The Universe collection of new science fiction and fantasy appeared in 1971 and annually thereafter until the death of its editor, Terry Cart, in 1987. Now Silverberg and wife Haber revive the tradition: the quality's about the same; the quantity has more than doubled to 20 entries, some of considerable length. Alien-contact variations are in the majority, led by Kim Stanley Robinson's fine, humorous human go-between preventing two weird alien races from going to war; also: John M. Landsberg (invaders), Grania Davis (polygot harvesters), Damian Kilby (alien captivity), Augustine Funnell (warring aliens and disease). Ursula Le Guin points up the ambiguities of faster-than-light travel; so does James Patrick Kelly. Bruce Sterling offers a curious futuristic fantasy, as does K. Hernandez-Brun. Post-apocalypse variations emanate from Stanley Compton and Jamil Nasir, while Gregor Hartmann writes absorbingly of the breakdown of causality. Also on the agenda: prehistoric moon magic (M.J. Engh), food (Scott Baker), computer games (Francis ValÉry), marital discord (Leah Alpert), humor (Richard R. Smith), man vs. machine (Geoffrey A. Landis), and cyberpunkish future slang (Paul Di Filippo). Pleasingly eclectic, an assemblage that measures up to the standards set by bygone Universe collections.