SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I'm doing the NaNoWriMo.

One of the ways I plan to succeed is to read less, but I don't want to read not at all. I want to read short stories in collections and anthologies. Who do you recommend?

Varley, Niven, Foster.

Thanks for the ideas Trike!

To give a context in no order here are books I'm thinking of reading or rereading.

* The Things They Carried

* The Frangipani Hotel

* Welcome to Bordertown

* Not One Damsel in Distress: World Folktales for Strong Girls

* METAtropolis: The Dawn of Uncivilization

* Dangerous Visions

* The Very Best of Charles de Lint

* the newly-ish found stories of Octavia E. Butler

* Canadian Pie

And somebody here somewhere said thatRobopocalypse is something like World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, in a way that may make it excellent for this project.

I'm not a fan of Robopocalypse, as it struck me as a lazy version of WWZ. He starts off each chapter with quotes and then sort of... forgets, I guess. The whole book is like that.

Some anthologies I really like not from the above-mentioned authors (although Varley is literally as good as it gets):

Masked - superhero stories that are mostly really good. I find most anthologies edited by Lou Anders tend to have very few clunkers in them.

Across Realtime is sort of an anthology in that it's two or three related novellas. It's really good, but it might be too much like a novel for what you're looking for.

Going Interstellar is themed around the idea of "scientifically plausible interstellar starships," but it's not as heavy or intimidating as that might sound. There are a number of stories which feature female protagonists.

There are various Best of the Year collections, of course, but if you don't want to be contaminated if you're writing SFF, try the Best Mystery stories collection. Those often scratch the same itch but don't engage the same part of the brain. Well, not mine, anyway.

Supernatural Noir is in my to-read tower and it looks really good. Ellen Datlow generally chooses good tales, so she's a safe bet for most any anthology.

One I've had recommended to me but haven't checked out yet is edited by Neil Gaiman, called Stories: All-New Tales.

Fredric Brown wrote clever, mostly very short stories. I just love his work, but of course it is older and some folks don't like reading back that far.

However, if you do, don't forget that there are several collections of Robot stories, and other short stories, by Isaac Asimov.

If you lean towards fantasy & paranormal, Ray Bradbury writes more timeless works, many of which are short stories. Even The Martian Chronicles can easily be read as independent stories set in chronological order on the same world and theme.

I no longer bother with the other members of the Grand Masters, Heinlein and Clarke. Imo, they just don't hold up so much to our own times.

Julia wrote: "Thanks for the ideas Trike!

To give a context in no order here are books I'm thinking of reading or rereading.


I'm not familiar with most of those, but since your tastes seem rather eclectic you might enjoy some mind-blowing Argentinian fantasy short stories by Borges (Ficciones). And if you want something haunting and extremely bite-size, try Invisible Cities by Calvino.