Best science fiction short stories according to redditors
We found 47 Reddit comments discussing the best science fiction short stories. We ranked the 33 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 47 Reddit comments discussing the best science fiction short stories. We ranked the 33 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Doesn't even have to be the Internet. Harlan Ellison published a picture of a topless woman in a major anthology with an accompanying story of how she was a bitch who ruined people's lives and oh here's her picture just so you know how to recognize a bitch hur hur.
Based on the timeline we're talking about a young woman letting a guy get a (rather tasteful) topless picture, and then his friend who was a no-name wannabe author at the time publishes it 10-15 later after he has made a name for himself.
It was brutal. I wasn't that good. But there were many people who were superb. It was such a pleasure watching them perform.
Here are some sci-fi recommendations (you may have read them already, but I thought I'd offer anyway):
Serious Scifi:
Anathem the "multiverse" (multiple realities) and how all that works
Seveneves feminism meets eugenics—watch out!
The Culture series by Iain Banks, esp Book 2, the Player of Games Banks is dead, but wrote some of the best intellectual scifi ever
Brilliant, Visionary:
Accelerando brilliant and hilarious; and it's not a long book
Snowcrash classic
Neuromancer another classic
Tawdry yet Lyrical (in a good way):
Dhalgren beautiful, poetic, urban, stream of consciousness, and more sex than you can believe
Underrated Classics:
Voyage to Arcturus ignore the reviews and the bad cover of this edition (or buy a diff edition); this is the ONE book that every true scifi and fantasy fan should read before they die
Stress Pattern, by Neal Barrett, Jr. I can't find this on Amazon, but it is a book you should track down. It is possibly the WORST science fiction book ever written, and that is why you must read it. It's a half-assed attempt at a ripoff of Dune without any of the elegance or vision that Herbert had, about a giant worm that eats people on some distant planet. A random sample: "A few days later when I went to the edge of the grove to ride the Bhano I found him dead. I asked Rhamik what could have happened and he told me that life begins, Andrew, and life ends. Well, so it does."
Sci-fi:
Axiomatic by Greg Egan
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061052655?ie=UTF8&tag=myblog0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0061052655
Selected Stories by PK Dick
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375421513?ie=UTF8&tag=myblog0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0375421513
It might be helpful if you give us a list of any books you've read that you did enjoy or genres you think you might like.
I have never met a person who didn't love Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but it may not be your thing if you don't like wacked-out sci-fi so some general idea of your interests could help a ton with suggestions.
A Short History of Nearly Everything is a solid non-fiction
Robot Dreams is a great set of sci-fi short stories
Ender's Game gets a ton of hate but is a pretty great sci-fi
On A Pale Horse is an older series that I'd consider fantasy but with sci-fi elements
Where the Red Fern Grows is well loved fiction
A Zoo in My Luggage is non-fic but about animal collecting trips for a zoo and is hilarious.
Tales of Pirx the Pilot, Stanislaw Lem.
I think it'd be hard to find a better fit than this! Also, More Tales of Pirx the Pilot. Lem is one of the most thoughtful and intellectual authors out there. The Pirx stuff is kind of 'Lem-Lite', more focusing on space flight and its issues and less on the philosophical stuff Lem was known for. Which is to say its fun and very well thought out.
http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Pirx-Pilot-Stanislaw-Lem/dp/0156881500
John Varley is one my favorite authors I keep coming back to him time and again.
The following are my favorites. He also has a nice website [Varley.net](http://Varley.net "Varley.net") . You can actually get a decent feel for who he is on the site. He puts up what he wants and the hell with what anyone thinks. I think thats why I like him. lol
Mammoth is on my too be read list. I have it just not gotten to it.
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Frank Herbert (Dune) had a series of short stories in the book Eye, one of which was very similar to this. I believe the story was called "The Coming of the Sword". Basically, mankind has been involved in a war for a long time when some guy on the front lines thinks of a way to make an energy field that detonates all explosives at range. His commanding officer pins him to a wall by his throat and snarls, "You stupid asshole. You haven't ended war! You've just made it personal!" Turns out that the entire scene is from a history book called The Coming of the Sword and it took place about five centuries earlier-- mankind has been fighting with hand weapons ever since.
This probably isn't the story you were looking for, but it might be in similar a genre.
Edited to provide link to book. (Sorry, no Kindle version, apparently.)
Amazon has got your back - Nine Tomorrows https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0014CAFB2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_tPF.AbQ3K51GB
If you can support your local book shops!
Some 80's cyberpunk-ish stuff. This is far from the best SF I've read, but it's obscure. Stuff I liked when I was a teenager-twentyager.
The Glass Hammer by K.W. Jeter. An odd, cyberpunk thing that I liked when I came out in 1985. Now out of print. I'm having it scanned and will post when it's ready.
When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger. (and sequels) Great adventure in an Islamic environment.
The Man Who Never Missed (and sequels) by Steve Perry.
The Skyway Series by John DeChancie. (Starrigger, Red Limit Freeway, Paradox Alley) Silly, adolescent adventure, driving across space and time.
Kindred by Octavia Butler. Actually, EVERYTHING by Octavia Butler is great.
Artificial Things, by Karen Joy Fowler. Short stories.
Blue Champagne by John Valey. Short stories.
[Global Head] (https://www.amazon.com/Globalhead-Bruce-Sterling/dp/0553562819)
It's Sterling's Burning Chrome. He's a lot more ... funky? More into global culture, more thinking about post-humanity when we all become immortal, more biology, less AI.
It's good stuff, though. Sterling has big ideas.
Keith Laumer's Jaime Retief series. Funny, inventive, and great reads. Satire and sci-fi rolled up into one.
It's almost 2011 and you've never read Dune? What are you waiting for. Jump in. Might as well lay on some John Brunner and Harlan Ellison while you're at it.
For Trans liberation I would read Leslie Feinberg's Beyond Pink and Blue.
For Gay and Lesbian liberation I'd read Harry Hay's Radically Gay
On Feminism there's a lot. So you may want to grab Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex and Silvia Federici's Revolution at Point Zero. Both will give you a historical and economic understanding of women's struggle.
On the African struggle I would read Thomas Sankara's The Burkina Faso Revolution.
For the Indian struggle, I suggest Anuradha Ghandy's Scripting for Change if you can find a copy somewhere.
That's it for stuff outside of the purely economic sphere.
As for fiction that intersects with communism, I suggest Iain M. Banks's Culture Series. Considering Phlebas, The Player of Games and Use of Weapons. The late Banks did a tremendous job at portraying a classless, stateless, moneyless, post-scarcity society with access to cornucopia technology.
For generally entertaining Sci-Fi that'll keep you turning pages, and is also written in a non-traditional way, you have to read the Warhammer 40,000 Ciaphas Cain series. Get yourself the two omnibi Hero of the Imperium and Defender of the Imperium you'll enjoy yourself to no end. Commissar Ciaphas Cain just kicks all kinds of arse.
If you enjoy Fantasy, and want a bit with a Marxist Dragon, then I recommend Alan Dean Foster's The Spell Singer Adventures series. Specifically books 1 and 2, Spellsinger and The Hour of the Gate. It's also laugh out loud funny.
If you're more into old fashioned adventures, like Conan the Barbarian kind, then you need to read Michael Moorcocks's Elric series. You can get your toes wet with Elric: The Stealer of Souls. The stories are great fun, Elric is an absolute Byronic anti-hero, he's physically weak, he has to dope himself up, he causes the downfall of his own civilisation, and yet he's a great swordsman, poet, philosopher, and so on. Very much a nihilist, very much a tragic hero.
Finally if you want to delve into the Paranormal, and specifically into the romance category (and why not, I say?). I think you should absolutely read Jeaniene Frost's Night Huntress series. Starting with Halfway to the Grave. Written by a woman, with a female protagonist, all from her first person perspective. It's a vampire story, and as far as the lore is concerned follows very closely to the White Wolf idea of the Masquerade. It's nothing like Twilight, you'll enjoy it and if you're like me, get hooked on the series.
Stanislaw Lem. Tales of Pirx the Pilot. Amazon
The first story sounds like "The Plastic Horror," found in The Shadow and Other Strange Tales: https://www.amazon.com/shadow-other-strange-tales/dp/B0006YD886
However, I don't think the other stories are in that anthology. Also, I'm pretty sure the kid who gets her face messed up because it's plastic is a girl, but I could be wrong.
I would absolutely recommend this as a primer for the genre.
Although it's only the one author, Clarke was instrumental in codifying science fiction into the viable genre it has become today and in this set of stories we can see the emergence of so many of the themes that later became synonymous with science fiction as a whole. You can also watch the evolution of the ideas that eventually became 2001 A Space Odessey develop, (imo he wrote that story about 50 times in different settings.)
It's definitely one of the books that introduced me to the genre. I'm also a big fan of his Tales from the White Hart collection (although I think these are included in the other book.) They have a more humourous outlook on the subject.
I'd also recommend Aliens For Neighbours by Clifford Simak as well as any Bradbury, Asimov or Dick.
I found it on Amazon fairly easily. I don't know if it's out of print, but Amazon's got "new" options for it, so I dunno.
Not a novel, but a collection of short stories:
Greg Egan, Axiomatic
But it is always difficult what other people would call "obscure".
http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/deathwing-short-story-ebook.html
>THE STORY
Dark Angels Sergeant Ezekiel returns to his home world to recruit new battle-brothers for the Chapter, but finds his people dead and their villages burned. Discovering an insidious alien threat behind the destruction, Ezekiel reclaims his birth-name of Cloud Runner and undergoes the Rite of the Deathwing, beginning a crusade that will leave a mark on the history of the Dark Angels Chapter.
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Deathwing
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Deathwing
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18493044-deathwing
https://www.amazon.com/Warhammer-40-000-Deathwing-40-000/dp/B000R9T04Q/
That was the story back in 1993 that really got me hooked. 20 years later I came back after war and injuries and blood and broken things.
I have a big-ass volume of Harlan Ellison stories.
I love it. I guess it's out of print, maybe that explains the price tag.
Some of his stories have been turned into really great comic books.
This one in particular, Sandkings, is really good. http://www.amazon.com/Sandkings-Science-Fiction-Graphic-Novel/dp/093028920X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314804453&sr=1-1
C. J. Cherryh writes great aliens. The Chanur Sage is an entertaining, classic space opera. While the Faded Sun trilogy is darker and a bit philosophical.
Unicorn Variations, a short story by Roger Zelazny. Fun short story based on a real game.
http://www.amazon.com/Unicorn-Variation-Roger-Zelazny/dp/0886467365
perfect for any INFJ
Tales of the Pilot Pirx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Pirx_the_Pilot
CHECK THAT https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Pirx-Pilot-Stanislaw-Lem/dp/0156881500
Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is what you want.
Two more gems worth keeping in mind: FH's short story (actually a pilgrimage manual, taking place around Children of Dune) "The Road to Dune" in eye and the famous Dune Encyclopedia. While neither is a full substitute for the mastery of the actual books, they both offer complementing (and in the latter's case, exhaustive) insights into the original Duneiverse that feels authentic and in the spirit of the books. Far superior, IMO, to any fanfic that followed...
No, that's not quite the one. Let me see if I can find it... Aha! here is the one I have. It really is a lovely book.
EDIT: Whoops! That's not it! Back to searching :D
EDIT2: Here, this is the exact one I have.
An old-time favorite was Keith Laumer's "Retief" series, about a galactic diplomat cum "James Bond", whose bureaucratic obstacles were bigger than the menaces he faced. http://www.amazon.com/Envoy-Worlds-Jaime-Retief-Series/dp/067165635X/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1394562276&sr=8-16&keywords=Keith+Laumer
Bruce Sterling had a similar Lovecraftian cold-war short story called "The Unthinkable" in his collection Global Head
Reminds me of Larry Niven's The Integral Trees..
I mean there are no boats or rock fortresses in the novel, but the environment is similar.
Let me plug those books (Larry Niven's The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring) as excellent reading for anyone interested in "hard" (or, more realistic) science fiction. Be sure to read The Integral Trees first, as The Smoke Ring is a sequel.
Already having a rudimentary understanding of orbital mechanics from KSP will make them a lot easier to follow. :)