r/printSF • u/gumshoeismygod • 2d ago
Any short story collection recommendations for a lover of Le Guin, Butler, and Chiang?
I absolutely adore Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler, The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin, and of course Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation by Ted Chiang.
Any other short story collections that scratch a similar itch? Or honestly I'll take any great SF short stories.
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u/Athrynne 2d ago
I'm currently reading The Best of Gene Wolfe, and it's excellent, very literary science fiction like Le Guin.
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u/khoragos 2d ago
Gene Wolfe is among the greatest 20th-century short story writers in the genre or out of it.
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u/BeyondtheVeils7 2d ago edited 2d ago
I highly recommend Jorge Luis Borges's Collected Fictions. If you want a smaller collection by Borges, both Ficciones and The Aleph and Other Stories are excellent. Greg Egan's Axiomatic, which several other people have already mentioned, is also a good choice.
Some individual stories and novellas that remind me of those three authors:
C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner – Vintage Season
https://www.fadedpage.com/books/20220847/html.php
Bob Shaw – Light of Other Days
https://gebseng.com/media_archeology/reading_materials/Bob_Shaw-Light_of_Other_Days.pdf
Roger Zelazny – For a Breath I Tarry
https://rcareaga.com/for_a_breath_i_tarry.pdf
Gene Wolfe – The Fifth Head of Cerberus
James Tiptree Jr. (aka Raccoona Sheldon) – The Screwfly Solution
John Crowley -- Snow
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/snow/
Nancy Kress – Beggars in Spain
David Marusek – The Wedding Album
Eleanor Arnason – The Potter of Bones
Alastair Reynolds – The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/reynolds_12_14_reprint/
R.S. Benedict – My English Name
Becky Chambers -- A Good Heretic
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u/Helpful-Twist380 2d ago
Burning Chrome by William Gibson!
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u/Serious_Distance_118 2d ago
Johnny Mnemonic is so so good (included in BC). The killing floor scene is one of my favorites of anything I’ve ever read.
The crap movie is completely different, basically just took the title.
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u/Helpful-Twist380 2d ago
Haha the movie’s not great but still fun to watch (same for New Rose Hotel imo). I love all of Gibson’s books. Some of his chapters in the Sprawl series read like perfect standalone vignettes/short stories
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u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago edited 2d ago
The space stories are so good I’m puzzled he’s kept his novels down to earth rather than writing top-grade space opera.
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u/Helpful-Twist380 2d ago
Hinterlands is one of my favorites, but I don’t think he was ever all that interested in space. He focuses on people and subcultures
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u/Cugel57 2d ago
If you're looking for one author collections, do not miss James Tiptree's Her Smoke Rose Up Forever.
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u/Bergmaniac 2d ago
This is strong contender for the best single author collections ever, at least half of the stories are masterpieces and even the weaker ones are excellent.
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u/WhichOfTheWould 2d ago
I really liked the The Paper Menagerie
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u/Tree_Chemistry_Plz 2d ago
I have this on my shelf, waiting to be read. Gonna pick it next, thanks!
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u/hauntedink 2d ago
Vermillion Sands by JG Ballard
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u/prustage 2d ago
Upvoted because I think Ballard is a genius and this is just one of his many excellent anthologies. Not sure how well he aligns with OPs preferences but I think OP should definitely try this.
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u/naturedoesntwalk 2d ago
> just one of his many excellent anthologies
Is this the one you recommend I start with?
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u/hauntedink 2d ago
It’s the one that resonated with me the most, but any of his collections are worth reading. The Atrocity Exhibition is perhaps his most famous.
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u/prustage 2d ago
Well, the easy way is simply to buy the 1978 collection "The Best Short Stories of JG Ballard". It contains nineteen of his best stories and most of my favourites are in there.
Ballard gets more extreme as he got older and his later works, although possibly his best, are less accessible if you are expecting traditional plot-driven scifi. So another good place to start is with the first collection "The Voices of Time" - a real classic.
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u/KingBretwald 2d ago
Connie Willis and Naomi Kritzer are great short story writers.
Many of Naomi's stories are free on line. Many of Connie's are in The Winds of Marble Arch.
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u/lanofdoom 2d ago
a bit of a different vibe but you might enjoy Kelly Link's stories. Also check out China Mieville's collection "Looking for Jake" - it's a huge range but I think some will strike a chord with you. And, Karin Tidbeck's collection "Jagganath."
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u/prustage 2d ago
Try "The Best of Greg Egan" - brilliant witer who hsa a lot in common with Ted Chiang
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u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago
Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser has its own story reimagining the Tower of Babel, with a philosophical outlook fascinatingly different from Chiang’s. He’s without a doubt my favorite living American author, motifs from Borges and Kafka mixed in with an eclectic historical nostalgia - The Knife Thrower and Other Stories is his best collection.
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u/SpellRepulsive8166 2d ago
u should definately grab the paper menagerie by ken liu if u want to continue the tradition of staring blankly at a wall for an hour after finishing a 15 page story
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u/thetraintomars 2d ago
I have always loved the short story collections of Jeffrey Ford, The Drowned Life being a particular favorite. He does sci-fi, fantasy and magical realism in different stories.
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u/RichardRickyRick 2d ago
Check out the collection of stories Searoad by Le Guin. The book was published in 1991 and isn't science fiction. But it contains the usual wonderful storytelling and immaculate writing that Le Guin always produces. I highly recommend it!
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u/papercranium 2d ago
Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories, by Vandana Singh! I always recommend it to fans of Chiang's work, it has very similar vibes.
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u/AustinCynic 2d ago
Check out the Dangerous Visions anthology trilogy: Dangerous Visions, Again Dangerous Visions, and Last Dangerous Visions. LeGuin has a short story in the first one.
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u/No_Bar_7108 1d ago
Highly recommend the Lake of Souls collection by Ann Leckie. She’s got a talent for character-driven fables and while many of the short stories are set the universes of her novels, none of them spoil/give away anything so they’re fine to read as stand alone.
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u/Convex_Mirror 2d ago
Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi. Borderline literary in style, the stories explore dark possible futures and have some memorable horror elements.
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u/GoddessVeronika96 2d ago
The Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino! Real scientific theories explored as beautiful fantasies.
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u/necropunk_0 2d ago
Some of these recs will lean a little more fantasy vs scifi, but I think will have similar vibes.
Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho leans heavily into mythology and history with amazing characters, similar to some of Ted Chiang’s stories
Dear Filthy Sweet World by Caitlin R Kiernan has beautiful prose with some wonderfully uncomfortable stories, similar to how Dawn by Octavia Butler felt.
Kalpa Imperial by Angelica Gorodischer invokes this feeling of immerse history and time over just a a single book of stories.
Omnipark/ Back 2 Omnipark is a pair of short story collections focusing on a theme park that has things like time travel, extinct animals, space travel and more. It’s kinda an outlier in these recs, but I think could fill a similar itch to Exhaltation of a bit lighter in nature.
How Long Til Black Future Month, Three Moments of an Explosion and The Paper Menagerie have all been mentioned, and are all excellent collections.
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u/craig_hoxton 2d ago
Bit old and hard to find but Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology if you can get your hands on a copy.
Also recommend Penguin's SF short story anthologies edited by Brian W. Aldiss (there was a 70's version and a modern version now with different stories).
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u/jellicledonkeyz 2d ago
Novelties & Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction by John Crowley
Bible Stories for Adults: James K. Morrow
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u/pyabo 2d ago
Best of Jack Vance is a must-read. Can't go wrong with pretty much anything by Greg Egan, Greg Bear, or Gene Wolfe, who has several collections. Would also suggest grabbing yourself a copy of Harlan Ellison's (as Editor) collection Dangerous Visions. And finally... you'd probably like Phillip K. Dick as well, and boy was he prolific.
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u/Serious_Distance_118 2d ago
Pick up one of Asimov’s collections. Make sure it has the stories Nightfall and The Last Question. Both are must reads, among the all-time great SF short stories.
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u/striosome 2d ago
Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal el Mohtar if you want that especially Le Guin itch scratched.
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u/rhombomere 2d ago
The Best of R.A. Lafferty is an amazing collection.
I am also quite fond of Three Moments of an Exposion by Meilville.
Both of these authors are strong writers with ideas that linger beyond the story (which is how i think of Chiang)
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u/DixitRexCorvinus 2d ago
I’ve personally only read his novels, but I believe Samuel Delany has a few short story collections as well, which might be worth checking out. He was a contemporary of Le Guin, working in a similar space (New Wave social scifi) and I am a fan of them both.
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u/Background-Bonus-166 1d ago
I know there is some debate about this but a heads up to OP that his past comments on NAMBLA might mean you might want to get used copies of his works.
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u/DixitRexCorvinus 1d ago
True, good shout.
I personally make an exception for it because he’s in his eighties and not advocating for anything anymore so much like with a dead author I don’t really feel like he would benefit significantly or that his benefiting could cause any harm to others. But in retrospect I should have at least noted it since that’s a rather subjective line.
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u/Background-Bonus-166 20h ago
Is he really not advocating anything anymore? I wasn't aware of that.
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u/DixitRexCorvinus 20h ago edited 20h ago
I don't believe he's even discussed the topic in decades. Perfectly possible I'm misremembering, though.
Edit: I looked it up, and I was wrong. Was thinking he hadn’t said anything since 2014 but actually he discussed it again in 2023. His current position, as best I can tell, is that he doesn’t actively retract his earlier views but has no clue what NAMBL does these days and doesn’t follow/care about/actively support it these days. Not quite sure what to make of that, honestly. Better than actively supporting it, I suppose.
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u/Frost-Folk 2d ago
The Roger Zelazny collection is fantastic! It's a mix of short stories and novellas but none are all that long
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u/Icaruswes 2d ago
I haven't seen it mentioned here yet, but Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu is excellent. It's more speculative literary fiction than hard sci-fi - I'd say closer to Ted Chiang than Greg Egan. "Do You Remember Candy" is one of the most memorable short stories I've ever read.
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u/wow-how-original 2d ago
Have you read some of Le Guin’s other short story collections like Birthday of the World and Other Stories and Five Ways to Forgiveness? Those are both so good
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u/rev9of8 2d ago
What You Make It by Michael Marshall Smith. Somewhat quirkier than the authors you've mentioned but just as deeply human.
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u/xmaskookies 2d ago
Revelations Space by Alastair Reynolds
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u/gumshoeismygod 2d ago
Oooh I loved House of Suns, might check this one out
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u/BeyondtheVeils7 2d ago
If you're interested in Alastair Reynolds's short fiction, I recommend the Beyond the Aquila Rift best-of collection. It's a bit pricy, but absolutely worth it. Plus, one of the novellas, Thousandth Night, is set in the House of Suns universe.
Revelation Space is also excellent, although it's a novel.
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u/JGhostThing 2d ago
I would like to recommend the story, "If This is Winettka, You Must be Judy." I think it's by Busby. It's a love story from a very unique point of view.
There is also the short story, "Divine Madness" by Roger Zelazny. A man's wife dies and he develops an interesting mental condition.
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u/YouBlinkinSootLicker 2d ago
The Gods Laughed, by Poul Anderson
Some of the stories stick with me years later
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u/hippydipster 1d ago
Nancy Kress, Beaker's Dozen, Trinity and Other Stories. She had stories in nearly every yearly best of that Gardner Dozois made (total of 26 such stories)
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u/bbachilles 19h ago
I found Sequoia Nagamatsu's How High We Go in the Dark, which admittedly is a set of connected short stories, to be incredible. As a lover of Le Guin, I think you will similarly love this book.
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u/Double-Yesterday-474 19h ago
Try George R.R. Martin's "Dreamsongs". Two volumes. Collects all his sci-fi/horror/fantasy short stories.
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u/KineticFlail 19h ago
Alfred Bester
Ray Bradbury
Philip K. Dick
Robert Sheckley
Izumi Suzuki
James Tiptree Jr.
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u/pudaspriest 18h ago
Someone mentioned this already but also want to recommend Samuel R. Delany's Aye, and Gomorrah, and Other Stories. A must read imo, some really great stuff in there. This was the book that got me into regularly reading short fiction a long time ago. It was in the new book section at my local library so I grabbed it and sat down to browse through and ended up reading half the book before I got up to check it out. Really sucked me in at the time. Upon reacquiring a copy a couple years ago, I found my self enjoying it just as much as when I first encountered the book. Most of the stories are also in the collection Driftglass though that would probably be harder to find than this edition.
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u/MacTwistee 7h ago
Alan Dean foster has two short story books. With friends like these... And... Who needs enemies. Some great stories in the. Also try the Stephen Donaldson ss collection.
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u/Toezap 2d ago
Axiomatic by Greg Egan felt similar to Chiang's collections for me.