# Favorite short stories **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [May 31, 2026, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512 "2026-05-31T18:27:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Thumper668](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thumper668/32/20803_2.png) [@Thumper668](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thumper668)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2026, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/61 "2026-06-01T22:31:29Z")
A Clean Well Lighted Place - Hemingway Report on the Barnhouse Effect - Vonnegut To Build a Fire - London Those are the ones that stand out. I will re-read both Vonnegut and Hemingway’s collections every few years. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/62 "2026-06-02T05:49:39Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > “Sardonicus”, by Ray Russell. It’s Gothic style horror that reads very much like it might have been written by Edgar Allan Poe, but in fact it’s a relatively modern creation first published in _Playboy_ in 1961, Somehow I acquired several _Playboy_ paperback anthologies of short stories from the ‘60s and ‘70s. High quality writing very unlike that found in “Men’s” magazines of the time. A lot of my favorite short stories have already been mentioned but I don’t think anybody has mentioned **“They’re Made of Meat” by Terry Bisson** , or **”The One Thousand Dozen” by Jack London**. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/63 "2026-06-02T06:00:12Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Somehow I acquired several _Playboy_ paperback anthologies of short stories from the ‘60s and ‘70s. High quality writing very unlike that found in “Men’s” magazines of the time. _Playboy_ paid its contributors very well, which resulted in some really good literary and interview pieces and was one way that it elevated itself above the typical “men’s” magazines of its era. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/64 "2026-06-02T10:10:40Z")
Some authors who published in Playboy: Atwood, Bradbury, Fleming, Nabokov, Le Guin, Updike, Oates, Murakami, Palahniuk, Singer, Borges, Malamud, AC Clarke, McGuane, King… i’m sure I’m missing a ton. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/65 "2026-06-02T11:01:14Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > _Playboy_ paid its contributors very well, which resulted in some really good literary and interview pieces and was one way that it elevated itself above the typical “men’s” magazines of its era. Good point. I used to read _Playboy_, and to be honest, it was mostly for the articles, as trite as that sounds. Great short fiction, interesting interviews, items on music and theatre and movies. There was a lot more to it than nude girls in pictorials, though those were nice too. Still, there were no more than 20 pages of those in a magazine that must have been 250 pages. The rest was filled with articles. I really enjoyed a book I borrowed from the public library: something like “The Best of the Playboy Interviews.” And there were in-depth, incisive, interviews with Alex Haley, Jimmy Carter, John Anderson, John Lennon, and so on. Some I had read in the magazine; others were new to me. But either way, none were the kind of thing you’d find in “Stag Monthly.” ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/66 "2026-06-02T11:02:27Z")
“The Gilgul of Park Avenue” by Nathan Englander. “The Cats” by John Updike. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 11:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/67 "2026-06-02T11:08:42Z")
The original Omni had a lot of good stories. For some reason, I occasionally think about a scenario (from faulty memory) in which a time traveler presents Newton with a pocket calculator and he freaks out. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/68 "2026-06-02T12:20:13Z")
_The Colossus of Ylorgne_ by Clark Ashton Smith _Worms of the Earth_ by Robert E. Howard I’ll agree to the multiply-suggested _Shadow over Innsmouth_ by H.P. Lovecraft, but there are others of his I like as much – _The Dunwich Horror, The Whisperer in Darkness_, and (although it’s really a novella) _The Case of Charles Dexter Ward_. I can’t believe that didn’t get published during his lifetime. _The Careful Man_ by Frederick Forsyth _Silver Blaze_ and several others by Arthur Conan Doyle. _A Martian Odyssey_ by Stanley G. Weinbaum _Uncommon Sense_ by Hal Clement ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/69 "2026-06-02T13:40:23Z")
Why doesn’t someone here contact a publisher to persuade them to publish a book called something like _Great Short Stories_? It can include all the stories mentioned in this thread which are out of copyright. It can also include all the ones where the authors (or their estates) are willing to publish their stories for the right payment. If you can get permission for the right ones, it will be the best collection of short stories ever published. ---
**Author:** ![Moonrise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonrise/32/14764_2.png) [@Moonrise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonrise)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/70 "2026-06-02T13:47:31Z")
> [@Dropo](#): > > > [@Moonrise](#): > > > > **Zweig** - _Amok_ > > I haven’t read it. Have you seen the movie? - [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190964/?ref\_=hm\_rvi\_i\_1](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190964/?ref_=hm_rvi_i_1) I haven’t, sorry. > [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > But the one that stands out for me is “Bartleby, the Scrivener” by Herman Melville. My favorite author has been Franz Kafka for decades, and I also had read “Moby Dick” before I discovered this story (which is a whole different work), but I instantly felt that this is a predecessor (60 years before Kafka first was published) of the kind of alienation in the “modern” world and workspace like Kafka expressed it. “I would prefer not to.” is one of the greatest sentences in literature. > [@Thumper668](#): > > To Build a Fire - London Yeah, these two are good too. I read them at the same time actually, in an anthology of American short stories. ---
**Author:** ![chela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chela/32/21582_2.png) [@chela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chela)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/71 "2026-06-02T14:04:26Z")
Alexander Pushkin The Queen of Spades Truman Capote A Christmas Memory ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/72 "2026-06-02T14:21:21Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Why doesn’t someone here contact a publisher to persuade them to publish a book called something like _Great Short Stories_? It can include all the stories mentioned in this thread which are out of copyright. It can also include all the ones where the authors (or their estates) are willing to publish their stories for the right payment. If you can get permission for the right ones, it will be the best collection of short stories ever published. Such compilations already exist, though most specialize; great short mystery stories, great short science fiction stories, etc. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/73 "2026-06-02T14:25:21Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Why doesn’t someone here contact a publisher to persuade them to publish a book called something like _Great Short Stories_? It can include all the stories mentioned in this thread which are out of copyright. It can also include all the ones where the authors (or their estates) are willing to publish their stories for the right payment. If you can get permission for the right ones, it will be the best collection of short stories ever published. The scope is just too broad, and the publisher would be deluged with complaints that the complainer’s “best story ever written” wasn’t included. My volume of all of Arthur C Clarke’s short stories is about the size of an old-school Manhattan telephone directory, and I’d be hard-pressed to find one to exclude from a “best of” collection. > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Such compilations already exist, though most specialize; great short mystery stories, great short science fiction stories, etc. Isaac Asimov edited a collection of SF from the 30s titled something like “The Golden Age of Science Fiction”, because that’s around the time that SF really took off and it reminded him of his youth. Even with that limitation, it had to be published in three volumes. (It’s a great collection, BTW, both revelatory of some of the scientific naivety of the 30s and just downright entertaining in its own right.) ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/74 "2026-06-02T14:29:48Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Why doesn’t someone here contact a publisher to persuade them to publish a book called something like _Great Short Stories_? It can include all the stories mentioned in this thread which are out of copyright. There are dozens of similar collections out there, of course. A couple that I read off of Project Gutenberg were “The Great English Short-Story Writers” (quite good) and “The Best American Humorous Short Stories” (casually racist by today’s standards). ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/75 "2026-06-02T14:31:40Z")
I have that one. And there were a bunch of other such collections; best short SF stories told in the first person, best short SF stories that are in the form of letters, and so forth. And I think there are annual collections as well; best short stories of 2025, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/76 "2026-06-02T14:37:54Z")
The short-story anthology _Points of View_ has its contents arranged by first-person POV, omniscient third-person POV, epistolary narrative, and so on. It’s been a high-school English staple for decades. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/77 "2026-06-02T14:43:25Z")
_Profession_ (I guess usually listed as a novella) by Isaac Asimov. Excellent illustration of “training” vs. “education”. _The Story of the Old Ram_ by Mark Twain. We were reading this in class in high school, taking turns reading a paragraph or two out loud. I got to read the section: > Parson Hagar belonged to the Western Reserve Hagars; prime family; his mother was a Watson; one of his sisters married a Wheeler; they settled in Morgan county, and he got nipped by the machinery in a carpet factory and went through in less than a quarter of a minute; his widder bought the piece of carpet that had his remains wove in, and people come a hundred mile to 'tend the funeral. There was fourteen yards in the piece. > > She wouldn’t let them roll him up, but planted him just so–full length. The church was middling small where they preached the funeral, and they had to let one end of the coffin stick out of the window. They didn’t bury him–they planted one end, and let him stand up, same as a monument. And they nailed a sign on it and put–put on–put on it–sacred to–the > m-e-m-o-r-y–of fourteen y-a-r-d-s–of three-ply–car—pet–containing all that was–m-o-r-t-a-l–of–of–W-i-l-l-i-a-m–W-h-e–" I couldn’t get through the last sentence - I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. The funniest industrial accident of all time… ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/78 "2026-06-02T14:52:37Z")
> [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](#): > > _The Story of the Old Ram_ by Mark Twain. I still think this must have been the inspiration for Grandpa Simpson’s “onion on my belt” monologue. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/79 "2026-06-02T15:19:49Z")
Harlan Ellison: “Mom”, “Djinn, No Chaser”, “Working With the Little People” Larry Niven: “Inconstant Moon”, “The Meddler”, “What Good Is a Glass Dagger?” Robert Heinlein: “The Long Watch”, “Life-Line”, “The Green Hills of Earth”, “The Logic of Empire” H.P. Lovecraft: “The Silver Key”, “The Street”, “The Strange High House in the Mist” Ray Bradbury: “Night Meeting” ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2026, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512/80 "2026-06-02T15:40:56Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > And I think there are annual collections as well; best short stories of 2025, for example. I have most of the Best American Short Stories going back to the 80s, plus some random older ones. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/favorite-short-stories/1030512.md?page=5)