Tell me a story!

What short stories do you really, really love?

Dunno specifically, but there's a lot of cool stuff in Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House.

Seconded!

I can't believe no one's mentioned Raymond Carver yet. (I'd go with What We Talk About When We Talk About Love)

Ray Bradbury's collection, The Illustrated Man. love!

Arthur C. Clarke - The Nine Billion Names of God

That's a goodie.

The greatest Science Fiction short story ever is Isaac Asimov's Nightfall or maybe his The Last Question.

I love just about every Sherlock Holmes story.

Poe has lots of good ones, he invented the form. The Fall of the House of Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Premature Burial... .

Is Nightfall that thing about the suns and darkness and societies imploding? That was fleshed out into a book? If so, it was great.

that's the one.

I loved that one too.

Ooh I love Nightfall!!!!!

Did you ever read the version where they tried to complete it?

Nope, the original was perfection. It was a short story for a reason, expanding it weakens the impact.

I read the book....I remember it being good, but different.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - although iirc, it was more novella length? (Someone help me out?) It's the story that was adapted into the movie Blade Runner. Um... And I'm suddenly drawing a blank on the author. I just woke up, for the record. *sheepish*

One of my favorite assignments in Jr. High English was writing a second ending to The Lottery - that's another fun short story. (Again, drawing a blank on the author. Heh.)

Shirley Jackson wrote The Lottery. It would have made a perfect Twilight Zone.

Shirley Jackson wrote The Lottery. It would have made a perfect Twilight Zone

It was a TV movie a few years back.�

Oh thank you.� I think when I wrote that post I remembered it was S. Jackson, but not really the rest.� Mwa!

"The Yellow Wallpaper," Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"El Dinosaurio," Augusto Monterroso (This, allegedly, is the shortest short story ever written.)

"Young Goodman Brown," Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Babylon Library" and lots of others by Jorge Luis Borges

And, of course, anything by Faulkner. Oh, and most of Dubliners by James Joyce.

I'm sure I'll probably think of some more, too.

Oooh I just found a paper recently that I did on The Yellow Wallpaper. I think I was saying there was enough in the story to suggest it really was the paper doing the crazy-making. :)�

Strindberg -- especially The Stronger

...wrote some short stories under a pseudonym, they're available under his name now.

One of them is the long walk and i have to say that one stayed with me for a long time, very disturbing, very well done.

neil gaiman has some short stories on his website

yes, it's called the Bachman Books, he wrote them as Richard Bachman.

The Long Walk always disturbs me too!!!

like good pretend canadians, my sister & i have been getting very much into alice munro. brutally & beautifully insightful. something i've been meaning to tell you is the last one i read.

& of course, i must (as a pretend israeli) shout out to my man etgar keret. at least one of his collections has been translated, i think it's the bus driver who wanted to be god. wacky & sad.

back in high school i could list off to you several of the ones we had to read that i really liked...i can't think of any right now tho except the aformentioned The Lottery. Currently there are a few stories in The Sandman collection (edited by Neil Gaiman) and the Legends series of sci-fi/fantasy authors that are really good.

I like Ray Bradburys...was it "The Collector", "The Collectionist". The one about the guy who buys a lot of books and eats a salad with some people. I also have a short story that I keep neglecting, its in its fifth draft or so.

How could I forget Metamorphosis?

Jorge Luis Borges has a number of good ones in his collection Labryinths.

Kafka! Of course! *Facepalm*

What's your favorite Borges?

I don't remember the title. It is about a detective in Paris trying to catch a serial killer. He convinces himself it has to do with Kabbala but you find at the end that he doesnt' have a clue.

I remember that one, although I also don't remember the title. I think, actually, he DID have a clue, sort of - he ends up in the right place, right?

Well, I think I'll answer this in a frumsg. I don't want to ruin the story for anyone who might read it.

Good call. Wish I'd thought of that - I could have explained my (incorrect) recollection of the story much better if I wasn't trying to avoid spoiling it. Hee.

the last shuttle by isaac asimov (it's the first one that springs to mind, though i've read five of his collections)
smith of wootton major by jrr tolkien

Yay! Somebody else read Smith. Have you read Farmer Giles of Ham?

indeed i have.�i didn't enjoy it so much, although the dragon was quite cleverly done. it comes in third, behind Leaf by Niggle.

It is hard to judge but I think I'd say Giles, then Smith, then Leaf.

The Masque of the Red Death..

and it's even better when read by Gabriel Byrne. God, I could listen to that man read the phone book.

And I have to admit, I liked "Brokeback Mountain" x_X *runs*

That's one the great Poe stories. A great film too, one of the best of the Vincent Price Poe films.

Anything by Anton Chekhov or Dorothy Parker.