I think the graphic says it all. I must admit that I had forgotten how much I loved them until I spend a month focusing on short fiction. I’m guilty of not sharing as many reviews as I wanted. I’ve been reading and listening to them and just enjoying them and instead I’ve let a lot of others do all the heavy lifting and sharing their own short story enjoyment.
If you missed any here are all the reviews from the month:
- SSM Review: Second Wind by Mike Carey (Zombie)
- SSM Guest Review: Numbers In The Dark by Italo Calvino from M.G. Harris (#9 on the ZERO MOMENT blog tour)
- SSM Review: The Wizards of Perfil by Kelly Link (Pretty Monsters)
- SSM Review: Devil’s Arcade – Mark Charan Newton (Darkness on the Edge)
- SSM Guest Review: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman from Jonathan McCalmont
- SSM Review: Bloody by Roddy Doyle (Stories)
- SSM Collection Review (Repost): A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris (Gollancz)
- SSM Guest Review: Lost and Found by Simon Avery from Sharon Ring
- SSM Guest Collection Review: love songs for the shy and cynical by Robert Shearman from Hagelrat
- SSM Review: Killing the Dead by Ian Sales (Edison’s Frankenstein Postscripts 20/21)
- SSM Review: The End of the World Show by David Barnett (The Janus House and Other Two-Faced Tales)
- SSM Review: Dead Can Dance by Xiaolu Guo (Lovers in the Age of Indifference)
- SSM Guest Review: At Reparata by Jeffrey Ford from Paul Charles Smith
- SSM Guest Collection Review: The Engineer Reconditioned by Neal Asher (from Mark Chitty)
- SSM Review: From the Lighthouse by Garth Nix (Across the Wall)
- SSM Guest Review: The Wendigo (1910) By Algernon Blackwood from Jonathan McCalmont
- SSMVideo: Neil Gaiman talks about all things Stories
- SSM Guest Review: The Shadow by Edith Nesbit from Aishwarya Subramanian
- SSM Guest Review: The Turing Test by Chris Beckett from David Hebblethwaite
- SSM Guest Review: How to Make Monsters by Gary McMahon from Sharon Ring
- SSM Guest Review: The Sleeping Serpent by Pamela Sargent from Cara Murphy (@Murf61)
- SSM Guest Review: Ten for the Devil by Charles de Lint from Liz De Jager
- SSM Guest Review: The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman from N. R. Alexander
- SSM Guest Review: Dirae by Peter S Beagle from Amanda Rutter
- SSM Guest Review: A Woman Naked by Christopher Priest from Ian Sales
Thanks to everyone to contributed. I’m chuffed to bits to see the range of writers and the amount of people willing to take time to share their thoughts. I’m especially grateful to those who comment on the Open Thread: What’s Your Favourite Short Story? post.
Here is a quick copy and past list of other short taken from most of the comments:
- “Chivalry” by Neil Gaiman
- Caitlin R. Kiernan – “Persephone”
- China Mieville’s too occasional efforts from “Looking for Jake.”
- Chekhov and Maupassant are two favourites
- Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question
- Ted Chiang, for his amazing ability to explore ideas past their logical conclusions.
- “Call Me Joe” by Poul Anderson and “Sandkings” by George R. R. Martin
- Paolo Bacigalupi has also made an impact on me with his short fiction. A particularly strong story is The People of Sand and Slag.
- i like saki and maughams short stories
- Death and the Compass, by Jorge Luis Borges is genius.
- The Kiss, by Angela Carter. It’s lovely and lyrical and just demands to be read aloud.
- The Yellow Wallpaper, of course.
- The Nameless City by Lovecraft – I think of this as one of his more quietly hysterical pieces. There’s a lot going on, though.
- My favourite sf short stories are: ‘Aye, And Gomorrah’, Samuel R Delany; ‘And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill Side’, James Tiptree Jr.; ‘A Little Something For Us Tempunauts’, Philip K Dick; ‘Air Raid’, John Varley; ‘The Gernsback Continuum’, William Gibson; ‘The Brains Of Rats’, Michael Blumlein; ‘A Gift From The Culture’, Iain M Banks; ‘Forward Echoes’, Gwyneth Jones; ‘FOAM’, Brian Aldiss; ‘The Road To Jerusalem’, Mary Gentle
- “Nine Hundred Grandmothers” and “The Six Fingers of Time” by R.A. Lafferty
- “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison
- “The Nine Billion Names of God” by Arthur C. Clarke
- “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale”, “Murder Mysteries”, “October in the Chair”, “Troll Bridge”, “Chivalry” and “Sunbird” by Neil Gaiman
- “Westwind”, “A Cabin on the Coast”, “Death of the Island Doctor”, “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” (technically a novella), “The Eyeflash Miracles” and “Seven American Nights” by Gene Wolfe
- I think I’d have to choose pretty much anything and everything by Ray Bradbury. The master of the short story, point ends.
- Other favorites: “Aunt Granny Lith” by Chris Offutt, “Mule Killers” by Lydia Peelle, “Some Zombie Contingency Plans” by Kelly Link, pretty much any story from Neil Gaiman’s Smoke and Mirrors, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut.
So there we have it. The end of Short Story Month. But could I really end it there? After all that? No way.
I’ve made a little badge so I can show off how much I love short fiction. And I’m going to carry on reviewing them on the blog. A short story is for life, not just for May…
I hope you enjoyed this month. I know I did.
