Questions tagged [short-stories]
For about a fictional work too small to be called a [novel] or [novella] - usually less than 10-20 thousand words and no chapters. Use to either identify the media on a [story-identification] question or disambiguate works where the tag covers the short story and its form in other media.. If you are looking for a particular anthology of short stories, use the [anthology-book] tag instead.
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Short story about two cities and their architects
This was a longish short story (or short novella) that I read in an anthology around 1990 (give or take 5 years).
There is an ancient city that is old and tired. People are leaving, there is not much ...
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I'm looking for a short story about a sculptor who creates a hand and is strangled by it
I believe I read the story approximately 10 years ago in a US newspaper online when looking for information on H.P.Lovecraft. I don't recall the newspaper or the year I read it, but I believe it was ...
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Sci-fi short story about a person that has to run across country and ages drastically as he's exposed to the elements
I read a sci-fi short story many years ago but can't recall the title.
It is about a person that has to run across country to get to a place of sanctuary within a period of time, somewhere about 10 ...
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Short story about a prehistoric man discovering either salt, garlic or onions for cooking
It takes place in a prehistoric era. The man is sick to death of the meat he's been eating and he discovers that adding something (onions, garlic, or salt - I can't remember) makes it appetizing again....
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Short story in which Earth is invaded by humanoids who are a bit dim [duplicate]
I have just read Harry Turtledove's novelette "The Road Not Taken" and it reminded me of a different, unmemorable, story in which Earth is invaded by humanoid aliens who aren't very bright.
...
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Golden Age short story about carnivorous aliens that pay humans a license fee to clone them for meat
The story is told from the perspective of one of a handful of explorers who encountered the aliens. The explorer is sharing a terrible secret with a colleague: When the explorers encountered the ...
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SF Short Story: Humans are attempting to join the Galactic Federation
Humans are attempting to join the Galactic Federation.
A small team are sent to represent Humanity and prove our worth to the aliens.
When it looks as if our membership is to be rejected the chief ...
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SF novella or short story: Humans suddenly get the ability to grant their every wish
People suddenly have the ability to materialise anything they desire, seemingly just by wishing for it.
This results in chaos, one example being that a young person materialises a ray gun and ...
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Short sci-fi story about traders who find an alien life form that absorbs heat
I've been trying to find this story for years.
The way I remember it is a man is a trader and he travels to a planet to find goods to trade. On this planet they have something, I think they were ...
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60s Short Story About AI Morality
There was a 60s sci-fi short story where a partisan, who had been fighting tyranny on his home planet, manages to escape just before things fall apart. He had no choice but to leave his comrades ...
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Short story about a robot being tested for sentience that saves its interrogator from a bomb placed by a terrorist
The story starts with an interrogation room where a robot is being tested for sentience. A terrorist places a bomb, and the robot the realizes the ship is going to explode, so it saves the ...
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Short story about a prisoner with implanted pain inducer who tries to escape anyway
I read this short story in my English schoolbook, ca. 1995. It's possible it was written specifically for the schoolbook but it had some "mature" feel to it which makes me think it might ...
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Need help identifying a sci-fi short story (shocked from a band saw, comes to in a slightly altered timeline)
I recall reading this fantastic sci-fi short story in a book of collected short stories, I just can't remember the name or author.
I read it maybe between 2010 and 2015, it was in a thick book of ...
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Short story set in alien land with oceans where people die of algae infection but we later learn that the dead people live on in the algae
I remember reading a short story online set in alien land with ocean and algae/fungus and the people begin dying due to infection but we later learn they get to live on forever in the algae. The ...
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Short story about man who couldn't stop consuming
The story was set in utopian future, post-scarcity setting. A man, living on a island (?), starts ordering more and more products of all sorts. While it wasn't a huge issue, it eventually drew ...
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Short story about a clone warrior who believes she's the original
I read this in an anthology in the early-mid 1990s. Details are hazy, but the main character was a clone fighting in a conflict. She doesn't seem to realise that she is a clone, and believes herself ...
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1
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Short story told by a shop owner, involving different customers who find and go through a time-travelling mirror [duplicate]
The story involves a shop owner and a time-travel mirror. The shop owner tells stories of customers going through the mirror.
The shop owner playfully demonstrates the power of the mirror to customers ...
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Short story where researchers recreate primordial Hawai'ian ecosystem, find it has an awareness
I'm pretty sure I read this in Analog, but it's possible it was in one of the other magazines, like Asimov's, probably in the 1980s or 1990s. I have a vague recollection of a black-and-white drawing ...
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Short story about a young artisan an old woman and a living statue/mecha
I am trying to identify of a fantasy short story about a young German artisan an old woman and a living statue/mecha he must take care of. Thanks.
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A fantasy story about a king who forgets everything after drinking the incorrect potion
I'm looking for a short fantasy story that I read in the early 1980s. Because of the story's not child-friendly nature, I am almost sure I did read it in a young adult fantasy book with no ...
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Short story where the protagonist is hired by a necromancer
Looking for the identity of a short story. Heard it on a podcast 5 or so years ago and I know there is a short story written somewhere.
A man is hired as an assistant to a necromancer because of his ...
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Looking for SF short story about first contact and humans have to destroy evidence before aliens reach Earth
I read a really great SF short story published in an anthology from the late 1990s (maybe 1996-1997?) that involved humans making first contact with a more advanced alien species whose ambassadors are ...
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Short story describing computer-controlled society ending up with the computer's demise
I am looking for a story, probably from the early 1950's, about a society that was essentially controlled by a computer. Every person had a plastic cube that contained their history. If one wanted to ...
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Looking for 70s short story about dying man and a deer
The story was in a sci fi anthology I read in 75. Terminally ill man watching a deer in the tree line from his hospital room window. Not the story "Time Deer."
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Science fiction short story in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine about a Portuguese man who reincarnates
I read a story in a 1986 Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine about a Portuguese man who reincarnates and can make women fall madly in love with him by squeezing a secretion out from under his ...
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1
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Looking for a military sf short story about American Marines taken to prevent the emergence of a demon in a different world (dimension?)
A small group of marines were taken to another world to help prevent the emergence of a demon that is awakened by torturing a victim. There is a powerful wizard with them who cannot directly attack ...
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Short story about a girl killing cancer cells with a video game
Remembering a short story I read when I was about 8-10 (this would have been 1981-83). I could have sworn it was in OMNI magazine, but it could have been in the Asimov Digest or something else.
The ...
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1
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250
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Short story by Ray Bradbury, man comes home to smart house, can't cope, takes a gun and shoots up the consoles, gets taken away by men in white coats
I'm looking for a short story by Ray Bradbury, in which man comes home to his "smart" house, he is greeted by the door, his living room offers him a drink.... Overwhelmed, he can't cope ...
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1
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AI tricks space pirates into attacking its ship; kills all but one as part of effort to "civilize" space
Sometime around 2000, I read a short story in an anthology. Humanity is implied to be entirely, or largely spaceborne, with rare encounters between ships.
A group boards/attacks one ship, intending to ...
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Short story about an engineer coming back to an abandoned city where only the robots are working. I read it in an anthology in the 1970's
This story is about a man who might be an engineer or engineering student returning to an abandoned city. He is trying to get civilization restarted but he must turn off the robot police who only ...
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2
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Short Story: Physicist Discovers how to fuse a common element
A lone Physicist discovers how to fuse a common element, probably Iron.
He is debating whether he should suppress the knowledge by not submitting a paper.
He reflects on his life and how 'Hell is ...
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Science fiction short story about underground society where children are kept away from parents [duplicate]
I'm looking for a science fiction short story about an alien society that lives underground, and there is a widespread sense of detachment from one's offspring, and children being raised isolated from ...
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Short story involving music composer and a musician playing the history of music
Narrator is a music composer. He’s describing the experience of his friend, a musician, after some transformative (lightning strike?) event. Subsequently the musician plays a history of music and this ...
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Short story about a boy who brings a roach back to life
I'm trying to find information about a short story which involved a little boy who brings a dead cockroach back to life at the end of the story. I recall that he is repeatedly told to stop playing ...
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I'm searching for a story set on a future Earth in which the most competent individuals are kidnapped(ish) and made to serve as government leaders
It's been quite a while since I read this -- I'm thinking 1990's but the story could have been from some time before that. It was definitely a story and not a novel. The basic premise is that there ...
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Short story about ruining civil society
Please help me identify an old short story.
Civil society is dystopic and getting worse. Narrator describes recent crime, violence, and mayhem. Bad news, right?
Nope. Two apparent beat cops, the ...
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Short story about MMORPG sweatshops
I read this short story in a Czech translation before the year 2010. It was included in a collection aimed at "younger readers", but sci-fi and fantasy collections in Czech and Slovak ...
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Short story in which a girl at a dinner party describes the end of the world by flooding
The story is about a guy at a dinner party who goes into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and meets the daughter of the party hosts. He starts talking to her and she mentions she is working on a ...
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Short story about Christmas retail season running the entire year [duplicate]
Every year, when the retail stores start putting out Christmas displays earlier and earlier, I think back to this story. This year, I want to track it down.
It was in a paperback short story ...
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Short story, possibly titled "Walk to the New Moon", about a time-travelling Neanderthal girl
A Neanderthal girl is separated from her tribe in a field hunting cattle. She returns to her tribe at full moon or new moon traveling through time.
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Illuminati with prediction machine that only works when the prediction won't be used
I remember a story where the Illuminati made a machine that could predict the future. However, there was a snag: the machine only worked when the user did not intend to use the information. Therefore, ...
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Horror Short Story from Dramatic Reading YouTube Channel
About a year ago, my wife and I were on a road trip and listened to a bunch of "Dramatic Readings" of various horror stories. Some were novelettes, like "The Dunwich Horror", some ...
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Short story about a programmer fired by mistake who can't be rehired
I am looking for the name of a short story about a man (a programmer, I think) who has worked for decades at the same job at a computer terminal and comes in after a particularly long weekend to find ...
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Story where inert, indestructible alien devices appear all across Earth
One day, billions of hovering, featureless alien objects appear out of thin air in a grid pattern across the Earth's surface. Initially, they cause car and plane crashes, but they do nothing for ...
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Story about an online influencer whose image is taken over by her owner corporation after her death
I read this story online, probably in one of the bigger SF magazine sites, within the last year.
The story is told from the perspective of the celebrity's personal assistant, who also was in love with ...
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1
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Science fiction short story about a man who was a god of rain
Trying to find a likely classic era (Clarke/Asimov/Bradbury time) science fiction short story. It had to do with a traveling man (salesman?) who was always, always traveling in some sort of ...
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Archaeologist on alien planet encounters an alien that tells him the ruins are from a previous human culture [duplicate]
I thought I had asked this question before but it's not in my history.
I'm trying to identify a short story, possibly from the 70s or 80s.
A team of archaeologists is exploring ruins on an alien ...
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Short story where man is sent to the past but he ends up thriving there and the government sends an agent to put him further back [duplicate]
The story is about a man who has a thriving business and a lovely wife. He receives a visitor to whom he decides to tell a supposedly made up tale of what is his actual life.
He was a criminal who got ...
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Looking for short horror story about two kids and a spell book
I’ve been looking around for a collection of short stories that contained one in particular. A brother and sister discover a book of magic in their grandparents’ basement. The girl begins using the ...
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An eternal being outsmarted by a lone man just deceased
I recall having listened to an audio version of a short story where we assist the duel of wits between an eternal being and a person who just passed away. Maybe it was on YouTube (very far in my ...
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