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	Звёздные корабли 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 Hart, 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
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Manuel Alfonseca
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