Best Short Stories.

My favorite short stories, beside I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream are all by Ray Bradbury. I particularily like "The Veldt", "A Sound of Thunder", "Zero Hour" (Which does not seem to get any love at all, somehow), and "There Will Come Soft Rains".

I also enjoy "Pickman's Model" by H.P. Lovecraft.

Bradbury: "The Pedestrian"

"The Other Foot" is another great one by Ray Bradbury. On a completely different note, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories by Sandra Cisneros is without a doubt one of the best short story collection published in recent years.

2BRO2B by Kurt Vonnegut, I'll list some more later.

A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman Lovecraft meets Doyle. The link is pdf.

edit: opps. Already said.

edited 12th Jan '10 7:52:19 AM by wellinever

2BRO2B by Kurt Vonnegut, I'll list some more later.

...Is that supposed to be 2BR02B? (Two-bee-are-oh-two-bee doesn't make as much sense as two-bee-are-naught-two-bee.)

Shit. You're right.

Adding "Celephais" to the already lengthy list of Lovecraft stories here.

Also, when it comes to Gaiman, "Forbidden Brides Of The Faceless Slaves In The Secret House Of The Night Of Dread Desire" is quite excellent.

edited 8th Jan '10 2:51:52 PM by Taelor

Let's throw something in from Guy de Maupassant: "A Piece of String".

Also, you gotta add An Occurrence at Owl Creek Brige by Ambrose Bierce

Huh, I just noticed it was already listed. Sorry.

edited 11th Jan '10 1:18:20 PM by Kentok

I eagerly recommend "20th Century Ghost" by Joe Hill. I first read it in the anthology "Poe's Children," but I Hill himself has published a short story collection named "20th Century Ghosts."

I loved Flight.

The only one I like that hasn't been mentioned yet is By the Waters of Babylon. Fun read, but I can't remember who the author was.

I'm going to kick this off with The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Seconding, most definitely.

I still quite like The Landlady by Roald Dahl. The Monkey's Paw was a favorite when I was young. Also, Isaac Asimov's personal favorite; I like a lot of Ray Bradbury's short stories too, especially Frost and Fire and There Will Come Soft Rains. I still quite like The Most Dangerous Game, too. A Hunger Artist; The Happy Man, and oh, don't forget Edgar Allan Poe's works too.

...that needs a page.

edited 4th Feb '10 11:04:25 PM by OuttaTheBLAM

Going for the old stuff, I'm going to have to nominate the "Tale of The Hunchback" from the 1001 Nights, as well as "The Fisherman and The Djinn," if only for "The Tale Of King Yunan" being stuffed in there.

Most of the modern stuff I've read has already been said, but... "Sonny's Blues" by Baldwin.

I like The Great Automatic Grammatiser by Roald Dahl, The Distance of The Moon by Italo Calvino, and Sandkings by George R.R. Martin.

So, turns out postmodernism is over with, because you couldn't get more postmodern than John Barth's "Life-Story". It's just not possible.

Haven't read many short stories, but I have to mention Angela Carter. Her fairy tale based stories were badass.

I'm going to agree with the Flannery O'Connor and Harlan Ellison suggestions.

They both write convincingly about the darkness in the human soul, despite writing in such diverse genres (science fiction/fantasy for Ellison, although he prefers being called a fantasist, and "Southern Gothic" for O'Connor, although she hated that term) and for having such differing belief systems (O'Connor a devout Catholic, Ellison an atheist).

Lather and Nothing Else and The Gift of the Magi are my personal favorites. The Tell-Tale Heart is a masterpiece of Unreliable Narrator, and I maintain a certain fondness for The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether by the same author.

So, turns out postmodernism is over with, because you couldn't get more postmodern than John Barth's "Life-Story"

I really liked "Night-Sea Journey" from that same collection (Lost in the Funhouse).

Does Anything from The Tales Of Beetle The Bard count? Because if so the The Hairy Heart and The Cakling Stump

I don't see why not.

I always loved "Eveline" from James Joyce's book Dubliners. There's something wonderfully evocative about the whole book, but that story in particular always stood out to me. I think it's a wonderful bit of prose.

One horror one I always quite liked was "Dread" by Clive Barker. It's disgusting, and one of the few horror stories I've ever read that really got under my skin.

And finally, I'd like to second "A Colour Out of Space" by Lovecraft. I'm a total sucker for gothic fiction.

Most of the Sherlock Holmes canon falls into this (exact story names and plots are eluding me right now, but I've got a big book full of the things). A Sound Of Thunder was pretty damn excellent. The Roald Dahl one previously mentioned is good, as well as a few Asimov stories (I recall one about robot cars with personalities that was pretty cool). The last one is the Neil Gaiman one mentioned earlier, A Study In Emerald. Brilliant fic and not that long, either. Nice twist at the end.

And of course, my own few short stories (plug).