Nominations for a potential BEST SFF SHORT FICTION ballot poll

Let's see how many voters / nominations we can get. Qualifying criteria up for discussion - novellas? Novelettes? What even is the difference? Any science fiction / fantasy / speculative / slipstream welcome.

A few to start off with:

JG Ballard, Track 12
Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate
Ursula Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
The Screwfly Solution, Raccoona (Alice) Sheldon aka James Tiptree Jr.

Not even close to well read enough in the genre to participate, but I would definitely use the results as a reading list!

Which doesn't help you one bit, I realize...

My noms will all be Classic Rock types — it's been decades since I read recent/contemporary SF.

Thomas Disch, "Descending"
Larry Niven, "The Fourth Profession"
Samuel Delany, "Aye, and Gomorrah..."
Tom Godwin, "The Cold Equations"

I'll probably come up with some others.

i'm not sure i recognise anything posted yet far by the names

Ray Bradbury, "There Will Come Soft Rains"

The Chiang, the Le Guin, the Delany and the Sheldon/Tiptree would all be in my ILX Anthology of Best SFF Short Fiction too. Here's a few more for the Contents page:

When it Changed - Joanna Russ
The Electric Ant - Philip K Dick
Fondly Fahrenheit - Alfred Bester
The Country of the Kind - Damon Knight
The Heat Death of the Universe - Pamela Zoline
Swarm - Bruce Sterling
The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race - JG Ballard
Reflections - Angela Carter

maybe we could post links where possible. I read When It Changed earlier on, very good.

http://www.future-lives.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/When-It-Changed.pdf

I'll dig out some more later.

might as well get some obvious ones out of the way

edgar allen poe - the masque of the red death
kurt vonnegut - harrison bergeron
h.p. lovecraft - the shadow of innsmouth
h.p. lovecraft - the dunwich horror
h.p. lovecraft - the call of cthulhu

how short is short? (i held off on 'at the mountains of madness')

Ooooh, I like the idea of this poll. A couple that I would have nominated are already up but I'll definitely have more once I get my brain in gear (def some Christine Brooke-Rose to come, for example).

For now, my immediate nomination is:

Jorge Luis Borges - Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

I like the idea too and similarly, I can't get my brain in gear.

Jorge Luis Borges - The Library of Babel
Jorge Luis Borges - The Circular Ruins
JG Ballard - The Voices of Time
JG Ballard - The Drowned Giant
Ray Bradbury - All Summer in a Day

brian evenson - glasses

Good call on The Drowned Giant, one of my favorite Ballards.

I could have gone for any number of the short stories, to be honest, but that's the one that has stayed with me the most.

how short is short? (i held off on 'at the mountains of madness')

maybe < 100 pages?

shirley jackson - the lottery
story of your life - ted chiang
the ones who walk away from omelas - ursula k. le guin already mentioned
nightfall - asimov
the screwfly solution - james tiptree jr.
first murderbot novella - martha wells (might be too long)?
jack vance - the moon moth

More historical recommendations!

Ursula Le Guin - Vaster Than Empires and More Slow
Cordwainer Smith - Scanners Live in Vain
Robert Aickman - The Trains
M.R. James - 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'
M. John Harrison - The Machine in Shaft Ten
Arthur C. Clarke - The Nine Billion Names of God
Jorge Luis Borges - Funes the Memorious
Roger Zelazny - The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth
Angela Carter - The Company of Wolves
Philip K. Dick - I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon
William Gibson - Johnny Mnemonic
Thomas Ligotti - The Frolic
Haruki Murakami - TV People
Bob Shaw - Light of Other Days

Plus many Ballard stories not yet mentioned but best to avoid vote-splitting.

novellas? Novelettes? What even is the difference?

According to the Hugo Awards categories:
Short story = fewer than 7,500 words
Novelette = 7,500 - 17,500 words
Novella = 17,500 - 40,000 words

And flash fiction is generally held to be fewer than 1000 words. Not to mention micro-fiction (fewer than 250 words) and drabbles (100 words exactly).

The Sheldon/Tiptree story which I think about all the time:

James Tiptree Jr. - Love is the Plan the Plan is Death

A couple more:

Brian Aldiss - Supertoys Last All Summer Long
Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon (later expanded to novel length but I prefer the shorter version)

Also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award_for_Best_Short_Story#Winners_and_nominees

there's too much stuff. still:

Brian Aldiss - Poor Little Warrior! (https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781625793614/9781625793614___3.htm)

R.A. Lafferty - The Six Fingers of Time (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31663)

John Crowley - Great Work of Time (novella length but really a big short story imo)

Was trying to work out what Lafferty to pick - like Aldiss or Ballard, definitely a vote-splitting author.

I didn't nominate anything by eg Aickman, Lovecraft, James, Jackson etc because I do think of the horror/supernatural/occult genre as something separate from SF and fantasy. But that's just me - let them all in!

> Poor Little Warrior!

woah, i read that *this* morning, working through the 800 page 50s compilation

I could nominate a stack of Lafferty, Aldiss et al but they were first thoughts

Tanith Lee - Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur de Feu
Tanith Lee - After the Guillotine
Clark Ashton Smith - Necromancy In Naat
Clark Ashton Smith - Demon Of The Flower

Sheridan Le Fanu - Squire Toby's Will
Hugh B Cave - Murgunstrumm
Robert E Howard - Pigeons From Hell
Algernon Blackwood - The Wendigo
Ralph Adams Cram - The Dead Valley

I could nominate a stack of Lafferty, Aldiss et al but they were first thoughts

please do!

I considered great work of time, it is long but you're right it's basically feels like a short story.

I do think of the horror/supernatural/occult genre as something separate from SF and fantasy. But that's just me - let them all in!

Yeah, I probably won't vote for anything I think of as pure horror (although supernatural horror is definitely speculative fiction, and some cosmic horror can count as sci-fi/fantasy). But I wouldn't want to be too restrictive, there's a lot of overlap, and even if people want to count all horror then I don't really mind.

I promise I will come back with more noms soon-ish.

my 2nd and third favourite Bradbury shorts are more horror than sf (the emissary, the scythe)

Separate poll for horror short fiction, maybe?

brian evenson - smear

(this one is definitely horror but also definitely sci-fi hah)

Feel like one place to start looking for a base of nominations is the table of contents of some of the more popular anthologies, at least two of which have already been polled.

Basically me seeing I can’t quite be arsed to think about nominations right now but will happy to vote.

Seeing = saying

Okay, here’s a great one from an author who can otherwise be problematic:
“Air Raid,” John Varley

And similarly:
"The Man Who Came Early," Poul Anderson
Although he has a few other good ones I am not able to dredge up at the moment.

"A Rose for Ecclesiastes," Roger Zelazny
(His Mars planetary romance, the Venus one already nominated)

"Rogue Moon," Algis Budrys
The novella, assuming it counts as short enough

M. John Harrison has a lot of good short stories, not sure which is a canonical standout, but I will nominate a personal favorite, "Settling the World."

Since we have "Poor Little Warrior!" we probably should have
"The Sound of Thunder," Ray Bradbury
"A Gun for Dinosaur," L. Sprague de Camp

Trying to think of a Robert Sheckley to pick. Oh yeah:
"Zirn Left Unguarded, the Jenghik Palace in Flames, Jon Westerley Dead"

"Vintage Season," C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner

"Passengers," Robert Silverberg

"The Liberation of Earth," William Tenn

I feel like I should nominate some Sturgeon but my favorites of his are novels.

Has anyone nominated any of his stories yet?

“Microcosmic God” is one that always gets anthologized, but I can barely remember it.

Are you a fan of More Than Human? Maybe you could nominate “Baby Is Three.”

The Store of the Worlds is a good Sheckley.

Separate poll for horror short fiction, maybe?

― Brad C

Yes!

Although... what is the end goal here? Is this going to be like a Jazz and Pop thing? At voting/reveal stage will people have to include information about they've voted for certain things, or at least details of the thing voted for - what it's (very broadly) about/the questions it poses, its themes, its subgenre, its era of origin/publication date...? Or is the end result just going to be a list of titles and authors?

If this thread is going to work maybe just pick one story by some of the authors named to get/keep the ball rolling

Like
“The Drowned Giant” – J.G. Ballard
“Nine Hundred Grandmothers” – R.A. Lafferty

Ah, the first one was already mentioned, more than once.

Bunch of great nominations already - in the, uh, classic rock vein (stuff that left an impression on me from my dad's Space Odyssey collection that hasn't already been nominated)

Frederick Pohl - The Tunnel under the World
Fritz Lieber - Mysterious Doings in the Metropolitan Museum
Alan E. Nourse - The Coffin Cure
Rachel Pollack - Is Your Child Using Drugs? Seven Ways to Recognize a Drug Addict

Don't want to split the Ballard/Dick/Borges/Lafferty votes, buuuut can't resist

Samuel R. Delany - Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones
Robert Sheckley - Ghost V

Liu Cixin - The Wandering Earth (novella ... subsitute Cloud of Poems if the former's too long).

Need to dip back into City of Saints and Madmen/The Ladies of Grace Adieu/some Kelly Link.

Feel like maybe we shouldn’t worry about splitting the vote.

Agreed. Also maybe keeping out horror is a good idea, otherwise we could include weird fiction as well, then you've got kafka and who knows where it ends.

I'm recontextualising this in my mind as ilx's (not all time's) favourite (not best) stories, just a wee poll for fun, otherwise it seems both overwhelming and futile. i'll start up a spreadsheet of nominations.