Short Stories/Collections That Have Influenced You

dangerous visions

Joyce Carol Oates has one I really enjoyed in which she wrote a story each in the style of Mark Twain, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. The stories revolved the last days of each author. I borrowed it from the library, but want to own a copy so I can scribble in the margins.

She's had several great collections, but 'Wild Nights' is one of the best, imo.

jaksen said:

Joyce Carol Oates has one I really enjoyed in which she wrote a story each in the style of Mark Twain, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe. The stories revolved the last days of each author. I borrowed it from the library, but want to own a copy so I can scribble in the margins.

She's had several great collections, but 'Wild Nights' is one of the best, imo.

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Looking for that collection now, it sounds like it'd be a fun read

phineas12gauge said:

Looking for that collection now, it sounds like it'd be a fun read

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She's a very strong writer with distinctive style. As far as modern-day Mystery short-story writers go, she's my favorite. She knows how to craft a store, for sure.

I'm going to pick this up now, as well. Because I've only read her stuff in EQMM.

Right now I'm reading "Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!" I'm sure it'll influence me somehow.

Just read one by Sabina Murray, 'Tales of the New World'

Lovely stuff, provocative, historical, elegant.

The October Country, by Ray Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
The Collected Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, by M.R. James
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
A collection of stories by J.G. Ballard, the title of which I can't recall
Fancies and Goodnights, by John Collier
And Other Stories, by John O'Hara
Collected Stories of Saki
Collected Stories of Anton Chekhov
several collections of stories by Joseph Conrad
Plain Tales from the Hills, by Rudyard Kipling
Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling

caw

A few I enjoyed and I didn't see mentioned:

Dubliners by James Joyce
Girl With Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace
The Long Valley by John Steinbeck

A lot of mine would be ones already listed (PK Dick, Lawrence Block, Harlan Ellison) but I would also include Isaac Asimov, Roald Dahl, Robert Bloch, and Fredric Brown -- just thinking off the top of my head.

When I was young I loved the "Great SF Stories" series edited by Asimov, Greenberg (and maybe a third person?) which had one volume for each year from 1939 up through the early 1960s. I also had a real fondness for collections of short-short stories (now usually called "flash fiction").

The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem really changed the way I thought about science fiction

Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway

A Sorrowful Woman by Gale Godwin

The Call Of Cthulhu
The Whisperer In Darkness
At The Mountains Of Madness
and many others by HP Lovecraft

Graveyard Shift
The Mauler
Trucks
and many others by Stephen King

Something Passed By
by Robert McCammon

Locusts
by Adam-Troy Castro

The People
by Zenna Bishop (as I recall)

Just to name a few.

The one which has influenced me most is Ray Bradbury's "R is for Rocket" collection. My favorite two being "A Sound of Thunder" and "Fire and Frost". They inspire me to write shorts and show me what can be done in them.

All of Neil Gaiman's short story collections. My copy of Fragile Things is ancient, and the shiny red leaf pattern is wearing off the cover, but I still reread the stories in there. I love the simplicity and clarity of the writing, and the magic or spec elements in the everyday world.

To be honest, even better than reading his shorts, is listening to Gaiman read them. If you ever get the chance to go to one of his readings, don't miss it. He does them all around the world these days. But we also listen to his audio books that are suitable for kids if we are travelling with the car.

Other short story writers: All the classic SF writers that I read when I was a young teenager. (That's Bradbury, Asimov etc.) And I've read so many others since then, its hard to isolate one. But every now and then, if I want to find a novel I'll enjoy, I'll read a collection of shorts and choose a novel by my favourite.

The new Anywhere But Earth anthology of Australian spec fic writers has some excellent SF short stories in it, including ones by Richard Harland and Margo Lanagan. It is a huge book!