Short Speculative Fiction Worth Reading
Discover the best short speculative fiction books worth reading. Explore captivating tales of sci-fi, fantasy, and the uncanny in this curated list of must-read stories.
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Is It Now Yet?
by William Sanders
Here is a new collection from a veteran SF storyteller. In thirteen deceptively simple-seeming tales William Sanders examines such matters as time, mortality, military folly, and the ethnic minority situation in Alaska as considered by a Bigfoot bush pilot. From the outrageous Looking For Rhonda Honda to the heartbreaking Jennifer, Just Before Midnight, from the farcical Acts to the almost unbearably bleak He Did The Flatline Boogie And He Boogied On Down The Line, there is something here for every taste and every mood. One of the stories in this collection, Empire, won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History; another, Dry Bones, was a finalist for the Nebula Award.
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The Fate of Mice
by Susan Palwick
A collection spanning the past twenty years of the author's career offers eight previously published and three new stories.
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Nations of the Living, Nations of the Dead
by Mort Castle
The Gypsy fables called Darane swature seek to explain the everyday mysteries of the world. In Mort Castle's Nations of the Living, Nations of the Dead, Romany stories guide us along the dark misty trails of the realms of history and fantasy, of ancient magic and contemporary culture, as we meet: Wyatt Earp, who has a distressing personal hygiene problem. Dr. Valentine of Paris, Keeper of the Secret of Immortality. Nordo, Monstrous Night Creature of the Philco Radio. And Cowboy Bob Steele, Sir Richard Burton, Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin, Steve McQueen and Heather Locklear, Alley Oop, H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Bloch, --and "the saddest woman in the world, Marilyn Monroe."in the Bram Stoker nominated short story, "I Am Your Need." Nations of the Living, Nations of the Dead is "Mort Mythology" by the writer who's been called "a master of the short story," "a writer with a remarkable gift for storytelling and a profound sense of what makes humans tick" and "El Maestro del Terror."
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Things Will Never be the Same
by Howard Waldrop
The only problem with THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME is that it's not nearly long enough. Sure, sure, it's chock full of great stories by the best short fiction writer of his generation, modern classics like "The Ugly Chickens" and "Flying Saucer Rock n Roll" and "Heart of Whitenesse" and many more... but there are two or three times as many terrific Waldrop stories, equally good and sometimes even better, that have been left out for want of space. There's only one solution. Read this book... and then go out and track down all of Waldrop's other collections and read them too.
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Prayers to Broken Stones
by Dan Simmons
From a ghostly Civil War battlefield to a combat theme park in Vietnam, from the omnipotent brain of an autistic boy to a shocking story of psychic vampires, journey into a world of fear and mystery, a chilling twilight zone of the mind. A woman returns from the dead with disastrous results for the family who loves her. . . . An old-fashioned barbershop is the site of a medieval ritual of bloody terror. . . . During a post-apocalyptic Christmas celebration, a messenger from the South brings tidings of great horror. . . . Includes the following stories: “The River Styx Runs Upstream” “Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams” “Vanni Fucci Is Alive and Well and Living in Hell” “Vexed to Nightmare by a Rocking Cradle” “Remembering Siri” “Metastasis” “The Offering” “E-Ticket to 'Namland” “Iverson's Pits” “Shave and a Haircut, Two Bites” “The Death of the Centaur” “Two Minutes and Forty-Five Seconds” “Carrion Comfort”
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Leavings
by P. D. Cacek
From the hilarious post-PMS future in "Even the Queen" to love and quantum physics exposed in "At the Rialto" or the eerie experience of "Death on the Nile", author Connie Willis--winner of a record six Nebula and six Hugo Awards--weaves her magic in five of her best short stories.
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The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
by Thomas Ligotti
A collection of favorite horror works includes the title story, in which the author introduces a small town under the siege of an existential darkness; and a variety of additional short works that follow a theme of confronting nightmares. Original.