Martin H. Greenberg - The Diplomacy Guild vol. 1

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ISAAC'S UNIVERSE: THE DIPLOMACY GUILD (Vol. 1)

Worlds of Science Fiction from Avon Books

100 GREAT SCIENCE FICTION SHORT SHORT STORIES

edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, &

Joseph D. 01ander

TALES FROM THE SPACEPORT BAR

edited by George Scithers & Darrell Schweitzer

Avon Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases

for sales promotions, premiums, fund raising or educational use. Special

books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs.

For details write or telephone the office of the.Director of Special

Markets, Avon Books, Dept. FP, 105 Madison Avenue, New York, New York

10016, 212-481-5653.

VOLUME ONE:THE DIPLOMACY GUILD

EDITED BY

MARTIN H. GREENBERG

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ISAAC ASIMOV

AVON WM 6 NEW YORK

To Madeline Claire, with love

ISAAC'S UNIVERSE: THE DIPLOMACY GUILD (Vol. 1) is an original publication

of Avon Books. This work has never before appeared in book form. This is a

work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely

coincidental.

AVON BOOKS

A division of

11je Hearst Corporation

105 Madison Avenue

New York, New York 10016

"Inventing a Universe" copyright 0 1990 by Nightfall, Inc.

"They Hide, We Seek" copyright 0 1990 by Agberg, Ltd.

"The Diplomacy Guild" copyright (0 1990 by David Brin

"The Burning Sky" copyright C 1990 by Poul Anderson

"Myryx" copyright (9 1990 by Robert Sheckley

"Island of the Gods" copyright C 1990 by Harry Turtledove

Cover illustration by Martin Andrews

Published by arrangement with the editor

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-92473

ISBN: 0-380-75751-6

portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S.

First Avon Books Printing: April 1990

AVON TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA

REGISTRADA, HECHO EN U.S.A.

Printed in the U.S.A.

RA 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21

Contents

Introduction by Isaac Asimov A

They Hide, We Seek by Robert SilverbergI

The Diplomacy Guild by David Brin56

Myryx by Robert Sheckley 77

The Burning SkV by Poul Anderson 137

Island of the Gods by Harry Turtledove 221

About the Authors 259

Introduction

INVENTING

A UNIVERSE

ISAAC ASIMOV

WHY HAVE I GONE TO THE TROUBLE OF INVENTING A

universe for other writers to exploit?

No, it isn't the money or the fame. Most of the royalties and all of the

fame will go, as they should, to the authors who actually write the stories

in this book and (it is to be hoped) in later companion pieces. My own

return is, as it should be, miniscule.

But there are other reasons and I would like to explain them at some

length, for among other things, they involve my feelings of guilt. Now

guilt (for those of you who have never experienced the emotion) is a dread-

ful annoyance, souring one's life and making one unable to enjoy properly

any renown or riches that come one's way. One is bowed down by its weight

and is rendered fearful of the (usually imaginary) accusing eye of public

disapproval.

In my case , it came about this way. I hadn't been writing for more than

ten or fifteen years when I began to have the uneasy suspicion that I was

becoming rather well known as a science fiction writer. In fact, I was even

Iftoduction vil

getting mentioned as one of the "Big Three," the other two being Robert A.

Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke.

It only got worse as the decades continued to fly by. We were not only

cursed with prolificity, but with longevity, so that the same old Big Three

remained Big for nearly half a century. Heinlein died in 1988 at the age of

80, but Clarke is still going strong as I write this and, obviously, so am

The result is that, at present, when there are a great many writers

attempting to scale the mountainside of science fiction, it must be rather

annoying for them to see the peak occupied by elderly has-beens who cling

to it with their arthritic paws and simply won't get off. Even death, it

seems, won't stop us, since Heinlein has already published a posthumous

book and the reissue of his old novels is in the works.

Thanks to the limited space on the shelves of bookstores (themselves of

sharply limited number), large numbers of new books of science fiction and

fantasy are placed on them for only brief intervals before being swept off

by new arrivals. Few books seem to manage to exist in public view for

longer than a month before being replaced. Always excepting (as some

writers add, with a faint snarl) the "megastars. "

"So what," I can hear you say in your warm and loving way. "So you're a

megastar and your books are perennial sellers and the economic futures of

yourself and your eventual survivors are set. Is that bad?"

No, it isn't bad, exactly, but that's where the guilt comes in. I worry

about crowding out newcomers with my old perennials, about smothering them

with the weight of my name.

I've tried to justify the situation to myself. (Anything to make it

possible for me to walk about science fiction conventions without having to

skulk and hide in doorways when other writers pass.)

In the first place, we started in the early days of science fiction-not

only the Big Three, but others of importance such as Lester del Rey, Poul

Anderson, Fred Pohl, Clifford Simak, Ray Bradbury, and even some who died

VIII ISAAC ASIMOV

young: Stanley Weinbaum, Henry Kutmer, and Cyril Kornbluth, for instance. In

those early days, the magazines paid only one cent a word or less, and there

were only magazines. There were no hardcover science fiction publishers, no

paperbacks, no Hollywood to speak of.

For years and decades we stuck it out under starvation conditions, and it

was our efforts that slowly increased the popularity of science fiction to

the point where today's beginners can get more for one novel than any of us

got in ten years of endless plugging. So, if some of us are doing unusually

well now, it is possible to argue that we earned it.

Secondly, from the more personal standpoint, back in 1958 1 decided I had

done enough science fiction. I had been successful in writing nonfiction of

various types and it seemed to me I could make a living if I concentrated

on nonfiction (and, to tell you the truth, I preferred nonfiction). In that

way I could leave science fiction to the talented new writers who were

making their way into the field.

So from 1958 to 1981, a period of nearly a quarter of a century, I wrote

virtually no science fiction. There was one novel and a handful of short

stories, but that's all. And meanwhile, along came the "New Wave." Writing

styles changed drastically, and I felt increasingly that I was a

back-number and should remain out of science fiction.

The trouble was that all this didn't help. The science fiction books that

I published in the 1950s refused to go out of print and continued to sell

steadily through the 1960s and 1970s. And because I wrote a series of

nonfiction essays for Fantasy and Science Fiction, I remained in the

consciousness of the science fiction public. I was therefore still one of

the Big Three.

Then, in 1981, my publisher insisted (with a big INSIST) that I write

another novel and I did and, to my horror, it hit the bestseller lists and

I've had to write a new novel every year since then, in consequence.

That would have made me feel guiltier than ever, but I've done various

things to pull the fangs of that guilt. For instance, I have, quite

deliberately, decided that since my

Introduction Ix

name has developed a kind of weight and significance, I would use it, as

much as possible, for the benefit of the field rather than of myself.

With my dear and able friends, Martin Harry Greenberg and Charles Waugh

(and occasionally others), I have helped edit many anthologies. More than

a hundred of these have now been published with my name often in the title.

What these serve to do is to rescue from the shadows numbers of stories

that are well worth exposing to new generations of science fiction readers.

Quite apart from the fact that the readers enjoy it, it means a little

money to some veteran authors, as well as a shot in the arm to encourage

continued production. The thought that the presence of my name might make

such anthologies do better and be more efficacious in this respect than

otherwise makes me feel fine.

Then, too, a number of novels by young authors have been published under

the "Isaac Asimov Presents" label. In this way, the young authors get

perhaps a somewhat better sale than they might otherwise have, and even

(perhaps) a better break at the bookshelves.

I have even granted the right to make use of some of the thernes that I

have developed in my own books. There is a series of a dozen books, for

instance, that have the generic title "Isaac Asimov's Robot City. " They

are written by young writers who have my express permission to use my Three

Laws of Robotics, and for each one I write an introduction on one phase or

another of robotics. The books are doing well, actually, and it is clear

that the presence of my name doesn't hurt.

Then another way of using my name usefully came up. Marty Greenberg

suggested that, rather than have writers use a "universe" I had already

invented and made my own, I invent a brand-new one I had never used and

donate it to some publishing house that would be willing to have writers

produce stories built about the concepts of the "universe"-and, of course,

that we find the writers who would want to try their hand at it.

I agreed enthusiastically. After all, I had just devised a new background

for my 1989 novel, Nemesis, one which had not been used in any piece of

fiction I had written

x KAAC ASIMOV

before, so I did not foresee any great difficulty in inventing an "Isaac's

Universe" for other writers to use. (The use of the word "Isaac" in the tide

was Marty's idea but I snatched at it eagerly. There are well over sixty

books that I have written-by no means all anthologies-with either "Asimov"

or "Isaac Asimov" in the tide, but none with "Isaac" alone, until this one.)

In making up a new "Universe" there were some things I couldn't abandon, of

course. We would be working within our own Galaxy in which I postulated the

existence of 25,000,000 star systems containing a habitable world, the

whole being linked together by devices that made it possible to travel and

communicate at faster-than-light speeds. The short-hand for this is

"hyperspatial travel and communication. "

I have this in my "Foundation" universe, and the other novels I have been

connecting to the Foundation, but from here on my Universes part company.

In my Foundation series and the novels related thereto, the Galaxy contains

only one intelligent species--our own. All the habitable worlds have been

colonized by human beings so that we, in effect, have an all-human Galaxy.

I may have been the first to write important novels based on such a theme,

and the reason I did it was to pare away the complexities that would arise

from a multiplicity of intelligences. I wanted to be able to deal with

humanity and its problems in a detailed all-human manner, making them even

clearer by showing them through a Galaxy-wide magnifying glass. This I have

ended up doing---albeit imperfectly, of course, since I am no Shakespeare

or Tolstoy.

However, I was well aware that there was the alternative

multiple-intelligence Universe. We see that now constantly on such

television shows as Star Trek and in many of the. older "space opera"

stories. There we always have the risk of a failure of imagination that

leads to the portrayal of other intelligences as differing from ourselves

superficially by the possession of green faces, or antennae, or corrugated

foreheads, but allowing these changes to leave diem, clearly, primates. You

can't really blame Star Trek for this, since they have to have human beings

playing the

Introduction xi

roles of other intelligences, but in science fiction stories in print,

having all intelligences primate (or, if villainous, reptilian) seems

insufficient.

E. E. Smith's Galactic Patroland its sequels had a multi-intelligence

Universe that had its intelligences encased in radically different

physiologies and this I found satisfying when I read the stories as a young

man. I was particularly pleased with the feeling Smith labored to give of

a communal mental feeling among individuals who had nothing physically in

common.

It was something like this, then, that I wanted for my Universe, but I

wanted to make my Universe more specific in its description of the

different species and more concerned with the various political, economic,

and social problems of the Galaxy. It was to be less space-operaish and

more quasi-historical, a melding to some extent of "Galactic Patrol" and

"Foundation."

I wanted a Universe with millions of planets bearing life, with the

indigenous life on every planet unique to itself and with differences

limited only by the imagination of the writer. However, there are only six

intelligent species-widely different in nature:

1. Earthmen.

2. An aquatic race, vaguely analogous to Earthly porpoises.

3. A fragile, skeletal insectlike species adapted to a low oxygen

atmosphere plus neon rather than nitrogen.

4. A sinuous, limbless species, possessing fringed flippers, however, that

are snakish in a way.

5. A small, winged species adapted to a thick atmosphere.

6. A strong, slow-moving, blocklike species with no appendages, and.adapted

to a gravity higher than Earth's.

The intelligences each control more than their native planets. They can be

pictured as going through the Galaxy, colonizing and settling planets

suitable to themselves. In general, a world suitable for one is not

particularly desirable for any of the others, and with plenty of each

variety, there is no push for going to the enormous expense of modifying a

planet to suit one's own kind. The intelligences can therefore live

together in the Galaxy without

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ISAAC'SUNIVERSE:THEDIPLOMACYGUILD(Vol.1)WorldsofScienceFictionfromAvonBooks100GREATSCIENCEFICTIONSHORTSHORTSTORIESeditedbyIsaacAsimov,MartinH.Greenberg,&JosephD.01anderTALESFROMTHESPACEPORTBAReditedbyGeorgeScithers&DarrellSchweitzerAvonBooksareavailableatspecialquantitydiscountsforbulkpurchasesforsa...

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