My list would be very similar to RealityChuck’s. I’ve collected SF short story collections for years, especially those from about '55 to '80. In my opinion, Donald A. Wollheim and Judith Merrill did the two best annual collections.
Another big endorsement for Bob Shaw’s Light of Other Days. I’ve always enjoyed that story because it so artfully combines SF elements into a good traditional story.
Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones is also a big favorite of mine. None of the other Delany I’ve read has even approached it. In fact, most of the rest of Delany’s stuff I’ve managed to finish I found pretty inferior. Any suggestions for more Delany of this quality?
Can’t remember the details of this story, but it involved a young, but well placed government official in a totalitarian society who is slipped an anti-hallucinatory drug before a meeting with the dictator.
Thanks for the link to the stories on the Sci-Fi channel site. Didn’t know that was there.
Henry Kuttner wrote some good stories by himself and some good stories with his wife (C.L. Moore). The latter were published under the pen name Lewis Padgett. I think there’s a “Best of Henry Kuttner” collection.
Cordwainer Smith - lots of good short fiction. “When the People Fell” “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” many others whose titles escape me. The one about D’Joan (what was it called?)
Theodore Sturgeon - tons of good short stories. “Rule of Three” “The (Widget), the (Wadget), and Boff” “Claustrophile” and many more.
I also like Smith’s “A Planet Called Shayol” and “Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons” (If I don’t get in trouble for saying that )
More:
“And He Built a Crooked House” by Robert A. Heinlein
“It’s a Good Life” by Jerome Bixby
“Incased in Ancient Rind” by R. A. Lafferty
“And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill Side” by James Tiptree, Jr.
“The Kugelmass Episode” by Woody Allen
“Bug House” by Lisa Tuttle
“The Monkey Treatment” by George R. R. Martin
“The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything” by George Alec Effinger
“Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hambugers” by Lawrence Watt-Evans
“Stable Strategies for Middle Management” by Eileen Gunn
“Tourists” by Lisa Goldstein
“It” by Theodore Sturgeon
If I were to pick my favorite SF short story writers, I’d list:
Harlan Ellison
James Tiptree, Jr.
R. A. Lafferty
Cordwainer Smith
Frederick Brown
John Varley
Tom Reamy
Cyril Kornbluth
Theodore Sturgeon
Ted Chiang
Larry Niven
**LoN, ** I hate to nitpick, but “Time Travelers Strictly Cash” is the *title * of a book by Spider Robinson, not a short story by Robert Heinlein(whom Robinson has immense respect for). If I’m wrong, and there is a Heinlein story out there that I have missed, please let me know where I can get it! Anyway, my two favorites are by those same two authors.
“The Man Who Traveled in Elephants” by Robert A. Heinlein. I always get tears in my eyes at the point where the veterans are in the Big Parade and “something that should not be on Broad Street in Philadelphia on the first day of January, men riding in the parade because, merciful Heaven forgive us, they could not walk.”
“True Minds” by Spider Robinson. I have a ratty paperbacked copy his story collection Melancholy Elephants and got him to sign it, not in the front of the book, as is traditional, but by that story. A story about the power of *real * love.
One of the recent stories that grabbed me was “A Colder War”, bt Charles Stross. Its available here, as well as in the "Best Sci-Fi of the year in one of the last couple years. Basically, Ollie North meets Cthulu.
Other stuff that I’ve read comes to mind, but this one just scared me and tied in nicely with history all at the same time.
Eeep… I did a Google search, and you’re right. I’m thinking of the Heinlien story about the time traveler who ends up being his mother, father, brother, sister, etc… Very good, and the name escapes me.
I’m glad to be in a place with other Spider Robinson fans… I’ve only read a few of his books, alas, but what I’ve read I love…
Prayers on the Wind by Walter Jon Williams
Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson
Blabber by Vernor Vinge
Ubermensch! I forget the author’s name. Superman growing up in Nazi Germany and the last prisoner in Spandau prison.
Swarm by Bruce Sterling
The Way of the Cross and Dragon by George R.R. Martin
The Green Hills of Earth and Life Line by Robert Heinlein
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
“The Microcosmic God” - Theodore Sturgeon (this is the one I’ve been trying to remember since my last post!)
“Helen O’Loy” - Lester Del Rey
“Mimsy Were the Borogoves” - Lewis Padgett
“Flowers for Algernon” - Daniel Keyes (later transformed into a novella/novel, I believe)
If you want the best collection of stories from the Golden Age (pre-1950) get Adventures in Time and Space edited by Healy and McComas. I think it was recently reissued, my version is a Popular Library hardcover I got in the mid-60s.
I agree that the Hugo and Nebula winners collections are a good source of high quality stories. Also 9 Billion Names of God is a good Clarke collection.
For Heinlein, check out “All You Zombies,” “By His Bootstraps” and “Them.”
Re: Who Goes There – right, it was Campbell, don’t know why I switched 'em up. My personal number one. But also good are:
A Pail of Air (I think by Leinster)
“The Fifth Head of Cerberus” by Gene Wolfe
“Persistence of Vision” by John Varley
tasty, tasty
My fave SF short story collections are the two 'Billion Year Spree" books. And back in the 50s and 60s, Groff Conklin seemed to have a knack for good anthologies.
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