Reading List: The Best Sci-Fi Short Stories

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 Clarke
• The 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 Bradbury
• The 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)