Favourite Short Story

[Nerds_feather]

S
"What We Talk About when We Talk About Love," Carver
"How To Tell a True War Story," O'Brien

These are two of my favorites as well, though you could pretty much take any story from Where I'm Calling From or The Things They Carried and name those as well.

 

[Lukron]

Collections I think it has to be the Cordwainer Smith Instrumentality books, they really changed how I see fiction. Just something about the underlying themes and emotions in those stories, particularly the Dead Lady of Clown Town and The Ballad of Lost C'mell.

 

[BAYLOR]

Two short stores in particular

The City of the Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

All the Way Back by Michael Shaara

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

Two short stories that always spring to mind are:
No Comebacks by Frederick Forsyth.

The Red Headed League by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

 

[CupofJoe]

Troll Bridge by Sir Terry Pratchett. Witty dry and funny.
The Ruum by Arthur Porges. Scared the crap out of me as a kid [even if I guessed the ending]
Coyote Peyote by Carole Nelson Douglas. What's not to love about a cat private eye in Las Vegas?

 

[Randy M.]

Only one??!! Hoo, boy ... Okay. I'll try.

"Homecoming" by Ray Bradbury -- I would nominate this as one of the great, if not the greatest, American fantasy short story of the 20th century. It takes the tropes of the horror story and makes a very human statement about love and loss, about being an outsider and also about family. (If I didn't choose this, I'd probably go with Fritz Leiber's "Smoke Ghost".)

And there are so many great collections:
The Martian Chronicles and The October Country by Ray Bradbury
Good Neighbors and Other Strangers and Still I Persist in Wondering by Edgar Pangborn
The Collected Stories of Ernest Hemingway
Collected Stories by Raymond Chandler
The Selected Stories of Ring Lardner
12 Stories by Frank O' Connor
The Two Sams by Glen Hirshberg
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Night's Black Agents & You're All Alone by Fritz Leiber
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories & Burning Your Boats by Angela Carter
Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler
None So Brave by Joe Haldeman
Extremities by Kathe Koja
Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith
The Throne of Bones by Brian MacNaughton
The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen
Seven Men by Max Beerbohm
The Continental Op & The Big Knockover by Dashiell Hammett


Randy M.

Yeesh. Where was my head? It's not criminal that I didn't mention Ficciones by Borges, in our time by Hemingway or The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, but it probably should be.

And while I'd still defend my choice of "Homecoming," really it's more my choice of favorite genre story. "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Poe is a story that's fascinated me for years and one I'd double-down on as the great American short story, though "The Lottery" has always struck me as the quintessential American short story -- or at least quintessential of one powerful strain of American thought distrustful of ritual and tradition.

 

[Diktor]

I've just discovered Robert Heinlein and just read by his bootstraps and I'm 63 and haven't read a better short sci fi story ever it's just incredible can't wait to read more of his stuff

 

[alexvss]

The Black Cat by Poe.
The Tower of the Elephant by Robert E. Howard.
I have no mouth, and I must scream by Harlan Ellison.

 

[Saiyali]

I like Neil Gaiman's short stories

I think Other People is one of the greatest things I've ever read. And in less than 1000 words...

King's talent from a writer best known for horror and speculative fiction

I rate Steven King very highly as a short story writer. Quitters, Inc. is a particular favourite, but the collection Night Shift is full of astonishingly good work.

One other I admire is Roald Dahl. There are several collections of shorts by him and they're all worth reading. I always liked the one with a machine that can hear plants.

I'm amazed that in all these years Brian Aldiss hasn't appeared. He wrote an insane amount of them for several decades, for sheer output alone deserves an honorable mention!

 

[The Scribbling Man]

I remember liking all of these short stories a lot:

Clifford Simak:

Crying Jag
Huddling Place
Sunspot Purge
Final Gentleman
The Thing in The Stone
The Autumn Land

H.G. Wells:

The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes
The Story of The Late Mr Elvesham
The Pearl of Love
An Answer To Prayer
The Presence by The Fire
The Red Room
The Man Who Could Work Miracles
Mr Skemersdale In Fairy Land
The Country Of The Blind
The Story Of The Last Trump
The Devotee Of Art

Isaac Asimov:

The Tercentenary Incident
True Love
Reason
Liar!
Satisfaction Guaranteed
Lenny
Galley Slave
Thou Art Mindful Of Him

George MacDonald:

The Light Princess
The Golden Key
The Wise Woman/The Lost Princess
The History of Photogen and Nycteris

Alfred Bester:

Hobson's Choice
Time is a Traitor
The Men Who Killed Muhammad
They Don't Make Life Like They Used To
The Devil Without Glasses

Ray Bradbury (generally I dislike Bradbury, but I did enjoy these paticular stories)

Pillar of Fire
Zero Hour
The Man
The Pedestrian
The Screaming Woman
Dark They Were With Golden Eyes

Edgar Alan Poe:

The Tell-tale Heart
The Raven

Others:

Representative by David Rome
Testament by Vincent King
The Birds by Daphne DuMaurier
The Apple Tree by Daphne DuMaurier

 

[Bick]

Non-Sf, I especially liked The Vessel of Wrath and Flotsam and Jetsam by W. Somerset Maugham.

And a new favourite short story: An Experiment in Gyro-Hats, by Ellis Parker Butler (see here)

Heaps of Wodehouse, of course. Too many to mention individually.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Can't think of just one, so here's a list

OLDER
"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson (1948)
"The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" by Ray Bradbury (1948)
"That Hell-Bound Train" by Robert Bloch (1958)
"Deadline" by Richard Matheson (1959)
"Gentlemen, Be Seated" by Charles Beaumont (1960)
"The Fertility of Dalrymple Todd" by Nelson Bond (1940)
"The Streets of Ashkelon" by Harry Harrison (1962)
"Jeffty is Five" by Harlan Ellison (1977)

NEWER
"October Tale" by Neil Gaiman (more of a vignette) (2013)
"The Thing About Cassandra" by Neil Gaiman (2010)
"The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu (2011)
"The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu (2011)
"The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link (2004)

 

[Droflet]

The Lion of Comarre by Arthur C Clarke. Haven't read it in many a year but still remember how good it was.

 

[dask]

“When Time Was New” by Robert F. Young, a superior time travel story. Hard to beat one of those.

 

[Ogma]

My favorite short story is "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang. Another favorite is "Unknown Things" by Reginald Bretnor.
My favorite collection is "The Redicovery of Man" by Cordwainer Smith.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I am so old I remember grade school teachers having us hide under desks for that Duck & Cover nonsense. I thought it was fun and hilarious and had no understanding of what it was about.

Years later I discovered science fiction with no help from my idiot teachers. Eventually I read:

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury

I cried.

Now we have the technology to make that house. We still have the nuclear weapons.

 

[BAYLOR]

Down There by Ramsey Campbell
Undertow by Karl Edward Wagner
The Last Defender of Camelot by Roger Zelazny
Paladin of the Lost Hour by Harlan Ellison
The Sombrus Tower by Tanith Lee
Born of the Sun by Jack Williamson
The Earth Brain by Edmond Hamilton
A Relic of War by Keith Laumer

 

[Astro Pen]

I'll keep it short.

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges
The Lake of Tuonela by Keith Roberts
Ylla by RayBradbury
The Veldt also Ray Bradbury
The Terminal Beach by J.G.Ballard

There is also an Anaïs Nin story, but I'm not telling you which one

 

[Don]

I'll keep it short.

The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges

Among my many favorite short stories are a couple written by Borges: Book of Sand and this one:

"Animales de los espejos" on the double by Don Kuenz

Animales de los espejos on the double

crcomp.net