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Ask HN: Favorite Short Fiction?
Short stories (and under-100-word short-shorts) are less popular these days (and I understand why, I love immersion in doorstop novel series too), but I appreciate the craft that goes into writing them much as I appreciate the aesthetics of succinct code.
Does short fiction scratch the same itch for you?
- kylebenzle 6y agoI love SciFi so here are my top 5 around 10,000 words or less. 1) The Machine Stops - Nothing beats it 2) The Futurological Congress - Best short SciFi novel 3) The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag - Freaking hilarious 4) Perfect Day for Bananafish - Not sci fi but amazing! 5) Blue Screen: How Peter Gustafson Defragmented the World - I wrote a short SciFi novel and my mom tells me its great :) [1] https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Stops-M-Forster/dp/1609420667 https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Stops-M-Forster/dp/1609420667 [2] https://www.amazon.com/Futurological-Congress-Memoirs-Ijon-Tichy/dp/0156340402 https://www.amazon.com/Futurological-Congress-Memoirs-Ijon-T... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Unpleasant-Profession-Jonathan-Hoag-ebook/dp/B008AL0EFW https://www.amazon.com/Unpleasant-Profession-Jonathan-Hoag-e... [4] https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Stories-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316769568 https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Stories-J-D-Salinger/dp/03167695... [5] https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Screen-Peter-Gustafson-Defragmented-ebook/dp/B084GHLYSX https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Screen-Peter-Gustafson-Defragmen...
- doomrobo 6y agoA Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller is my favorite sci-fi short story I’ve read in a long time. It follows an order of Catholic monks in the American southwest many years after a nuclear holocaust. I won’t say more than that. It was originally just 1 story, Fiat Homo, and then was expanded into a novel. Fiat Homo is freely available in audio form from the BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03w355l/episodes/guide https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03w355l/episodes/guide
- kylebenzle 6y ago320 pages (almost 100,000 words) is short? I need to re-calibrate. I know I'm a slow reader but anything that I can't finish in a day (about 10,000 words) is "long" for me. I agree, one of my ALL TIME favorite books but the second half took me weeks to get through.
- Jtsummers 6y ago320 pages would not be short fiction. Short fiction is going to be a novella or a short story. Novellas tend to cap out around 150 pages depending on the definition, and many definitions are much shorter (50-100 pages).
- doomrobo 6y agoJust the first story, Fiat Homo! If anyone wants to stop there I won’t judge
- hodder 6y agoMy favorite of all time is The Most Dangerous Game. I just really enjoyed it as a kid, and continue to think about it 25 years later. https://marshallbrain.com/manna https://marshallbrain.com/manna is also a great one.
- kylebenzle 6y agoNot sure what question people are answering here... At ~65,000 words, or 225 pages how are these "short". I think of "short" as finish in one or two sittings. I read slow as hell but even for a speed reader this is not a "short" story.
- colanderman 6y agoIsaac Asimov – The Machine That Won the War Only because it paints such a perfect picture of the inanity of so much of the work that we do in the software engineering profession.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DanBC 6y agoI used to love reading the Interzone compilations. I guess some are available online in various places. (One of the stories keeps getting mentioned on HN, and it's pretty good. "Blit": http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htm ) I also used to enjoy lots of the stories from One Story which was a monthly single short story on Amazon Kindle. I found Caitlin Horrocks' "This is not your city" which is a great compilation. Bruce Stirling has consistently good short fiction. For science fiction you sometimes get great one off compilations. "Mirrorshades" is excellent; "Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet" has some great stories.
- dantheman 6y agoIssac Asimov - The Last Question David Foster Wallace - Incarnations of Burned Children
- beardbound 6y ago"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut will always have a place in my heart. I also quite liked a Ray Bradbury short story that I believe was called "The Homecoming". However I had to look it up. I think that was it. I used to love short stories, but I don't see as much of them anymore. I think that some of that has been swallowed by the more serial novellas that I see on platforms like kindle unlimited. I've long felt that this is incentivized by the ways that the platform pays writers (percentage of the book read). It encourages writers to write shorter gripping stories. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I've been going through quite a bit of great pulp fiction recently, but it is a bit of a departure from the more traditional novel or short story.
- LordGrey 6y agoMy favorites: Larry Niven - The Jigsaw Man Larry Niven - The Fourth Profession Issac Asimov - The Last Question
- Shared404 6y agoDon't know if these count, but I'm a big fan of the BOFH series. I believe most of them are available online on The Register now.
- akeck 6y agoAlso: http://bofh.bjash.com/ http://bofh.bjash.com/
- FiatLuxDave 6y agoBig fan of short fiction here. I tend towards silver age sci-fi and fantasy, but I also dig a good whodunit. I think the main reason why we see less of them these days is because of the lack of popular serial format magazines. Some favorites that come to mind at the moment: "Goodnight Mr. James" in 'All the traps of Earth' by Clifford Simak "Neutron Star" and "What good is a glass dagger?" by Larry Niven "Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn" by various authors The Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series by Fritz Leiber (successive short stories) "If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?" and "The world well lost" by Ted Sturgeon "The Tactful Saboteur" by Frank Herbert "The Gold at the end of the Starbow" and "The Engineer" by Frederick Pohl It seems to me that the best aspect of a short story is that the story can present an idea or twist without long characterization and world building, so that you get the idea in a purer form.
- shanecleveland 6y agoAbsolutely. I love most Hemingway. "Men Without Women" being my favorite collection. "Banal Story" and "Today is Friday" both very short. And is "A Very Short Story" from another collection is, as the title suggests, very short. J.D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" from "Nine Stories" is a good, but dark, introduction to the Glass family, who are the subject of many of his stories. And a random one I cherish: "Boys" by Rick Moody (https://barringerlit.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/6/13263242/boys_-_rick_moody.pdf https://barringerlit.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/2/6/13263242/boy...)
- copperx 6y agoYes. I don't understand why short fiction isn't more popular these days when many of us have shortened attention spans. I think "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" by Hemingway should be mandatory reading in high school.
- commonturtle 6y agoTed Chiang’s Exhalation. I didn’t like all of his short stories, but a few in this book were really great.
- dpl 6y agodeath of ivan ilyich by tolstoy
- syndacks 6y agoI made a flippant comment during book club about how short stories are nothing compared to novels. A friend suggested I check out Raymond Carver which blew my mind. His prose is one of a kind and his stories usually leave me floored. I recommend the collection, "What we talk about when we talk about love" (the title of one story) -- which, by the way, is the play central to the (excellent) movie Birdman. Man, typing this got me excited. Think I'm gonna pour a glass of Teacher's and see if anyone wants to dance.
- sharmi 6y agoMy vote goes to short stories by Somerset Maugham. The subtle humour in the stories are a delight to read. He also captures the human nature with honesty and sympathy.
- easytiger 6y agoIf you search "short story" or "short stories" you get quite a lot of compilations and old periodicals on http://gutenberg.org/ http://gutenberg.org/
- giantg2 6y agoHere it is: I won the lottery, allowing me to quit my job.
- kleer001 6y ago> under-100-word short-shorts They call that "flash fiction" these days.
- tjalfi 6y agoEveryone should read Saki's The Open Window[0]. [0] http://englischlehrer.de/texts/openwindow.php http://englischlehrer.de/texts/openwindow.php
- stonecharioteer 6y agoNever thought I'd see Saki mentioned on HN!
- marttt 6y agoDaniil Kharms, early Soviet-era absurdist, avant-garde writer and poet. When I was in my early 20s, he had a huge influence on me. A random piece (yes, many, or even most, are like that): --- Blue Notebook #10 Once there lived a red-haired man who lacked eyes and ears. He was also lacking all hair, so he was called red-haired only with a large degree of generalization. He couldn't speak, as he was lacking a mouth. The same with his nose. Even arms and legs, he just didn't have any. Nor stomach, nor backside, nor spine. And no intestine. He didn't have anything! Therefore it is totally unclear who is being discussed. In fact, let's not talk about him anymore. --- More examples: http://www.scn.org/realpoetik/Daniil-Kharms03.htm http://www.scn.org/realpoetik/Daniil-Kharms03.htm http://polyhymnion.org/lit/harms/ http://polyhymnion.org/lit/harms/ And his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniil_Kharms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniil_Kharms
- HAL9OOO 6y agoClassic short story I was introduced to in high school: The Lottery https://fullreads.com/literature/the-lottery/ https://fullreads.com/literature/the-lottery/