Introduction

I volunteered for this job, you know. I wanted to talk about two things: stories that I love, and writers who I feel could do with being better known. And while some of these stories are loved by many people, and so are some of the writers, it’s nice to see them all together in one place: stories of my life and others, to paraphrase one of the authors.

‘How Alike Are We’ by Kim Bo-Young, translated by Jihyun Park and Gord Sellar

“There’s something I can’t see.”

Kim Bo-Young is a South Korean science fiction writer: she was a consultant on Bong Joon-Ho’s movie Snowpiercer but her own work is stranger and more dreamlike. ‘How Alike Are We’ is a story about an AI in a spaceship that’s part a Asimovian twist on detective stories and part comment on gender. It’s also brilliant.

First published in English in Clarkesworld magazine, Issue 157, 2019, and available to read here

‘The Armada’ by Caryl Brahms and SJ Simon

“Drake stirred. Elizabeth of England patted his shoulder as one might a shaggy dog.”

Brahms and Simon wrote the greatest comic fiction of the 20th Century, most of it historical. This extract from their brilliant novel of Shakespearian times was written, incredibly, to bring the book up to a more publishable length. It is at once a great history lesson and beautiful elegy to the past.

Chapter XV of No Bed For Bacon, Black Swan, 2012

‘Elizabeth Thug’ by Jonathan Carroll

“‘Comic Sans.’”

Jonathan Carroll is the great modern heir to surrealism, with a thing about talking dogs and very expensive pens. Neither feature in the beautifully brief ‘Elizabeth Thug’, an incredible short story about erasure and the murder of mystery.

Collected in The Woman Who Married a Cloud, Subterranean Press, 2012, and available to read on Medium here

‘The Problem of Susan’ by Neil Gaiman

“She has the dream again that night.”

You may have heard of Neil Gaiman. He is my favourite modern story writer, in short and long form, and ‘The Problem of Susan’ is his incursion into the world of CS Lewis’: you might say it is the dark side of Narnia.

First published in Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy, edited by Al Sarrantonio, Roc, 2004, and collected in Fragile Things, Headline 2006

‘Story of Your Life’ by Ted Chiang

“Your father is about to ask me the question.”

‘Story of Your Life’ was filmed as Arrival, which is how I came to hear of Ted Chiang and his extraordinarily precise, unblinking science-fiction stories. His stories are sometimes almost clinical in their clarity, but there’s always emotion in them, and none more so in this deeply moving tale.

First published in Starlight 2, 1998. Collected in Stories of Your Life and Others, Tor Books 2002

‘Cursed Bunny’ by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur

“Grandfather used to say, ‘When we make our cursed fetishes, it’s important that they’re pretty.’”

Bora Chung is probably the scariest writer I have ever read: her stories are rooted in South Korean culture, both old and new, and are visceral, horrifying and somehow also funny. This one’s great.

Collected in Cursed Bunny, Honford Star, 2021

‘The New Mother’ by Lucy Clifford

“The children were always called Blue-Eyes and the Turkey…”

Just thinking about this story makes me upset. Actually reading it is something I can do only every year or so. The most frightening fairy tale of all time? Definitely.

First published in The Anyhow Stories, Moral and Otherwise, Macmillan, 1882

‘Specialist’ by Robert Sheckley

“The photon storm struck without warning.”

I read a lot of scifi anthologies as a teenager (more on that later) and some of the stories in them have stayed with me all my life, even though I had forgotten the names of the authors and the stories (more on that later, too). So when I came across ‘Specialist’ again, I was very happy indeed. A vintage science fiction story about co-operation and hope, it’s just gorgeous.

First published in 1953 and collected in Untouched by Human Hands, Ballantine, 1954; reprinted by Penguin in 2021. Widely collected and anthologised, including in The Golden Age of Science Fiction, edited by Kingsley Amis, Hutchinson, 1981

‘One Of Our St Bernard Dogs Is Missing’ by NF Simpson

“It is good to be spurred on with hope.”

NF Simpson is the greatest surrealist writer of all time: his plays, films, and TV shows were both philosophically brilliant and really, really funny. This short piece, a monologue from 1977, is mostly about getting lost in the snow, but in a way that suggests Kafka at his funniest.

First performed on BBC2’s Closedown in 1977. Collected in Most Of What Follows Is A Complete Waste of Time, Oberon, 2013

‘The Man Who Liked Dickens’ by Evelyn Waugh

“Let us read Little Dorrit again. There are passages in that book I can never hear without the temptation to weep.”

Maybe this is the most horrible story of all time. It makes my throat close up whenever I read it. Waugh liked it so much he stuck it in his novel A Handful of Dust. Terrifying.

First published in Hearst’s International combined with Cosmopolitan, September 1933. Collected in The Complete Short Stories, Penguin, 2010. Also integrated into A Handful of Dust, Chapman & Hall, 1934, widely reprinted

‘Wild Flower’ by John Wyndham

“It is a wine of virtuous power…”

I could have made this a list entirely of John Wyndham stories, and ten times longer too: I love his work. The short stories, mostly written for American pulps, are particularly good. ‘Wild Flower’ is more lyrical than most, and it is both beautiful and full of melancholy.

Collected in The Seeds of Time, Michael Joseph, 1956; new edition from Penguin, 2014

‘The Mystery Story’ by ?

“ – ”

As I said above, I used to read a lot of scifi anthologies, and I used to forget what the stories were called and who wrote them: and so it is with this story. I remember the plot – a man lives in a literal nightmare world where freakish and murderous creatures are everywhere, and his only escape is in sleep, where he dreams that he lives in a normal, dull world exactly like our own. I was so obsessed with finding this story that I seriously considered writing it again, myself: I didn’t, but the thought gave me the idea for my novel, All My Colors.

(If you know what the story is, by the way, please let me know. I will be disappointed and delighted.)