My picks:
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BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER by Herman Melville
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THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH by Edgar Allen Poe
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FIRST LOVE by Samuel Beckett
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THE DEAD by James Joyce
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THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE by Henry James
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens. You can never go wrong with Dickins.
And see this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=168184
I’d go with:
A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J. D. Salinger
**A Good Man is Hard to Findp/b] by Flannery O’Connor
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth
The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe
Absolutely no doubt about the top slot: “The Idyll Of Miss Sarah Brown” by Damon Runyon. Finest short story ever written.
Also worth mentioning…
“The Verger” by Somerset Maugham
“The Gold Bug” by Edgar Allen Poe
“A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote
O Henry and Ring Lardner also wrote some terrific short stories. So did Guy de Maupassant, who was thoughtless enough to write in French, but thankfully his work has been translated into readable words.
“An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge” - Ambrose Bierce
“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” - Ernest Hemingway
“The Old Man and the Sea” - Hemingway
“NightFall” - Asimov
I know that you’re all going to moan and call me trite, etc. – but “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson really is the best short story ever. And that’s DESPITE all the people who say it’s the best short story ever.
Four other greats:
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber
“The Mysterious Stranger” by Mark Twain
“The Selfish Giant” by Oscar Wilde
and I’ll second “Bartleby the Scrivener” by Melville.
“The Moon Moth” by Jack Vance
“Explaining Death to the Dog” by Susan Perabo
“Dermuche” by Marcel Ayme
“Greasy Lake” by T.C. Boyle
“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen
don’t see The Call of Cthulhu or anything else by Lovecraft on here.
The Tell-Tale Heart (poe)
Cask of Amantillado (poe)
ok I don’t really think I have enough for 5…
Jack London’s To Build a Fire
“A Child’s Christmas in Wales.”
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson.
“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes
“Sredni Vashtar” by Saki
“The Unrest Cure” by Saki
“Five Letter from an Eastern Empire” by Alasdair Gray
“Portrait of the Artist as a Foaming Deathmonger” by Tibor Fischer
“The Lottery” Shirley Jackson
“Yellow Wallpaper” ?? Who’s that by? Is that even the right title? It’s about the woman with some problems who goes to live in a new house, with hideous wallpaper… yeah, and its kind of horror story
My number 1 pick (skipping number 3 & 4, which I’m not sure about), is one I also can’t remember. It’s by Bradbury, in The Illustrated Man, I think, and its about these astronauts who visit a planet, where a quite special visitor has just been. Can I say who it is? Is that a spoiler? A little help, someone!
I’m glad to see Joyce’s The Dead represented in the OP. It’s what I popped in to scream at the top of my lungs about with a fanatical look in my eye.
That out of the way, I’d like to mention a lesser-known story:
With the Night Mail, by Rudyard Kipling-- a brilliant story that works on many, many levels:
It’s “science-fiction” from the turn-of-the-century. It’s a coded meditation on some of the more esoteric aspects of hermeticism, and their relation to other mystical systems. It’s a ripping adventure yarn. It comes bundled with several pages of paratextual material in the form of several pages of news and advertising from the year 2000. It’s breathtaking.
I will still go with “The Lottery” too. It is extraordinarily well-crafted. I think that it appeared in [i[The New Yorker* first.
There is also a story by Ray Bradbury about a primitive deepsea monster and a lighthouse. Can’t think of the name but it is sterling!
“why I live at the P.O.” ~ Eudora Welty
Yeah, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the right title. It’s by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
That reminds me of “The Man” A story where the local inhabitants were singularly unimpressed by the astronauts.
My own choice is:
1…Diabologic by Eric Frank Russell.
A lone Earthman is captured by unimaginative aliens and who come to regret it as he uses his logic to dumbfound them.
2… Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C Clarke
A group of monks who think their purpose in life is to catalogue all the names that are used to signify God decide to shorten the process by buying a computer to help them.
3…Resurrection ( or The Monster) by A E Van Vogt
Vicious aliens land on Earth from which all life has vanished, but the planet appears untouched with all cities etc. still standing. They have the technology to resurrect some members of the human race which turns out to be a big mistake.
4…Nightfall by Isaac Asimov
Confusion on a planet not used to dark nights
5… The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
The last computer ever built is asked the final question
I read a lot of science fiction by the way.
V
Zoe, the Bradbury story is called “the Foghorn”. It’s the story the film “The Beast from 20,000 fathoms” is based on.
By HP Lovecraft
At the Mountains of Madness
The Call of Cthulhu
The Shadow over Innsmouth
I also second Nightfall and the Last Question by Isaac Asimov.