Fifty re-readable SFFH stories: your recommendations.

[Extollager]

Fifty re-readable SFFH stories: your recommendations.

This thread is limited to nominations for short fiction that you suggest others owe it to themselves to try. Short fiction includes short stories (under 17,00 words) and novellas (17,000-40,000 words).

Please do not nominate any story here unless

1.You have read it at least twice, preferably more than twice

2.It may be fairly categorized as science fiction, fantasy, or supernatural “horror” – please identify which term you’d like to use to categorize it (I put “horror” in quotation marks because many of the better weird tales, etc. don’t actually aim at horror but at dread, astonishment, or even wonder)

3.You tell us how/where to find the story

To tell us how/where to find the story, you may do one of the following:

a.Specify “Contento” if the story is listed in Contento’s Index:

Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections, Combined Edition

or

b.Provide a link to the story if it is available online

or

c.Specify a book or magazine in which the story may be found.

Nominate only stories that you believe continue to provide satisfaction. Do not nominate stories solely for “historical” value (e.g. the first android story, the story that influenced the sympathetic vampire trope, etc.). If you feel some uncertainty about a story, don’t nominate it.

You don’t have to explain why you are listing a story, though you are welcome to do so.

Please avoid nominating stories that have already been nominated by someone else on this thread.

Please number your nominations so that we keep a running numerical list.

Thanks.

1.Charles Williams, “Et in Sempiternum Pereant” (horror)

Et in Sempiternum Pereant

2.Arthur Machen, “The Great Return” (“horror”)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35611/35611.txt

3.H. G. Wells, “The Crystal Egg” (sf)

4.H. G. Wells, “The Star” (sf)

Both here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27365/27365-h/27365-h.htm

5.H. P. Lovecraft, “The Colour Out of Space” (sf/h)

The Colour Out of Space

6.Bob Shaw, “Light of Other Days” (sf)

https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~jharlow/slowglass.htm

7.Fritz Leiber, “A Pail of Air” (sf)

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/51461/pg51461.txt

8.Jorge Luis Borges, “The Aleph” (f)

https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/borgesaleph.pdf

9.Kuttner and Moore, “Vintage Season” (sf)

Reprinted in Bova, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. IIA; see Contento for other sources

10.Walter M. Miller, Jr. “Conditionally Human” (sf)

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/51651/pg51651.txt

 

[Extollager]

11.William Hope Hodgson, “The Voice in the Night” (horror)

The Voice in the Night - Wikisource, the free online library

12.J. R. R. Tolkien, “Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth” (fantasy)

This remarkable work is found in The History of Middle-earth Vol. 10, Morgoth’s Ring. It is not just something for Tolkien completists but a sustained work of the imagination.

13.Damon Knight, “Stranger Station” (sf)

Contento lists a bunch of sources for this story.

14.Robert Louis Stevenson, “Thrawn Janet” (horror)

The Merry Men

15.Arthur Machen, “N” (fantasy)

Collected in Tales of Terror and the Supernatural by Machen

 

[Extollager]

16.M. R. James, “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’” (horror)

"Oh, Whistle, and I'll come to you, My Lad", by M. R. James

17.Karen Joy Fowler, “Standing Room Only” (sf)

STANDING ROOM ONLY, by Karen Joy Fowler

18.Algis Budrys, “Rogue Moon” (sf)

Reprinted in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. IIB, edited by Bova

19.Lord Dunsany, “The Hoard of the Gibbelins” (fantasy)

The Book of Wonder: The Hoard of the Gibbelins

20.Saki, “Sredni Vashtar” (horror)

Chronicles of Clovis -- SREDNI VASHTAR

www.cs.cmu.edu

 

[Extollager]

Svalbard's comment elsewhere (#133)

500 Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Books You Should Read Before You Die - Members' Version

Has anyone listed Jules Verne yet?

www.sffchronicles.com

about the difficulty of tracking the accumulating stories, so as to avoid duplication, spooked me about the proposal stated in the first posting here.

Perhaps one of the moderators could change the thread title to this:

FIFTY REREADABLE SFFH STORIES: YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS

Participants would, then, submit, in one posting or several, titles of fifty short works (up to 40,000 words) in our genres that they believe readers owe it to themselves to try, according to the criteria specified in the first posting above. If someone else listed the same stories that would not be a problem, although some people posting might prefer to avoid repeating what others listed.

 

[Pyan]

Done - I think that 50 is much more manageable than 500, for a start (there's no rule that says you must stop at fifty, if people submit more, let them), and I definitely don't recommend using all capitals in a thread title (because people don't like being SHOUTED AT!)

 

[Extollager]

Thanks, Pyan -- that's a good tip (about the capitals). Thanks for fixing the title.

 

[Extollager]

21.Fred Chappell, “The Adder” (horror)

---Printed in More Shapes Than One

22.A.M. Burrage, “One Who Saw” (horror)

---Reprinted in Cuddon’s The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories

23.Robert Aickman, “The Houses of the Russians” (horror)

---Reprinted in Painted Devils, etc.

24.Rudyard Kipling, “The Phantom ’Rickshaw” (horror)

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2806/2806-h/2806-h.htm

25.Katherine MacLean, “Contagion”

---Various sources given in Contento

26.Philip K. Dick, “The Pre-Persons” (sf)

---reprinted in The Golden Man

27.Robert A. Heinlein, “‘And He Built a Crooked House’” (sf)

---Contento lists multiple sources

28.Clifford Simak, “Desertion” (sf)

---gobs of sources listed by Contento

29.Edmond Hamilton, “What’s It Like Out There?” (sf)

--- Contento lists multiple sources

30.Terry Bisson, “Bears Discover Fire” (sf)

Bears Discover Fire - Lightspeed Magazine

I was driving with my brother, the preacher, and my nephew, the preacher’s son, on I-65 just north of Bowling Green when we got a flat. It was Sunday night and we had been to visit Mother at the Home. We were in my car. The flat caused what you might call knowing groans since, as the...

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Bonus:

Jacqueline Simpson, “Three Padlocks” (horror)

Reprinted in the author’s Where Are the Bones? and Other Stories.

I didn't number this one because you'll have to go out of your way to see it, and many folks wouldn't necessarily want to buy the book.

Pyan is right -- post more than 50 if you want; but I thought some of our well-read Chronsters would like the task of making a list of 50 stories.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Too many rules!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

A couple of Orson Scott Card’s, available in Maps In a Mirror anthology


Unaccompanied Sonata - dystopian fantasy maybe? Could be classed as futuristic too

The Porcelain Salamander - fantasy

Song master (later became a book but the short version is better, as is Ender’s Game, also includes) - fantasy

King’s Meat - fantasy horror

No matter what you think about Card, his short work is great.

 

[Extollager]

Too many rules!

Nah. They're reasonable and will promote development of a higher-quality batch of lists than otherwise. So I think.

But tell me which one(s) you'd get rid of.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

One that sticks with me - Ray Bradbury, The Last Night of the World, included in the Everyman collection of his short work. So simple and moving

 

[Abernovo]

Three that have stuck with me for thirty-odd years of re-reading, are:

Boobs, by Suzy McKee Charnas - fantasy, for everyone who felt they didn't quite belong;

The Company of Wolves, by Angela Carter - fantasy, highly literary, and brilliant; and

Knock, by Fredric Brown - sf, an effective, apparently straightforward but intelligent short story.

 

[hitmouse]

The Last Castle Jack Vance Galaxy April 1966

 

[farntfar]

The numbering seems to have been lost but by my count this is
41. The ones who walk away from Omelas by Ursula LeGuin

Available at https://sites.asiasociety.org/asia2...Ursula-The-Ones-Who-Walk-Away-From-Omelas.pdf
although I can't tell you if this infringes copyright. (I've only just found it there. )
It's in several anthologies I think and ULG's own The wind's twelve quarters which is where I read it first.

 

[Extollager]

Three that have stuck with me for thirty-odd years of re-reading, are:

Boobs, by Suzy McKee Charnas - fantasy, for everyone who felt they didn't quite belong;

The Company of Wolves, by Angela Carter - fantasy, highly literary, and brilliant; and

Knock, by Fredric Brown - sf, an effective, apparently straightforward but intelligent short story.

I'll give a source of the Brown for you. Contento lists a bunch of sources for it. One of them is Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 10 (1948).

 

[Randy M.]

"The Company of Wolves" from Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
"Boobs" by Suzy McKee Charnas was in at least one best of year volume and Stagestruck Vampires & Other Phantasms

The former volume is an acknowledged classic, the latter is pretty darn good.

 

[Abernovo]

C'mon, Abernovo, give us a clue as to where these stories may be found. Thanks. I'll even do the Brown for you. Contento lists a bunch of sources for it. (One of them is Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 10 (1948).

When you've quite finished being condescending, Extollager.... I'll admit, being in a rush this morning, I missed that petty requirement. However, if I'd realised it was a requirement, I don't think I would have bothered.

Boobs was originally in Asimov's, in 1989. It can also be found now in Charnas' collection Music of the Night.
As Randy states, The Company of Wolves is in Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.

 

[Extollager]

Giving sources for the stories you recommend is a courtesy to prospective readers, Abernovo.

 

[AlexH]

Nah. They're reasonable and will promote development of a higher-quality batch of lists than otherwise. So I think.

But tell me which one(s) you'd get rid of.

Rule 1. I've barely read anything twice, meaning I'm out otherwise, though I do I read more short stories than anything else.

 

[Extollager]

Thank you for being honorable, Alex!