The Short Story Thread

[BAYLOR]

Is anyone familiar with the western short stories by Robert E. Howard? I am having trouble finding the other stories that feature the main character from the short story Meet Cap'n Kidd. It appears in the collection Swordsmen and Supermen along with stories by Jean D'Esme, Darrel Crombie and Arthur D. Howden Smith. My favorite is the last story called How Sargoth Lay Siege to Zaremm by Lin Carter.

The Vultures of Wahpeton by Howard is quite good.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Potted Princess" by Rudyard Kipling (1893) -- An Indian amah tells the two children in her care a story about a Princess placed inside a giant jar, and how all who would wed her fail to open it with their great magic, until the son of a potter figures out the simple solution. A very light-hearted story, as the amah is clearly making the story up as she goes along. Lots of local color. I particularly like the description of the food the Princess has inside her jar.

. . . plantains, red and yellow ones, almond curd, boiled rice and peas, fowl stuffed with raisins and red pepper, and cakes fried in oil with coriander seeds, and sweetmeats of sugar and butter.

 

[Jesse412]

I was given a collection of seven short stories called Beyond Control edited by Robert Silverberg who also wrote the introduction. Silverberg contributes the tale The Iron Chancellor about a family who upgrade their house robot which puts them on a diet that starves them and eventually traps them in their own home. A great technology run amok story which is basically the theme of the book.

Isaac Asimov's The Dead Past (which appears in another anthology I own) is about the government suppression of an invention that allows the user to view events in the past similar to how we watch television today.

Autofac by Philip K. Dick is about automated factories that continue to supply mankind with everything they need long after they are wanted. A group of humans must stop the factories before they use up the last of Earth's resources.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Rooted Lover" by Laurence Housman (1894) -- Romantic tale of a ploughman who allows a witch to transform him into a poppy in a desperate attempt to win the love of a Princess.

 

[j d worthington]

Is anyone familiar with the western short stories by Robert E. Howard? I am having trouble finding the other stories that feature the main character from the short story Meet Cap'n Kidd. It appears in the collection Swordsmen and Supermen along with stories by Jean D'Esme, Darrel Crombie and Arthur D. Howden Smith. My favorite is the last story called How Sargoth Lay Siege to Zaremm by Lin Carter.

The Breck Elkins series can be found in: A Gent from Bear Creek, The Pride of Bear Creek, and Mayhem on Bear Creek (from Donald M. Grant); selections from the series can be found in: The Riot at Bucksnort (from University of Nebraska Press; also includes some of the Buckner J. Grimes stories); The Complete Action Stories (from Wildside Press; also includes stories from other series), etc.... Or, if you like reading electronic versions:


Amazon.com: The Breckenridge Elkins Stories:19 Western Short Stories by Robert E. Howard eBook: Robert E. Howard: Kindle Store

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Reluctant Dragon" by Kenneth Grahame (1898) -- Famous story about a lazy, poetry-loving dragon and his mock fight with Saint George. It's quite droll, and its reversal of the usual expectations reminds me a bit of Robert Sheckley.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Last of the Dragons" by Edith Nesbit (1899) -- Another reversal of the usual assumptions. The Prince is expected to rescue the Princess from the dragon (and the Princess is only supposed to get herself captured by the dragon in order to be rescued), but the dragon is a gentle sort, who only wants to be called "Dear" and help people. Some of trhe comedy is provided by anachronisms; although this story is supposed to take place "before . . . English History began" the Prince has a motor-car, the dragon likes to drink petrol, and the dragon eventually becomes "the first aeroplane."

"The Spell of the Magician's Daughter" by Evelyn Sharp (1902) -- The lazy daughter of a magician, who has neglected to study her magical skills, meets a King's son and pretends to come up with a spell to save his land from a giant. To her dismay, just making up the spell makes it real, so she has to go to a great deal of trouble to make it all work out.

That ends this book. I happened to notice that this anthology was not listed in the Internet Science Fiction Database, so I added the information to it myself.

Publication Listing

 

[Jesse412]

The other collection of short stories I own that contains Isaac Asimov's The Dead Past is called The Analog Anthology #1 with an introduction by Stanley Schmidt. It contains both short stories and articles that were previously featured in the magazine Analog: Science Fiction Science Fact and its earlier incarnation Astounding Science Fiction.

Short stories from this book I recommend are And He Built A Crooked House by Robert Heinlein, Stanley Schmidt's The Prophet, Poal Anderson's The Longest Voyage, Can these Bones Live? by Ted Reynolds, and Stanley Weinbaum's The Lotus Eaters. Stories by A.E. Vogt and Theodore Sturgeon among other authors are also featured.

There are also some interesting articles as well. Language For Time Travelers by L. Sprague de Camp talks about how the spoken language changes over time. No Copying Allowed by John W. Campbell is about how future technology that travels backwards in time would be impossible to reverse engineer in the present. The Asking Of Questions by Poal Anderson is basically a dedication to John W Campbell's work as editor of the magazine and how they would move on after his death in 1971.

The Vultures of Wahpeton by Howard is quite good.

I'll have to check that out.

The Breck Elkins series can be found in: A Gent from Bear Creek, The Pride of Bear Creek, and Mayhem on Bear Creek (from Donald M. Grant); selections from the series can be found in: The Riot at Bucksnort (from University of Nebraska Press; also includes some of the Buckner J. Grimes stories); The Complete Action Stories (from Wildside Press; also includes stories from other series), etc.... Or, if you like reading electronic versions:


Amazon.com: The Breckenridge Elkins Stories:19 Western Short Stories by Robert E. Howard eBook: Robert E. Howard: Kindle Store

Thank you!

 

[j d worthington]

You're quite welcome. There are also sites which have those which are in public domain for you to read free, should you wish to do so....

 

[Jesse412]

A collection I found entertaining is 3000 Years of Fantasy and Science Fiction edited by L. Sprague de Camp and his wife Catherine Crook de Camp. It has a foreword by Isaac Asimov and is composed of stories that show the progress that the science fiction and fantasy genres have made through out the millennia. It contains excerpts from Plato's Timaios and Homer's The Odyssey which are absolute classics I recommend everyone read them in full. I also enjoyed the stories A Journey To The Moon by Cyrano de Bergerac and The Cats of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft. My favorites are as follows:

H.G. Wells' The New Accelerator is about a scientist who invents a drug that basically gives the user super speed. What I like about this story is it seems like a fairly realistic depiction of what would happen to someone had they gained this power. Long before any Flash comics had brought up the idea.

Before Eden by Arthur C. Clarke is about astronauts on Venus who discover a form of alien intelligence that they are unable to communicate with. It also has a message about the effects that pollution and human carelessness pose on life.

 

[J-Sun]

This thread started out as a place to post about stories "you've just read" but I like the more generalized innovation, myself. So it's been a long time since I last re-read it but probably the first SF anthology I ever read was The Best of the Best by Judith Merril which selects 29 stories of 428 pages from the first five of her twelve "year's best" anthologies (1955-1960, even though that's six years).

This had Sturgeon's "Bulkhead", Leiber's "Space-Time for Springers", Cordwainer Smith's "No, No, Not Rogov!", Algis Budrys' "Nobody Bothers Gus", Isaac Asimov's "Dreaming Is a Private Thing" on to somewhat out of the way pieces like Steve Allen's (yes, that Steve Allen) "The Public Hating". Although it took me eons to pick up The Best of J.G. Ballard, and I still haven't read it, Merril's anthology also had the pretty impressive and memorable "Prima Belladonna" and "The Sound Sweep". Most importantly to me, it had two by Carol Emshwiller: her extremely impressive "Day at the Beach" and her even more impressive "Pelt", which is one of my very favorite stories.

 

[Jesse412]

I'd like to recommend a few short stories from a collection I borrowed called The Fantastic Imagination 2. Admittedly I'm not a big fan of high fantasy and I'd rather read about spaceship & robots than swords & sorcery. That being said I still highly recommend a few of these shorts like George Mac Donald's The Golden Key and The Kith of the Elf-folk by Lord Dunsany.

My favorite story of the bunch is from one of my favorite authors Ursula K. Le Guin called April in Paris. Its about magic and time travel, where people from different time periods meet in the same place and find common ground despite at first having trouble communicating with each other.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Beginning a series of reviews of the stories in the collection The People Trap by Robert Sheckley. (Or, to give it the full title shown inside the book, The People Trap and other Pitfalls, Snares, Devices and Delusions, as Well as Two Sniggles and a Contrivance. It might be interesting to try to figure out which stories are the Sniggles and which one is the Contrivance.)

"The People Trap" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction June 1968*) -- One of Sheckley's great satires. This one involves an overpopulated USA where people participate in a deadly race across 5.7 miles of New York City (which takes several days) to win the grand prize of one acre of land. A mixture of Escape From New York and Soylent Green, with the addition of the author's sardonic wit. (*This was the first issue of the magazine I owned, back when I was a twelve-year-old SF fan.)

 

[Jesse412]

I'm not a big fan of magic but this one caught my eye because Isaac Asimov's name is real big on the cover. This collection is called Witches: Isaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy #2. I recommend picking it up just for the Poul Anderson story Operation Salamander. It's a very fun story set in a world where magic is basically science and a fire elemental terrorizes a town.

There is also a very good Robert Bloch story called Sweets to the Sweet which is super creepy. It also contains stories by A. E. van Vogt, Andre Norton, and one of my particular favorites by Rufus King called Malice in Wonderland. Definitely check this collection out if you are a fan of magic or Asimov.

 

[BAYLOR]

I'm not a big fan of magic but this one caught my eye because Isaac Asimov's name is real big on the cover. This collection is called Witches: Isaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy #2. I recommend picking it up just for the Poul Anderson story Operation Salamander. It's a very fun story set in a world where magic is basically science and a fire elemental terrorizes a town.

There is also a very good Robert Bloch story called Sweets to the Sweet which is super creepy. It also contains stories by A. E. van Vogt, Andre Norton, and one of my particular favorites by Rufus King called Malice in Wonderland. Definitely check this collection out if you are a fan of magic or Asimov.

I have volume 3 Cosmic Knights which includes Roger Zelaznys' story The Last Defender of Camelot.

Volume 4 Spells which contains stories like Jack Vance's The Miracle Worker

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Victim from Space" (Galaxy April 1957) -- A fellow lands on a planet where the very human aliens honor him as the emissary of their god; but on this planet, the greatest honor one can hope for is a painful, violent death. Multiple dark ironies abound.

 

[BAYLOR]

All The Way Back by Michael Shara a earth expeditionary force meets an aline and learns things about humanity past which they were better of not knowing.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"Shall We Have a Little Talk?" (Galaxy October 1965) -- Another fellow goes to another planet of very human aliens. Here the plan is to buy some property so that Earth can defend it and eventually take over, all morally and legally of course. The problem is that the law requires clear communication with the aliens, and they seem to have a language that keeps changing. A lightly satiric, clever tale.

"Restricted Area" (Amazing Stories June/July 1953) -- A team of space explorers encounter a world full of friendly, bizarre animals, trees that grown multiple varieties of fruit on a single plant, a metal tower nearly a mile high, and other oddities. The solution to the mystery is an unexpected one.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Odor of Thought" (Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2 1953) -- A guy delivering interplanetary mail crashes on a world where the predatory animals have no ears and no eyes; they hunt their prey by telepathy. The big question is how to survive by controlling his thoughts. A clever story with a twist at the end.

"The Necessary Thing" (Galaxy June 1955) -- Part of the "AAA Ace" series, dealing with a couple of guys who scout out planets for colonization. Here they head out with a gizmo that can produce anything on command. When they find out it will only produce one of each item, they quickly get in trouble when they need duplicate parts to make repairs. Another tricky puzzle story with a stinger in the tail.

"Redfern's Labyrinth" (original to this volume 1968) -- In sharp contrast to the previous stories, this is a surreal psychological tale which reminds one of Kafka and Borges. The protagonist receives mysterious messages about a labyrinth. The story itself is an enigmatic maze.

'Proof of the Pudding" (Galaxy August 1952) -- A fellow who hid from a nuclear war by taking his spaceship to the far side of the Moon returns to find that he is the last person on Earth. He also discovers that he has the ability to create things with his mind. When a woman shows up, he has to decide if she is real. Sort of like Philip K. Dick Light.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

"The Laxian Key" (Galaxy November 1954) -- Another "AAA Ace" story. Here the two guys obtain a gizmo that produces something (they don't know what at the start) for free. Pretty much an SF version of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."

"The Last Weapon" (Star Science Fiction Stories 1953) -- Three men try to track down a hidden cache of ancient Martian weapons, with unfortunate results. A sardonic look at human greed and cruelty.

"Fishing Season" (Thrilling Wonder Stories August 1953) -- People are disappearing without a trace from a certain suburban neighborhood. Could the old man who love fishing offer some insight into the problem? A decent story.

"Dreamworld" (original to this volume, although my memory and my research tells me that this is a revised version of the story "The Petrified World" from If February 1968) -- A man has nightmares of a world where things aren't constantly changing, as in the real world. Another Philip K. Dick sort of story.

"Diplomatic Immunity" (Galaxy August 1953) -- An alien comes to Earth to "invite" them into their empire, although it seems that humanity has no choice. The humans try to figure out how to kill the alien, who seems to take on the nature of whatever they try to use. A cynical story, with no "good guys" and a very open-ended conclusion.

"Ghost V" (Galaxy October 1954) -- Another "AAA Ace" story, in which the heroes try to figure out why an otherwise inviting planet seems to be haunted by monsters. A light ending to the collection.