Compiled by Kurt Busiek. This version of the File 770 readers’ short fiction recommendations lists the stories by author in alphabetical order.
The list follows the jump.
ABRAHAM, DANIEL
Balfour and Merriweather in The Incident of the Harrowmoor Dogs
Flat Diane
ALDISS, BRIAN W
Heresies of the Huge God
Who Can Replace A Man?
ALLEN, WOODY
Match Wits With Inspector Ford
ANDERS, CHARLIE JANE
Six Months, Three Days
ANDERSON, POUL
The Man Who Came Early
The Martyr
No Truce With Kings
ARNESON, ELEANOR
The Grammarian’s Five Daughters
Knapsack Poems
ASIMOV, ISAAC
The Bicentennial Man
The Last Quetion
The Martian Way
Nightfall
Reason
Robbie
Shah Guido G
The Ugly Little Boy
BACIGALUPI, PAULO
The People of Sand and Slag
BALLARD, J.G.
Billennium
The Drowned Giant
The Voices of Time
BANKS, IAN M.
State of the Art
BARRON, LAIRD
Hallucigenia
BARTHELME, DONALD
Game
BEAGLE, PETER
Come, Lady Death
Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros
We Never Talk About My Brother
BEAR, ELIZABETH
Shoggoths in Bloom
BEAR, GREG
Sisters
BECKETT, CHRIS
The Perimeter
BENFORD, GREGORY
Freezeframe
BESTER, ALFRED
5,271,009
Fondly Fahrenheit
BIERCE, AMBROSE
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
BISSON, TERRY
Bears Discover Fire
BIXBY, JEROME
It’s A Good Life
BLISH, JAMES
Surface Tension
BLOCH, ROBERT
Hell On Earth
BOUCHER, ANTHONY
The Quest for Saint Aquin
BRACKETT, LEIGH
Enchantress of Venus
BRADBURY, RAY
All Summer In A Day
The Crowd
Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed
Frost and Fire
The Great Wide World Over There
Heart Transplant
Homecoming
Kaleidoscope
Mars Is Heaven!
The Million-Year Picnic
There Will Comes Soft Rains
The Veldt
Way In The Middle Of The Air
BRIN, DAVID
Piecework
Thor Meets Captain America
BRODSKI, ENEASZ
Amazing Man
BUCHER-JONES, SIMON
Double Trouble At The Parasites On The Proletariat Club
Going On Passed Judgement
BUDRYS, ALGIS
Walk to the World
The War Is Over
BUJOLD, LOIS McMASTER
Mountains of Mourning
BUTLER, OCTAVIA
Bloodchild
Speech Sounds
BYATT, A.S.
Body Art
The Conjugal Angel
CADIGAN, PAT
The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi
CARD, ORSON SCOTT
Ender’s Game (novella)
Mikal’s Songbird
The Originist
Saint Amy’s Tale
Unaccompanied Sonata
CARROLL, JONATHAN
Friend’s Best Man
CARTER, ANGELA
The Company of Wolves
CHENEY, J. KATHLEEN
Masks of War
CHERRYH, C.J.
A Thief in Korianth
CHIANG, TED
Hell Is The Absence Of God
The Lifecycle of Software Objects
The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate
Seventy-Two Letters
Story Of Your Life
CHO, ZEN
The House of Aunts
CHU, JOHN
The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere
CLARKE, ARTHUR C.
The Nine Billion Names of God
The Sentinel
The Star
Superiority
CLIFTON, MARK
Star Bright
COLLIER, JOHN
Evening Primrose
Thus I Refute Beelzy
COWAN, JIM
The Spade of Reason
DAHL, ROALD
Pig
The Sound Machine
The Wish
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
DANIEL, TONY
A Dry, Quiet War
DAVIDSON, AVRAM
Or All The Sea With Oysters
DEBODARD, ALIETTE
Immersion
DELANY, SAMUEL R
The Tale of Gorgik
Time Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Stones
DE LINT, CHARLES
Mr. Truepenny’s Book Emporium and Gallery
The Moon Is Drowning As I Sleep
DEL REY, LESTER
Helen O’Loy
DEMARCE, VIRGINIA
Biting Time
DE MAUPASSANT, GUY
The Horla
DICK, P.K.
Beyond Lies the Wub
Human Is
DISCH, THOMAS
Angouleme
DRAKE, DAVID
Hangman
Loyal to His Own
DUNCAN, DAVE
The Minstrel’s Tale
DUE, TANANARIVE
Like Daughter
DUNSANY, LORD
Carcassonne
The Hoard of the Gibbelins
The Sword of Welleran
EGAN, GREG
Oracle
Learning To Be Me
Reasons To Be Cheerful
ELLISON, HARLAN
A Boy And His Dog
Croatoan
The Deathbird
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream
Jeffty is Five
Repent, Harlequin, Said The Ticktockman
The Whimper of Whipped Dogs
EL-MOHTAR, AMAL
The Truth About Owls
FARLEY, DONNA
It Must Be Someplace
FARMER, PHILIP JOSE
Extracts From the Memoirs of ‘Lord Greystoke’
FINNEY, JACK
Of Missing Persons
Second Chance
FOSTER, EUGIE
Trixie and the Pandas of Dread
When It Ends, He Catches Her
FOWLER, KAREN JOY
What I Didn’t See
FRIEDMAN, C.S.
The Dreaming Kind
GAIMAN, NEIL
A Study In Emerald
Chivalry
Goliath
How to Talk to Girls at Parties
Nicholas Was…
The Price
Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar
Snow Glass Apples
The Sound of Her Wings (comics story)
GARCIA-MARQUEZ, GABRIEL
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
GIBSON, WILLIAM
Burning Chrome
Fragments of a Hologram Rose
The Gernsback Continuum
New Rose Hotel
GILMAN, CHARLOTTE PERKINS
Herland
The Yellow Wallpaper
GODWIN, TOM
The Cold Equations
GRIFFITH, NICOLA
Cold Wind
HALDEMAN, JOE
The Hemingway Hoax
Tricentennial
HARRIS, JOANNE
Gastronomicon
HARVEY, W.F.
August Heat
HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL
The Celestial Railroad
HEINLEIN, ROBERT A
“All You Zombies—”
Goldfish Bowl
Green Hills of Earth
The Long Watch
The Man Who Sold the Moon
The Man Who Traveled in Elephants
The Menace From Earth
HERNANDEZ, JAIME
Izzy in Mexico (comics story)
HICKEY, ANDREW
The Adventure of the Piltdown Prelate
HOWARD, ELIZABETH JANE
Three Miles Up
HOWARD, ROBERT E.
Red Nails
The Shadow Kingdom
HUTCHINSON, DAVE
Discreet Phenomena
ING, DEAN
Devil You Don’t Know
JACKSON, SHIRLEY
The Lottery
JACOBS, W.W.
The Monkey’s Paw
JAMES, M.R.
Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad
JEMISIN, N.K.
Stone Hunger
JOHNSON, KIJ
The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change
JONES, DIANA WYNNE
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (any section)
KAGAN, JANET
The Nutcracker Coup
KAPP, COLIN
The Railways Up on Cannis
KELLY, JAMES PATRICK
Think Like A Dinosaur
KEYES, DANIEL
Flowers for Algernon
KIERNAN, CAITLIN R.
Black Helicopters
The Dry Salvages
Riding the White Bull
KING, STEPHEN
The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet
The Boogeyman
Graveyard Shift
The Mist
Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut
Survivor Type
KLAGES, ELLEN
In the House of the Seven Librarians
KLAGES, ELLEN and ANDY DUNCAN
Wakulla Springs
KNIGHT, DAMON
Four in One
KOONTZ, DEAN
Wake Up to Thunder
KORNBLUTH, C.M.
Gomez
The Little Black Bag
The Marching Morons
KOWAL, MARY ROBINETTE
Evil Robot Monkey
KRESS, NANCY
Margin of Error
LAFFERTY, MUR
I Look Forward to Remembering You
LAFFERTY, R.A.
All Pieces of a River Shore
Days of Grass, Days of Straw
Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies
LANGFORD, DAVE
BLIT
LAWRENCE, K.M.
The Freedom
LEE, TANITH
Fold
Red As Blood
LE GUIN, URSULA K
Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight
The Darkness Box
The Day Before The Revolution
The Finder
Intracom
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
Sita Dulip’s Method
Solitude
LEIBER, FRITZ
The Black Gondolier
The Button Molder
Ill Met In Lankhmar
Lean Times in Lankhmar
A Pail of Air
Space-Time for Springers
Time Fighter
LEM, STANISLAW
Let Us Save the Universe
The Seventh Sally
Terminus
LINGEN, MARISSA K.
Uncle Flower’s Homecoming Waltz
LINK, KELLY
Magic for Beginners
Two Houses
LIU, KEN
Mon no Aware
LONGYEAR, BARRY B.
Enemy Mine
LOVECRAFT, H. P.
At the Mountains of Madness
The Call of Cthulhu
The Color Out Of Space
Cool Air
Iranon
Pickman’s Model
The Whisperer In Darkness
MACLEAN, KATHERINE
The Snowball Effect
MacLENNIN, PHYLLIS
Thus Love Betrays Us
MAMATAS, NICK
Joey Ramone Saves the World
MARTIN, GEORGE R R
A Beast for Norn
Nightflyers
Sandkings
A Song for Lya
McAULEY, PAUL J.
Sea Change With Monsters
McDONAGH, MARTIN
The Pillowman (play)
McDONALD, IAN
Unfinished Portrait of the King of Pain by Van Gogh
McHUGH, MAUREEN
Necropolis
McINTYRE, VONDA
Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand
McKILLIP, PATRICIA A.
A Troll and Two Roses
McKINLEY, ROBIN
The Door in the Hedge (entire anthology)
The Princess and the Frog
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
MERRIL, JUDITH
That Only A Mother
METZGER, THOM
The Masonic Dream Engine
MIEVILLE, CHINA
The Ball Room
An End to Hunger
Familiar
Reports of Certain Events In London
MILES, LAWRENCE
A Broodmare for Gloriana
MILLER, LION
The Available Data on the Worp Reaction
MILLER, SAM J.
57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides
We Are the Cloud
MILLER, WALTER M. JR.
The Last Canticle
MITCHISON, NAOMI
Miss Omega Raven
MONETTE, SARAH
Elegy for a Demon Lover
MOORE, C.L.
Shambleau
MURPHY, PAT
A Falling Star Is A Rock From Outer Space
His Vegetable Wife
Rachel in Love
NEWMAN, KIM
The Man Who Collected Barker
NIVEN, LARRY
The Ethics of Madness
Inconstant Moon
Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex
Neutron Star
NORDLEY, G. DAVID
Crossing Chao Meng Fu
ORWELL, GEORGE
Animal Farm
PADGETT, LEWIS
Mimsy Were the Borogoves
Private Eye
The Proud Robot
PALWICK, SUSAN
Going After Bobo
PANGBORN, EDGAR
Night Wind
PIPER, H. BEAM
Omnilingual
POE, EDGAR ALLAN
A Cask of Amontillado
POHL, FREDERIK
The Day After The Day After The Martians Came
Day Million
Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus
Outnumbering the Dead
The Tunnel Under the World
POPKES, STEVEN
The Egg
PRATCHETT, TERRY
The Sea and Little Fishes
Troll Bridge
PRATT, TIM
Cup and Table
Impossible Dreams
PURSER-HALLARD, PHILIP
De Umbris Idearum
REED, ROBERT
Eight Episodes
REYNOLDS, TED
Can These Bones Live?
ROBINSON, KIM STANLEY
Green Mars (story, not novel)
ROWE, CHRISTOPHER
Voluntary State
RUSS, JOANNA
Everyday Depressions
When It Changed
RUSSELL, ERIC FRANK
Allamagoosa
Dear Devil
Plus X
The Witness
SAKI
The Open Window
Sredni Vashtar
The Wolves of Cernogratz
SAUNDERS, GEORGE
In Persuasion Nation
SCHMITZ, JAMES
The Second Night of Summer
SHAW, BOB
Light of Other Days
SHEA, MICHAEL
The Autopsy
SHECKLEY, ROBERT
The Accountant
Human Man’s Burden
The Odour of Thought
Protection
SHEFFIELD, CHARLES
Georgia On My Mind
SHELDON, RACCOONA (see also Tiptree)
The Screwfly Solution
SHEPARD, LUCIUS
The Man Who Painted The Dragon Griaule
R&R
The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter
A Spanish Lesson
SILVERBERG, ROBERT
The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov V
Enter A Soldier. Later: Enter Another
Feast of St. Dionysis
Sailing to Byzantium
Sundance
SINGH, VANDANA
Infinities
SLADEK, JOHN T.
Elephant With Wooden Leg
Heavens Below: Fifteen Utopias
SMITH, CLARK ASHTON
The Dark Eidolon
SMITH, CORDWAINER
Alpha Ralpha Boulevard
The Ballad of Lost C’Mell
The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal
The Dead Lady of Clown Town
The Game of Rat and Dragon
The Lady Who Sailed the Soul
Scanners Live In Vain
Under Old Earth
SOUKUP, MARTHA
Alita in the Air
SPINRAD, NORMAN
Carcinoma Angels
STERLING, BRUCE
Swarm
STERLING, BRUCE and RUDY RUCKER
Storming the Cosmos
STIEGLER, MARC
The Gentle Seduction
STROSS, CHARLES
Lobsters
STUART, DON A.
Twilight
STURGEON, THEODORE
Baby Is Three
The Claustrophile
The Man Who Lost The Sea
Microcosmic God
More Than Human
Saucer of Loneliness
Slow Sculpture
When You Care, When You Love
SWANWICK, MICHAEL
The Dog Said Bow Wow
SWANWICK, MICHAEL and WILLIAM GIBSON
Dogfight
SWIRSKY, RACHEL
If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love
The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window
TENN, WILLIAM
The Liberation of Earth
TIPTREE, JAMES JR.
And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill’s Side
The Girl Who Was Plugged In
Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
In the Midst of Life
Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death
The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats
The Women Men Don’t See
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!
TURTLEDOVE, HARRY
The Road Not Taken
UTLEY, STEVEN
Shattering
VALENTE, CATHERYNNE M.
Fade to White
Silently and Very Fast
VANCE, JACK
The Last Castle
Mazirian the Magician
The Moon Moth
The Potters of Firsk
VANDERMEER, JEFF
Dradin, in Love
The Transformation of Martin Lake
VAN PELT, JAMES
Miss Hathaway’s Spider
VAN VOGT, A.E.
The Weapon Shop
VARLEY, JOHN
The Barbie Murders
In The Bowl
In The Hall Of The Martian Kings
Overdrawn at the Memory Bank
Press Enter
VERNON, URSULA
Jackalope Wives
Toad Words
VINGE, JOAN D
To Bell The Cat
VINGE, VERNOR
True Names
VONNEGUT, KURT
Harrison Bergeron
Welcome to the Monkey House
WAGNER, KARL EDWARD
Lynortis Reprise
Misericorde
Raven’s Eyrie
Where the Summer Ends
WALDROP, HOWARD
Flying Saucer Rock & Roll
French Scenes
Mary Margaret Road-Grader
Thirty Minutes Over Broadway
The Ugly Chickens
WATT-EVANS, LAWRENCE
Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers
WEINBAUM, STANLEY G.
A Martian Odyssey
WHITE, T.H.
The Troll
WILHELM, KATE
Baby, You Were Great
WILLIAMS, WALTER JON
Video Star
WILLIS, CONNIE
All My Darling Daughters
Death On The Nile
Epiphany
Firewatch
The Last of the Winnebagoes
Schwarzschild Radius
Spice Pogrom
The Winds of Marble Arch
WILSON, ROBERT CHARLES
This Peacable Land
WOLFE, GENE
Has Anyone Seen Junie Moon
Silhouette
When I Was Ming the Merciless
WOLLHEIM, DONALD A.
Give Her Hell
Up There
YOLEN, JANE
Lost Girls
The Devil’s Arithmetic
YU, E. LILY
The Cartographer Wasps & the Anarchist Bees
ZELAZNY, ROGER
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth
Fire and Frost
For A Breath I Tarry
The Game of Blood and Dust
Home Is The Hangman
KJWALLL’KJE’K’KOOTHAILLL’KJE’K
The Last Defender of Camelot
A Rose For Ecclesiastes
This Moment of the Storm
24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai
Unicorn Variations
AUTHORS RECOMMENDED IN GENERAL FOR GOOD SHORT FICTION
Akutagawa, Ryunosoke
Bishop, Michael
Bradbury, Ray
Collier, John
Fyfe, H.B.
Gaiman, Neil
Gunn, Eileen
Henderson, Zenna
Klages, Ellen
Lafferty, R.A.
Lee, Tanith
LeGuin, Ursula K
Park, Paul
Quaglia, Roberto
Smith, Cordwainer
Sturgeon, Theodore
Varley, John
Wells, H.G.
Willis, Connie
Wolfe, Gene
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Another excellent short fiction selection by Ursula K. LeGuin is “Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea”. I personally always recommend this to anyone who wants to get a flavor of her most famous SF novels, “Left Hand of Darkness”, or “The Dispossessed”.
Nice work Kurt!
Thank you, Kurt!
Thank you Kurt! Now I have a lot of reading to do. (Not like I didn’t already, but this may push things around in the queue.)
I just reread “In Dreams”, by the way. It’s excellent. That ending just makes me feel happysad. Thanks for that too 🙂
ETA: I never realized until reading this list that nobody mentioned “Beggars in Spain” by Nancy Kress. That one really made an impression on me. Didn’t care for the novelization though.
Anthony Boucher! D’oh! One of his stories that’s stuck with me for a long time is “The Pink Caterpillar”.
Dawn:
Yeah, that’s why I wanted the list, too, and set it up in alphabetical order.
Chronological would have been nice, too, but I wasn’t up to that much research.
Thanks! This August, for our 20th anniversary, we’re doing something of a direct sequel to that story. Just got more pages for it in today…
I keep adding everything to the list. At some point, I have to stop that…
I didn’t suggest any Borges!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths
Great list! Thanks, Kurt!
By the way, doesn’t Iain Banks’ name have two “i”s?
Many thanks, Kurt.
Seeing Thomas M. Disch’s name reminds me of another story that has stuck with me forever – Descending. That story is why I NEVER read on an escalator. That and I would probably hurt myself…
Thank you, Kurt 🙂
Thanks Kurt!
Can’t believe that I forgot Katherine MacLean The Missing Man and for humor The Trouble with You Earth People.
Squid:
It does indeed. He is not a Cyclops. Thanks.
Thank you Kurt!
Is there a professional editor around? We need someone to compile the File770 Best SF Short Fiction Anthology. Then we can all nominate it next year. 🙂
Lists like these are part fascinating, part frustrating.
Take an author that I know in some depth as an example – Ray Bradbury. You can’t have a list of recommended Bradbury stories without “The Fog Horn” and “A Sound of Thunder”. And those are just the obvious ones. What about his best SF story (“And the Rock Cried Out”)? Or his scariest story (“Gotcha!”)? Or his most touching mainstream story (“The Laurel and Hardy Love Affair”)?
When were these recommendations solicited, by the way? I didn’t see anything.
Now I’m thinking about flagrant (or, at least, possibly interesting) omissions. How about Manly Wade Wellman’s “John the Balladeer” stories, for example “The Desrick on Yandro”? Or Richard McKenna’s “Casey Agonistes”? …. I suspect, though, one could go on like this forever.
Restricting myself purely to authors already on the list (otherwise I’d be here all day), here is one story per author that stands up to anything already nominated:
Isaac Asimov: “The Billiard Ball”.
J. G. Ballard: “The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D”.
Alfred Bester: “They Don’t Make Life Like They Used To”.
Avram Davidson: “The Sources of the Nile”.
Samuel R. Delany: “Driftglass”.
Philip K. Dick: “Faith of Our Fathers”.
Thomas M. Disch: “Descending” (already suggested and heartily seconded).
Harlan Ellison: “On the Downhill Side”.
Robert A. Heinlein – “They”.
Shirley Jackson: “One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts”.
Kij Johnson: “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss”.
Damon Knight: “Anachron”.
Nancy Kress: “The Battle of Long Island”.
R. A. Lafferty: “Rainbird”.
Tanith Lee: “The Demoness”.
Ursula K. Le Guin : “Ether, OR”.
Fritz Leiber: “The Man Who Never Grew Young”.
Ken Liu: “The Paper Menagerie”.
Katherine MacLean: “The Missing Man”.
George R. R. Martin: “With Morning Comes Mistfall”.
Maureen F. McHugh: “After the Apocalypse”.
C. L. Moore: “Vintage Season”.
Edgar Pangborn: “Longtooth”.
Steven Popkes: “The Ice”.
Robert Reed: “Roxie”.
Joanna Russ: “The Second Inquisition”.
James H. Schmitz: “The Witches of Karres”.
Robert Sheckley: “The Store of the Worlds” (a.k.a. “The World of Heart’s Desire”).
Lucius Shepard: “A Traveler’s Tale”.
Norman Spinrad: “Journals of the Plague Years”.
Bruce Sterling: “Dori Bangs”.
Michael Swanwick: “Triceratops Summer”.
James Tiptree, Jr.: “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever”.
Stanley G. Weinbaum: “The Circle of Zero”.
Gene Wolfe: “Forlesen”.
Thank you Kurt! I wish there were more iTunes-like places where we could just download the story without copyright violation. What a great jury file770 commenters make for this list.
I would have included Little Faces, by Vonda N. McIntyre on my list of five, except that yesterday I just couldn’t remember the title and author of the story. Stupid, stupid brain!
Thank you, Kurt! I’m sorry I missed the compilation stage, but you did great work pulling the list together.
I made a huge mistake! The Fritz Leiber story I meant to recommend was “The Oldest Soldier,” not “Time Fighter.”