
This is sort of rigorous fiction I wish we would see more of
December 12, 2020
As I was (finally) organizing all the books I've saved over the years and marking their 'read' vs 'not yet read' status in Goodreads, I came across two volumes from 1990 in the "Isaac's Universe" shared world anthology series and I could not resist reading the first. After all, writing in this shared universe volume created by Isaac Asimov were Harry Turletodove, Robert Silverberg, David Brin, Poul Anderson, and Robert Sheckley. Asimov's universe is interesting and somewhat plausible and the stories told by the contributing authors were engaging, with the notable exception of the entry from Poul Anderson (alas).
I own the second volume in the series and plan to read it soon, but I think I'll read a few novels first. While I love short stories and anthologies, I cannot read too many in a row without getting antsy for a longer story.
The Diplomacy Guild is certainly worth reading if you can find a copy.
I own the second volume in the series and plan to read it soon, but I think I'll read a few novels first. While I love short stories and anthologies, I cannot read too many in a row without getting antsy for a longer story.
The Diplomacy Guild is certainly worth reading if you can find a copy.
June 27, 2022
This is a great idea for an anthology. Isaac Asimov is asked to create a science fiction universe and then other authors contribute short stories and novellas set in that universe.
The premise is that when humanity reaches the stars, they discover six other star-faring races. Each race has its own environmental requirements, so they are all usually interested in different planets. But the discovery of ancient cities--filled with at-first inexplicable technology left behind by an ancient and now vanished race. So there is now a source of possible conflict among the current races.
All the stories here are at least good, with contributions by Poul Anderson and Harry Turtledove really standing out.
The premise is that when humanity reaches the stars, they discover six other star-faring races. Each race has its own environmental requirements, so they are all usually interested in different planets. But the discovery of ancient cities--filled with at-first inexplicable technology left behind by an ancient and now vanished race. So there is now a source of possible conflict among the current races.
All the stories here are at least good, with contributions by Poul Anderson and Harry Turtledove really standing out.
July 7, 2025
Didnt expect much from this but almost every story hit for me. I really like Asimov's universe here. I mostly read this for the Sheckley story and it sure didnt dissapoint. It was as incredibly disorienting as I've come to expect from his work.
I was surprised that I didnt love Poul Anderson's offering. That being said, I didnt hate it.
I was surprised that I didnt love Poul Anderson's offering. That being said, I didnt hate it.
December 10, 2025
I can't find a hit. Asimov clearly could not either....
July 27, 2014
Not bad. Pretty good sci-fi tale spinning. Off to listia. =)
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews