What's everyone's favourite short stories?

[touchingcloth]

Jack Reach's To Build a Fire is a good read if you like things about absolute berks getting what's coming to them.

[FeederFan500]

The Loneliness of the Long Distance runner.

The title story is the best one, some of the others are ok but I wouldn't recommend them beyond the first one.

[Red82]

Anything by Denis Johnson or Hank Bukowski.

[touchingcloth]

What's the title of that one that's all about some second hand shoes?

[Tarquin]

A Good Man Is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor

The Door in the Wall - H.G. Wells

Started reading The Willows by Algernon Blackwood in the laundrette yesterday and that's weirding me out.

[Jerzy Bondov]

A very enthusiastic +1 for Lydia Davis. Amazing stuff.

Right now I'm caning Books of Blood by Clive Barker, it's just the best.

[AliasTheCat]

yes, seconds for John Cheever and Jorge Luis Borges, you can't go wrong with basically any of their work.
I would also add that pretty much anything by Nikolai Gogol, Raymond Carver, Franz Kafka or Anton Chekov would be well worth your time - it's hard to pick one and harder to think of any duds.

I read Cortazar after a recommendation on here from @Wet Blanket and particularly liked his short stories- I guess House Taken Over would be a good shout.

Also, Lovecraft tends to get a lot of attention in these threads, but my go-to would be some of Robert E Howard's blood and guts offerings like The Red Nails and The Worms of the Earth.

 

[Phoenix Lazarus]

About forty years ago, I had a really good anthology of short horror stories.  They included one in which a mild-mannered gentleman murders the family next door who torment him with noise, and another in a man who refuses to take part in a local tradition of a winter folk-dance, finds himself compelled by a magical force to go out and dance in the early hours, while his toes and fingers develop frostbite.  They also include one in which a schoolboy turns into a giant toad.  Do these ring a bell with anybody, as I'd like to track down either the whole book or those individual short stories.   

[Oosp]

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson has to be in with a shout.

[Mr Banlon]

The Signal-Man
The Gambler

[Glebe]

Can't recall any particular story but I do remember enjoying King's Graveyard Shift and I'm pretty sure I read Skeleton Crew too. 'The Mist' is in that which I've definitely read.

[Shaxberd]

Octavia Butler's short story collection Blood Child is excellent, especially the title story and 'The Evening and The Morning and The Night'. Science fiction written in the 80s that still feels original and fresh. Humanity interacting with aliens is a common theme, and I really like her take on it, exploring the challenges of communication with very different beings and uneasy coexistence with something more powerful than us.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

the horla
the dead
a good man is hard to find

or as i prefer to call them: "the best of the beatles"

[gilbertharding]

No-one mentioned Saki yet?

I'd find it very difficult to narrow down my favourite, but the one about the talking cat would have to be right up there.

[Vodkafone]

A Good Man Is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor

The Door in the Wall - H.G. Wells

Started reading The Willows by Algernon Blackwood in the laundrette yesterday and that's weirding me out.

I fucking love Algernon Blackwood. The Man Whom The Trees Loved is my favourite. So everyone should read that one, basically.

[Waking Life]

Robert Aickman.

All of them.

[Toki]

Oh yeah, Robert Aickman is great. Ringing the Changes is horrible, though.

[DrumsAndWires]

The Loneliness of the Long Distance runner.

Absolutely solid pick. Gritty and edgy.

Something about this gives me 'young John Lydon energy'.

Is the film worth a watch?

[dontpaintyourteeth]

yes.

[13 schoolyards]

Slightly surprised nobody got in before me to recommend Ramsey Campbell, but I guess his star has waned a little since the 70s and 80s - plus there's an absolute shedload of his short stories out there now, the man's a machine.

You should be able to find his earlier collections - Demons by Daylight and The Height of the Scream - pretty much anywhere that sells old horror, and Alone With the Horrors is a pretty good best of collection. He can bit a little hit and miss (as you'd expect from someone who must have written hundreds of short stories by now), but his best work is brilliant.

There's one story he wrote about an amusement park obsessive who stumbles into the wrong park that terrified me in a way I don't think anything else ever has (except maybe one or two of Ligotti's stories). It'd probably help if I could remember the title though.

*edit* It's called 'The Companion', and helpfully it's available online: https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-companion/

[Senior Baiano]

This was the first thing that jumped to mind. Of the books I studied at school, it stuck with me more than 1984 or Brave New World. It painted a far more vivid and realistic future. Admittedly, it's entirely possible that I just preferred it because of the brevity.

I'm surprised that there doesn't appear to be any recent adaptions, as I assume it's public domain.

Forster didn't die till 1970, the cunt, so nah

[Catalogue Trousers]

Shadow, Shadow On The Wall by Theodore Sturgeon
Obstinate Uncle Otis by Robert Arthur

[Gladys]

Robert Aickman.

All of them.

Yes. I'd agree with that. Probably my all time favourite writer. Favourites off the top of my head are 'The Trains', 'The Hospice' and 'Wood'.

I'd also add...

'Gifco' and 'Egnaro' by M John Harrison (and all his other stories)

'Under The Garden' by Graham Greene

'Crewe' by Walter de la Mare

[Sebastian Cobb]

Robert Aickman.

All of them.

Heh I was going to go for Aickman-adjacent Perfect Love by Elizabeth Jane Howard on their We are for the Dark collection.

I love The Insufficient Answer, from Aickman too.

[touchingcloth]

Just read Ted Chiang's Tower of Babylon in the bath, which reminded me I really ought to get started up on Exhalation again.

[PlanktonSideburns]

You've just been breathing in? How long has this been going on

[wrec]

Just read Ted Chiang's Tower of Babylon in the bath, which reminded me I really ought to get started up on Exhalation again.

It feels like Chiang does a post-grad in every area of science or mythology he bases a story around.

[DrumsAndWires]

Jack Reach's To Build a Fire is a good read if you like things about absolute berks getting what's coming to them.

Checked this out a couple days ago and really liked it. Perfect weather to read it in as well.

As much of a Berk that he was, I do slightly sympathise/empathise with his sheer arrogance and refusal to listen to the Elders.

[Noodle Lizard]

For horror, more or less anything by M.R. James or E.F. Benson. You can find good compilations of both. Shirley Jackson's The Lottery has been mentioned already, but she wrote plenty of other spookier ones. Arthur Machen too; The Great God Pan is more a novella than a short story, but well worth the hour or two it'd take to read. And the obvious Poes and Lovecrafts too.

[touchingcloth]

Checked this out a couple days ago and really liked it. Perfect weather to read it in as well.

As much of a Berk that he was, I do slightly sympathise/empathise with his sheer arrogance and refusal to listen to the Elders.

I like that it's a happy ending for the dog.