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I've been getting back into short stories, thanks partly to the BR for Stories of Your Life and Others, and I'd love some recommendations for collections. (Really outstanding anthologies are okay too.) In short fiction, I tend to especially enjoy work that's on the slightly weird and speculative side.

I'm currently working on Friday Black and am planning on reading How Long 'til Black Future Month?: Stories and Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories in the near future.

Some of my all-time favorite short story collections:
At the Mouth of the River of Bees by Kij Johnson
Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee
The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories by Vandana Singh
So You Want to be a Robot and Other Stories by A. Merc Rustad
And of course Ursula K. Le Guin's work.

What are your favorite short story books?

I'm not much help here, since so far I've only ever read anthologies. But I just want to say thank you for the story collection recommendations - they look very promising!

I loves me some short stories. I’ve bought a whole stack of them I need to get to, but here are a few standouts...

From my youth:

The Persistence of Vision by John Varley is great start to finish. The introduction to his Eight Worlds series, the mind-bending title story, all of that. The Barbie Murders is all Eight Worlds, so yeah: love.

Convergent Series by Larry Niven. I particularly love the title story, where (view spoiler)[the main character uses math to beat the devil (hide spoiler)].

With Friends Like These... and ...Who Needs Enemies? by Alan Dean Foster. The title story of the first is great fun, and it also has the first story where I encountered the idea of Megalodon swimming around in our oceans. The second has the delightful “Swamp Planet Christmas��, where the young daughter of a research scientist on Venus writes letters to Santa Claus... using the official government communications channel. Hilarity ensues.

Get Off the Unicorn by Anne McCaffrey, although I know I liked it, I honestly don’t recall much about the stories in the collection except for “A Proper Santa Claus�� which is a kinder-gentler Twilight Zone story and a Pern short, “The Smallest Dragonboy.�� The Santa Claus one is one of my all-time favorite short stories, easily top 5.

Recent:

Word Puppets by Mary Robinette Kowal is terrific. The three connected Lady Astronaut stories at the end are great, but I absolutely love the short-short “Evil Robot Monkey.�� You can read it here on her site:
My review of the book with story breakdowns: /review/show...

Masked, a superhero story collection that has some genuinely great stories in it. My review: /review/show...

The Secret Book of Paradys is a bunch of lush, rotting vignettes of a dystopic Paris during its height (plus supernaturals!). I think Tanith Lee excels in this format. I also loved Night's Master (a "mythology book" of an invented demon world she thought up, told in a series of short stories).

I'm told I'll also like Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers and The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. I also have The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories on my list.

Also second Get off the Dragon!

Allison wrote: "Also second Get off the Dragon!."

Unicorn.

But I remembered it as “Dragon�� too, and was baffled when I couldn’t find the link. That’s how strong that Dragonboy story is.

Err...Getting off my dragon long enough to say I meant Unicorn!

Lots of good FREE recent shorts on Tor.com

Thanks for the 🐒 one Trike. It, like all of her work I’ve read so far, was wonderful.

I have to give a big shout out to Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr., full of some stunning, essential classics.

I’ve also loved reading Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler.

Nalo Hopkinson has two collections (that I've read) both with a range of stories, often with Caribbean themes, Skin Folk and Falling in Love with Hominids. Both were very fun collections.

I'll give a second vote for Word Puppets, some fun stuff in there.

I bought my husband Flight or Fright for his birthday. It’s an anthology of airplane horror stories and what can go wrong will go wrong stuff. It’s edited by Stephen King and he has a story in there as well as one by Joe Hill. There’s also Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl and heaps of others. I haven’t read it yet (and I’m not going to this month either seeing I’m getting on a plane) but it looks interesting. Especially for people who like horror and planes.

Thanks, y'all! Nice to both see some new things and to get reminded of some that are already on my TBR.

Oh man, it's kind of funny to have that Anne McCaffrey recommended. Her books were one of my first introductions to "adult" sff, and I distinctly remember reading that collection while I was in high school. She and MZB's Sword and Sorceress anthologies were probably what got me into short stories in the first place.

A few others on my shelves that I'm reminded I haven't gotten to yet:
-Inspired by Octavia Butler: Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars and Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements
-More Tiptree: Meet Me At Infinity: The Uncollected Tiptree: Fiction and Nonfiction
-This Strange Way of Dying: Stories of Magic, Desire and the Fantastic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Ok, that short-short Evil robot Monkey is good. Ty Trike for the link.

The New Voices of Fantasy is worth a look, and a read. It was a read of the month in another club and it just won the World Fantasy award for best anthology. Alyssa Wong's short story "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers" had me looking for a novel by her. (Almost fell out of my chair reading it. It won the Nebula and World Fantasy award.) Didn't find one yet (a novel), but will notice when I do.

Harlan Ellison has some good short stories

Inspired by this thread, I decided to get as many of my unread short story collections off my shelves as I could. (You’ve seen my shelves, so you know this wasn’t easy.)

I’m a little behind.

I have that orange Year's best SF 9, too. And a whole bunch more, too. I love short stories, but I just don't get around to them... I don't know why....

Trike wrote: "Inspired by this thread, I decided to get as many of my unread short story collections off my shelves as I could. (You’ve seen my shelves, so you know this wasn’t easy.)

I’m a little behind.

"
I wish Amazon was in our country... damn that's a lot of books!!

These are collections I would recommend:

In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss -- beautifully written stories with a fairy tale-like feel

In the Palace of Repose by Holly Phillips -- mix of s.f. and fantasy

Punktown by Jeffrey Thomas -- is weird and dark and s.f. more than fantasy.

Extremities: Stories by Kathe Koja -- leans toward horror and dark fantasy, Koja's writing is minimalist and brutally to the point as she offers striking images

A Feast of Sorrows by Angela Slatter -- again, a fairy-tale feel, and very well written

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke -- stories set in milieu of her novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and with much the same tone; some readers seem unimpressed but I found these stories great fun

Deadfall Hotel by Steve Rasnic Tem -- four novellas, another book that leans toward horror, but the walk-away from this book is concerned with a father/daughter relationship; if Bradbury had written Something Wicked This Way Comes entirely from the point of the father, it would have been something like this

The Gist Hunter and Other Stories by Matthew Hughes -- Hughes has made his rep by tapping into the kind of work Jack Vance wrote; the stories in the first two sections were worked into separate novels and mainly work to comic effect melding fantasy and s.f. The stories in the last section are edgier, some approaching horror.

Speaking of edgier work, I'm not sure from your request whether you'd like darker fantasy, but Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe is certainly weird, as is Caitlin R. Kiernan's To Charles Fort, With Love. (A "best of" by Kiernan is scheduled for a February 2019 release from Tachyon.)


RM

Corinne wrote: "Looking to my left at my bookshelf* I kinda want to make a pile too. "

Do iiiit. Do it!

Randy wrote: "These are collections I would recommend:

In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss -- beautifully written stories with a fairy tale-like feel

[book:In the Palace of Repose|173707..."

Dangit Randy, did you not see my photo? Stop offering more excellent collections to add to my short story pile.

My TBR of short story collections and anthologies sorted into their natural groupings of SFF and MDS (Mystery&David Sedaris). That's not even all of my Sedaris books, I couldn't find one. I cannot explain my compulsion to acquire but not read David Sedaris (though I have read still others).

Xanadu is a little obscure and has mixed reviews, but I liked it. It is "slightly weird and speculative".

Trike wrote: "Randy wrote: "These are collections I would recommend:

In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss -- beautifully written stories with a fairy tale-like feel

Funny. I was thinking of it as returning the ... um ... favor?

You reminded me I have that Ford collection and should get around to reading it.

Corinne wrote: "


That is just from my horror shelf :/
I feel guilty reading at home. Like I should be doing something instead. I'm best with audiobooks in the car but I still want these and I want to read th..."

Corinne! You have the old ugly head HPL collections? I really wish I'd kept those. At some point I replaced them with the Arkham House editions and while the Lee Brown Coye covers are great, I have a fondness for those Ballantine covers.

RM

i know you rather wanted collections than anthologies but Ill still humbly suggest "Aliens: Recent Encounters" collected by Elizabeth Bear, about all kinds of humans-meeting-aliens shenanigans.

Its got one of my favorite stories of all time (alien deep sea mermaid matriarchy anyone?)

Also on my TBR I have "The Imago Sequence and other stories" by Laird Barron. Its got cosmic horror but obv I cant vouch for its quality yet.

Aliens: Recent Encounters
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories

The Imago Sequence and Other Stories is very good, but also very, very dark and disturbing work. Barron is a powerful writer, but I do find a little at a time is about all I can take.

RM

Dreamsongs. Volume I is utterly fantastic; it has some of the best GRRM's works such as A Song for Lya, The Second Kind of Loneliness, Sandkings.
Minority Report and Other Stories is also enjoyable. PKD's great with shorts.
The Inheritance is a must read for Robin Hobb fans.

My friend just published a collection of first contact short stories and they're quite weird apparently. I haven't read it yet but it sounds like it might be what you're looking for.

/book/show/4...

Thanks for the comprehensive post, Corinne!

Thank you Corinne.
I hope to explore those sources.

The only problem is, often a writer will blow me away with a short, so I'll come here to find a collection or novel by them, and they don't have any. Frustrating!

I just read the story collection Friday Black, which I liked and recommend. My review: /review/show...

This blog has many previous issues of an online magazine called
Many short stories of fantasy, sci-fi and horror here.

I'm currently reading , but this is more recommended if you like your fantasy more directed towards literature/slice of life/magical realism.

Corinne wrote: "Agreed it’s a great but sometimes frustrating way to find new authors. The one I linked has caught my interest and she is a prolific short story writer (many links to them on her website. Free acce..."

I mostly find new authors by watching Booktubers.

These are the ones I'm using to start with for the Short Story Challenge:

A Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume One (Liaden Universe stories)
A Long December
A Time For Grief (Tales of the Apt, #2)
Ad Astra
Alien_Contact
Best_Science_Fiction_of_the_Year_vol2
Black Heart, Ivory Bones
Blood Sisters
Book_of_Cthulhu_2
By Blood We Live
Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Dancers in the Dark and Layla Steps Up
Delphi Complete Works of Jules Verne (Illustrated)
Epic: Legends of Fantasy
February Thaw and Other Stories of Contemporary Fantasy
For Love of Distant Shores (Tales of the Apt #3)
Going Interstellar
In Our Own Worlds: Four Tor.Com Novellas
Lore of the Witch World
Messenger's Legacy (The Demon Cycle #3.5)
Monstrous Little Voices: New Tales From Shakespeare's Fantasy World (Monstrous Little Voices, #1-5)
Not So Stories
Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy, and Horror Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe
Salsa Nocturna
Side Jobs (Dresden Files)
Silver Birch, Blood Moon
Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt #1)
Tales from High Hallack Volume Three (The Collected Short Stories of Andre Norton Book 3)
Tales from High Hallack, Volume 1: the collected short stories of Andre Norton
Tales from High Hallack, Volume 2: The Collected Short Stories of Andre Norton
The Best of Bova: Volume 1
The Best of the Best Horror of the Year 10 Years
The Complete Works of H.G. Wells
The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World
The Final Frontier
The Great Bazaar and Brayan's Gold: Stories from The Demon Cycle series
The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Lord Dunsany Compendium (10 books in one!)
The Sword & Sorcery Anthology
The Ultimate Dragon
The Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Works of Robert E. Howard
The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2017 Edition
The Year's Best Military SF & Space Opera
Tor.com Publishing 2019 Debut Sampler
Tor.com Short Fiction Fall 2019
Tor.com Short Fiction Summer 2019
Tor.com Short Fiction: January-February 2019
Tor.com Short Fiction: March-April 2019
Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets
Wild Cards I: Expanded Edition
Wizard's Worlds (Witch World Series)
Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction

I am reading Meet Me in the Future: Stories and enjoying it a lot.

I'm working through The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Thirteen, which is work from 2018 and has a lot of good pieces.

I also recommend N.K. Jemisin's How Long 'til Black Future Month?, Word Puppets by Mary Robinette Kowal, Nalo Hopkinson's Skin Folk and Falling in Love with Hominids.

I am working on Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight by Aliette de Bodard and Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Machado, and loving both. I also purchased a subscription to this year, so I'm planning on reading at least the four 2020 issues.

Oh, and then I also started The Trans Space Octopus Congregation: Stories, which is also very good so far.

Thank you for the heads up for the Trans Space Octopus, Kaa. The author edited a transgender anthology which I liked, but I haven't read something written by them. I have to give it a try.

I've read and enjoyed a few of their stories online, and I'm really excited to get a whole collection to work through!

The short story challenge prompted me to start Future Visions: Original Science Fiction Inspired by Microsoft. I really enjoyed the Seanan McGuire story at the start and it's hard to argue with the price (free).

It's good to see that Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight is more widely available. Thanks Kaa!

I read "Even when the world has told us we have ended," by Cat Hellisen. This novelette is currently free for Kindle/Nook (at least in US), and I recommend it if your are looking for an interesting read.

Just found another collection that fits both my professional and personal interests - Take Us to a Better Place: Stories is stories published by a major public health foundation. It's not all SFF, but some of it is! It includes stories by Yoon Ha Lee, Martha Wells, and Karen Lord, among others.

Oh, and it's free:

Thank you for this interesting suggestion and link, Kaa!

A friend in another group compiled a list of links to all of the Nebula-nominated novelettes and short stories:

NOVELETTES

“For He Can Creep�� - Siobhan Carroll
...

“His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light�� - Mimi Mondal
...

“The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye�� - Sarah Pinsker
...

“The Archronology of Love�� - Caroline M. Yoachim
...

“A Strange Uncertain Light�� by G.V. Anderson and "Carpe Glitter" by Cat Rambo - Not available for free

SHORT STORIES

“Give the Family My Love�� - A.T. Greenblatt
...

“The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power�� - Karen Osborne
...

“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing�� - Shiv Ramdas
...

“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island�� - Nibedita Sen
...

“A Catalog of Storms�� - Fran Wilde
...

“How the Trick Is Done�� - A.C. Wise
...

Cool, we already have three novelettes in our BR this month!

As for short stories, I read AC Wise's (good) and AT Greenblatt's (meh). Will try to read the rest.

I hadn't noticed that Tor.com does a of the month since September 2019. I'll start keeping an eye on that. It's not just their own stories, and they have links to where they can be read online.

Good find Anna, will keep that in mind going forward when looking for a short story to read.