Thursday, December 26, 2019

The 25 science fiction stories I most liked

Isaac Asimov

In the United States fiction is classified depending on the length of the work, with four subsequent stages:
  1. Novel, any work that has more than 40,000 words.
  2. Novella, a work between 17,500 and 40,000 words.
  3. Novelette, between 7,500 and 17,500 words.
  4. Short Story, less than 7,500 words.
Naturally, the limits are not strict, and in practice they depend on who classifies each book. In Spanish, however, we have fewer categories:
  1. Novel.
  2. Short novel, which applies to works of intermediate length.
  3. Story, with few characters and a simple plot.
As I gave in another post the list of my favorite novels in the science fiction genre, here I’ll consider just the last three categories. As I had too many, I applied them the following restriction:
From each author, I have chosen a maximum of two works.
This is the list, containing 25 stories, in alphabetic order of author names:

Author
Story
Date
Poul Anderson
Sister planet
1959

Turning point
1963
Isaac Asimov
Nightfall
1941

The singing bell
1955
Raymond E. Banks
The short ones
1955
Ray Bradbury
The man
1949

The fire balloons
1951
Arthur C. Clarke
The ultimate melody
1957

Dial F for Frankenstein
1965
Анатолий Днепров
Anatoly Dneprov
Крабы идут по острову
Crabs on the island
1958
Иван Ефремов
Ivan Yefremov
Stellar ships
1944
Tom Godwin
The cold equations
1954
Robert A. Heinlein
The menace from Earth
1957
Zenna Henderson
Pottage
1955
Murray Leinster
The aliens
1959
Walter M.Miller Jr.
Dark benediction
1951

A canticle for Leibowitz
1955
Fred Saberhagen
Without a thought
1963
James Schmitz
Balanced ecology
1965
Robert Sheckley
Human man’s burden
1956

The minimum man
1958
Cordwainer Smith
Scanners live in vain
1950

The game of rat and dragon
1956
Theodore Sturgeon
Thunder and roses
1947
A.E. van Vogt
Black destroyer
1939

Ray Bradbury
Eight of these stories belong to the subgenre of the first contact with aliens; four to the exploration of the solar system; four to interstellar exploration; three to artificial intelligence; two are apocalyptic; and four belong to other topics.
The stories by Poul Anderson I like most are those that pose important moral dilemmas. This happens especially in what for me is his favorite novel, Orbit unlimited, which is made up of four brief stories, but as I quoted the whole book in my previous post, I have excluded those stories from this one. In their place I have selected two other similar stories.
Of some authors, like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, I had more than two works to choose from, but since my decision was irrevocable, I had to select just two. In Clarke’s case, I decided to choose those I have cited most often, among other sites in this blog. One of them, The ultimate melody, belongs to the collection titled Tales from the White Heart, incredible stories told by a scientist at drinkers meetings in an English pub, somewhat in the style of Mr. Mulliner stories by P.G. Wodehouse. I have mentioned this story in the first novel of my series The Sleuths of the Spanish Transition, entitled Quetzalcoatl’s Zahir.
The story by Raymond Banks, The short ones was one of the influences that led me to write my science fiction novel Jacob’s Ladder.
The fire balloons, by Ray Bradbury, is a little known story belonging to the cycle of the Martian Chronicles, but is difficult to find in the editions with this title. Perhaps it is precisely because of the reason why I like it, as it is one of Bradbury's Martian tales with more religious connotations.
Walter M. Miller Jr.
A canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller Jr., is the original short story, later expanded to become a complete novel, one of my favorite long novels. As Miller’s second story I chose Dark Benediction, to which I have dedicated a post in this blog.
It can be seen that all the stories on my list, without exception, belong to what has been called the Golden Age of Science-Fiction (1939-1965). In fact, one of those stories, by van Vogt, is often cited as the opening of the golden age, although others have given that honor to Who goes there? by John W. Campbell Jr., which was adapted to the movies in the famous 1951 film The Thing from another world.
Of course, everyone has their own lists and they rarely coincide. As a comparison, here is one based on popular voting. Of these 100 stories, just five are on my list. Of my 18 authors one half are on that list, but several of them with different stories.

The same post in Spanish
Thematic Thread on Literature and Cinema: Previous Next
Manuel Alfonseca
Happy Christmas

1 comment:

  1. While I enjoy many of the new science fiction writers of today - I also find that many of my favorites also come from the "Golden Age" of Science Fiction ( possible due to the fact that I myself hail from near that time and read those same novels ).

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