Some Good Fantasy Short Stories Online
I tried to leave a comment over at Torque Control, but filled it with links, so I expect it disappeared into a spam filter. Easy enough to post here.
A commenter, Saladin Ahmed, asked for suggestions of fantasy short stories, preferably under 3,000 words, that might make a good addition to an undergraduate course on writing fantasy. How could I resist such a request!? I intended to list maybe three or four stories, but kept adding one more, then one more, until I came up with this list, which is still utterly incomplete. (Not all of these pieces fit the length requirement, but so it goes.) I limited myself to one story per writer.
A commenter, Saladin Ahmed, asked for suggestions of fantasy short stories, preferably under 3,000 words, that might make a good addition to an undergraduate course on writing fantasy. How could I resist such a request!? I intended to list maybe three or four stories, but kept adding one more, then one more, until I came up with this list, which is still utterly incomplete. (Not all of these pieces fit the length requirement, but so it goes.) I limited myself to one story per writer.
- "The Golden Age of Fire Escapes" by John Aegard
- "The Zombies" by Donald Barthelme
- "The Boy Who Was Born Wrapped in Barbed Wire" by Christopher Barzak
- "My Shadow" by Kate Bernheimer
- "The Brief History of the Dead" by Kevin Brockmeier
- "The Secret Identity" by Richard Butner
- "The New Mother" by Lucy Clifford
- "The Desires of Houses" by Haddayr Copley-Woods
- "A Keeper" by Alan DeNiro
- "Erasing Amyloo" by Russell Edson
- "Above It All" by Carol Emshwiller
- "The Way He Does It" by Jeff Ford
- "Loot" by Nadine Gordimer
- "Hold Tight" by Gavin Grant
- "The Rapid Advance of Sorrow" by Theodora Goss
- "The East" by M. John Harrison
- "A Country Doctor" by Franz Kafka
- "Blue Ink" by Yoon Ha Lee
- "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link
- "Eight-Legged Story" by Maureen McHugh
- "The Palm Tree Bandit" by Nnedi Okorafor
- "A Hard Truth About Waste Management" by Sumanth Prabhaker
- "The Girl Who Ate Butterflies" by M. Rickert
- "Cabinet No. 42" by Eric Schaller
- "Detours on the Way to Nothing" by Rachel Swirsky
- "A Buyer's Guide to Maps of Antarctica" by Catherynne Valente
- "Secret Life" by Jeff VanderMeer
- "A Haunted House" by Virginia Woolf