Best short story collection?

[Axolotl]

I'm currently favour short stories and essays in literature over full length novels, unfortunately this conflicts with the publishing industry which seems to favour huge novels or even multi-book series at the moment especially for SF type works.

So I'm looking for recommendations for short story collections especially speculative fiction ones. So far the best I've found are Dangerous Visions and Labyrinths and I've heard god things about Mirror shades which I intend to pick up. But what other collections are there which are worth reading?Which do you consider the best?

[Hiro Protagonest]

I have one, but it's a TV show and it's not all sci-fi (though it's all speculative fiction).

[Gnoman]

For fantasy, there is a long-running anthology series edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley entitled "Sword and Sorceress", which specializes in typical sword and sorcery plots with female protagonists. I believe there were around twenty volumes.


If it's sci-fi you're interested in, I have one titled "What might have been: Volumes One and Two" which detail various alternate history scenarios. One, for example, involves a time-travelling scientist attempting to prevent the American Civil War, while another has a Persian historian attempting to discover who was king of Athens at the time Greece fell to Xerxes.

[Pink]

Neil Gaiman has published a few collections of his short stories. I fairly enjoyed reading his work, but the exact collection I read escapes me.

[Logic]

I really liked Warriors. It was edited by GRRM, and the only reason I initially picked it up was for the ASOIAF story therein.

Highly recommend it, especially Out of the Dark (don't Google it, you will probably hit the spoilers QUICK.)

[Mr.Bookworm]

In more recent stuff, I've found that most of the anthologies put together by Jon Joseph Adams are pretty good. Federations (Star Trek-ishy sci-fi), the Living Dead (zombies), Wastelands (post-apocalypse), and Brave New World (alt history), off the top of my head.

Gardner Dozois has done a ton of anthologies, most of which are pretty great. "The Year's Best Science Fiction Collection" series is on a 29th volume as of last year and I don't think I've encountered one of them that was bad. All of them also include fairly extensive notes on other short sci-fi that was released that year, for further reading.

If you like George RR Martin, he has two collections of short stories called Dreamsongs (Vol. 1 and 2). They're both doorstoppers and are very cheap. He's also done some stuff with the aforementioned Dozois. Warriors (take a guess), Songs of a Dying Earth (a Jack Vance tribute), and Songs of Love and Death (romance).

Elizabeth Bear recently came out with a short story anthology called Shoggoths In Bloom that's great (as is everything else she's done).

Machine of Death is very good. It's about a device that can predict the exact cause of death for a person with a simple blood test and all of the societal changes that result. It's also free. (http://machineofdeath.net/about/book)

If Neil Gaiman's your thing, he's done three anthologies, which are all good. Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and Stories (coedited with Al Canneverspellhislastname).

That's all I can think of at the moment. Might have more for you when I'm not away from my bookshelf.

[Kitten Champion]

One SF short story collection that I was particularly fond of was Cory Doctorow's Overclocked. His take on I, Robot I enjoyed in particularly.

Philip K. ****'s Minority Report and Collected Short Stories is certainly worth the time to read through, as is any of his compilations you can find really.

Axiomatic by Greg Egan is one of my favourites as well, particularly for his takes on the topic of post-humanism.

There are thousands upon thousands of public domain SF short stories on the internet, you might be surprised to see what's available out there. That is, If you don't mind reading them off a screen or printing them off yourself.

[comicshorse]

I'd second 'Mirrorshades' and 'Dreamsongs' (even though I find the protagonist of the Tuf Voyaging stories one of the most loathsome characters I ever read). I'd also add William Gibson's 'Burning Chrome', a collection including his early Cyberpunk short stories but several other very good stories as well. Also 'Quantum of Solace', the collection of the James Bond short stories.
Also if you are at all interested in Warhammer or WH40K Gams Workshop have produced some good books of short stories set in both settings

[Dr.Epic]

Do anthology TV series count?

[McStabbington]

I Robot by Isaac Asimov. It's a bit dated, and some of the mysteries work primarily by not giving you all the clues and/or are reliant on now common genre conventions, but it's an absolutely genius execution of a very simple concept: posit three basic rules upon which an artificial intelligence might work, and then riff on the various ways in which new situations might cause those rules to go haywire.

[Eldan]

If Neil Gaiman's your thing, he's done three anthologies, which are all good. Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and Stories (coedited with Al Canneverspellhislastname).


He has only one real SciFi story though, that I can remember. His first draft of The Matrix.

[Feytalist]

He has only one real SciFi story though, that I can remember. His first draft of The Matrix.

It's more a story set in the Matrix universe. Called Goliath, from Fragile Things.


Asimov has a couple of great short story collections. And many SF-flavoured essays as well. There's one collection called The Best of Asimov that I enjoyed a lot. I, Robot is good, too.

[Eldan]

I only vaguely remember Gaiman's comments on it, but I think he was asked to write it when the script for Matrix was still in the early drafts. Which is why he's working with the "human brains are processors" idea, instead of the "human body heat batteries".

[Feytalist]

Huh, I didn't know that. That's pretty cool, and also accounts for the slight weirdness.

Although with Gaiman one should be used to slight weirdness.

[Eldan]

It felt very Philip K. [Censored Word] to me, from how I remember it.

[Weezer]

One I've been reading lately is Things That Never Happen by M John Harrison. Only a couple are straight out SF, but all have some element of the fantastic or strange in them, and they're bloody amazing. Stories like "The Egnaro", "The Great God Pan", "Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring", "The Horse of Iron and How We Can Know It", "Gifco" and especially "A Young Man's Journey to London" are amazing and overwhelming. Harrison is one of the best writers of prose I've come across in the SF/Fantasy genre, only matched by the likes of Gene Wolfe and LeGuin. They aren't comfortable stories, they cut into you, and reveal the effects the hint of the fantastic can have on someone's life.

[JoshL]

Seconding the PKD and Gaiman suggestions. There are some great collections of PKD's short fiction. If you're up for horror, Clive Barker's "Books of Blood" is a must-read. If you're up for fantasy/fairy tale stuff, I just read A.S. Byatt's "The Djinn In The Nightingale's Eye" and Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" which were both astounding. If your sci-fi runs towards the post-apocalyptic, I recently read a collection called "Wastelands" that was really great.

Oh, and I wouldn't be me if I didn't recommend Charles de Lint. "Dreams Underfoot" is both a great intro to his world of Newford, but really blurs the line between short collection and novel. Urban Fantasy based heavily in European and Native American folklore.

[Tavar]

ReVisions is a pretty good anthology, based on the idea of a change at one point or another, and the results. I enjoyed it, at least.

[Kindablue]

I got into PKD (someone suggested calling him Horselover Fat to get around the censor) after finding a set of his Complete Novels at a library and being surprised at how short most of them were. They're not short stories, but most of them are only about 200 pages, so if your just looking for shorter, those might works.