nomadman
Sophomoric Mystic
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2007
- Messages
- 464
Impossible (and rather pointless) to pick one favorite short story, but if forced to pick it'd probably be Call of Cthulhu by Lovecraft, for various different reasons. My favorite short story collection is Fictions by Borges; it's the only collection I've read in which every single story seems perfect. Dunsany, Schulz and Cordwainer Smith have also produced some extremely good short fiction as has Calvino, but I'm basing that mainly on Invisible Cities which isn't strictly speaking a short story collection.
Blackwood's The Wendigo and The Willows are two of the best weird tales ever written, along with much of Lovecraft's output. I'm not overly fond of Kafka but In The Penal Colony is an excellent and chilling piece that's lodged itself firmly in my brain. Jean Ray's The Mainz Psalter moves alongside Hodgson's work as one of the best "nautical weird tales" ever written (a type of tale that I believe warrants its own sub-genre, given the unique challenges to its protagonists). Thomas Ligotti has written some very good existential horror, stand-outs being The Bungalow House and Teatro Grottesco. Laird Barron in The Imago Sequence wrote some of the most chilling horror of recent years, as has Joel Lane. TED Klein's Black Man With a Horn is the best Lovecraftian-inspired work I've read. Robert Aickman writes strange tales of a singular character that tend to linger about you for a while after reading.
Much of Hemingway's output leaves me flat but Soldier's Home is a piece I've reread numerous times. Paul Bowles' A Distant Episode would be considered a classic of weird fiction if it wasn't written by a mainstream author; it's absolutely relentless in its cold cruelty. Cortazar's The Night Face Up is a great waking/dreaming piece which I've found myself going back to from time to time. Akutagawa's In a Bamboo Grove (which provided the main story for Kurosawa's Rashomon) is written as a trial of a murderer and the conflicting testimonies of his various witnesses; it has a phenomenal last line.
Gene Wolfe, Fritz Leiber and Theodore Sturgeon have written some excellent SF though my favorite Sturgeon story to date is a rather obscure one, Nightmare Island, which can be found in the second collection of his complete works. Avram Davidson has a body of work that I tend to go back to, as has RA Lafftery whose surreal sense of humor has the capacity to make me laugh out loud. Saki, Kipling and Dahl wrote some superb pieces; Dahl's Georgy Porgy is hilarious and terrifying at once.
Finally there was a Lovecraftian piece in one of the Chaosium anthologies that I loved. It wasn't by anyone famous and I can't remember its title, but it was the basis for a terrifying recurring dream I had that lasted the rest of the week. Powerful stuff and I wish I knew its name, or even which anthology it was in.
Blackwood's The Wendigo and The Willows are two of the best weird tales ever written, along with much of Lovecraft's output. I'm not overly fond of Kafka but In The Penal Colony is an excellent and chilling piece that's lodged itself firmly in my brain. Jean Ray's The Mainz Psalter moves alongside Hodgson's work as one of the best "nautical weird tales" ever written (a type of tale that I believe warrants its own sub-genre, given the unique challenges to its protagonists). Thomas Ligotti has written some very good existential horror, stand-outs being The Bungalow House and Teatro Grottesco. Laird Barron in The Imago Sequence wrote some of the most chilling horror of recent years, as has Joel Lane. TED Klein's Black Man With a Horn is the best Lovecraftian-inspired work I've read. Robert Aickman writes strange tales of a singular character that tend to linger about you for a while after reading.
Much of Hemingway's output leaves me flat but Soldier's Home is a piece I've reread numerous times. Paul Bowles' A Distant Episode would be considered a classic of weird fiction if it wasn't written by a mainstream author; it's absolutely relentless in its cold cruelty. Cortazar's The Night Face Up is a great waking/dreaming piece which I've found myself going back to from time to time. Akutagawa's In a Bamboo Grove (which provided the main story for Kurosawa's Rashomon) is written as a trial of a murderer and the conflicting testimonies of his various witnesses; it has a phenomenal last line.
Gene Wolfe, Fritz Leiber and Theodore Sturgeon have written some excellent SF though my favorite Sturgeon story to date is a rather obscure one, Nightmare Island, which can be found in the second collection of his complete works. Avram Davidson has a body of work that I tend to go back to, as has RA Lafftery whose surreal sense of humor has the capacity to make me laugh out loud. Saki, Kipling and Dahl wrote some superb pieces; Dahl's Georgy Porgy is hilarious and terrifying at once.
Finally there was a Lovecraftian piece in one of the Chaosium anthologies that I loved. It wasn't by anyone famous and I can't remember its title, but it was the basis for a terrifying recurring dream I had that lasted the rest of the week. Powerful stuff and I wish I knew its name, or even which anthology it was in.
