Short Stories, Apocalypse Version

Because I promised another apocalypse post, right? So I gathered up some apocalyptic short stories for you. All written by dudes, I’m noticing. We need more women writing apocalyptic short stories (luckily we have Margaret Atwood and Susan Beth Pfeffer to deal with long form).

Year of the Jackpot by Robert A. Heinlein. Really more of a long story at ninety five pages. You can buy it for two dollars, kind of a lot really, but I remember it being a good story about the world seeming to reach a peak of insanity. The ending is probably one of my favorites.

Last Contact by Stephen Baxter. It’s a story about dark energy, cool enough, and a sudden “big rip” as the universe is suddenly pulled apart, vanishing before our eyes. Unfortunately, it’s not online anymore, a real shame. I wish I mentioned it when I first read it (of course, I didn’t have a blog then, so it may have been difficult). If you can find it somewhere, I highly recommend it.

The Scarlet Plague by Jack London. I love Jack London, so I just had to include his story of life after a plague wipes out most of the planet and returns the few survivors to a pre-industrial level. It’s a pandemic story from ninety nine years ago. It’s worth reading for that alone.

The Spider by Hans Heinz. Okay, confession, this isn’t an apocalypse story. But it is about impending doom, so I think I can kind of make it work? Well, whatever, it’s my blog. I make the rules. Anyway! It’s about a med student investigating a hotel room where everyone ends up hanging themselves. Not all that different from 1408 by Stephen King, but I liked this one better.

What apocalypse related stories do you like? Or short fiction in general?

Story Time

I always like to do something fun in my Saturday posts. Sometimes it’s just fun for me, like in one of my rants, but you guys have put up with that enough lately, so I decided on something that’s actually fun for everyone: short stories.

I love short stories. I love long stories, too, but this week’s about the short ones, namely those of the sci-fi genre. We’re lucky to live in a time after the explosion of sci-fi shorts left us with thousands of varying quality to choose from.

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

I actually mentioned this one before, but at the time was unable to find a copy of it online. The prolific Asimov calls it his best work. It’s certainly one of the smartest, most amusing ones.

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

If you prefer to be depressed by your sci-fi, look no further. It’s one of the most heart-wrenching, emotionally driven stories I’ve read period.

And He Built a Crooked House by Robert A. Heinlein

And He Built a Crooked House is par for the course time travel-y confusion. Seriously, you might need to write down detailed notes about what’s going on. Still fun though.

The Unreconstructed M by Philip K. Dick

It’s Philip K. Dick, so that right there should tell you it’s going to be cynical.

Ugh, I just realize there are all guys here. Lame. However, I’ve also been reading through MACHINE OF DEATH, a collection of short stories by various authors based on the premise set forth in one of Ryan North’s Dinosaur Comics. And lucky for us there are plenty of females in there as well as males. So it’s proof that women can A), write science fiction, and B) be funny. Suck on that, SFWA.

Short Story Appreciation

Even though I can’t write them (every idea I think up is just too “long”), I love short stories. I think it may take more skill to write a coherent short story than it does a long one, where you have time to get to know characters and reveal their personality. And to craft a story with beginning, middle and end in so few words! Talent, that’s what it is.

Well, here are some of the best ones I’ve found. Fair warning: here there be spoilers.

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

I’m sorry that I only just read this recently. Asimov thinks of it as his best story and considering how prolific he was, that’s saying something. It really is worthy of praise as intriguing, philosophical, and as per usual with him, with a believable glimpse at the distant future. There was once a website that had this story on it for free but it’s shut down now, possibly for legal reasons. I’m afraid your best bet for finding this is in a collection.

The Picture in the House by H.P. Lovecraft

I don’t think I could mention short stories without bringing up Lovecraft. Most of his works are wordy for supposed shorts, with meandering yet vivid sentences that tend to bog down the reader. But if you want one that’s interesting and fairly concise, you could do worse than “The Picture in the House”. It starts out as eerie, builds to unsettling and stays there until the end where it spikes into OMFG!!! If you want a collection, there are several out there and they tend to flush out the weaker ones as well. Since he’s been dead for over seventy years, his work is in the public domain. There are several sites filled with his short stories.

The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe

Hey, Halloween is in just over a month. It’s time to get in the mood, and you probably can’t do better than Poe. Unlike most nineteenth century writers, I find his work engaging, even when the main character isn’t named and his circumstances mostly unknown, as in this story. We learn a man has been imprisoned during the Inquisition (and even that isn’t described accurately)—that’s all, and yet that’s all we need to know. None are better than at putting the reader into the body of the main character, making his stories intense and powerful. As he’s also been dead long enough for copyright to expire, many of his works are available.

Where Are You Going, Where Have YouBeen? by Joyce Carol Oates

See? It’s not all horror and sci-fi. I read it in college and it made a strong impression on me. Oates is absolutely eloquent with her words here. In a few sentences, the reader has a sense of the main character, Connie, her family, and how Connie views her family, something that becomes absolutely painful when you get to the end. In a word: haunting. It’s available for free on Joyce Carol Oates’s webpage at the University of San Francisco.

To Build a Fire by Jack London

And if that last story didn’t depress you, how about one about dying of exposure? You might think that spoils something, but I don’t. It doesn’t convey the desperation, the fear that the short story does. It’s available for free at several sources since, again, copyright has expired. Definitely worth a read.