I’m hoping this is the best place to ask, even if I’m not technically asking for book suggestions. I’m looking for short stories with beautiful prose (not purple prose!). I’m mostly interested in sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery but I’m willing to read anything really. An example of a book I really liked was The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. So something like that would be really nice. Thanks!
by Brahehat
7 Comments
Neil Gaiman’s short stories range from lovely to disturbing, but his command of writing as a craft is beautiful.
Ted Chiang’s science fiction collections are really wonderful (Stories of Your Life and Others, Exhalation).
Ursula K LeGuin, Ian MacLeod, David Marusek, Nabokov, Gene Wolfe.
Amal El-Mohtar has some gorgeous short stories, really worth reading. My favorite of hers is in the short story collections “Mythic Dreams,” which has retellings of myths from around the world, but this one (which is actually available to read online) is the first of hers I read and it stuck with me for a long time: [https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/madeleine/?ref=amalelmohtar.com](https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/madeleine/?ref=amalelmohtar.com)
P.H Lee’s short stories are mostly speculative fiction with beautiful prose– I particularly recommend the fairy-tale style ones in the Tales of the Great Sweet Sea collection, which you can find here: [https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/series/tales-of-the-great-sweet-sea/](https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/series/tales-of-the-great-sweet-sea/) .
I really enjoy John Wiswell’s short stories, like this one: [https://reactormag.com/d-i-y-john-wiswell/](https://reactormag.com/d-i-y-john-wiswell/).
Ray Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles is my favorite collection (though it’s technically a novel, I guess. I think all of the chapters started as independent short stories).
There Will Come Soft Rains is a great example (maybe the best one).
Sounds like you might enjoy the short stories of Edgar Allen Poe.
Michael Chabon.