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Alas, I really like short story collections too!! However, my favorites might have a scifi or fantasy tinged story but they are not exclusive or even primarily in the genre.

Scifi/ Fantasy genre specific favorites are (so far):
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang my favorite collection
Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson
All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva more horror/fantasy than scifi. One scifi story in the collection (Manus) stays with you long after the last page.

Some scif/fantasy stories but not most of the collection:
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah brilliant collection!! Title story (and a couple of others) is scifi/fantasy

Favorite collections that have minimal scifi elements (so far):
The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen I enjoyed every story here. Some funny, most very poignant! Loved it!!
Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires This one blew me away! I loved it!!
Barefoot Dogs: Stories by Antonio Ruiz-Camacho Not quite as well known as the others listed, this one was intense and draws you in. Really good!!

I've just bought the ginormous The Big Book of Science Fiction which promises to have assembled the best of the best of the best SF stories of all time within 1200 pages - I think I'll be reading this one slowly for months, story by story.

When I was still in school, I read tons of short stories - a habit I'd like to get into again. E.g. the whole Isaac Asimov Presents Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1: 1939 book series (which has endless parts!) - loved it, as well as The Stories of Ray Bradbury part 1 and 2 - teachers kept making fun of me for reading that "Sputnik stuff" and today they teach the same Bradbury in class. How times change!

The The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke is also really brilliant, a huge book full of fantastic ideas, though some may seem a bit dated now.

I haven't marked any of these as "read" on GR because it was just too long ago and I no longer remember them well enough, I'd have to reread (and might) to be able to tell if they still hold up today.

My absolute favorite that I totally fell in love with as a ten year old was Unaccompanied Sonata & Other Stories - made me stay up all night, made me cry, it was wonderful. I haven't reread that collection in forever, but I still vividly remember the title story.

But as always with things we read or watched in our youth, it's hard to tell how much our assessment of them is clouded by nostalgia.

By the way, if anyone would like a good SF/Fantasy anthology for only 99 cents (in most countries), check out The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year #11 - I think they're using this one as a gateway drug to lure you in, so that you'll then have to read all the other years, as well. :-)

Has anyone read Amazon's ? I noticed that you can get 5/6 free on Audible, and I almost got them, but they have really low ratings. And I think they're horror, so maybe I should skip it even if it's (mostly) free? I kinda want to listen to the Lauren Beukes one at least, but I'd love to know how disturbing these are!

Disorder Collection:
The Best Girls
Loam
Ungirls
Anonymous
The Beckoning Fair One
Will Williams

I've only read "Ungirls" so far (allthough I've downloaded the others). As often I can't remember a thing, but I gave it 4 stars, so I guess I liked it ^^'.

@Anna - I read that collection and rated all of them 3 stars except one (Will Williams- which I enjoyed very much).

I marked two of them as very disturbing and wished I hadn’t read them.

They probably fall into the category of psychological horror.

Sarah, which ones were very disturbing?

edit: I found the answer in your reviews, thanks!

4 nebula award short fiction stories with links inside the link. All free online from Uncanny Magazine. Because of this and a few others from the last few days, had to buy an issue from Amazon so at least some pennies went into the author's coffers.

This seems to be free. Stories I’ve read so far are interesting and well written. Africanfuturism: An Anthology

I’m reading stories from several sources at the moment, including an old favourite I haven’t looked at in some time: The Wind's Twelve Quarters

Silvana wrote: "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.

I just got that so I can read those stories, plus
The Ice Dragon and
Nightflyers.

Here are some unknown anthologies and magazines. The Dreamtime anthologies are all for charity. The Black Infinity series is some new, some reprint fiction, harking back to a time was space exploration was more on the dangerous, creepy side.

Dreamtime Dragons
Dreamtime Damsels & Fatal Femmes: A Dreamtime Fantasy Tales Anthology
Black Infinity: Blobs, Globs, Slime and Spores
Black Infinity: Body Snatchers!
Black Infinity: Deadly Planets
Black Infinity: Derelicts
Black Infinity: Insidious Insects
Black Infinity: Strange Dimensions

I just read a random find called Absalom's Mother and Other Stories by Louise Marley. An unnoticed gem! 4.4 stars, and I'm going to hang onto my copy to reread.

I read Isaac Asimov's 50 short sci-fi stories collection. As you would expect some really hit the spot with me, but some were flat (or I didn't get them).
Although it was an old book it still held relevance to the sci-fi world today.

Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honour of Jack Vance is a fantasy anthology in which a bunch of authors write short stories in the Jack Vance style with some of his creations. I found it mixed, but Jack Vance fans would probably like it.

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

I have the DTB tucked away in my hoard house, somewhere.

Interestingly, the book was originally supposed to be named -- with the now-archaic meaning of "get"="offspring", the way crops "yield" -- but a typo in internal paperwork at Ballantine led to the current name.

Science Fiction Periodical Archives

Corinne wrote: "In case some who read THE SECRET LIFE OF BOTS by Suzanne Palmer would be interested in knowing... there is a new story with Bot9 in Clarkesworld Magazine #177, June 2021
"

Thanks! The saga continues....

Some of the best short Fantasy stories I've read in recent years are in Dreamtime Damsels & Fatal Femmes: A Dreamtime Fantasy Tales Anthology by various authors.

Not all are top notch but the ones that are really are!

I am expanding my reading comfort level from the usual standard literary stuff. The science fiction novels look intimidating to me, not being familiar. So I think I will stick here for much of the year for my sci-fi selections. A series of shorter works will introduce me and not too much intimidate me.

Cynda wrote: "I am expanding my reading comfort level from the usual standard literary stuff. The science fiction novels look intimidating to me, not being familiar. So I think I will stick here for much of the ..."

For what it's worth, that's how many of us -- maybe especially older readers of s.f. -- were first introduced to the genre. Anthologies like the The Hugo Winners Vol 1 and 2 1955-1970, the SF Hall of Fame volumes, and others gave us the background stories while newer "Best ofs" and the magazines filled in more recent developments.

Thank you for thks information Randy. I am of an age where I am exercising my brain--I know no better term--and must push it in all different directions.

I have found some Nebula Awards anthologies on Hoopla, just a few, more than enough. I will read two award anthologies and then mostly literary science fiction for the remainder of the 10 total planning this year. I am familiar with literary works.

I will also read 10 fantasy which will be easier for me, I think.

Thanks again.

Dreamtime Damsels & Fatal Femmes: A Dreamtime Fantasy Tales Anthology is a Fantasy anthology with a theme of strong female protagonists. Some excellent stories in that one.

Cynda wrote: "I am expanding my reading comfort level from the usual standard literary stuff. The science fiction novels look intimidating to me, not being familiar. So I think I will stick here for much of the ..."

Have you read The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by AS Byatt? Byatt is pretty well known as a literary author (mostly for Possession but this is her collection of fairy tales.

For science fiction, one of the best single author collections I've read is Warm Worlds and Otherwise by James Tiptree Jr., but it's pretty intense and it might be too dark for some readers.

I usually read novels, but I recently bought Swords, Sorcery, & Self Rescuing Damsels. I've enjoyed it so far.

Here are a few Short Story Collections that I like.
Galactic Empires 1 and 2, edited by Brian Aldiss. Favorite Story, Foundation by Isaac Asimov.
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964 II a, and II b, edited by Ben Bova, Favorite Story, Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.
Dark Forces: New Stories of Suspense and Supernatural Horror, edited by Kirby McCauley, Favorite Story, The Mist by Stephen King.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Science Fiction, edited by Isaac Asimov, Favorite Story, Margin of Profit by Poul Anderson.
Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison, Favorite Story, Gonna Roll the Bones by Fritz Leiber.
Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison, Favorite Story, The Word for World is Forest by Ursula Le Guin.
Thieves' World, edited by Robert Aspirin, Favorite Story, The Secret of the Blue Star by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

I'll add a few more,

Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories by Kelly Barnhill -- another with a fairy tale feel

Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont -- if you're interested in work adapted to the original Twilight Zone or which established the tradition TZ tapped into (along with Richard Matheson's work and some of Ray Bradbury's)

A Nest of Nightmares by Lisa Tuttle -- a Shirley Jackson-ish feel to these older stories. Her more recent work in The Dead Hours of Night is also good

You all are lovely. These are good suggestions. I will take these suggestions for 2023. I will read largely based on what is available through the library and e-services I use. Thank you :-)

I was able to locate another short story collection by A.S. Byatt than what Beth suggested. I read Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice. I found some quite enjoyable fantasy stories there. I will remember that I enjoy A S Byatt's short stories.

Below are the collections I've read. It's difficult to rank them (these all ranged from very good to excellent), so chronological seemed best. A few that you might not know about are "First Person, Peculiar" by T.L. Sherred, "Living Way Out" by Wyman Guin, "Space by the Tale" by Jerome Bixby. Some of these are horror and possibly non-genre, but mostly sci-fi.


1950 The Man Who Sold the Moon Robert A. Heinlein
1950 Waldo & Magic, Inc. Robert A. Heinlein
1951 The Green Hills of Earth Robert A. Heinlein
1952 City Clifford D. Simak
1953 Assignment in Eternity Robert A. Heinlein
1954 Untouched by Human Hands Robert Sheckley
1955 Citizen in Space Robert Sheckley
1956 Alternating Currents Frederik Pohl
1957 Pilgrimage to Earth Robert Sheckley
1957 The Case Against Tomorrow Frederik Pohl
1958 Starburst Alfred Bester
1958 The Deadly Streets Harlan Ellison
1959 The Menace from Earth Robert A. Heinlein
1959 The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag Robert A. Heinlein
1959 Tomorrow Times Seven Frederik Pohl
1960 Notions: Unlimited Robert Sheckley
1960 Store of Infinity Robert Sheckley
1960 The Man Who Ate the World Frederik Pohl
1961 Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation Harlan Ellison
1961 Nightmares Robert Bloch
1962 Ellison Wonderland Harlan Ellison
1962 More Nightmares Robert Bloch
1962 Shards of Space Robert Sheckley
1963 Orphans of the Sky Robert A. Heinlein
1964 Space by the Tale Jerome Bixby
1964 The Dark Side of the Earth Alfred Bester
1965 The Anything Box Zenna Henderson
1967 I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream Harlan Ellison
1967 Living Way Out Wyman Guin
1967 Nine By Laumer Keith Laumer
1968 Neutron Star Larry Niven
1968 The People Trap Robert Sheckley
1970 Nine Hundred Grandmothers R. A. Lafferty
1970 Ole Doc Methuselah L. Ron Hubbard
1971 Moderan David Bunch
1971 The Same to You Doubled Robert Sheckley
1972 First Person, Peculiar T. L. Sherred
1972 Strange Doings R. A. Lafferty
1972 The Rim of the Unknown Frank Belknap Long
1973 Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home James Tiptree, Jr.
1974 Mixed Feelings George Alec Effinger
1975 Warm Worlds and Otherwise James Tiptree, Jr.
1975 The Night Ghouls and Other Grisly Tales R. Chetwynd-Hayes
1977 The Monadic Universe George Zebrowski
1978 Cautionary Tales Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
1978 Night Shift Stephen King
1980 Manifest Destiny Barry B. Longyear
1980 Shatterday Harlan Ellison
1983 Through Elegant Eyes R. A. Lafferty
1984 Things Beyond Midnight William F. Nolan
1990 Four Past Midnight Stephen King
1993 The Rediscovery of Man Cordwainer Smith
1995 Microcosmic God Theodore Sturgeon
1995 The Ultimate Egoist Theodore Sturgeon
1996 Killdozer! Theodore Sturgeon
1997 Slippage Harlan Ellison
2001 Here Comes Civilization William Tenn
2001 Immodest Proposals William Tenn
2002 Stories of Your Life and Others Ted Chiang
2003 The Cold Equations and Other Stories Tom Godwin
2005 Bloodchild and Other Stories, Second Edition Octavia E. Butler
2006 Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts George Zebrowski
2006 The Draco Tavern Larry Niven
2006 To Be Continued Robert Silverberg
2007 To The Dark Star Robert Silverberg
2008 Dark Integers and Other Stories Greg Egan
2008 Pump Six and Other Stories Paolo Bacigalupi
2008 Something Wild is Loose Robert Silverberg
2009 Crystal Nights and Other Stories Greg Egan
2009 Trips Robert Silverberg
2013 The Wandering Earth Cixin Liu

Thank you Bryan. Next year I will be doing a mad catchup (50ish books) on 21st-century fiction. I will use this list. I have read Larry Given before, a retelling of Dante's Inferno and want to read Octavia E. Butler.

This year I read The Martian Chronicles byRay Bradbury which read just like an episodic novel or like a collection of connected stories.

I had the complete Edgar Allan Poe on my Kindle for a long time and I slowly read through the short stories there. I did something similar with H.P. Lovecraft. Both pretty weird and lots of short stories. I got into an American Lit. kick and read some Truman Capote and Flannery O'Conner short stories. Not SFF but great at evoking emotion in few words. I asked for Library of America collections of Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. Le Guin for Christmas so I may have some new shorter stories to read.

Bobby wrote: "I had the complete Edgar Allan Poe on my Kindle for a long time and I slowly read through the short stories there. I did something similar with H.P. Lovecraft. Both pretty weird and lots of short s..."

I just got the complete Edgar Allan Poe for an early Christmas gift - looking forward to working my way through it!

Do you have the ISBN for the Ursula K Le Guin collection by chance? I've been trying to find more of her works.

ISBN: 978-1-59853-538-9

Hainish Novels & Stories, Volume One

I don’t have it yet but like the LOA format.

Awesome! Thanks so much

Check out what was nominated for SFF Short Fiction February 2023.

The Best of R.A. Lafferty. A unique writer.

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Helen Oyeyemi
The Future Is Blue, Cat Valente
Laughter at the Academy, Seanan McGuire
Six Months, Three Days, Five Others, Charlie Jane Anders (I think the stories included are also all free on tor.com)

Hope it's okay to jump into this long-dormant discussion, but I have been reading more short fiction lately, and I'm sort of amazed by how many magazines there are publishing new scifi! I just discovered Fusion Fragment, and the first issue I read No. 15 was really excellent. I've long been a reader of Asimov's (which I get in print) and I've dipped in and out of Clarkesworld and a few other magazines, but I'm curious how many people here follow the scifi magazine scene, and if you have opinions about where the best work is being published, what to watch, how to figure out what magazines have what kinds of personalities?

It is absolute fine to necropost in older threads! This isn't even that old yet :D But I think your question deserves its own thread, if you'd like to start one in this same folder?

BJ wrote: "Hope it's okay to jump into this long-dormant discussion, but I have been reading more short fiction lately, and I'm sort of amazed by how many magazines there are publishing new scifi! I just disc..."

Hi BJ, mostly I only read random stories that are online, so I can't say I have a favorite magazine. I live in the UK, so I don't subscribe to any of the main three. I used to subscribe to one of the UK's main SF magazines - Interzone, which I really enjoyed, but then I ran out of time to read it and realized 2 years later that I had all these issues that I hadn't even cracked open, so I didn't renew. One day, maybe I'll have time for a magazine again.

Corinne wrote: "Hi BJ, check out this link someone else shared. Offers a summary of "all" the mags: /topic/show/......"

Oh that list is really interesting! A little overwhelming, in fact! But helpful! There are quite a few there I hadn't heard of, or vaguely knew of but didn't really know what kind of thing they did!

You can download the Tor 15th anniversary short fiction bundle for free!

WTEK wrote: "You can download the Tor 15th anniversary short fiction bundle for free! ..."

Thanks for sharing this, WTEK!

WTEK wrote: "You can download the Tor 15th anniversary short fiction bundle for free! ..."

Yes, thank you WTEK! I just downloaded it!

As I woke up this morning I found myself thinking vaguely about “The Veldt��, by Ray Bradbury, a story that I believe was in a short fiction anthology we used at my high school 50-odd years ago. I realized that I didn’t actually remember much about the story at all. We were out and about this morning and I found a copy of the Bradbury collection The Illustrated Man at a nearby Indigo store. I was quite impressed by the amount of Bradbury that was there on the store’s science fiction shelves. Along with Asimov and a few others he seems to have retained his popularity over the years.

When I was a kid I read a few of his story collections but I never personally ranked him as high as Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke and other more “hard core�� sf writers, if that term makes sense. In recent years I picked up his famous novel Fahrenheit 451, which I had never read, and found it interestingly written but unexciting, perhaps a little dated. I also reread The Martian Chronicles, effectively a story collection which seemed to have some great pieces and also some weaker ones. It will be interesting to read the stories in The Illustrated Man. I remember the striking cover of a Bantam paperback but I honestly don’t know whether I’ve ever read the collection.

Stephen wrote: "As I woke up this morning I found myself thinking vaguely about “The Veldt��, by Ray Bradbury, a story that I believe was in a short fiction anthology we used at my high school 50-odd years ago. I r..."

Hi Stephen ^^
I think it is because Bradbury included effort into character building that distinguished him from hard sci-fi masters like Asimov and Clark.

With a few exceptions, like Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury was a fantasist. He acknowledged that. But he began publishing in the 1950s, when there wasn't much call for fantasists and because of Fahrenheit and The Martian Chronicles (really, more science fantasy), the cover writers always talked him up as a great s.f. writer, a sort of bait-and-switch tactic if you were looking for the hard s.f. of the time. And probably something of a disservice to Bradbury over the long run.

I agree whole-heartedly with Randy’s description of Bradbury’s works as well as the above poster’s acknowledgement of his “character first�� way of writing stories.

I am in the middle of reading the collection from 1969 “I Sing the Body Electric!�� by Bradbury. There are a few stories, which, at least on the surface, are SF. In fact, most of them are. You won’t find Dragons or medieval society in a Bradbury story.

I am now tempted to list all the the short story collections I have yet to read in the hopes someone else has one of them as well and might be interested in a buddy read next year��. That would be a monumental undertaking though.

Bradbury was very much a fantasist but also a science fiction writer who published a lot of his early stories in 1940s genre magazines. By 1950 he was well established and was already publishing books. That was the year of The Martian Chronicles, which collected earlier stories. He had a long career and later writing was probably less science fictional in the main. (I’m not very familiar with most of it.) I’m not sure what I think distinguished his writing from that of others; it wasn’t just an interest in character. There is a personal prose style and an interest in nostalgia for the American society of an earlier day, the 1890s/early 20th century. Also a feel for the weird and marginal. Whatever it was it made him a real crossover literary star and has led to long term popularity.