Favourite Short Story

[jojajihisc]

Again favorites read this year only.

The Things - Peter Watts
Frankenstein, Frankenstein - Will McIntosh
Arvies - Adam-Troy Castro
Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment - M. Rickert
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank - John Varley

 

[Quokka]

I haven't read a lot of short stories though many of my favourite novels were originally short stories, like Blood Music and Flowers for Algernon.

Ursula Le Guin's The Wind's Twelve Quarters is excellent. It contains The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, a short story that will still be getting talked about in ethics classes 100 years from now. I also really liked Direction of the Road, nice little story about a tree but there's some interesting ideas about perceptions and pov.

Buy Jupiter isn't one of Asimov's best collections but it's one of my favourites because it's one of the books that got me into SFF and reading at all. Asimov loves the last line twist and I really like the final image in Each an Explorer.

A novella rather than short story but Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption really shows King's talent from a writer best known for horror and speculative fiction and you can see why movie producers would have jumped at it.

 

[dask]

" The Upper Berth" H I forget who

F. Marion Crawford?

 

[Pyan]

Single story? Probably The Nine Billion Names of God, by Arthur C Clarke. Sheer brilliance.

(Read it for free here)

Collection? Neutron Star, by Larry Niven. IMHO, the very essence of what makes Niven an author I re-read again and again.

 

[Bunami]

Thanks for the link pyan, I shivered at the end.

 

[Abernovo]

Not sure if I can have a single favourite short story any more than a single favourite novel, but there are a few that stand out. They're not all strictly SF&F, but if not, lingering on the fringes.

Sredni Vashtar by Saki is brilliant, no other word for it

Boobs by Suzy McKee Charnas, likewise and to me had similarities in dark humour, although from a female view

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Angela Carter's collection of fairy tale inspired and sometimes very dark magical realism

 

[Connavar]

Nice to see another fan of Bloody Chamber and Other Stories


I agree its impossible to name a few short stories as fav, best you have read. I discover great short stories often and have to revise my favs list monthly...

 

[soulsinging]

I've never been a fan of short stories for some reason. I tend to prefer novels. The only short story I really recall leaving an impression on me is:

The Dead- James Joyce

It's one haunting piece of work, and possibly his most accessible writing.

 

[Extollager]

One short story(very short) i've enjoyed recently is A Pail of Air by Fritz Leiber.

It concerns a family living under the snow after the earth is pulled away from the sun, they survive by thawing frozen oxygen in a pail over a fire(hence the title).

I fervently agree. This is one of my absolute favorites in any genre. I'm not that much of a Leiber fan, but this is great.

Other favorite short stories:

Ivan Turgenev, "Bezhin Meadow" and others
Anton Chekhov, "The Steppe" (novella) and many others
Leskov, "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (novella) and several others
Lovecraft, "The Colour Out of Space"
Hawthorne -- numerous; I'll list that wonderful pre-Pre-Raphaelite story "Rappaccini's Daughter" -- it should have been the basis of a painting by John Waterhouse
Many non-fiction stories in Joseph Mitchell's essential omnibus Up in the Old Hotel
Elizabeth Gaskell, "Cousin Phillis" (novella)

 

[GOLLUM]

Leskov, "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (novella) and several others

You're the first person I've seen on these forums (I think) to mention Leskov. Lady Macbeth of MtsensK is a superb example of how good Russian literature can be; a very powerful story that stays in the conscience long after the story has been read.

I've dug up this link because I think it's important that people are made aware of such a great prose writer who seems a little forgotten today.

http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-forgotten-19th-century-russian-great

Cheers.

 

[clovis-man]

You're the first person I've seen on these forums (I think) to mention Leskov. Lady Macbeth of MtsensK is a superb example of how good Russian literature can be; a very powerful story that stays in the conscience long after the story has been read.

I've dug up this link because I think it's important that people are made aware of such a great prose writer who seems a little forgotten today.

http://quarterlyconversation.com/the-forgotten-19th-century-russian-great

Cheers.

Not forgotten in the world of opera, thanks to the vision of Dmitri Shostakovich:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122575072

 

[soulsinging]

Gogol, forgot about him. One of the few short story authors I really do enjoy. He's insane!

 

[Extollager]

I read a bunch of Leskov about 15 years ago -- novellas and short stories, also The Cathedral Folk, a "chronicle" that has just been retranslated as The Cathedral Clergy. (I read the Hapgood translation in a Hyperion reprint, I believe.) There are several collections that shouldn't be hard to come by -- a Penguin Classics containing "Lady Macbeth" and others; a collection including The Enchanted Wanderer; and a collection of short, often satirical works including his famous "Lefty." There's also a short novel called At the Edge of the World (it is not a Dunsanian fantasy but a book about missions in a remote corner of the Russian world). I should revisit him.

 

[Extollager]

Gogol, forgot about him. One of the few short story authors I really do enjoy. He's insane!

Gogol should be on my list, too.

Tolstoy is a great writer in the novella form. I hardly know a more powerful and convincing account of lust than his The Devil (well, right up there with "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk"). Father Sergius is an unforgettable study of pride.

I should make a serious effort to read novellas by E. T. A. Hoffmann -- oh, but I must mention, you really should consider looking up Adalbert Stifter if you don't know him.

But this thread is supposed to be on short stories and I keep listing novellas. So here are some of my favorite sf short stories: Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day," Knight's "Stranger Station," Shaw's "Light of Other Days."

 

[Extollager]

Is it Zsigmond Moricz's collection Seven Pennies that has the one about the silent wife who suddenly says something like "If that ever happened, the church tower would fall down"?A story that seems to have stuck in my mind despite my vagueness. This is such a literate bunch of people that I won't be surprised if someone actually knows.

 

[Extollager]

Chekhov -- here we are, some titles:

"Grisha" -- great short story about a little boy
"Vanka" -- another fine story, this time the boy is a few years older
"Gooseberries" -- much of the point is that the guy's fantasy about having a rural property where he can grow his own gooseberries is a bit unreal, but it inspired me to plant gooseberries anyway

Also I must cite the Icelander who has a collection called The Stars of Constantinople -- excellent stories in that book -- Ólafur Jóhann Sigurðsson.

Will no one else mention Hemingway? OK, I will, "Cat in the Rain."

 

[Extollager]

I love short stories too and i must say "Hoard of the Gibbelins" is a great choice. Must be the best first story i have read of all the authors i read for the first time.

That was just about my first Dunsany & I remain fond of it.

I knew some guys who were involved in college radio comedy. They called it the Num-Nume Theater of the Air, alluding to Dunsany's "Three Bottles of Relish."

 

[Extollager]

What is your favourite short story and why? Is there a collection of short stories you particularly like?

A very good ghost story is Burrage's "One Who Saw."

 

[Extollager]

Some more sf short story favorites:

Katherine McLean's "Pictures Don't Lie" (good enough to be stolen by EC comics, it seems), "Contagion," & more. I don;t seem to see her mentioned very often. But she seems to have written one good story after another.

Walter M. Miller's "Crucifixus Etiam," "Nobody Here Like Me," etc.

Novella -- "Vintage Season" by "O'Donnell" is a huge favorite. Kuttner's "Children's Hour" was good. Walter M. Miller's "Conditionally Human" is great.

 

[j d worthington]

Yes, "Vintage Season" and "The Children's Hour" (along with "Mimsy Were the Borogoves") are among my very favorite stories from the field: poignant, heartbreaking, and so beautifully written....