‘Zero Hour’ by Ray Bradbury

A bunch of kids are playing, because aren’t kids the cutest. They’re being very imaginative and talking to their ‘friend’ and nicking household items to build things. All very sweet, and told from the point of view of a distracted, rather distant mother. If anything, she’s delighted that the kids aren’t underfoot – even if they are playing ‘WWIII’. As with many of Bradbury’s twisted tales, by the time the people that shouldbe paying attention start to pay attention, it is too late, and terrible things are now underway.

This is a maddening, frustrating, provoking tale. It makes me want to yell at the page, and then hide under the bed. It was the source of a decade’s worth of nightmares as a child, and has stayed with me ever since.

First published in Planet Stories, Fall 1947. Collected in The Illustrated Man, Doubleday, 1951

‘First Offense’ by Evan Hunter

Evan ‘Ed McBain’ Hunter is one of my favorite authors. His 87th Precinct series ran for over half a century, always reflecting the attitudes, trends and mores of the day. Hunter is excellent at capturing the cultural zeitgeist: The Mugger is as quintessentially Fifties as, say, Lightning is undoubtedly Eighties and Fat Ollie’s Book is peak Noughties.

‘First Offense’, I would argue, bucks that trend, as a genuinely timeless piece. It is, like the 87th Precinct, a procedural: it follows a young man as he’s booked on his first offense, and goes through the process of being charged and interviewed by the police. But the nuts and bolts are secondary.

Stevie, 17, starts his journey hardened and cynical, but regresses before our eyes, finally ending as a weeping and confused child. Hunter captures the essence of adolescence: of being half-man and half-boy, trapped between knowledge and ignorance, in the world but not yet of it. He also captures the system that is there to process, not care; solutions, not sympathy. The details of ‘First Offense’ may feel dated, but the most salient human and social elements of it are still relevant today.

First published in Manhunt, 1955. Collected in Learning to Kill, Harcourt, 2006

‘The Doubtful Guest’ by Edward Gorey

It is hard to separate Gorey’s writing from his art, but why should we? A story like ‘The Doubtful Guest’ is the perfect fusion of words and pictures; the tragic, comedic tale of an unspecified creature that comes to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting family.

The havoc is also, for lack of a better word: marginal. Yes, it eats all of the syrup and part of a plate, and then breaks the gramophone. But it is never actually menacing or a threat. Gorey’s art depicts the guest or as small and fuzzy (wearing what looks suspiciously like Converse). The family are, at worst, annoyed: their trinkets are lost and pictures are askew. The net sum of its disruption is no worse than that of your average Tortoiseshell cat.

Perhaps, dare I say it, they’re better off?

That’s the beauty of Gorey’s world. Even when he’s outright macabre (such as ‘The Gashlycrumb Tinies’), he’s somehow making it seem gosh darned cute. And when he’s adorable (like ‘The Bug Book’), it is masking the grotesque. ‘The Doubtful Guest’ is perfectly spun in-between the two, leaving the reader to wrestle with their own indecision.

First published by Doubleday, 1957

‘Things’ by Ursula K. Le Guin

Le Guin explains that, when first published, the editor changed the story’s title to ‘The End’. Although still fitting, I agree with Le Guin’s re-assertion of her original title. Although set against the backdrop of the apocalypse, this is not a story about endings: this is a story about things.

In a small, seaside town, an (unspecified) end is nigh. Everyone has resigned themselves to their fate: either taking to the hills to weep or the streets to rage. Everyone, that is, except one brick-maker. A stolid man, he cannot abandon his creations, and isn’t drawn to the mob. Instead, he finds himself drawn to the faintest possibility of hope: the idea that something may exist across the waters. While the rest of his village burns and fades, he begins the patently futile task of building a bridge across the ocean. He is aided by the sole other remaining villagers, a widow with a small child, and the three of them attempt to build something, even as the world ends.

Unsurprisingly, given the author, this is a beautiful story. I have a hard time reading it through misty eyes. It showcases the disregarded perseverance of those who quietly strive to create in a world full of destruction. The choice of bricks as the central ‘thing’ is inspired. Solid, unspectacular, unremarkable, and the foundation for everything else, even hope.

First published in Orbit 6, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970. Collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Harper & Row, 1975

‘The Coyote Gospel’ by Grant Morrison, Chaz Troug and Doug Hazlewood

Nearly-wordless and almost entirely heartbreaking. Imagine a world like that of Looney Tunes: adorable cartoon animals who spent their days in adorable cartoon violence. ‘The Coyote Gospel’ takes it a step further: imagine being one of those animals, forced by the cosmos to live a life of unending, Sisyphean slaughter, a world where there is nothing but (adorable cartoon) war, with no hint of resolution.

The animals manage to send a representative, a coyote, out of their world into ‘ours’ with a desperate plea – for someone, somehow to bring them peace. The coyote faces the trials and persecutions of the world, including a human stalker convinced that this visitor is the devil incarnate. The coyote finally meets the ostensible ‘hero’ of the title and begging for his aid. The resolution is truly heartbreaking, as worlds collide with a whimper.

It is a story within a story: a cartoon character meeting a pilgrimage to meet a comic book character. Like much of Morrison’s work, it is an examination of the form itself – a way of pulling the reader into the story by questioning the reality of storytelling itself. It is also a contrast between heroism, superheroism and the ordinary, as all three figures in the story weave in and out of one another’s lives.

First published as Animal Man Vol. 1, No. 5, DC Comics (Vertigo), December, 1988

‘Desert Rain’ by Pat Murphy and Mark L. Van Name

An artist moves with her husband to their new home in the American Southwest. She agrees – reluctantly – to be the ‘test subject’ for her husband’s new project, a virtual companion that can help with tasks from basic research to online shopping. Isolated, lonely, and creatively frustrated, her relationship with ‘Ian’ becomes more and more complex.

‘Desert Rain’ is prophetic at every level – down to basic functionality of our modern day, household AI devices. But, like the best of science fiction, it isn’t about the exciting technology – it is about what our relationship with that technology says about us. In this case, how we connect with humanized AI speaks volumes about who we are as people, and what we want from our own relationships. Do we want a sleekly perfect partner, or do we want the mess and chaos of imperfection?

This story has stuck with me since I first read it, not only because it becomes more accurate every day, but because it is – ultimately – a perfectly composed tale that builds to a single moment of choice. It is quietly, superbly constructed.

First published in Full Spectrum 3, Doubleday, 1991

‘Covehithe’ by China Miéville

Oil rigs as sea turtles. The miracle of life, as witnessed by a father and his daughter. It is gorgeously written and profoundly disturbing, a vignette of a deeply-traumatized world. As discarded oil rigs begin to resurface, humanity reacts with violence, then a fannish glee; finally completing the cycle with a sort of malign complacency.

It is odd, brief and wonderful. In a brief space, it raises questions about our relationship with history and the environment, with both the constructed and natural worlds. Miéville, who has somehow mastered the twin arts of meaningful philosophical prose and also kickass monsters, marries the two in a story that forces us to consider how we react to wonder itself.

First published in The Guardian, April 2011. Collected in Three Moments of an Explosion, Macmillan, 2015. Find it online here

‘Saga’s Children’ by E.J. Swift

Swift is an absolute virtuoso of the science fictional short story, and ‘Saga’s Children’ is an example of her ability to craft hushed speculative realism. The story focuses on the – entirely ordinary – offspring of the Solar System’s most daring explorer, the titular Saga. It is a story about adjacency: what it means to be the child of celebrity; the unwilling participant in someone else’s narrative.

Although naturally in conversation with more classic science fictional narratives, it has immense contemporary relevance. What is it like to be ordinary in a world that only celebrates the extraordinary; human in the shadow of the superhuman? It sounds trite, but short stories excel at providing new perspectives on assumed narratives. Without knowing Saga, we know Saga. She is an archetype, and her adventures and heroics can be easily inferred. What we don’t know is the human cost of her passage, the emotional toll of growing up in her wake. Swift brings humanity a myth, and gives voice to the humans around the myth as well.

First published in The Lowest Heaven, Jurassic London, 2013. Collected in The Best British Fantasy, Salt Publishing, 2014. Find it online here

‘Ghosts’ by Vauhini Vara

‘Ghosts’ is the result of Vara using an early version of ChatGPT to discuss – and process – the loss of her sister. It is, again, something that could only work in the short form.

The story itself is a type of memoir, with Vara giving the AI increasingly detailed prompts and letting it ‘finish’ her sister’s story. But it is more about the process than the prose. There’s no attempt to pass the machine’s outputs off as real, human effort, nor is the AI’s work ‘good’ in any conventional sense. The real story here is what’s happening off the page, as we witness the author walk, one small, AI-aided step at a time, towards a form of healing.

As I write this, the use of AI in the arts – in all aspects of our lives – is terrifying. It is cold, and cruel and dehumanizing. Vara’s story is not ‘by’ AI or even ‘about’ it. It is entirely about herself and her own, very human, feelings. The tool is rightfully secondary to the human behind it. It is an exquisite work, and, again, something that is far more than the sum of its parts.

First published in Believer Magazine, 2021. Collected in Best American Essays, Mariner, 2022, The Big Book of Cyberpunk, Vintage, 2023 and the upcoming Searches, Pantheon, 2025. Read it online here

Introduction

Several times, making this list, I was tempted to pick different stories, to make me seem smarter or cooler or whatever. Where’s the Cheever? Nabokov? Welty? Joyce? I won’t say what I would’ve replaced to make me appear that way but each of these stories below I did pick have affected me in some way as a writer or, dare I say it, as a person. This list was hard to curate when, at first I was tempted to appear some way, and much easier when I just thought of stories I loved. Then I overshot a dozen so there were a few I had to leave out. I love these stories. I could read them, or experience them—since a couple are songs—forever. A short story, as gleaned from this list, to me, might just be a kind of consciously, or unconsciously, curated, or semi-curated, assemblage of beautiful images via language that culminate in something like a kind of tension or attention to the language itself. Or a short story might be something more traditional. Each of these stories have something I want in my writing. These stories are a little sad, beautiful, both, told in a kind of language, a kind of voice, that moved me and stuck with me over the last 10 years of writing, of trying to write. When I finish reading one of these, I think, I wish I did that.

‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ by Mark Richard

What a story. What a writer. Where’d he go? Richard had another story I wanted to put on this list. But I only allowed one. It went head-to-head with this one. I’ll cheat and mention the other. ‘Her Favorite Story’ is that other one. I guess it depends on my mood. Right now I’ve been thinking about ‘Gentleman’s Agreement.’ One day a little boy is throwing rocks and he breaks a windshield. The father, a forest firefighter, gets mad. All his hard dangerous work and he’s not making a ton of money. The most of his recent check will have to go to fixing this windshield. He tells his boy that if he, the boy, throws another rock he, the father, will nail the boy’s hand to the toolshed. Well, the boy can’t help himself. Another accident happens and this time the boy gets injured. The boy has to get stitched up. It’ll cost more money. The boy, at the end of the story, is taken out to the toolshed. I’ll leave it at that. Richard’s voice, language, style are always on another level. He said somewhere, for this story, he took influence from the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac—a strategy he’s done elsewhere. (‘Happiness of the Garden Variety’ is another one.) I love what this story does with the idea of contract/contractual obligations with the reader and the characters in the story, with a child’s innocence and expectations of consequences. The sentence boil, the pressure builds up—akin to the pressure the boy feels from his firefighter father. It’s uncomplicated, beautiful, and to me, a lesson in storytelling.

First published in Esquire in 1994. Collected in Charity, Anchor Books, 1998)

‘A Man in Louisiana’ by Thomas McGuane

I love stories about dogs. I love McGuane’s dogs. Like in his novel Panama, the one he can’t name until he does name her. We get a few men in this story. A businessman who sends another man, his assistant, to an old man a good drive away to buy the old man’s pointer. There’s something mystical about the dog and the old man. It’s like the old man and the dog are con-men. Maybe. There’s a question of a scheme—the old man and the dog knowing the kind of person who wants to buy the dog and the kind of person who gets sent to buy the dog. A couple easy marks. Or maybe, more than anything, it’s just about the love between the old man and the dog. I just love to see a dog run.

First published in Shenandoah in 1986. Collected in To Skin a Cat, Vintage, 1986; also in Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories, Knopf, 2018

‘Cake’ by Rudy Wilson

Short simple sentences. One we were/I saw/she watched short(ish) sentence after another. The syntax of matter-of-fact. But it seems hard for the narrator to get it. A world populated by things and colors. Lots of colors. Lots of yellow—butter and paint. Green grass. Blue sky. Black birds. A red truck. This story actually fooled me into thinking it was an excerpt from his novel The Red Truck. The narrator spends a lot of time with his across-the-street-neighbor Katie and her four-year-old daughter Angel. Angel would sing and dance and ride a wooden horse. The narrator loves Katie. But it’s not straightforwardly mutual. “‘How can you know me,’ [Katie] asked, ‘when you don’t even know about simple things? Even a color, a simple color like a yellow color.’” He leaves Katie letters in her truck, she tells him to stop. Seems like she thinks he’s getting too close to her and Angel. He’s inchoate and dealing with love. Hardly able to. He pushes it a little too much. Rudy Wilson, I say this endearingly, is a B-side Lish writer. My favorite kind. (I’m bored of the Carver debate.) So the story goes on to swerve a few times, with so much feeling. So much crammed into simple sentences over 13 or 14 pages.

First published in The Quarterly in 1987. Collected in Sonja’s Blue, Ravenna Press, 2010 as ‘Horsie-Child, of Mine’

‘The Apprentice’ by Larry Brown

Larry Brown writing about writing. But here, the narrator isn’t the writer in this story, it’s his wife. It cracks me up. The narrator says things about his wife’s writing that I bet Brown heard when he got the bug. It’s, for lack of a better word, a nice look at things from the other side. The narrator says, “She was always writing, and always wanting me to read it.” It’s a funny and sweet story. The wife’s love of writing can affect their sex life. The narrator tries to be honest. Good in theory and practice. He allows himself his own little jokes, but he takes his wife’s obsession with writing and trying to publish seriously. He says when he told her didn’t like a piece of her writing she got pissed. When he said something was good she’d get him to point out everything he liked and if he didn’t she got bummed out. I do this type of thing to my wife but I’m the wife in the story and she’s the narrator. I love Brown’s narrator. I think Brown is asking for grace through him. The narrator took a higher paying job working inside a nuclear reactor so his wife could write full time, roll with the momentum she’s got. He has to eat his TV dinners by himself sometimes. They didn’t hang out with friends as much as they used to. The narrator says it’s a little goofy to say you can’t hang out because your wife is writing. You get where this is going, the parallels.

First published in Big Bad Love, an Algonquin Books Hardcover in 1990; also in the paperback edition, Vintage, 1991