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Let's talk about science fiction short stories

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Orbert:
The great thing about science fiction short stories is that most science fiction starts with a great "What if...?" idea, and a lot of the time there just isn't enough to flesh out an entire novel.  But a short story can explore the idea properly without getting too deep into the characters and all that.  It's not about the characters, although it does help to have good ones; it's just about that one idea.

Anyway, all of my favorites have already been mentioned (Asimov, Ellison, Bradbury) but you used to be able to pick up some really good anthologies all the time.  Every year, Omni would publish the "best of the year", and you can always find collections of past Hugo and Nebula winners in paperback.  You get a whole lot of variety and also get exposed to a lot of different writers, then you can check out more from the writers who really grabbed you.

Scandanavian War Machine:
ooh there was this really fun little book I read in highschool called Einstein's Dreams and it was a bunch of short stories basically just describing worlds where time wasn't constant. Where it was affected by other, more earthly things.

for example: in one world, time moved slower the further from the center of the earth you were, so everyone lived on mountain tops to live longer and nobody ventured down into the areas with faster time unless they were reckless or trading from town to town.
In another world, the faster you went, the slower time went, so everyone lived in mobile home-type vehicles speeding around never-ending super highways.


I wanna look that book up again, I don't remember much about it besides those two stories.

HiFranc:
When I was younger, I borrowed Arthur C Clark's "The Wind From the Sun"[1] from the Library.  It's definitely worth a read.  Most of the stories have stings in the tale.

[1] The book I read was "The Wind From the Sun and other stories" but, a quick search on Amazon, shows the title changes but always has "The Wind From the Sun" in it.

scarred:
Bradbury's easily my favorite, but Ellison is pretty good and if you're more into magical realism, Neil Gaiman's short story collections are good too.

China Miéville has a book of stories out called Looking For Jake that's pretty much my favorite collection besides R is for Rocket or The Martian Chronicles. It tends to be pretty dark and creepy contemporary/speculative fiction/urban fantasy, and it cemented my belief that he's one of the best writers actively working. Can't recommend it highly enough.

De_El:
Ahh, yeah, Miéville's a great novelist, but I haven't had a chance to check out his short fiction. I should do that.  A friend of mine just finished reading Perdido Street Station after I gave it to him like 4 months ago.

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