For me, it is The Most Dangerous Game (1924) in which a castaway is hunted down on an island by a mad Russian aristocrat and his henchman.
It is probably the most significant short story. Not only did it inspire paintball of all things, but it was a pre-war visitation of the sort of stories you would get in the 50’s (James Bond etc) of exotic locations, fearsome underlings and a battle of wits.
by ARedemptionSong
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The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin.
The Most Dangerous Game is utterly brilliant, but I was surprised by The Jaunt, by Stephen King, and it stayed with me.
IMO John Steinbeck’s The White Quail
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Sandkings y George R.R. Martin.
I honestly don’t remember that many of them, so have to go with Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
Cathedral by Raymond Carver
The Gift of the Magi
I really enjoyed “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Hemingway
All you zombies – Robert A. Heinlein
Isaac Asimov’s The Last Question should be mentioned here.
Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder
Story of Your Life, Ted Chiang
*The Lottery*, by Shirley Jackson.
*The Last Question*, by Isaac Asimov.
*The Tell-Tale Heart*, by Edgar Allen Poe.
*The Metamorphosis*, by Franz Kafka.
*The Gift of the Magi*, by O. Henry.
The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst
Hills like white elephants-Hemingway. The most deceptively simple yet powerful piece of writing I’ve read
There will come soft rains by Ray Bradbury
I have no mouth and I must scream. Changed my mind on an AI overlord.
Chekhov the bet
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison
The Dead by James Joyce is one of the most profound and beautiful short stories ever written, and the 1987 film adaptation starring Donal McCann and Angelica Huston is also a masterpiece.
The Yellow Wallpaper and The Lottery have already been mentioned here but a terrific anthology of short stories that I never see mentioned is Sum by David Eagleman.
It’s 40 short stories imagining what the afterlife could be like. My favourite of them is called Metamorphosis. I bought two copies of Sum so that I could loan one out to people while still having a copy on hand. Then I stupidly loaned out the second copy. Now I need to buy a third!
I read The Most Dangerous Game, but have forgotten it (though I recall enjoying it – somewhat). Mine are two that deserve to be read side by side. They are:
A Hunger Artist, by Franz Kafka
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
For those who enjoy these, they will also likely enjoy “The Most Beautiful Drowned Man in the World,” also by Marquez.
Other, longer short stories (which might not qualify because they are short novels or novellas) for me are the following:
The Little Prince
The Old Man and the Sea
Death of Ivan Ilyitch
The Pearl
Of Mice and Men
Plus a bunch of Hemingway’s actual short stories. Finally, Harrison Bergeron, by Vonnegut. Given that the question asks for just one, I would go with A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.
The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft is, in my opinion, the best short story ever written.
H.P. Lovecraft created a new genre of horror, and this story is the epitome of what is now called cosmic horror. He inspired countless authors with his short stories even though he never saw the impact he made on the genre while he was alive. Stephen King said about Lovecraft and his writing: “He opened the door for me as he had done for others before me.”
The story centres around a man who accidentally discovers a connection between artists with strange dreams, notes from a dead professor, newspaper clippings, and a clay figurine.
The beginning of the story has always given me chills and is, in my opinion, the best opening to a story ever: “The most merciful thing in the world I think is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the mindst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
Please read it or listen to the audio version.
The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges is perfect
*The Temple* by HP Lovecraft. A short story about a WW1 German U Boat’s crew going insane and their captain being stranded alone at the bottom of the ocean next to an ancient ancient temple city which he is drawn to go inside of
Good atmospheric horror, and the twist of it being a strict submarine commander who doesnt like any nonsense and hysterical hallucinations from his crew only to slowly realize something is very wrong (but too late) is nice
*The Chains of Command*, by Graham McNeil, introduces Uriel Ventris of the Ultramarines, and is the account of his Captain’s death (upon which Ventris will rise to captaincy and strive to live up to Idaeus’ legacy)
The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) by Jorge Luis Borges is a doozy and very much ahead of its time in describing parallell timelines being created by different choices and their outcomes, and the woah-moment ending really takes you by surprise.
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Really liked The Jaunt by S King
“A Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin. It expresses what “The Yellow Wallpaper” does in a very short, ironic tale.
“Harrison Bergeron” does the same today for what 1984 does.
Edit: I meant “HB” warns us that we can be told things are for our own good when they actually help us be suppressed and controlled, not that it was a warning of socialism. It’s a 3-page story, not a 284-page novel. Lol.
The fact that in “HB” they amend the constitution over 200 times, for example. Yes, that’s hyperbole, but to say Vonnegut wanted us to take it a step further and decide the whole thing was a satire mocking the idea that this could be true, and that conservatives are just trying to scare people? I know Vonnegut and Orwell were very opposite in their political beliefs, but I don’t know about that.
The lamb to slaughter always sticks with me
Bright Winter by Anna Keesey
The Dead by James Joyce
The Swimmer by John Cheever
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
The Cold Equation, about a girl who stows away on a spaceship bc she wants to surprise her brother, even though she knows better.
There’s a short story I read once and never found again. If anyone knows please comment the title. It’s about a mom and her son and these -robots? Androids?- who ha e human parts but can only move if being perceived by humans. She makes a choice because it turns out her son is dying. Does anyone know what I’m talking about? That story was amazing.
A Clean Well Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway
The Lottery Shirley Jackson
Sonny’s Blues, by James Baldwin.
It’s a masterfully told, slow burn take on brothers, Jazz, heroin, race, cities… Really just high art about art.
_A Perfect Day for Bananafish_ by J.D. Salinger is my favorite short story. If you’re interested in a good order in which to read Salinger’s stories featuring the Glass family, here is my take:
1. A Perfect Day for Bananafish
2. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
3. Seymour: An Introduction
4. Franny and Zooey
All Summer In A Day
Edgar Allan Poe tops my list. The Cask of Amontillado, The Raven (technically a poem but I think it counts), The Tell-Tale Heart – I can’t decide between them.
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
A whole bunch of stuff by Ray Bradbury, but I’ll specifically say “There Will Come Soft Rains” as a personal favorite. I also love The Sound of Summer Running as it captures a couple specific feelings perfectly in a way that I haven’t found elsewhere.
A whole bunch by Poe and Lovecraft…not sure I can even pick.
If I HAVE to pick one it’s “The Lottery” tho. As someone who teaches short stories, I can see by my students’ reactions that this story is the GOAT. It hits every year, and has for a long time, even across generations.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
I would prefer not to tell you.
>!Seriously: **Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street** by Herman Melville. Clearly a story with a moral, but I’ve never been able to figure out exactly what that moral is. It’s in the public domain and available for free [here](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11231).!<
For Esme, with Love and Squalor by JD Salinger
My f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s are not intact
To Build a Fire — Jack London
A Good Man is Hard to Find — Flannery O’Connor
*A Good Man Is Hard to Find* by Flannery O’Connor.
I can’t believe nobody has said The Legend of Sleepy Hollow yet
Harrison Bergeron
A Rose for Emily
Other People
A lot of great mentions already, but let me add:
“The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson;
“The Devil and Daniel Webster” by Stephen Vincent Benét; and
everything in Ficciones by Borges, especially “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” “Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote,” and “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero.”
I didn’t see anyone mention my favorite of all-time yet, so I feel inclined to chime in with “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates.