This month, rather than sharing a genre, I’m sharing a writing form, Short Fiction, especially Flash Fiction.
Short vs Flash Fiction
Flash fiction is a classification of short fiction. Generally, stories with less than 7500 words (about 10 pages) are considered short fiction. Flash fiction is anything shorter than 1000 words (just over 3 pages). As the word count gets smaller, other terms are sometimes applied. Here’s a breakdown from Wikipedia: the six-word story, the 280-character story (also known as “twitterature”), the “dribble” (also known as the “minisaga,” 50 words), the “drabble” (also known as “microfiction,” 100 words), and “sudden fiction” (750 words).
I agree with the commentators mentioned in the Wikipedia article: “Some commentators have suggested that flash fiction possesses a unique literary quality in its ability to hint at or imply a larger story.” The key to short story formats is to tell a larger story than the few words allow, and the fewer words, the greater the challenge. The reader must read between the lines, which means the author must provide the right lines to set up the story in-between.
Sharing Great Stories
One of the benefits of knowing other readers of a genre you like is sharing some of the stories and series you have loved and some you are checking out. Since my introduction to science fiction and fantasy, I’ve read short fiction in the genres extensively, primarily classic stories.
With the increase in independent authors and online publishing options, short fiction is experiencing a renaissance now. However, recommendations of current works are difficult because of the way these works are published. Works in series are usually published as part of the series and my recommendations for series include those works. Individual works are usually published in anthologies and online collections. And there are so many anthologies with different combinations of authors and stories, it is difficult to recommend specific ones.
Still, I have some recommendations for you and an announcement. I’ll start with that announcement.
Flash Fiction Coming Soon to Vella
My own weekly flash fiction series of science fiction and fantasy, Flashing Lights: Short and Weird, is launching on Kindle Vella on Dec 1. Flashing Lights is a collection of ghost stories, alien encounters, and other weird tales. You might think of it as something similar to the classic Twilight Zone episodes that you can read in five minutes.
If you live in the US, you can read the first 3 episodes for free. After that, they cost about ten cents each. I’ll have more about the series after it launches. In the meantime, you can watch my author page on Amazon* for new series as they become available.
Affiliate Links
As an aside to this posting, I want to let my readers know I am introducing affiliate links into my posts. An affiliate link is a link to a URL where the owner of that URL might compensate me for your click in some way (usually a small commission). Your experience and personal information security are not changed in any way. The obvious example in these posts is when you click a link to Amazon. If you purchase the item, Amazon puts some pennies in my tip jar. You don’t pay any extra. Affiliate links in text are marked with “*” but they may also occur within image links which are not marked.
Sci-Fi and Fantasy Short Fiction
Short fiction has a great heritage in science fiction and fantasy. Great classic authors cut their teeth in the pulps and, later, the anthology periodicals like Weird Tales (1922-2014), Amazing Stories (1926-2021), and Analog Science Fiction and Fact (originally Astounding Stories, 1930-present). Most of these periodicals are out of print now, but it isn’t because there isn’t a demand for the content. Sci-Fi and fantasy short stories are experiencing a new golden age, but they are now available online.
Wikipedia has an extensive list of short science fiction works. This is a crazy-long list, so may not be that helpful in finding something to read unless you know what you are looking for (like a specific author). I’ve read many of the authors and specific works listed, and many of the names are familiar to most fans of fantasy and science fiction.
Let’s take a look at a few great works I’ve enjoyed and recommend by two elite speculative fiction authors.
The Martian Chronicles
Most people think of the Martian Chronicles* (1950) by Ray Bradbury as a novel, but it was originally published as short stories. The conversion to a novel is what’s called a fix-up structure. The collected stories were assembled with some new content to tie them together. From the publisher:
Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in waves… Each wave different, and each wave stronger.
Bradbury’s Mars is a place of hope, dreams and metaphor-of crystal pillars and fossil seas-where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn -first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars … and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.
Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time’s passage. In connected, chronological stories, a true grandmaster once again enthralls, delights and challenges us with his vision and his heart-starkly and stunningly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, our weakness, our folly, and our poignant humanity on a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong.
Here are a few links to help you find the novel:
The Illustrated Man
Also by Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man* is another collection of short stories told in a novel framework. From the publisher:
You could hear the voices murmuring, small and muted, from the crowds that inhabited his body.
A peerless American storyteller, Ray Bradbury brings wonders alive. The Illustrated Man is classic Bradbury— eighteen startling visions of humankind’s destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin. In this phantasmagoric sideshow, living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Provocative and powerful, Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth—as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world.
Here are a few links to help you find the novel:
Arthur C. Clarke
The Collected Stories* of Arthur C. Clarke is a massive collection of Clarke’s short fiction. From the publisher:
Six decades of fascinating stories from the legendary “colossus of science fiction” and creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey gathered in one compendium (The New Yorker).
Arthur C. Clarke, along with H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein, was a definitive voice in twentieth century science fiction. A prophetic thinker, undersea explorer, and “one of the true geniuses of our time,” Clarke not only won the highest science fiction honors, the Nebula and Hugo Awards, but also received nominations for an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize, and was knighted for his services to literature (Ray Bradbury).
Now, more than one hundred works of the sci-fi master’s short fiction are available in the “single-author collection of the decade” (Booklist, starred review). This definitive edition includes early work such as “Rescue Party” and “The Lion of Comarre,” classics like “The Nine Billion Names of God” and “The Sentinel” (which was the kernel of the later novel and movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey), and later works including “A Meeting with Medusa” and “The Hammer of God.”
Here are a few links to help you find the collection:
Short Sci-Fi in Tabletop Gaming
Roleplaying Games
If I had thought ahead, I would have saved Lasers & Feelings for the short sci-fi RPG. It is one of the simplest RPGs around. With super simple rules, it can be learned in 15 minutes and played in 30-45 minutes. Each play feels like a sci-fi short story.
Boardgames
For the boardgame representing short sci-fi, I looked for a quick, easy game with a sci-fi theme. A few good options that came to mind are Lost Legacy: The Starship (10 min) by AEG and Martian Dice (10 min) by Tasty Minstrel Games. Both are quick and a lot of fun, but the sci-fi theme is pretty thin. Note: play times are from the publisher and may be underestimated…
But the game we’ll look at is Star Realms (20 min) by Wise Wizard Games. It’s ranked 136 boardgamegeek.com. I have this physical game, but honestly don’t play it often because the app version is so fantastic and fast (10 min).
Star Realms is a fast paced deck-building card game of outer space combat. It combines the fun of acquiring new ships and bases from cards available in the market with attacking your opponent’s bases and defending your own. When you reduce your opponent’s score to zero, you win! There are plenty of card effects and combinations to keep the game fresh for many plays, and several expansions for when you want more.
If you enjoy short science or fantasy fiction and other speculative fiction, you will be interested in my monthly newsletter. Sign up for it here.
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Cover image by Butusova Elena/shutterstock.com. Used under license from Shutterstock.com.