I feel that, bookaholic though I am, I have not read nearly enough short stories. "The Lottery", "A Jury of Her Peers", "The Scarlet Ibis" and a bunch of Edgar Allen Poe stories are all I've read, mainly because I don't like reading whole books of short stories.
What are some good short stories that I should read? I am completely out of books to read and stories seem like a good thing to try reading...
The Sticker Goddess
Posted by Jeni (Member # 1454) on :
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is my personal favorite.
I also just read "The Anatomy of Desire" by John L'Heureux and "Bestiary" by Julio Cortazar. They were both interesting but highly disturbing.
[This message has been edited by Jeni (edited January 17, 2003).]
Posted by CalvinMaker (Member # 2032) on :
Gah! I hated "The Yellow Wallpaper."
Then again, we read itin school, and dissected it until the ashes weren't even left from the dead carcass.
I would suggest "Deep Breathing Exercises" by OSC and "SandKings" by George R. Martin (Sp?)
Posted by Jeni (Member # 1454) on :
I actually appreciate things more after they've been dissected. I read it in school too.
"Unaccompanied Sonata" is my favorite OSC short story, btw.
[This message has been edited by Jeni (edited January 17, 2003).]
Posted by Sal (Member # 3758) on :
I think the best stuff Salinger ever wrote are his stories: "Nine stories." "Franny and Zooey." "Raise high the roof beam, carpenters." "Seymour. An introduction." -- To be read in this order. Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
First Love, by Samuel Beckett. Quite possibly one of the most perfect short stories ever written. I'll have more suggestions later, but I just had to get that out there.
Posted by ae (Member # 3291) on :
Hurrah! Time to use all those links to great stories I've got piling up. Yep, you can read all these online, for free.
Eh, gotta go for a while. Be back with the rest in a while.
ae
[This message has been edited by ae (edited January 17, 2003).]
Posted by bookmastr (Member # 4475) on :
I have to agree with jeni... Unaccompaned sonata, Is my Favorite short story. THough The best day, or The poceliean salamander all from Maps In A Mirror, By OSC, Is Great. Wish they were online, Or they would re-release Maps.. Karl
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
'The Quiet Man.'
'The Seeds of Paradise.'
For OSC short stories, my favorite has long been 'Dogwalker.' Close after that is 'Homeless In Hell,' which you can find on this very site.
Oh, bugger. I can't remember the rest. Maybe (still) later.
ae
[This message has been edited by ae (edited January 17, 2003).]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
If you're into sci-fi, there's a GREAT list of short story authors floating around this board as a result of OSC's request for anthology suggestions.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
SciFi: "Portraits of His Children," George R.R. Martin "Press Enter," John Varley "Traitor," R.M. Meluch "Borders of Infinity," & "Labyrinth," Lois McMaster Bujold (These two are part of a series including novels and short stories.)
Mystery: All of the Sherlock Holmes stories, esp. "A Scandal in Bohemia," and "The Speckled Band" All of Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Stories, esp. "The Undignified Melodrama of the Bone of Contention"
The Biblical books of Ruth and Jonah are also great short stories.
Posted by CalvinMaker (Member # 2032) on :
ScottR-You can also get Dogwalker for free at frescopics.
Bookmastr- Maps IS going to be rereleased.
Posted by ae (Member # 3291) on :
Gah! It's not working. My post isn't registering the edit changes, so it looks like I'll have to re-post.
This is redundant, but I just finished reading all the stories in Maps in a Mirror, and my favorite was also "Unaccompanied Sonata"...just to add my recommendation Posted by Man-Eating Cow (Member # 4483) on :
"The Persistence of Vision" by John Varley
"The Mangler" by Stephen King (Any story from the Night Shift anthology is wonderful. )
"I Have No Mouth And I must Scream" by Harlan Ellison
"The Diamond As Big as the Ritz" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck (*I* say it's a freaking short story. Wanna make sumthin of it?!? )
K. That's what I can think of at the moment. I have a rotten memory.
If you haven't read it you should. Actually I like most of O Henry's stories, but this is probably one of his funniest ever.
AJ
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
One of my favorite short stories ever is "Ralph the Duck" by Frederick Busch. He later expanded it into the novel Girls which I thoroughly enjoyed.
As far as SF, my perennial favorite is Heinlein’s "The Green Hills of Earth." I don’t know why. I just like it.
Another favorite is "How We Lost the Moon--A True Story by Frank W. Allen" by Paul J. McAuley.
For OSC, my vote would have to go to "The Originist."
Posted by Thread Killa (Member # 4398) on :
Die, thread.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
The Colour Out of Space, by HP Lovecraft. Ig nore the hype, this is better than the much-ballyhooed "Call of Cthulhu" (which isn't bad, in and of itself, mind you).
For a novellette (??), "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is also good by Lovecraft, though I am biased, since it mentions my hometown, and Innsmouth itself is in large part inspired by my hometown, circa 1930.
-Bok
Posted by Toretha (Member # 2233) on :
*swats thread killer* don't you try to kill my sister's thread!
Posted by JuniperDreams (Member # 3471) on :
Read all those!!! Muahahaha!
Did anyone ever read that one by Bradbury? I think it's called "All Summer in A Day"... Poe is great. Isacov is great... Um... "Death of Red Peril" was sad.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
"mimsy were the borogoves" by Lewis Padgett
Posted by Unmaker (Member # 1641) on :
I think this essay is pretty cool, but then I'm biased toward its author.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Was "Mimsey Were the Borogroves" by Padgett? It's been too long since I've read that; it's a great story.
I would recommend just about any of Theodore Sturgeon's short stories. All of his short stuff has been compiled into a many volumed collection, and so is back in print for the first time in ages.
William Sanders is a contemporary SF author whose short fiction is, in my opinion, *vastly* superior to his longer stuff. In particular, I recommend his short story "The Undiscovered", but just about all of his short stuff is first rate.
Some of Ursula K Leguin's short work is incredibly good. In particular, I'd recommend "Mazes", "The Wife's Tale", and "Gwillian's Harp" (not completely sure of the name in that last title), all of which are anthologized in The Compass Rose.
Nancy Kress' short fiction is incredibly good, probably even better than her excellent longer work. She says that her favorite, and most natural form is the novella, and I agree with her that her novellas are incredible. Of the collections of her stuff that I've read, Beaker's Dozen has been my favorite.
Octavia Butler has an excellent collection of her short fiction called Blood Child; I highly recommend it.
If you're looking for good SF anthologies that will expose you to the SF authors currently shaping the genre, I recommend Gardner Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies (note that there are a number of yearly anthologies with similar titles, but with different editors). Someone here--Irami I think, but I could be wrong--said that he found the Dozois anthologies to be absolutely horrible, and dull to boot, but I really can't imagine why anyone who enjoyed short SF would think that; my guess has been that he unfortunately opened the book to a clunker, and was so disgusted that he gave up on the entire series of anthologies. There definitely are stories in each collection that don't work for me, but on the whole the work is excellent.
Well, that was probably more than you wanted to know.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Mimsy was by Padgett, as i put in my post
and it's my favorite short story of all time.
Posted by Kasie (Member # 3100) on :
The Dead, by James Joyce Any and all by Flannery O'Connor -- she's a fascinationg read, especially if you're interested in different perspectives on religion A Rose for Emily, by Faulkner
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Augh! How could I have forgotten one of my favorite short SF authors? Howard Waldrop's short stuff, especially his earlier work, is incredible. He seems to have gotten a bit bitter in recent years, but the stories collected in works such as Night of the Cooters are almost all brilliant. He's only published two novels, Them Bones and The Texas Israeli War. The former is as good as his short fiction, but I haven't been able to locate a copy of the latter.
Cordwainer Smith is another author whose short work isn't to be missed. I remember "The Game of Rat and Dragon" being particularly interesting, but all of his short work is quite good.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
I just realized something tonight: I've never read Unaccompanied Sonata .
The part about that which is shocking is that I have thought ever since I saw this thread that I had . It turns out that the short story I was thinking of was Sepulchre of Songs.
I realized this when seeing the top 100 list of short stories, which had Unaccompanied Sonata at number ten, and Sepulchre of Songs much further down on the list. I went to my bookshelf to find which story is which, but couldn't find the story. It turns out after an amazon.com trip, its in the Monkey Sonatas anthology, the one book in the Maps in a Mirror that I don't own .
Its mentioned as being one of the best short stories in existence, but how am I going to get my hands on it when the book is out of print? I suppose I will check out the libraries in my area...
Posted by Ryan Hart (Member # 5513) on :
The Bet by Checkov is a really neat look into human nature.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
Let me toss in another vote for OSC's "Unaccompanied Sonata" as an absolutely wonderful story. I actually cried when I read it; I think it should be mandatory reading for anyone considering a career in music.
Asimov's "The Ugly Little Boy" is also very powerful. I also like his "The Feeling of Power" and "The Billiard Ball."
Posted by UofUlawguy (Member # 5492) on :
I'm glad someone mentioned Lovecraft. I just picked him up for the first time this past couple of weeks, and I've been reading the stories as fast as I can. I just thought his name comes up often enough that I should know something about him.
The Colour out of Space was not one of my favorites. Shadow over Innsmouth wasn't bad.
My favorites so far are At the Mountains of Madness, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, Shadow out of Time and the Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
At times, he's really not the best writer. He is too in love with adjectives and adverbs, mostly wierd ones. But his stories often make up for it.
UofUlawguy
Posted by Leonide (Member # 4157) on :
It's all well and good to highly recommend Unaccompanied Sonata ...but there are those of us who have no clue how to get our hands on it, dangit!
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
All your stories, UofU are novellas though, no shorter than 50 pages each. Not really a short story.
Lovecraft can't do dialogue, so, by and large, he doesn't. And he does have a conciously archaic bent, but I find that it lends something to the story, after reading the more modern style stories of others.
And I stand by Colour Out of Space. Good pacing, not too overwrought with "unspeakables", "unimaginables", etc... Plus, it has the "blasted heath", you have to love the blasted heath!
-Bok
Posted by UofUlawguy (Member # 5492) on :
Yeah, I realized I picked some of the longer ones. For some reason, I have enjoyed those a lot more. The shorter stories too often seem to follow the same lame formula (as summarized in Book-a-Minute). I find many of them unsatisfying.
I'll try and remember some that I did like, but really the longer ones have appealed to me more.
I have to admit that Colour out of Space wasn't one of the formulaic stories. It was actually pretty cinematic, meaning I can easily imagine it as a film. You could probably make a really creepy movie out of it.
Speaking of Lovecraft movies, I saw a particular horror movie one Saturday when I was a kid, and although I didn't understand a lot of it, I really liked it. I remembered certain scenes, and especially the theme song, for years afterward. But I didn't know the title, or anything else about the movie. I have tried to find out what it was, but didn't figure it out until last week. It was The Dunwitch Horror, made in the 70's and based on a Lovecraft story. I imagine that if I went back and watched it now, I would think it was cheesy, though.
UofUlawguy
Posted by UofUlawguy (Member # 5492) on :
Okay, I found the titles of some of the shorter Lovecraft stories that I liked.
The Doom that Came to Sarnath Dreams in the Witch-House The Nameless City
And still, none of these is nearly as good as the longer stories.
UofUlawguy
Posted by UofUlawguy (Member # 5492) on :
I should also say that my favorite short stories are written by Phillip K. Dick. I have read the entire Collected Stories (all six or seven volumes) and just loved them. I wish I could remember the titles of specific stories to recommend. I do remember that one of my favorites is The Variable Man, but I don't remember the volume in which it appears.
UofUlawguy
Posted by UofUlawguy (Member # 5492) on :
Sorry for posting three posts in a row. I mean four.
UofUlawguy
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Yeah, I have a book of his Dream Cycle stories, and they feel much better than most of his Cthulhu stories. The language works better as fantasy.
Although they tried to shoehorn Pickman's Model into the dream cycle, which seems silly.
I am really enjoying Dream Quest right now, and like Charles Dexter Ward, and really like Innsmouth (which is based on my hometown, so it feels very creepily authentic), but ATMoM seemed a bit stale to me, even with his attempts to connect various stories. The Dream Cycle book is great, it puts all the short stories referred to in Dream Quest before it, making it feel like a culmination.
I liked the Sarnath, Polaris is cool, The Shunned House is chilling, and I really like The Quest of Iranon, but The Nameless City left me a bit confused at the end.
**SPOILERS**
Am I to take it that the last chamber is an entrance to the dreamlands? And if so, what about all the Elder Ones that appear at the end, I can't tell if they are coming from their tombs to the dream world, or coming out of the dreamland?
-- I'm thinking that the difference between the Cthulhu stuff and the Dreamland stuff is that while both are filled with tragic stories, the dreamland stories are filled with sympathetically tragic protagonists, while the Cthulhu stories are a bit too straightforward neutral.
-Bok
Posted by UofUlawguy (Member # 5492) on :
Mountians of Madness was only the second story I read, after Call of Cthulhu (which I read first only because it sounded like the place to start, to figure out who the heck this Cthulhu person was I had heard about). Because I hadn't read any of the other, connected stories yet, Mountains of Madness was all new to me, and any side references to other stories didn't stand out or distract me.
What I liked about it was the complexity of the created world in the far past, althought the way it was presented was lame. How could they learn so many details about this alien civilization just by looking at the pictures on the walls?
I also read the Nameless City before the Dream stories, so I didn't catch the connection. I'll have to go back and look at it again.
UofUlawguy
Posted by Chaeron (Member # 744) on :
"Unaccompanied Sonata" remains one of my all time favorite short stories. On par with Graham Greene's "The Destructors" or Joyce's "The Dead".
For a good, wacky read, I suggest "Freeway Games" or "Closing the Timelid", two incredibly strange stories I read in Maps in a Mirror.
Posted by hansenj (Member # 4034) on :
I read Freeway Games aloud to a bunch of my friends last year because it wasn't very long, and they were curious about what I had been reading for the last week (I had checked out Maps in a Mirror from the library). After getting a little ways into it, I realized I should have read it myself before reading it to a group of people (many of which have never read anything by OSC). When we finished the story, they all thought I was a freak for reading something like that.
But yes, I would agree that it's a wacky read. Posted by hansenj (Member # 4034) on :
Oh, and to all of you waiting to get your hands on Unaccompanied Sonata, at least you won't have to wait forever with the reprint of Maps in a Mirror coming up sometime in the future! (December? January?) Don't worry, it's worth the wait.
(Are you sure your library doesn't have it? Even our small library here in town had one.)
[ August 25, 2003, 01:05 PM: Message edited by: hansenj ]
Posted by Túrin (Member # 2704) on :
"Scanners Live in Vain" by Cordwainer Smith. Very, very good, but his writing style is a little unusual. If you don't mind expanding your horizons it's truly wonderful. By all his short fiction in one volume here.
Best OSC short story: Sandmagic
Don't forget THE COLD EQUATIONS by Tom Godwin.
Posted by solo (Member # 3148) on :
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
I love this short story and I was totally unaware that he had also written a novel length version until I saw it at the library the other day while looking for a Greg Keyes book. I haven't read the novel yet but it is next on my list.
Posted by eslaine (Member # 5433) on :
Solo, there was even a movie of Flowers! I still think of the story now and then. Especially when I was working for a placement agency for the developmentally disabled.
Posted by solo (Member # 3148) on :
Apparently there have been a couple of movies and several stage adaptions of the story. I read it in high school and then found it in a childrens Sci-Fi anthology that a store was clearing out for $0.75 a few years ago. There wasn't much else in the anthology that was very interesting (mostly excerpts from old sci-fi novels) but this story was worth much more than the price I paid. I should have bought all the copies they had left and given them to everyone just for this story. I recommend anyone looking for an amazing short story to track this down.
Posted by Sopwith (Member # 4640) on :
The Guy With The Eyes by Spider Robinson The Picture in the House by H.P. Lovecraft The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry We Also Walk Dogs by Robert Heinlein Ill-Met in Lahnkmar by Fritz Leiber
Posted by eslaine (Member # 5433) on :
Frank R. Stockton: The Lady, or the Tiger The Discourager of Hesitancy
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![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
.![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
. It turns out that the short story I was thinking of was Sepulchre of Songs. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
.![[Cry]](graemlins/cry.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
When we finished the story, they all thought I was a freak for reading something like that. ![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)