[Puck]

Didn't find a similar thread, but please feel free to point me to one if I missed it.

I am looking for good/favourite short stories and/or collections of them. Does anyone have any recommendations? Or any favourite ones? Or authors who write good ones? Genre or age of the story/collection do not matter much.

I'm looking for recommendations for various reasons, but mostly I simply like short stories but sometimes it can be rather frustrating to sift through all the stuff out there to find the few good ones. Of course, they take much less time to read than full novels, but still.. When most of the stories in an anthology are 'meh' it can be a real downer. Also, they're rather under-appretiated, even though I've found some great authors by encountering their short-stories first (K.J. Parker, for example). Thus, I'd like to see if anyone can recommend any stories that are really good.

Collections I've read recently were Fearsome Journeys and Fearsome Magics, which were a mixed bag. I've also got Tor's 'Five Years of Stories' collection, but it's so huge, I'm not likely to make my way through that any time soon. And again, I'm not looking for fantasy stories specifically, just any good/interesting/thought-provoking/image-inducing* ones.

* as weird as that last one sounds


Anyway.. any ideas?

[worry]

Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor is quite good. I haven't read A Good Man Is Hard to Find yet, but her rep as one of the best is well earned. I'm sure there's a Complete collection out there too. She's like if a talented, perceptive mid-20th Century writer like Tennessee Williams was possessed by Daniel Clowes.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Laheri maybe? It won the Pulitzer, and I remember its stories being keenly drawn and purposeful.

I haven't read the bulk of Dubliners by Joyce, shamefully, but "Araby" truly is a great story.

Cosmicomics by Calvino and The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem are both comic sci-fi collections where the stories are actually linked. Not the two books are linked, I mean each book has a through-line rather than totally disparate short stories. What differentiates that from chapters you'd have to ask a wiser person than I. But both great books.

[Salt-Man Z]

THE WEIRD anthology by the VanderMeers: 100+ stories filling 1100 pages and spanning 100 years.

Any collection by Gene Wolfe (STARWATER STRAINS might be my favorite, but THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER STORIES AND OTHER STORIES might be his best) or by Jorge Luis Borges (save yourself the trouble by just picking up THE COLLECTED FICTIONS.)

That SWORDS AND DARK MAGIC anthology that had SE's Malazan spin-off story "Goats of Glory" in it is pretty good, too.

This post has been edited by Salt-Man Z: 06 August 2015 - 03:41 AM

[Salt-Man Z]

As far as individual stories, off the top of my head, my favorites would include:

"Golden City Far" by Gene Wolfe (in STARWATER STRAINS)
"Leif in the Wind" by Gene Wolfe (in STORIES ed. by Gaiman & Sarrantonio)
"The Aleph" and "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Jorge Luis Borges

[amphibian]

The Boat by Nam Le is the best collection I've read in the last ten years by a single author.

Jhumpa Lahiri gets a big push from me as well. Read her stuff.

However, I need to sit down and figure out some others that I liked/you'd like.

Alistair Reynolds did Diamond Dogs and Galactic North to fit in pieces around the Revelation Space novels. Those are very cool, with Diamond Dogs being something like a better and more succinct Player of Games.

[Andorion]

Anybody here read the old Legends 2 anthology? It had short stories by Robin Hobb, GRRM, Terry Brooks, and lots of other big names.

In non-fantasy, I once read a collection of short stories by Tolstoy, but the name escapes me for the moment

[Imperial Historian]

The two legends anthologies generally had a high quality of short story. Introduced me to Hobb and GRRM among others from what I recall.

Looking for Jake and other stories by China Mieville I really enjoyed.

The phillip K dick short story collections are also usually high quality.

[Gabriel Chase]

worry, on 05 August 2015 - 11:50 PM, said:

I haven't read the bulk of Dubliners by Joyce, shamefully, but "Araby" truly is a great story.

Magnificent, especially 'The Dead'.

As for a more recent collection, I'd recommend The Color Master by Aimee Bender.

[James Hutton]

I can recommend Robot Uprisings edited by Daniel H. Wilson and John Joseph Adams. The blurb may sound a bit cheesy, but I found the short stories very well written and off the beaten tracks. I especially liked Alastair Reynolds', Cory Doctorow's and Seanan McGuire's contributions!

[Nevyn]

I really enjoyed the Rogues Anthology (edited by GRRM and Dozois)

Ironically the GRRM story was one of my least favourite in it.

But enjoyed a good number of them, especially the Rothfuss and Lynch contributions.

[Coco with marshmallows]

The Last Wish by Sapkowski.

A series of short stories that introduce Geralt the witcher.