OT: Best Ever Sci-Fi short stories

Screw electronics for a minute. What is the best ever sci-fi short story you have ever ever ever read? I'll kick off by nominating 'Time's Arrow' by AC Clarke.

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Cursitor Doom
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"Need" by T. Sturgeon or "A Saucer of Loneliness" by same. (I got several volumes of "the complete works of T. S." for xmas.)

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

'The Primary Education of the Camiroi' by R. A. Lafferty sticks in my mind.

John

Reply to
John Robertson

I don't think I've read Time's Arrow. My fav time travel story is "All you Zombies" by R. Heinlein.

Reply to
George Herold

The Weapon Shops short story, the precursor to The Weapon Shops of Isher book, was pretty good. Well, when I was a teenager.

At some point, I mostly outgrew SF.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

Best ever sci-fi story... sci.electronics.design is about circuit design >:-} ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

Maybe not the best, but I like "A Colder War"

Trying to harness the powers of the Outer Gods to fight the cold war doesn't work out too good for the Americans and Soviets.

Reply to
bitrex

Nightfall, or maybe Flowers for Algernon.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Phil Hobbs

That was good, I remember reading it ~35 years ago.

I don't know about the best, but there are some that left a lasting impression, decades after having read them. Usually caused by what I have seen described as an "epiphany" at the end.

From the same author there was "The Nine Billion Names of God" and "The Forgotten Enemy".

"Childhoods End" started my conversion from religion. Not a short story of course.

Heinleins 50's short story "All You Zombies" literally left me with my jaw dropped. (30 years later I still recognized the plot in the recent film "Predestination").

Greg Egans "Dust" is the only more recent example I can think of that had that effect. I first read it as incorporated into the start of his novel "Permutation City".

Over the years one gets a bit jaded but at the time they were all great.

Vernor Vinge's "True Names" is good and still bears reading despite it being about computers from the perspective of 1980.

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John Devereux
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John Devereux

"The Lady Who Sailed The Soul" by Cordwainer Smith. Everything by him is just /strange/ and wonderful.

"Profession" by Asimov. Still valid, and many people still don't understand it until after the plot point has been noted.

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"The Cold Equations" by Goodwin. Made my daughter speed read it before she disappeared to Aus for

6 months, between school and uni. ("Dad. I've just bought a plane ticket to Australia..." :) )

"Against the Fall of Night", by Clarke. The early variant of "The City and the Stars". I like both, for different reasons.

"Slow Tuesday Night" by RA Lafferty, because it is so engagingly silly. Ditto "900 Grandmothers" and

Reply to
Tom Gardner

I was never much of a fan for Sci-Fi books; rather, I loved the old Ellery Queen murder mysteries. I mowed lawns and otherwise earned or begged enough money to buy the paper backs at our local 5&10 store. They were all of 25 cents, a precious fortune for a youngster in the old days.

The big difference between the Ellery Queen mysteries and other mysteries was that somewhere around the end of the book, the author challenged the reader to solve the mystery. Up to that point, all of the clues had been presented, and with a lot of deduction and reasoning, the reader could solve it. A unique bit of writing, for sure, and those books kept me intrigued for many years.I still have some of them stuffed into an old box somewhere in the garage.

Dave M

Reply to
Dave M

I used to read a mass of sci-fi when I was about 8 or 9, by all the usual's like, J. Blish, T. Sturgeon, R. Heinlein, I. Asimov, A. Clarke, R. Bradbury, A. Norton, F. Herbert, P. Anderson...

However, as I am now 58, I am unable to answer your question.

-- Kevin Aylward

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Reply to
Kevin Aylward

Yeah, SF is seldom great literature. Or never.

What's your favorite book ever? Mine is "A Damsel in Distress" by P G Wodehouse.

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John Larkin

"1984" is actually one of the worst books ever written, but people seem to have just not noticed yet.

Both bad as a SF novel, and bad as a social commentary. It covers all the bases.

Reply to
bitrex

I'm of two minds on SF.

On the one hand I like big concepts that make me put the book down for a minute while I stretch my mind to wrap it around something like the "meteor defense" bit in Niven's _Ringworld_. Best short story for that was Heinlei n's _All You Zombies_.

On the other, being a techy geeky guy I occasionally explore outside my c omfort zone into authors like Bradbury whose prose manages to tickle my gee k side as well as my atrophied poetic side. His best short for me might be _All Summer In A Day_ because it resonated with the outsider in me.

On the gripping hand for me SF has to talk about "the human condition" en gagingly and about something we'll never outgrow, but in a new way. For me that's our desire to break free of our constraints even though we insist on bringing them with us wherever we go, which I thought was well expressed i n Niven's _Limits_.

Mark L. Fergerson

Reply to
alien8752

As some old guy who stills reads a lot of SF/fantasy, (I'd say it makes up ~50% of my fiction reading... I tend to keep fic./technical at 50%/ ratio.. time-wise.) driving home this thread reminded me of Spider Robinson's anthology "Best of All Possible Worlds."

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(I couldn't find my copy... I've been making room on my shelves.)

He picks favorite stories from Authors, and they pick theirs. Both are published. I wish I could remember the name of the story Heinlein picked... (I'm terrible at names). It was about a monk who was a juggler.

That and William Goldman's "Duel Scene" from the "Princess Bride".

(neither are hardcore SF.) George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Indeed. But who cares?

That isn't the reason for reading it. Personally I like stories (and other things) that give my preconceptions a kick up the arse - i.e. that make me /think/.

A large bookshop in Cambridge had many bookshelves marked "fiction" and one bookshelf marked "literature". That rankled, so I asked the manager how he decided to put a book in one or the other.

He looked confused, hummed and hawed, and then muttered about literature=hardback and/or literature=old.

Very unsatisfying.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

I care. I won't read bad writing (unless it's electronics.)

SF seldom does that.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

Wow, favorite book ever is too much. I just saw "The Good Shepherd" by CS Forester on my shelf, and thought I'll keep that out to read again. (WWII naval fiction) In some ways it reminds me of "A day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (sp)" by Solzhenitsyn.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Most "SF" books these days are really wizards and warriors books. In space.

SPAAAAAAAAAACCEEE

Reply to
bitrex

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