all summer in a day (Photo credit: Mathieu Struck)
In my most recent posts I published here I presented three of my favorite short stories. All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, and A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner are three very good, well written examples of classic short stories. In earlier centuries the short story was a more popular medium than the novel and in fact many of the more classic novels by authors such as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austin, and Alexander Dumas were originally released a chapter at a time and were not put together in novel form for sometime after their publication.
In modern times collections of short stories have been released but unless they are by famous authors such as Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, or Danielle Steele they fail to get much notice. Each year collections by upcoming authors are released, The Years best Science fiction or the years best Horror and these books often have an introduction or a guest editor who is an established and famous author so the book will sell better.
Several years ago Stephen King wrote an article for Entertainment Weekly in which he talked in great length about the oft ignored and maligned art of the short story. About how the writer is contained to only a few pages to get the reader to care enough about the characters to read all the way through. About how hard it is to write a complete story in such a short amount of space. He mentioned several collections worth investigating and giving some time to and because I have a profound respect for Mr. King and feel his suggestions may be worth looking into I did. What I found were some really good stories and have since picked up a few collections here and there just for something a little different.
The following list are my suggestions should you feel that you want to read some fascinating fiction from some known and a few unknown authors. The short story as a genre is one that can lead to some wonderful places so please give some of these guys a few of your dollars, you won?t be disappointed.
Jack Ketchum, ?Peaceable Kingdom. Jack Ketchum has written many great horror novels including?Off ?Season, Offspring, The Girl Next Door,?and?Red. Peaceable Kingdom is a treasure trove of 32 short stories that I found to be really disturbing but very well written.
Clive Barker, Books of Blood Volumes 1-3. This collection features the story ?The Midnight Meat Train on which the movie of the same name is based. This collection is not for the?squeamish.
Bentley Little, The Collection. Bentley Little is the author of Many great horror novels, among my favorites are The Store,Dominion,The Walking,?and The Policy. This collection of 32 short stories really is quite a pleasure to read. My favorites are The Idol and The Washingtonians.
Robert A. Heinlein -The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein. This is a small collection of science fiction shorts that are really fascinating to read. The best one is All You Zombies, a story about a person who is their own mother and father.
Matthew Klam, Sam the Cat and other stories. This I read based on the recommendation of Stephen King in his EW article and I was?pleasantly?surprised. There are 7 stories here and very well worth your time.
Stephen King, Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. These are my two all time favorite collections by Stephen King. I really enjoyed the stories in Nightmares and Dreamscapes but these two really set my fire for reading. Especially Night Shift which has the honor of being the first ?real?book I can remember reading.
Tales Before?Tolkien:?Roots of Modern Fantasy. This is a collection of fantasy stories written before J.R.R. Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit,the two novels that shaped modern fantasy. There are 22 stories here to enjoy.
SO there you go, some great collections to pick up and read for yourself. Also you could try the various compilations out there. They have hem for every genre althoiugh I tend to stick to the Zombies and science fiction.
Happy reading!!!!
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Source: http://thenightlysilence.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/the-art-of-the-short-story/
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