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Subject: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: Foo Bar on 06/20/06 at 10:04 pm

Got a favorite short story?  Post a link to it.  Adjust the Subject: line accordingly.

I'll start off with one of my all-time favorites:  Terry Bisson, They're Made Out of Meat.

http://www.terrybisson.com/meat.html

Because they're made out of meat.  Meat.  No kidding.  I mean it.  Meat.  Made out of.  Who would have imagined it?

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: KKay on 06/26/06 at 8:57 am

Here is The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
http://www.americanliterature.com/SS/SS16.HTML

more to follow.

I am a big short story fan and I"m glad you began this thread.  I need to be more involved in it!

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #3: Harrison Bergeron

Written By: Foo Bar on 06/27/06 at 9:04 pm


I am a big short story fan and I"m glad you began this thread.  I need to be more involved in it!


Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

If you're in school, and you feel held back by your fellow students (or worse, by your teachers!), this is one of the most dangerous stories ever written.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: HawkTheSlayer on 06/29/06 at 3:07 am

H.P. Lovecraft's "The Statement Of Randolph Carter".

http://www.hplovecraft.com/cthulhu/carter

I believe that's the proper link.

I was introduced into Lovecraftian stories about 12 yrs. ago, & this one stood out to me.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #4: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

Written By: Foo Bar on 07/05/06 at 8:40 pm


I was introduced into Lovecraftian stories about 12 yrs. ago, & this one stood out to me.

Randolph's 404 at that link, but he should be here:

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thestatementofrandolph.htm

Campus Crusade for Cthulhu:  It found me!

Cthulhu for President:  Why vote for the lesser of two evils?
(Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn and I vote!)

Cthulhu loves me, this I know.
Cause the High Priest tells me so.
He's my Lord, all dank and wet.
He won't eat me (not just yet).

And in that vein, a story:  Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html

It's Lovecraftian, in its own way.  (The difference being that Cthulhu doesn't hate any of us, any more than the cattleman hates the cows in his stockyard.  Harlan Ellison's AM, on the other hand...  well, "hate" is probably an understatement. :)

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #4: I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

Written By: HawkTheSlayer on 07/06/06 at 3:54 am


Randolph's 404 at that link, but he should be here:

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thestatementofrandolph.htm

Campus Crusade for Cthulhu:  It found me!

Cthulhu for President:  Why vote for the lesser of two evils?
(Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn and I vote!)

Cthulhu loves me, this I know.
Cause the High Priest tells me so.
He's my Lord, all dank and wet.
He won't eat me (not just yet).

And in that vein, a story:  Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html

It's Lovecraftian, in its own way.  (The difference being that Cthulhu doesn't hate any of us, any more than the cattleman hates the cows in his stockyard.  Harlan Ellison's AM, on the other hand...  well, "hate" is probably an understatement. :)


How about Clark Ashton Smith's "Return Of the Sorceror"?
(Put me off ever eating blue cheese again!!!)

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: Foo Bar on 07/10/06 at 9:30 pm

Good science fiction makes one or two assumptions about technology, but is primarily about the human condition. 

So... what do you suppose happens when you cross religious fundamentalism (and whether it's the cross or the crescent doesn't matter) with widespread availablility of bioengineering technology (which will probably happen within the next 50 years)? 

http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Moral%20Virologist&pagetitle=The+Moral+Virologist&section=fiction

Greg Egan's The Moral Virologist is one possibility.  Probably one of the nicer possibilities.  The species survives.  Sort of.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: La Roche on 07/13/06 at 5:25 pm


Here is The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
http://www.americanliterature.com/SS/SS16.HTML

more to follow.

I am a big short story fan and I"m glad you began this thread.  I need to be more involved in it!


I remember that... weird ass story, lot's of metaphores.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: HawkTheSlayer on 07/13/06 at 5:27 pm

Another good one is "Or Battle's Sound", by Harry Harrison.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: Foo Bar on 08/10/06 at 9:22 pm

199619971998, by Rev. John Shirley. 

Because it's better to be lucky than smart.  (The saucers didn't land in 1998 because our High Epopt of Sales saw the plans, but he forgot he was reading the date upside down.  We gotta wait until 8661.)

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: CeeKay on 08/10/06 at 11:36 pm

My favorite short story writer is Raymond Carver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Carver).
I couldn't find any of his stories published on the net.

I also like Margaret Atwood.  And I've read lots of stories the names and authors of which I will never remember.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: KKay on 08/11/06 at 8:42 am

my favoirtie is really Maggie: Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane.
oh...and A Clean, Well Lighted Place by Hemingway.


i am never ready for these posts...just when i think i have just one answer the ideas come poppping up.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: McDonald on 10/21/06 at 5:32 pm


Here is The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
http://www.americanliterature.com/SS/SS16.HTML

more to follow.

I am a big short story fan and I"m glad you began this thread.  I need to be more involved in it!


I second that! What a great piece.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #3: Harrison Bergeron

Written By: Jessica on 10/25/06 at 10:28 am


Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

If you're in school, and you feel held back by your fellow students (or worse, by your teachers!), this is one of the most dangerous stories ever written.


One of my favorites! Thanks for the link!

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: Foo Bar on 10/25/06 at 9:27 pm

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
- Ernest Hemingway, inspiring authors around the world and decades thereafter (even including a detour into songwriting in 1998 for Weird Al Yankovic's "This Song's Just Six Words Long"), what you can do when asked to write a short story with a six-word limit.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #15: A Colder War

Written By: Foo Bar on 02/16/07 at 11:10 pm

Full text of A Colder War

Charlie Stross, 2000, with props to Lovecraft

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: agrimorfee on 02/20/07 at 2:56 pm

The Tell Tale Heart :o

http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/poe/works/tt_heart.html

Subject: I have no keyboard and cannot write.

Written By: Foo Bar on 04/12/07 at 10:56 pm


Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut (1961)

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html


Fine Diana.  You get Hunter S. Thompson, Robert Anton Wilson, and now Kurt Vonnegut, and win the first decade of the 21st century.  We can wait a few years until the unpublished manuscripts hit the 'net.  Maybe that fire in 2000 only got the copies that were stuck in time.  So it goes.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #1: They're Made out of Meat

Written By: RTynanDDS on 04/17/07 at 1:40 pm

I can't find the text of any of his stories online either, but Raymond Carver is one of my favorites too. "So Much Water So Close to Home" and "A Small, Good Thing" are kind of perfect. That's one of the great things about short stories -- they're usually narrow enough in scope to either work as a whole or not. And when they work, they create really precise images.

I have stronger, longer lasting impressions from short stories than many novels I read. Even Stephen King's "Night Shift" has more memorable characters and images than most of his novels for me.

Subject: Re: Favorite Short Stories #99: The Marching Morons

Written By: Foo Bar on 05/14/07 at 8:09 pm

OK, so, the guy behind Beavis and Butthead, like, in 2006, he made this hilarious dark comedy called Idiocracy, an' it was inspired by a short story called "The Marching Morons", an' I'd tell y'all ta read the story thing 'cept the C.M. Kornbluth thing was in somethin' they usedta call a "book", it's from 1951, an' it has too many words and stuff...

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