Great Sci-Fi Short Story Collections

Explore the best sci-fi short story collections with our curated list of must-read books. Discover classic and modern tales from top authors in one thrilling compilation.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One 1929-1964 Cover
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The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One 1929-1964

by Robert Silverberg

Twenty-six of the greatest science fiction stories ever written. Robert Heinlein in "The Roads Must Roll" describes an industrial civilization of the future caught up in the deadly flaws of its own complexity. "Country of the Kind," by Damon Knight, is a frightening portrayal of biological mutation. "Nightfall, " by Isaac Asimov, one of the greatest stories in the science fiction field, imagines a planet where the sun sets only once every millennium and is a chilling study in mass psychology.
The Ascent of Wonder Cover
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The Ascent of Wonder

 

No summary available.
The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories Cover
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The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories

by Tom Shippey

A collection of classic science fiction short stories features tales by H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clark, Frederik Pohl, Clifford Simak, Brian Aldiss, Ursala K. LeGuin, and many others. Edited by the author of The Road to Middle-Earth. 20,000 first printing.
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick Cover
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Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick was a master of science fiction, but he was also a writer whose work transcended genre to examine the nature of reality and what it means to be human. A writer of great complexity and subtle humor, his work belongs on the shelf of great twentieth-century literature, next to Kafka and Vonnegut. Collected here are twenty-one of Dick's most dazzling and resonant stories, which span his entire career and show a world-class writer working at the peak of his powers. In "The Days of Perky Pat," people spend their time playing with dolls who manage to live an idyllic life no longer available to the Earth's real inhabitants. "Adjustment Team" looks at the fate of a man who by mistake has stepped out of his own time. In "Autofac," one community must battle benign machines to take back control of their lives. And in "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon," we follow the story of one man whose very reality may be nothing more than a nightmare. The collection also includes such classic stories as "The Minority Report," the basis for the Steven Spielberg movie, and "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," the basis for the film Total Recall. Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick is a magnificent distillation of one of American literature's most searching imaginations.
Axiomatic Cover
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Axiomatic

by Greg Egan

A dazzling collection of short fiction, filled with invention and hard-science speculation, by the popular author of QUARANTINE, PERMUTATION CITY, and DISTRESS. Growing in reputation and sales with every book, Greg Egan, has filled this volume with the best of his short fiction work, that his growing audience is sure to appreciate.
Luminous Cover
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Luminous

 

No summary available.
Selected Stories of Theodore Sturgeon Cover
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Selected Stories of Theodore Sturgeon

by Theodore Sturgeon

Theodore Sturgeon was a genuine American master. Praised, revered, and even envied by the likes of Bradbury, Vonnegut, and King, his short stories contain some of his best work. In "Thunder and Roses," soon after a nuclear Holocaust, a starlet gives one final performance during which she makes an odd request of the few remaining survivors. In perhaps his most praised story, "The Man Who Lost the Sea," a man riffs on memory and experience on the way to the story's powerful conclusion. And in the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning masterpiece, "Slow Sculpture," a young woman with a lump in her breast chances upon a strange healer. With unrivaled emotional impact, Theodore Sturgeon's stories are funny, lyrical, surprising, and provoking.
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Mirrorshades Cover
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Mirrorshades

 

No summary available.
Burning Chrome Cover
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Burning Chrome

by William Gibson

Best-known for his seminal sf novel Neuromancer, William Gibson is actually best when writing short fiction. Tautly-written and suspenseful, Burning Chrome collects 10 of his best short stories with a preface from Bruce Sterling, now available for the first time in trade paperback. These brilliant, high-resolution stories show Gibson's characters and intensely-realized worlds at his absolute best, from the chip-enhanced couriers of "Johnny Mnemonic" to the street-tech melancholy of "Burning Chrome."
Crystal Express Cover
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Crystal Express

 

No summary available.
Gnarl! Cover
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Gnarl!

by Rudy Rucker

Though he is also a mathematician, computer scientist, and essayist, Rudy Rucker is best known for his ground-breaking science fiction. The companion volume to Seek!, Rucker's selected nonfiction, Gnarl! brings together three dozen of the writer's best science fiction short stories. His first major story collection in 17 years, the volume includes a number of previously unanthologized stories, including tales cowritten with Marc Laidlaw, Paul Di Filippo, and Bruce Sterling. Classics such as "The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka," a timely meditation on the paradoxes of cloning, are side by side with works of pseudomemoir like "The Indian Rope Trick Explained." The Rucker formula - cutting-edge physics, a wild but perversely logical imagination, and a decidedly punk attitude - illuminates this new collection.
No Direction Home Cover
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No Direction Home

by Norman Spinrad

No summary available.
The hard SF renaissance Cover
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The hard SF renaissance

 

No summary available.
Accelerando Cover
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Accelerando

by Charles Stross

The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day. Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber’s son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity. For something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form...
Supermen Cover
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Supermen

by Gardner Dozois

A science-fiction anthology highlighting mind-expanding stories of the future of the human form includes more than 20 classic stories from the most imaginative writers in the field.
Beyond Singularity Cover
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Beyond Singularity

 

No summary available.