Reading List: The Best Sci-Fi Short Stories
reading
This is a list of the ‘best’ short science-fiction stories according to a long thread on Reddit (I may not have captured some if I had already read them or just didn’t fancy them when I read the description). I’m slowly working through the list in no particular order. Presented here as both a record of progress but also in case anyone else is interested in doing a similar exercise. Where possible, I have linked to online versions of the stories.
- The Masters by Ursula K Le Guin
Food For The Gods by Arthur C ClarkeThe Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C Clarke- I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
- The Time Machine by H G Wells
- The Things by Peter Watts
- Divided by Infinity by Robert Charles Wilson
- The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Star by Arthur C. Clarke- I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray BradburyThe Jaunt by Stephen King- Beyond the Aquila Rift by Alastair Reynolds
- The Queen of Air and Darkness by Poul Anderson (have the ebook of this)
- Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang
- The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
- Understand by Ted Chiang
- Nightfall by Isaac Asimov
- Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov
- Reason by Philip K Dick
- The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin
- Burning Chrome by William Gibson:
- Fragments of a Hologram Rose
- Johnny Mnemonic
- New Rose Hotel
- Winter Light
- Burning Chrome
- Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes (short story and a novel)
- Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Road Not Taken by Harry Tutledove
- The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach
- Mimsy Were The Borogoves by Lewis Padgett
- Meddler by Philip K Dick
- The Library of Babel by Jorge Borges
- The Void by Ray Bradbury
- Project: Earth by Phillip K. Dick
Rendevous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke- Theodore Sturgeon’s short stories (apparently there are 13 volumes of them):
- Shottle Bop
- Microcosmic God
- Killdozer!
- Baby Is Three
- A Saucer of Loneliness
- The World Well Lost
- The Man Who Lost the Sea
- Slow Sculpture.
- Light Of Other Days by Bob Shaw
- The Clapping Hands of God by Michael F Flynn
- The Wind From The Sun by Arthur C Clarke (collection)
- The Keys to December by Roger Zelazny
- Cloak of Anarchy by Larry Niven
- Consider Her Ways by John Wyndham
- The Garden of Time by JG Ballard
- The Fermi Paradox is our Business Model by Charlie Jane Anders (have the ebook)
- Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue by Charlie Jane Anders
- Surface Tension by James Blish
- Arena by Fredric Brown
- Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bestor
- The Men Who Murdered Mohammed By Alfred Bestor
- Adam and No Eve by Alfred Bestor (I have the ebook)
- Cordwainer Smith’s work
- The People of Sand & Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi
- All Summer in A Day by Ray Bradbury
- Bloodchild by Octavia Butler
- The Wandering Earth by Cixin Liu (collection)