What’s your favorite Short Stories? The ones that you reread once in a while. Mine are:
There Will Come Soft Rains - Ray Bradbury
*The Passing of Black Eagle *- O. Henry
*The Storyteller *- Saki
*A Man Called Horse *- Dorothy Johnson
*The Standard of Living *- Dorothy Parker
Crane
Answer - Fredric Brown
Now, that’s a short story!
Another Ray Bradbury: *All Summer in a Day
*
Stephen King’s 1408 and That Thing, You Can Only Say What it is in French
“Among the Hairy Earthmen” by R.A. Lafferty. Haunting and brilliant. It’s so convincing, it just has to be the truth!
The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
Bartelby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry
“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellision
“And I Awake and Find Me Here on the Cold Hill Side” by James Tiptree, Jr.
“A Perfect Day for Bananafish” by J.D. Salinger
“Tell the Women We’re Going” by Raymond Carver
“If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love” by Rachel Swirsky*
“The Game of Rat and Dragon” by Cordwainer Smith
“Stable Strategies for Middle Management” by Eileen Gunn
“The Rats in the Walls” by H.P. Lovecraft
“The Pusher” by John Varley
“What Was the Name of that Town?” by R.A. Lafferty
*Probably the most controversial SF story in the past 20 years. There is an honest debate as to whether it’s SF or not, but it’s been chosen by some sad puppies as Everything That is Wrong With the Genre.
For the first bit, I thought it was stupid. Then I thought it was powerful. Then I didn’t know what to think.
But I never even considered thinking of it as *controversial. *
Fucking sad puppies. The whole fucking point of science fiction is to be weird and subversive and push boundaries. Those whiny little bastards are just pissed that bigoted conservative white men aren’t running the show any more. Not saying those bigoted conservative white men didn’t give us some great stuff, but Jesus, the 50s are over. Let’s evolve. (Hilariously, they nominated Chuck Tingle for a Hugo in an attempt to make a mockery of it, and he responded by advertising on his website for all the more deserving writers they hated.)
The Alligators- John Updike
“The Canvas Bag”, Alan E. Nourse
“First Contact”, Murray Leinster
“Songs of War”, Kit Reed
“Aztecs”, Vonda McIntyre
“The Last Question”, Isaac Asimov
Survivor Type; Jerusalem’s Lot - Stephen King
Croatoan; The Three Most Important Things in Life - Harlan Ellison
At The Mountains Of Madness. H.P. Lovecraft (not teally all that short)
Dolan’s Cadillac. Stephen King
Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption. S.K.
In The Hills, The Cities. Clive Barker (the most WTF monstrosity I have ever read about is featured in this story)
Almost anything by Paul Bowles.
Stephen King is coming up a lot here. I love his short stories. For him and Ray Bradbury, reading their shorts is like eating candy.
Sunday After the War- Henry Miller. Miller visits his family in NYC after years abroad, and is overcome with emotion.
Random Sample - T.P. Caravan
“The Lottery” - Shirley Jackson
Echoes - Alan Brennert
We See Things Differently - Bruce Sterling
Night of the Cooters - Howard Waldrop
Hoop-of-Benzene - Robert Reed
Into the Miranda Rift - G. David Nordley
Reave the Just - Stephen R. Donaldson
“Sign At The End Of The Universe” by Duane Ackerman
“Jeffty Is Five” by Harlan Ellison
“Djinn, No Chaser” by Harlan Ellison
“The Waltz” by Dorothy Parker is my all-time favorite. Her “Soldiers of the Republic” is very good as well.
I also like “Witness for the Prosecution” by Agatha Christie a lot, but for obvious reasons, don’t reread it that much.
I liked Tama Janowitz’s Slaves of New York, even though practically no one else did. My favorite story from that is “Physics.”
I like Poe’s “The Mystery of Marie Roget” and “The Purloined Letter.”
If you can call The Canterbury Tales short stories, I love those. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is my favorite, and I will admit that as anti-Semitic as it is, “The Prioress’ Tale” creeps the hell out of me, and I can’t read it when I am by myself after dark. Or maybe the anti-Semitism is part of what’s so creepy about it.
Almost forgot-- “Sally Bowles” from The Berlin Stories. By Christopher Isherwood. It’s really a chapter in a novella, but it reads like a short story.