Short Stories

Inundated with science-fiction, the first draft of this post was flooded with entries by Ray Bradbury. My preoccupation with his short stories are parallel with this young woman's love for him. This list, assembled in ascending order, are recommended short stories for you. Some come from renowned authors, others from pseudo-anonymous Internet authors. I hope you find them as fascinating, thought provoking, and impactful as I have. If you have any recommendations of your own, feel free to post them in the comments.

Ambrose Bierce - Haita The Shepard - A sort of dark satirist, Bierce writes on seeking happiness.

'RICHH' - Sagan's Pizza - True or false, an interesting account of a pizza delivery to Carl Sagan.

'Isis' - Wackers: The Secret Life of a 'Fantasy Maker' - Buried along with other such gems as "Mail Fraud" and "My Life as Santa's Rubber Clad Love Slave" in the Cult of The Dead Cow Publications are the experiences this author had as a phone sex worker.

Ray Bradbury - Pillar of Fire - When his grave is disturbed, a man who died four centuries earlier rises from his tomb to infiltrate a utopia. On my own, I do not know if this story exists to serve any sort of metaphorical purpose. It is simply bad ass, and I daydream musical interpretations of it. Unable to find a file of it on the Internet, it is the second entry in Bradbury's science-fiction anthology S is for Space, and it follows an equally amazing story Chrysalis (reminiscent of Johnny Got His Gun, now come to think of it).

Harlan Ellison - I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - The only survivors in the world are tortured endlessly by a sentient machine which brought on a apocalypse.

David Sedaris - The Santaland Diaries - Now a tradition for NPR's This American Life to play every Christmas time, this story cannot be found online, however audio transcripts read by Sedaris himself are plentiful. The actual text can be found in the back of Barrel Fever.

Ambrose Beirce - An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Made into a Twilight Zone episode, this classic short story is set during the Civil War, where a man is about to hang for being a Confederate sympathizer.

George Orwell - Shooting An Elephant - A metaphor for imperialism, Orwell's essay is an account of an experience he (probably) had while being stationed in Burma.

Ray Bradbury - The Pedestrian - Originally I wanted to post The Tonybee Convector, but I have a penchant for dystopias instead utopias. Perhaps the two stories belong together, as together they display Bradbury's love and disdain of what the future could be.

A random entry from the ASSTR - The Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository is an archive of virtually every adult story posted on the Internet, dating back to the aforementioned Usenet group, Alt.Sex.Stories. One cannot possibly imagine the bizarre "erotic" fantasises posted here. To say that Freud would have had a field day here is a gross understatement.