# What are your favourite short stories?



## Lucifer Saudade (May 19, 2015)

It's been a long time since I've read something of this nature, I'm afraid my literary evolution has been halted for some years now 

Figured I'd start with something small and this'd be a good place to ask 

Oh, and a couple more questions - did you keep evolving/ expanding your literary tastes from your early adulthood until now? What are your favourite genres/ eras/ types of books to read?


P.S darkest/ grittiest novel you know? Recommendations are welcome :tiphat:


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

My favourite short stories are the Jeeves stories by P. G. Wodehouse.

I find the novels involving Jeeves a bit too much of a good thing.

I think my tastes have evolved a bit in the last 30 years.

Can't think of a suitably gritty/dark novel at the moment but if inspiration strikes I will post it.


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## clara s (Jan 6, 2014)

"the lurking fear" HP Lovecraft

"everything's eventual" Stephen King

top dark short stories

genres, eras, types of books I like...

Poetry, I adore it, french poetry of 19th century, russian, english, american, european, Haiku

Russian literature especially the master Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky

books about architecture, photography, archaeology

and more...


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

My three favorite short stories are all by American writers:

"The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry. Heartwarming Christmas story.

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. A tale of the American Civil War.

"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson. Shocking and memorable.


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## Guest (Sep 22, 2015)

Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis."


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

hpowders said:


> "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. A tale of the American Civil War.


A fine tale. Are you also a fan of the Devil's Dictionary?


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Other short stories (or collections) worth a mention:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Love,_Last_Rites#Stories

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_with_the_Dog

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141184515?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nose_(Gogol)


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Dr Johnson said:


> A fine tale. Are you also a fan of the Devil's Dictionary?


Not yet!


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Nikolai Gogol - Diary of a Madman.
Martin Waddell - Old Feet (known mainly for his children's stories but this is a macabre comedy).

Also various Edgar Allan Poe, Isaac Asimov, Arabian Nights and Brothers Grimm stories.


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

hpowders said:


> Not yet!


Check it out _instanter._


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

If Thomas Pynchon didn't write it, I don't want to read it.

While that may be true sometimes, I don't think there's really any kind of fiction I don't like, except maybe crime novels of the Ian Rankin/Stuart MacBride/Peter James variety, which all seem to revel in corny one liners (and not even hilariously bad ones) and poorly judged sleaze. As for eras, I do definitely prefer 20th century and later literature, though I am also a fan of Swift and Cervantes, Chaucer and Petrarca, and, even further back, Aeschylus. I have not much enjoyed the 19th century literature I have read, Constance Garnett's translation of _The Brothers Karamazov_ being one of the most insufferably dull slogs I can remember in all my years of reading (possibly tied with _The Lord of the Rings_), though it must be said that it remains relatively untapped ground for me.

To the main question: most of my short story reading has been of Jorge Luis Borges, whose collection _A __Universal __History of Infamy _has been one of my favourite books for a few years now.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Some that I've read, liked, and can remember the titles to without looking them up:

Julio Cortazar: _Axolotl_
Anthony Trollope: _The Panjandrum_,
Isaac Asimov: _The Last Question_
Ambrose Bierce: _An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge_, _A Diagnoses of Death_, _The Applicant_

Those are all I can remember at the moment, but I've gone through quite a few I liked. I was fond of George Gissing short stories too.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

One of my favorites is Balzac's "Gambara":

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1873/1873-h/1873-h.htm

And, appropriately enough, it's about music!


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## breakup (Jul 8, 2015)

"The Glass Flower" by George R.R. Martin. 

"Hop Frog" by Edgar A. Poe, plus many of his other short stories.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

Three of my favorites that immediately come to mind:

*A Country Doctor *by Franz Kafka
*Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius* by Jorge Borges
*The Sisters* by James Joyce


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Some personal favorite individual stories:

Joyce's "Araby" (yeah, and "The Dead")
Updike's "A&P" 
George Saunders' "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline"
John Barth's "Stories of our Lives"
Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat"

There are many others, though. Reminds me I need to read more short stories.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

Appreciation is about mental associations, these are based on experience. Your taste is certainly supposed to, if not evolve, change. I know mine has. Just a few years ago, reading Katherine Mansfield would have been pointless for me. Now I love her stuff. Virginia Woolf said Mansfield was the only writer who has ever made her jealous of their writing - I can see why.

Some of my evolution has been about learning to appreciate subtle ironic dialogue, the eccentricities of different quirky authors, and such. That was in my late teens and early twenties - that time when you're supposed to develop a brain in any case. I think what I did was read about what the authors were trying to achieve with their styles, then try to get that from what they wrote, and once I succeeded, just kept reading & enjoying.

Re short stories, in addition to Mansfield, I admire Borges. "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" is pretty funny.

I'm a fan of "Neon Heart Murders" by Harrison (collected in Things That Never Happen). "Science & the Arts" - the author's own favorite - I find appeals to me more now than before. I've been meaning to read or reread more lately but haven't found the right mood.

I tend to like funny stuff. "Come Rain or Come Shine" by Kazuo Ishiguro made me laugh a lot when I first read it (another short story). Not sure what the effect would be on rereading it, and thus not sure if I was just having one of those days. Either way, I recommend trying it.

"Nine Hundred Grandmothers" by R.A. Lafferty (the short story, not the collection) is funny and I heartily recommend it. It may not have other content than amusement, but I don't see why it should.

The first few Dying Earth stories by Jack Vance are pretty good.

Can't help with darkest & grittiest.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

Though they aren't all my favorites, I always enjoy a Stephen King story. Even if the story is kinda meh, his writing always brings me in. Two by him that I loved are 1408, and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

Haruki Murakami's the Elephant Vanishes is charming in a way.

A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor. I've only read a few stories by her, and I recently got a book of her complete short fiction. Can't wait to crack into it.


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## Chopiniana93 (Sep 6, 2015)

Cosmos said:


> Though they aren't all my favorites, I always enjoy a Stephen King story. Even if the story is kinda meh, his writing always brings me in. Two by him that I loved are 1408, and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
> 
> Haruki Murakami's the Elephant Vanishes is charming in a way.
> QUOTE]
> ...


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## breakup (Jul 8, 2015)

Edward Hays wrote books of parables, 2 of them "the Ehtiopian Tattoo Shop" and "Twelve and a Half Keys" I have read and found several stories very good. 

I also enjoyed "Zen in the Martial Arts" by Joe Hyams, a series of short stories from Joe's experiences.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

The Summer People, Shirley Jackson

In Amundsen's Tent, John Martin Leahy
The Underbody, Allison V. Harding
The Cookie Lady, Philip K. Dick
Podolo, L. P. Hartley


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Currently:


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## Guest (Sep 24, 2015)

_The Willows_ by Algernon Blackwood
Any short story by Tanazaki Junichiro
_The Black Cat_ by Poe
_Oil of Dog_ by Ambrose Bierce
_The Shadow Over Innsmouth_ by Lovecraft
I'd like to include Poe's _The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket_ as a short story.
_In the Court of the Dragon_ by Robert W. Chambers
_The Rats in the Walls_ by Lovecraft
_Kaleidoscope_ by Ray Bradbury
_A Voice in the Night_ by William Hope Hodgson
_Man From the South_ by Roald Dahl
_The Spider_ by Han Heinz Ewers
_The Yellow Sign_ by Robert W. Chambers
_The Cocoon_ by John B.L. Goodwin
Anything by Guy de Maupassant

Someone mentioned Thomas Pynchon although I've never read any short stories by him but I am a gigantic fan of _The Crying of Lot 49_ and have re-read it about once a year ever since I first read it around '83 or '84. Unlike most Pynchon novels, this one is very short and can be read in the space of an afternoon, which is how I first read it being unable to put it down without finishing it. Apparently, it is his least favorite novel but I find it a work of sheer genius. I've tried to find discussion groups of this novel but so few people seem to have read it.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

Victor Redseal said:


> Someone mentioned Thomas Pynchon although I've never read any short stories by him...


You should read "Entropy" (I think you can find it online).

BTW, CoL49 is just about my all-time favorite novel. I don't think it's his least favorite...it's considered a classic. There's an awful lot of critical analysis of it.


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## breakup (Jul 8, 2015)

Many years ago I read a story called "Epiphany" but I can't remember the author, and I loaned it out and never got it back. It was printed in one of the monthly pulp SF magazines of the time that I was buying. The story happened shortly after the first human contact with an alien race and one of the aliens came to a small church with questions about why humans seemed to have such a hopeful attitude toward existence, when everywhere else people seemed to be much less hopeful about the future. In the end the alien vowed to take the message of Christ to other members of his society, and he stated his occupation. He made things out of wood, he was a carpenter.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2015)

Who, like me, were voracious readers of the Alfred Hitchcock anthologies? I think I read a couple of volumes of "Stories for Late Night" and "Stories to Stay Awake By." Another one was "Hard Day at the Scaffold" and I had "Spellbinders in Suspense." Either my older siblings left the paperbacks laying around or my mother sometimes bought me hardcover editions for Christmas or my birthday. I read many a creepy tale in these various anthologies--some of them rather bizarre such as "Dead Oak in a Dark Woods" and one about a man who takes his family on a vacation to his boyhood summer haunt only to realize too late that he was really coming back to recover a horrible memory--really creepy story. I remember reading "The Most Dangerous Game" about the guy that hunted people on an island--that was in "Spellbinders in Suspense" and so was Dahl's "Man From the South" which haunted me a long time after I read it as a teen. I also enjoyed a story by Jack Webb called "The Incomplete Corpse". Jeez, I read so many of those stories. I loved those books. I KNOW I'm not the only one here who pored over those many a night. Who else?


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## breakup (Jul 8, 2015)

Years ago I would read several SF monthly magazines and I read several multi volume series by some of the major authors, the Foundation series, the Dune series, Heinlein's Lazarus Long series and many others. Now I don't know how I found the time to read all that I remember. "The Most Dangerous Game" was published in one of these monthlies, good story.


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## Chopiniana93 (Sep 6, 2015)

I completely forgot to add to my list the stories of Ray Bradbury. Although I am not a SciFi- fan, I really like his stories. They are dazzling and in some way captivating.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2015)

My oldest sister introduced me to Bradbury when I was 8. I read a collection called "The Golden Apples of the Sun.' I'll never forget "The Sound of Thunder." I remember reading a story, don't know which collection, called "The Murderer" that was chillingly dead-on about a future when everybody wore watches that allowed them to talk to people and fed them all kinds of information and everybody walked around with their wrists glued to their ears each absorbed in their own conversations and paying no attention to anything around them. It's actually creepy how right Bradbury's vision of the future turned out to be. And then there was "The Fruit in the Bottom of the Bowl." The funny thing is, I haven't read any of these since I was a boy and yet I remember them all and I was able to understand them even though I was only 8 or 9 although it took a few more years before i could appreciate "The Martian Chronicles" although I was intrigued by the story of the crew that landed on Mars and it looked like 1910 earth and they met all their dead relatives and everyone was overjoyed and went home to be with their departed loved ones until the captain began to think about what was going on and how it could be happening. But most of the stories at 8 kind of went over my head and it wasn't I was about 14 that I really became fan of the book. The story about the Martian who would look like departed loved ones of the earth people and they all wanted him to live with them and mimic their departed sons or daughters--that one was so sad. And the astronauts who encounter the family of a long dead fellow crewman living their little idyllic existence until the crewmen realize they were androids the dead crewman had built because his real family died before he did and he couldn't handle the loneliness. So the astronauts decide the androids have to be destroyed.

About that time, I also bought "I Sing the Body Electric" although I might be wrong about that title. I remember one story about called "Tomorrow's Child" about a couple who has a bizarrely deformed child that they have to keep hidden until a doctor realizes the baby isn't physically deformed but dimensionally deformed and the parents are offered the opportunity to enter this dimension to be with their son as he really looks. And another story about the last earthman on Mars--Barton--who set up a complex phone network so that anyone visiting from earth could call him but instead the network itself becomes a living thing that decides to get rid of him. It has a bizarre twist ending.

I read "R is for Rocket" "The Illustrated Man" "S is for Space" "The Veldt"--man, I read a LOT of Ray Bradbury. He was one of the greatest authors ever IMO.


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## Guest (Sep 25, 2015)

I should have added two more short stories to my original list both by Anthony Boucher--"They Bite" and "Mr. Lepescu." Boucher is one of those authors who you run across very occasionally but I was able to find a compilation of short stories by him. I still think "They Bite" is his magnum opus--it was the first time I ever heard of the Benders.

A text of "They Bite"--not very long:

http://tccwrite.blogspot.com/2010/12/they-bite-by-anthony-boucher.html


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## Chopiniana93 (Sep 6, 2015)

Victor Redseal said:


> My oldest sister introduced me to Bradbury when I was 8. I read a collection called "The Golden Apples of the Sun.' I'll never forget "The Sound of Thunder." I remember reading a story, don't know which collection, called "The Murderer" that was chillingly dead-on about a future when everybody wore watches that allowed them to talk to people and fed them all kinds of information and everybody walked around with their wrists glued to their ears each absorbed in their own conversations and paying no attention to anything around them. It's actually creepy how right Bradbury's vision of the future turned out to be. And then there was "The Fruit in the Bottom of the Bowl." The funny thing is, I haven't read any of these since I was a boy and yet I remember them all and I was able to understand them even though I was only 8 or 9 although it took a few more years before i could appreciate "The Martian Chronicles" although I was intrigued by the story of the crew that landed on Mars and it looked like 1910 earth and they met all their dead relatives and everyone was overjoyed and went home to be with their departed loved ones until the captain began to think about what was going on and how it could be happening. But most of the stories at 8 kind of went over my head and it wasn't I was about 14 that I really became fan of the book. The story about the Martian who would look like departed loved ones of the earth people and they all wanted him to live with them and mimic their departed sons or daughters--that one was so sad. And the astronauts who encounter the family of a long dead fellow crewman living their little idyllic existence until the crewmen realize they were androids the dead crewman had built because his real family died before he did and he couldn't handle the loneliness. So the astronauts decide the androids have to be destroyed.
> 
> About that time, I also bought "I Sing the Body Electric" although I might be wrong about that title. I remember one story about called "Tomorrow's Child" about a couple who has a bizarrely deformed child that they have to keep hidden until a doctor realizes the baby isn't physically deformed but dimensionally deformed and the parents are offered the opportunity to enter this dimension to be with their son as he really looks. And another story about the last earthman on Mars--Barton--who set up a complex phone network so that anyone visiting from earth could call him but instead the network itself becomes a living thing that decides to get rid of him. It has a bizarre twist ending.
> 
> I read "R is for Rocket" "The Illustrated Man" "S is for Space" "The Veldt"--man, I read a LOT of Ray Bradbury. He was one of the greatest authors ever IMO.


I completely agree with you, he's one of the best American Writers of the last century.
The story about the crewmen who landed on Mars is called _The Long Years_. I read it almost 2 weeks ago and I really liked it.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2015)

I forgot about "There Will Come Soft Rains" about the automatic house that continues its daily routine even though no one lives there anymore. There was also the story about the Southern blacks leaving earth to go to Mars and all the racist white people are outraged--how dare they just up and leave us, they must think they're really clever!! Then another story picks up later in the book where the very last people from earth, destroyed by nuclear war, come to Mars and come upon a black settlement and request permission to stay. But the last fleeing earth folks are white and some of the blacks want to make them agree to be slaves if they want to stay. He also wrote the screenplay for "Moby Dick" with Gregory Peck and Richard Basehart. He said it was hardest thing he ever had to write.

My mind boggles at the thought that there might be people who have never read Bradbury.


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## Guest (Sep 26, 2015)

Text of "The Willows" written, I think about 1907. I've read a number of Blackwood's stories but none can quite match this one. Kind of a long read but worth it:

http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/blackwood/stories/willows.htm

Text for "In the Court of the Dragon" by Robert W. Chambers. It was part of his "The King in Yellow" series. These stories centered around a fictional book, a play, called "the King in Yellow" originally in French. The words drove those who read it mad. Efforts were made to ban it but bookstores and what not continued to sell it. Each story is that of someone who had read the book and the awful after-effects. Written sometime during the Edwardian era, I believe. Chambers was both an author and a painter. Creepy story with beautiful symbolism--typical Chambers:

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/31078/

Another story from the King in Yellow series--"The Yellow Sign." Sure to make your skin crawl:

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/YellSign.shtml

Text of "The Spider" by Hans Heinz Ewers. One of the weirdest stories I've ever read--wonderfully strange and creepy. a favorite of Lovecraft's:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605651.txt


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Sometimes t'internet is just a freakin' killjoy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_worn


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

_The Burrow_ by *Franz Kafka* stands out for me. He wrote dozens of brilliant short stories. But that one in particular I find is beyond the pale.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Short stories by Henry James are rather subtly miraculous, and his language is a thing to behold.

The Figure in the Carpet, the Aspern Papers, The Author of Beltraffio, The Beast in the Jungle, The Lesson of the Master, Daisy Miller, Travelling Companions, A Passionate Pilgrim, The Middle Years etc...


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Xaltotun said:


> Short stories by Henry James are rather subtly miraculous, and his language is a thing to behold.
> 
> The Figure in the Carpet, the Aspern Papers, The Author of Beltraffio, The Beast in the Jungle, The Lesson of the Master, Daisy Miller, Travelling Companions, A Passionate Pilgrim, The Middle Years etc...


I agree, though I also love Max Beerbohm's hilarious parody of his style in "The Mote in the Middle Distance."

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14667/14667-h/14667-h.htm#mote


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

" The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door..."


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## Badinerie (May 3, 2008)

The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens. A ghost story 

His Midsummer Madness Gilbert Frankau ( A peter jackson romance story)

thats what comes to mind right now.

Ooh... The Horror of the Heights Arthur Conan Doyle. Bit of early Sci Fi Horror!
Love it Struggling to choose HG Wells one


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

schigolch said:


> " The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door..."


An oldie but goodie. I can't remember who first penned it, but there were several variations in SF magazines throughout the 1960s and 70s.

Another short short, reputedly the shortest story ever written, is entitled _Report Card for the Planet Earth._

"F"


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

For mine there are too many to mention, but of course I'll still try. You can safely bet mine are all going to be science fiction or speculative fiction oriented. I live eat and breathe the stuff unashamedly.

A few that stand out:

Shirley Jackson "One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts"

R. A. Lafferty "All Pieces of a River Shore" (insanely bizarre stuff is Lafferty, not yet public domain)

Eric Frank Russell - "Allamagoosa" (still funny today)

Harlan Ellison - "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman" (I was assigned to read this in grade school or maybe junior high school and have been anti-authority ever since. :devil:. Thanks, Harlan!)

Isaac Asimov - "The Dead Past" (Not great literature maybe, but does show Asimov's titanic intellect at work.)

Richard Wilson - "Deny the Slake" (probably not well known, but contains everything I love about the SF short story. It's a story of alien archeology of sorts. I have fond memories of it. It is not public domain)

John W. Campbell - "Who Goes There?" (Again, not great literature, but one of the most tense stories I've ever read, though I guess it's more of a novella than a short story. The various movie version of _The Thing_ are based on it, but the story I think is even more intense.)

That's too many for now I suppose. I'm sure I have several hundred more favorites.


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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

The Dubliners, by Joyce...


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Too many to name. One I have returned to a number of times is Conrad's Secret Sharer. Kafka and Dostoyevsky's short stories have been favourites. Flann O'Brien's stories... Hesse's Strange News from another Star...


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Given that we are on t'interweb this story bears reading:

http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I too like The Dubliners, and An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce.

And also:
James Thurber - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Philippa Pearce - The Great Blackberry Pick

Patrick O'Brian - Samphire

Jack London - To Build a Fire

Fay Weldon - Weekend

Roald Dahl - Lamb to the Slaughter

Ray Bradbury - The Sound of Thunder

Edgar Allan Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher

O. Henry - Witches' Loaves

and lots of others. But I'll stop there!


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## Jos (Oct 14, 2013)

"Blood music" by Greg Bear, the short story, he later reworked it into a novel.
Roald Dahl, E.A. Poe and Bob den Uyl, a Dutch writer with wonderful and sometimes hilarious short stories. Not sure if any of his works are translated; if not, they should be.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Stephen King ones. That introduced me to horror. Especially *''One for the road''*, give me creeps even now, especially in winter. Also Lovecrafts highlighting *''The Outsider''*, *''Rats in the walls''* and *''Picmans model''*


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## Vronsky (Jan 5, 2015)

Karel Čapek _Tales from Two Pockets_
Charles Bukowski _Tales of Ordinary Madness_ & _Post Office_
Varlam Shalamov _Kolyma Tales_

And the first place is reserved for Borges. I enjoy in his works, _Labyrinths_, _The Book of Sand_, _The Aleph_ and the list goes on...


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry. A warm, marvelous Christmas tale.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Robert Heinlein: _They_


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

I realized that I hadn't mentioned any stories by Donald Bartelme, who's one of my favorites. Here are some of the best ones I've read so far:
- Chablis
- Sindbad
- At the Tolstoy Museum
- The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace
- The Genius
- Concerning the Bodyguard

If you haven't heard him before, I recommend checking these works out. Especially since they are all very, very short stories [I think the longest might be 6 pages]


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Vronsky said:


> Varlam Shalamov _Kolyma Tales_


_

I was beginning to think I was the only one here who loved this book._


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## GhenghisKhan (Dec 25, 2014)

PAtriotism by Yukio Mishima
I have no mouth and I must Scream by harlan Ellison


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## Vronsky (Jan 5, 2015)

Morimur said:


> I was beginning to think I was the only one here who loved this book.


If you like "Kolyma Tales", I can recommend you "Seven thousand days in Siberia" by Karlo Štajner. Great book on the same theme and even more expressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlo_Štajner


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

I'm not really a fan of fantasy or horror but Guy de Maupassant's _Le Horla_ is excellent. I think it beats both Poe and Lovecraft in their own games.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Morimur said:


> I was beginning to think I was the only one here who loved this book.


He is excelllent, maybe even better than Solzhenicin.
Raw, brutal, but also warm, human...There is a hope.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

Xaltotun said:


> I'm not really a fan of fantasy or horror but Guy de Maupassant's _Le Horla_ is excellent. I think it beats both Poe and Lovecraft in their own games.


Just searched for it and came up with this: http://ia802708.us.archive.org/6/items/MysteryintheAir/Mita_470821_ep08The_Horla.mp3

Radio version featuring the great Peter Lorre.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

A brilliantly-crafted but utterly horrific short story that I could never bear to reread is *Sredni Vashtar* by H. H. Munro ('Saki').


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

Most of Agatha Christie's short stories featuring Hercule Poirot or Jane Marple. My favorite of all of these is the Poirot story "The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim." It's especially well-written, and I've always been very impressed by how Christie has Poirot solve the mystery without ever leaving his home.


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## Doulton (Nov 12, 2015)

Flannery O'Connor--all her stories
"Bartleby the Scrivener" by Melville
"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin
"The Dead" by James Joyce is the best of an exceptionally strong collection, DUBLINERS
"The Death of Ivan Ilych" by Tolstoy
Any short story by Richard Yates
A lot of works by John Cheever


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