I don’t read short stories very often because I’d usually feel a bit underwhelmed by them, but I really like ‘Stories of Your Life and Others’ by Ted Chiang, especially ‘Story of Your Life’ and ‘Division by Zero’ – these two are probably also my favourite sci-fi stories. I don’t really like the type of sci-fi when the story is basically just like ‘we need to build bigger and newer weapons and fight continuously because everyone is a threat’, as if the purpose of science is just to give people a more effective way to kill; I like stories when the authors try to depict how science has challenged and changed our ways of life, our perception of the world, and our ways of thinking; Ted chiang did an amazing job doing exactly this in the collection.
by Chocolate_PannaCotta
3 Comments
Tough question! There’s so many good ones.
Probably [How Long ’til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40855636) precisely for the reasons you outline. Lots of sci-fi but in a way that looks toward what it means to be human, to reach out into the world/space, to try for something better, etc. Some really great stories in there.
You might enjoy Ray Bradbury’s short stories, there are quite a few collections. I have one called “The Stories of Ray Bradbury” – it’s excellent.
fair play ( rent spel original Swedish title) by Tove Jansson, just a beautiful selection of slice of life stories with deep characters