Lookin' for suggestions for good, exciting science fiction short stories.
I don't mean any good stories. Fritz Leiber's "Gonna Roll the Bones" or "Dandelion Wine" by Ray Bradbury are good reads, but not what I'm looking for.
By exciting, I mean in the sense of action and/or suspense.
I don't neccesarily mean "pulpy," though. Just quality, exciting fiction where there's a really big problem that seems overwhelming that has to be overcome to save someone or something.
Some examples:
Nancy Kress, "Computer Virus" David Langford, "Different Kinds of Darkness" Robert Silverberg, "Hot Times in Magma City" or "Beauty in the Night" "Trill and the Beanstalk" from the first issue of InterGalactic Medicine Show
Any suggestions?
[ April 15, 2006, 08:26 AM: Message edited by: Cactus Jack ]
Posts: 241 | Registered: Nov 2001
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Mr Porteiro: I was totally going to write that! I loooooooove that story and it is very exciting and suspenseful as well. Heh, how ironic, the moon was really bright last night and my bf and I were joking about it.
Posts: 484 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Hi, all. This is my first post. I thought "Gonna Roll the Bones" was very suspenseful, but I can see how Leiber's rather overwrought style and expressed desire to write in the manner of a tall tale might distract from the suspense for some. I have some other things I might recommend, but these probably will seem a little old hat.
I like the suggestions of "Inconstant Moon" and "Press Enter." Something else by Varley that's suspenseful and exciting is "Air Raid."
I'd recommend "The Tunnel Under the World" by Frederik Pohl to anyone who hasn't read it. It combines a pretty good detective story with SF plot devices and Pohl's usual acerbic social commentary.
A good suspenseful story with a nasty twist at the end is Robert Bloch's "A Toy for Juliette," which is printed in Ellison's collections "Partners in Wonder" and "Dangerous Visions." I didn't like Ellison's companion piece, "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World" as much, because it suffers from some problems with coherence and has the perpetual Ellisonian weakness of having inanimate objects make SPEECHES IN ALL CAPS EXPLAINING WHY THEY LOVE OR HATE SOMETHING, but the two go kind of hand-in-hand.
If the problem of researching a graduate thesis first hand lends itself to suspense, then Connie Willis's "Fire Watch" is a good one to read as well.
Richard Matheson's "Death Ship" is very suspenseful, and a similar story with a time-travel theme is Phillip K. Dick's "A Little Something for Us Tempunauts."
I'd also suggest two stories by Ward Moore, "Lot" and "Bring the Jubilee," which are justifiably famous.
Posts: 10 | Registered: Feb 2006
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Honestly, Gonna Roll The Bones is one of my favorite stories. I just used it as an example to show that I didn't want ANY good stories, no matter how good, but a fairly specific type of action or suspense story
Thanks for the suggestions, all of you!
I love Press Enter--that's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. Varley did another one with a pregnant woman on the moon--I can't remember the name of it, but it was also a good one. (The Bellman? Or was that a different one?) It's amazing the way Varley can nail such a combination of plot, character, world creation and voice in his stories.
Some more might be "The President's Doll" by Timothy Zahn, "Alphas" by Gregory Benford and a story by F. Paul Wilson with a title that looked like jumble of letters--it was ROVPD typed over CAVEE typed over EFI.
What about novels?
Posts: 241 | Registered: Nov 2001
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Cactus Jack, if you're extending this to novels as well, I'd say that David Brin's Kiln People fits the bill beautifully.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Read 'Robot Dreams' by Isaac Asimov. Asimov was one of the best SF writers, and his short stories are the best. They all have a certain twist at the end that makes you want to go back and read it again.
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If you like novels read the Rama Trilogy by Arthur C. Clarke. It's got the suspense you're looking for plus the story is just OUT THERE. The trilogy is my favorite by Arthur C. Clarke.
Posts: 1158 | Registered: Feb 2006
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I was racing back to ressurect this thread, because going through the bookstore today, I'd been thinking about the Science Fiction class I'm taking.
They're talking about that "sense of wonder" that all good science fiction stories must evoke. And I got thinking about that extra quality that stories had that created an even deeper love in the fans. Stories like Ender's Game and movies like Star Wars. There was something more than just wonder.
And then the word came to me, and I came rushing home to add it to this thread, to perfectly describe the extra quality that, when mixed with wonder, created the perfect Science Fiction story.
The word was "Excitement."
Ah, well. Looking at the thread title, I guess I'm just re-inventing the wheel.
Posts: 1894 | Registered: Aug 2000
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The best speculative fiction is rich enough that I feel fully immersed in the world in which the work is set.
I just read all of Steven Brust's Taltos and Taltos-related novels. It was an immersive experience. Indeed, I kept having these moments where for just a second I was about to shrug one of my arms slightly and release a stiletto into my hand. A couple of times I even started talking to my familiar in my mind.
I always tend to soak up some of the language/style of the well-executed works that I read in my thought patterns for a day or two. But I do believe this is the first time, I've had an almost-physical gesture result.
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Samuel, is Legacy the original novel or the sequel?
The original is a fantastic "settlers on a world that isn't quite what they thought" yarn. The sequel is a vile hedonistic farce of a sci-fi story.
Posts: 2283 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Hey there, Cactus Jack! Short stories are a medium that are probably past their heyday, but it never hurts to revisit the classics. I would go hunting for Ballantine's old "Best of..." series. Alibris might be a good bet, most of those saw one printing in the '70s.
Hands down, look for Fredric Brown, he did the three-pager better than any other author. Other authors to look for from that series are Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Stanley Weinbaum, and Jack Vance.
Of more recent reprints, I'd point you to "Owls Hoot in the Daytime", a collection of John the Balladeer stories by Manly Wade Wellman.
Posts: 196 | Registered: May 2005
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Legacy is the first one. And it rocks. (Every time I’ve read it I thought that it would have made a movie ten times more scary than “Alien.”) Some time after I read the sequel “Beowulf’s Children” I saw a reference on line to “The Dragons of Herot” and I got all exited until I found out that it wasn’t really a trilogy after all but that Dragons was just another name for Beowulf’s. Dang!
Here are some other novels that rock and fit into the “exciting” category.
“The Integral Trees” “The Smoke Ring” both by Larry Niven “The Mote in God’s Eye” and “The Gripping Hand” by Niven and Pournelle “The Guns of the South” by Harry Turtledove Also David Brin’s “Startide Rising” and “The Uplift War”
As for short stories: “The Deadly Ones” by Floyd L. Wallace “He Who Shrank” by Henry Hasse “A Walk in the Dark” by Clarke “The Nine Billion Names of God” by Clarke “Blood Music” and “Schrodinger's Plague” by Greg Bear “Neutron Star” by Niven “Goldfish Bowl” by Heinlein “By His Bootstraps” by Heinlein “Nightfall” and “Sucker Bait” by Asimov “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” by Harlen Ellison “Bloodchild” by Octvia Butler "The Saliva Tree" by Brian Aldis
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