recommend short stories?

[Desdichado]

Ill-met in Lankhmar is probably the one to go with there.

I'd also recommend Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos for an anthology of mostly non-Lovecraft mythos tales. Some of the stories are remarkably bad, but many are quite good, and it's fun to see different takes on the themes anyway.

 

[PaulKemp]

"The Year's Best Sci-Fi," edited by Gardner Dozois, and the "Year's Best Fantasy and Horror," edited by Ellen Datlow. Both typically contain upwards of twenty stories each and the quality, as you would expect, is high.

 

[The Human Target]

Bradbury - The Illustrated Man

 

[Tauric]

I keep a copy of Tales of the White Wolf on my bedstand for nights when I can't sleep. It's a collection of Elric stories, written by, among others, Tad Williams, Neil Gaiman, and Moorcock himself.

 

[Psion]

I've been keeping a collection called The Good Stuff (ed. Dozois) by my bedside, and it has a lot of SF adventure stories I had yet to see.

Of course, this may be a bit dated, but if you don't own them, I recommend The Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

 

[JoeGKushner]

That's one of the things that the various Years Best of are good for.

I recommend the Earthsea bit. It's short enough that you can almost consider them... longer short stories and the fourth book is an anthology of short stories.

Good call on the new Thieves World Omnibus edition, First Blood. I've got it and have been rereading it. Easier on the eyes than the old paperbacks.

Tales of the White Wolf had some good stuff but a little too much of it, including Moorcock's own work, took place in other dates/times. For that, I recommend Pawn of Chaos which doesn't just feature Elric but many variants of the Eternal Champion so you don't have any deep expectations on how the characters should act or where they should be at *not Nazi Germany thank you*.

 

[Greylock]

It's neither Sci-Fi or Fantasy, but if you're lookibg for the best short story anthologies out there, you shouldn't ignore two by John Gardner; The King's Indian and The Art of Living. Both have some of the best short ficiton I've ever read, and I've read a lot. It is a favorite genre of mine.

And yes, I've pimped John Gardner here many times. Can't help myself.

 

[mmadsen]

I'm looking for a short story anthology to keep in my car so when I eat at a restaurant at lunch I have something to read. I kept the new Conan anthology in my car for about 9 months and it was a worthy lunch companion.

If you enjoyed the first Conan anthology, naturally you should enjoy the second. And if you enjoyed both of those, you should enjoy The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn: The Last King.

 

[Starman]

Any of Harlan Ellison's collections of short stories deserve to be on everyone's must read list.

Starman

 

[Dinkeldog]

Bradbury's _Illustrated Man_ is fantastic. So is _Dandelion Wine_, which is written, kind of like _To Kill a Mockingbird_, as a series of short story-style events with an overarching theme. At any rate, you can pretty much read a chapter of that and then stop and pick up the next story at some point later.

Another choice is Charles DeLint, who has written a number of books, short story collections and novels, in a modern fantasy style. The writing style is different from what you'll get from the older stuff; he's one of my current favorites.