This volume is a collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov compiled by Martin H. Greenberg. There is no underlying theme to the stories collected other than each chosen from one of the fifty years of writing since Asimov's first professional sale. With seven stories, this volume presumably covers seven years worth of Asimov's writing career. It appears that Greenberg tried to select the best story from each year. Although the individual stories are good, the result is a somewhat unfocused and disjointed collection.

The seven stories included are: Marooned Off Vesta, Robbie, Nightfall, Runaround, Death Sentence, Catch That Rabbit, and Blind Alley.

Robbie, Runaround, and Catch That Rabbit are all found in I, Robot, and form the foundation of the robot series of stories. All three are quite good, building up the elements of what later became known as the Three Laws of Robotics. Marooned Off Vesta was Asimov's first professional sale, and is essentially a vehicle to illustrate Newtonian mechanics. This story is somewhat weak, as the solution to the problem the characters find themselves in is so basic that it strains credulity that a supposedly experienced space crew wouldn't have thought of it immediately.

Death Sentence is a proto-Foundation story that takes place in the Empire during its heyday, with a hint at what would eventually become psychohistory. It is also the first indication that the Foundation stories and the Robot stories could be linked together. Given the awfulness that the Foundation-Robot mash-ups represented, that alone, in my opinion, means that this story has a lot to answer for. The story is also not very good, being both confusing and unclear.

Blind Alley is another Empire based story, this time featuring the attempts of a harried bureaucrat assigned to watch over the lone nonhuman race encountered in the galaxy, and his attempts to manipulate the system to get what he wants (and what he believes is good for the nonhumans), even if his superiors would disagree.

Finally, the collection contains the classic story Nightfall - which is one of Asimov's most famous pieces of short fiction. This story relates the events of the last few hours before a solar eclipse enshrouds a many sunned world in darkness for the first time in two thousand years, and the panic and hysteria that this event engenders. On top of the psychological story that plays out as the various characters try to come to grips with the pending event through harsh rationality, mystical revelation, skepticism, or hysteria, the story also (somewhat subtly) raises the question of assumptions. The characters, used to the conditions of the world they live on blithely assume that life could never evolve on a planet with a single sun, as life depends upon a constant source of light. One is left to wonder what assumptions we make concerning the necessities of life that are based upon nothing more than the conditions we live under.

Overall, this collection contains several good stories, but the lack of any kind of unifying element detracts from their impact. While this is a good collection of Asimov stories, there are many that are better - either as a broad overview of his work, or as a focused sample relating to a particular type of story. In the end, this is a decent book, but there is nothing in particular to recommend it over a number of other collections of Asimov's short fiction. ( )