A Place for Short Stories

[Ood Omega]

Couldn't find a place about this subject so I just wanted to make a place where people could share their favorite short stories and/or collection of short stories.

One of my favs, a collection called They Came From Outer Space: 12 Classic Science Fiction Tales That Became Major Motion Pictures which has an introduction by Ray Bradbury. His intro titled The Turkey That Attacked New York describes how his short The Fog Horn was turned into the movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a film which he personally was not too happy with.

A few other short stories included are Who Goes There by John W. Campbell, Jr. which was turned into The Thing from Another World, remade into John Carpenter's The Thing and more recently the 2011 The Thing. Harry Bates' Farewell to the Master which was filmed originally in 1951 as The Day the Earth Stood Still, I actually prefer this short story to either film versions. The Alien Machine by Raymond F. Jones filmed as This Island Earth and A Boy And His Dog by Harlan Ellison are also featured. I highly recommend this collection if your a sci-fi fan.

I own a few more collections I'd like to share but I'll save them for a future post as my OPs can get long-winded. I'm interested in what short stories others can recommend so please share your favorites.

[berk]

Sticking with science fiction, I always recommend The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, volume I edited by Robert Silverberg and volumes IIA & IIB by Ben Bova. Hardly a bad story in the lot.

[Ood Omega]

I'd like to recommend a few short stories from a collection I borrowed called The Fantastic Imagination 2. Admittedly I'm not a big fan of high fantasy and I'd rather read about spaceship & robots than swords & sorcery. That being said I still highly recommend a few of these shorts like George Mac Donald's The Golden Key and The Kith of the Elf-folk by Lord Dunsany.

My favorite story of the bunch is from one of my fav authors Ursula K. Le Guin called April in Paris. Its about magic and time travel, where people from different time periods meet in the same place and find common ground despite at first having trouble communicating with each other.

[dupersuper]

Fragile Things and Smoke & Mirrors by Gaiman, Iterations and Identity Theft & Other Stories by Robert J. Sawyer, The Human Edge, Science Fiction Century, Earth Descended, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other stories by R.L.Stevenson, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, Rip Van Winkle/The Legend of Sleepy Hollow/3 other Washington Irving short stories, Complete Poe short stories, Nebula Awards Showcase 2007 and Songs of Love and Death are ones I own and have read that come to mind.

[Ood Omega]

I'm not a big fan of magic but this one caught my eye because Isaac Asimov's name is real big on the cover.
This collection is called Witches: Isaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy #2. I recommend picking it up just for the Poul Anderson story Operation Salamander. It is set in a world where magic is basically science and a fire elemental terrorizes a town, very enteraining.

There is also a very good Robert Bloch story called Sweets to the Sweet which is super creepy. It also contains stories by A. E. van Vogt, Andre Norton, and one of my particular favs by Rufus King called Malice in Wonderland. Definitely check this collection out if you are a fan of magic or Asimov.

[Kieran_Frost]

My favourite short story of all time is A Tall Woman and Her Short Husband. It is beautiful. I studied it for GCSE; all about a couple in China before/during/and after the Communist revolution. I wept. It's magnificent. It should be a movie with Michelle Yeoh!

[T Hedge Coke]

Leigh Brackett's got a beautiful short story called "All The Colors of the Rainbow" that sort of puts the lie to a lot of myths about what the 50s science fiction market was or could be. Well worth tracking down.

CL Moore was a genius, hands down, and any collection is worth tracking down, whether her work on her own or the Lewis Padget stuff she did with her husband.

Joe Lansdale's short fiction is strong and thick enough to warrant whole books, he just boiled it down, hits you right in the face with it, and then the story's done. Electric Gumbo's a good collection.

I think F Scott Fitzgerald is a better short writer than a novelist, really, and "Jelly Bean" is a helluva story.

[Johnny P. Sartre]

Faulkner, Cortázar, Chekhov, and Borges are masters of the short story and it's mandatory have them in this thread.

Other than that: Roberto Bolaño (Last Evenings on Earth and Secret of Evil), Octavio Paz, Horacio Quiroga, Francisco Coloane, Felisberto Hernandez, Juan Rulfo, Augusto Monterroso, Julio Ramon Ribeyro, and José María Arguedas are all worth your time.

[Ood Omega]

My favourite short story of all time is A Tall Woman and Her Short Husband. It is beautiful. I studied it for GCSE; all about a couple in China before/during/and after the Communist revolution. I wept. It's magnificent. It should be a movie with Michelle Yeoh!

Do you happen to know who the author is? I'm having trouble finding a copy to read. All I can find online are summary essays people have written about it.

[Sailor Moon]

Recent short story collection I read was Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes. I loved every story, especially The 100% perfect girl for me.

[Ood Omega]

My current favorite collection (and has been for years) is one I feel lucky to own the hardcover of. The Hugo Winners Edited by Isaac Asimov Volumes I & II may be the best sci-fi short story collection I've ever read/owned. Along with these wonderful shorts are an intro and anecdotes about each author. Every story in this book is an award winner but I will just try to talk about a few.

It starts with the novelette The Darfsteller by Walter M. Miller, Jr. about an actor turned theatre janitor where all actors have been replaced by robots. The main character who had refused to 'sell out' schemes to get himself back on stage.

Another story I found particularly moving is Arthur C. Clarke's The Star. Earth explorers led by a astrophysicist/priest, travel to a distant star system that was destroyed by a supernova. They discover a time capsule sealed in a vault that was left by the dead civilization that once lived there. I can't really explain anymore than that without spoiling the ending but It was shocking and I was very moved.

Robert Bloch's The Hell-bound Train is classic Bloch if your a fan of the macabre I highly recommend it.

The most moving story in the entire collection Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes about a janitor of below average intelligence and a lab rat named Algernon who both undergo experiments to increase their intellect. I can't really say more than that without spoilers but this could be a tearjerker for some and I challenge everyone to read it and not be affected by it in some way. It is both beautifully crafted and highly entertaining.

Other stories I recommend Poul Anderson's The Longest Voyage, The Sharing of Flesh & No Truce With Kings, Jack Vance's The Dragon Masters & The Last Castle, and Nightwings by Robert Silverberg.

There are also three Harlan Ellison stories that are must read classics; The Beast That Shouted Love At The Heart Of The World, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said The Ticktockman & I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream. Plus this wonder Asimov anecdote about Ellison always showing up to conventions with a different beautiful woman on his arm.

[DavidB.]

I'm going to use this thread to ask for help. Can anyone recommend some nice collections of short horror stories?
Nothing with Lovecraft and Poe since I own most of their works.

Can you name some of your favorites?
Thanks in advance guys!

[Kieran_Frost]

Do you happen to know who the author is? I'm having trouble finding a copy to read. All I can find online are summary essays people have written about it.

I'm afraid my copy is in some "school stuff" box, somewhere. I do need to find it, and will let you know when I do. It was a female author, who lived in China. That's all I can remember off the top of my head. I seem to recall I tried to find it on-line, with little success. Which is odd, because it was a national GCSE paper.

Recent short story collection I read was Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes. I loved every story, especially The 100% perfect girl for me.

Murakami's short stories are great. I love his after the quake collection.

[Ood Omega]

I was given another collection of seven short stories called Beyond Control Edited by Robert Silverberg, who also wrote the introduction and contributes the tale The Iron Chancellor about a family who upgrades their house robot which puts them on a diet that eventually traps them in their home. A great technology run amok story which is basically the theme of the book.

The better stories IMO are Isaac Asimov's The Dead Past, which appears in another anthology I own, and Autofac by Philip K. Dick. Asimov's story is about the government suppression of an invention that allows the user to view events in the past similar to how we watch television today. P.K.D.'s story is about automated factories that continue to supply mankind with everything they need long after they are wanted. A group of humans must stop the factories before the use up the last of Earth's resources. It is similar to his short story Second Variety for those of you who have read it or watched the movie Screamers, both of which I am a fan of.

[berk]

I'm going to use this thread to ask for help. Can anyone recommend some nice collections of short horror stories?
Nothing with Lovecraft and Poe since I own most of their works.

Can you name some of your favorites?
Thanks in advance guys!

Whenever this question is asked I always go back to an anthology I read as a kid: Hauntings: Tales of the Supernatural. A lot of famous ghost and horror story writers, mostly from the first half of the 20th century, are in there, plus some remarkably effective illustrations by Edward Gorey. There is one Lovecraft story, but don't let that put you off - it's a short one, and doesn't take up a lot of space from the rest. This was published in the late 60s or early 70s, so the most recent story was from the 60s; most of them are much earlier.