Top 50 Classic Short Stories

An old veteran walks to the wall of remembrance and remembers. --- A short little piece that I had to get down tonight so it may be a bit rough but I hope people see it for what it says.

I'm convinced that I'm in direct-voice communication with the spirit of a young girl who was killed by Indians in this section about a hundred and seventy-five years ago.

What is desirable is not always necessary, while that which is necessary may be most undesirable. Perhaps the measure of a man is the ability to tell one from the other. and act on it.

A masters student does some research into the Apollo 11 moon landing and the claimed hoax. He has some startling discoveries to announce when he delivers his final paper in an Australian university.

A thieft was framed. He needed to clear his name or die. It's a fight for life.

A girl goes for a walk in the woods and gets lost, the searchers can't find her, but her destiny does. Some codes have been omitted so as not to give away too much, I promise there's nothing that should upset anyone as this is more a drama with some sex and not a stroke story.

At one time,this was before the Robot Restriction Laws they'd even allowed them to make their own decisions It was a big, coffin shaped plywood box that looked like it weighed a ton. This brawny type just dumped it through the door of the police station and started away. I looked up from the blotter and shouted at the trucker. "What the hell is that?" "How should I know?" he said as he swung up into the cab. "I just deliver, I don't X-ray 'em. It came on the morning rocket from is all I know."

A Tale of revenge in the old west

It's hard to ferret out a gang of fanatics; it would, obviously, be even harder to spot a genetic line of dedicated men. But the problem Orne had was one step tougher than that!

The space ships were miracles of power and precision; the men who manned them, rich in endurance and courage. Every detail had been checked and double checked; every detail except--

Was it a wild talent that MacReedy had, or was it just prophetic genius that led him to figure out new, improved ordnance weapons and make models of them--before the armed forces had them? Whichever it was, MacReedy was both valuable and dangerous--and when the general saw MacReedy's final figure, the weapons following the mobile rocket A-missile launcher....

There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one. For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is.

There were but three days in which to decipher the most cryptic message ever delivered to earth.

Ordinarily the military least wants to have the others know the final details of their war plans. But, logically, there would be times.

I smelled the trouble the moment I stepped on the lift and took the long ride up the side of the "Lachesis." There was something wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it but

Under normal conditions a whole person has a decided advantage over a handicapped one. But out in deep space the normal may be reversed--for humans at any rate.

How far would you go for a lost loved one?

A little known species defends the Galaxy with an ultimate weapon.

Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States!

This is about the best-hated author on Earth. Who was necessarily pampered and petted because of his crime against humanity....

Being a minor mage and a constable in one of the most difficult zones on the planet means I see a lot. There are no other mages with the constables so I get called for many cases. Sometimes to recreate a crime and others to help with surveillance. Just being a constable on the King's Walk is dangerous. Being a mage constable means everyone knows me and I am always a target for those that hunt us.

The son of one of the first Ashtear and a sidhe queen clone hunts ancient realm gates. When he finds one lost and forgotten he opens a gate. The realm holds dark sidhe and he scouts it until he feels a need to act and help a female slave. After that he discovers their plan to open a gate onto his world to attack.

When the lies outweigh the truth can revenge and death not follow far behind?

If you should set a thief to catch a thief, what does it take to stop a racketeer...?

Some smart people invent a way to dispose of rubbish, and a few other things. The CIA want their technology, and they won't hand it over. Things heat up. Set in Australia.

Was this ill-fated expedition the end of a proud, old race--or the beginning of a new one? There are strange gaps in our records of the past. We find traces of man-like things--but, suddenly, man appears, far too much developed to be the "next step" in a well-linked chain of evolutionary evidence. Perhaps something like the events of this story furnishes the answer to the riddle.

To Thad Allen, meteor miner, comes the dangerous bonanza of a derelict rocket-flier manned by death invisible.

The remarkable thing about Atummyc Afterbath Dusting Powder was that it gave you that lovely, radiant, atomic look--just the way the advertisements said it would. In fact, it also gave you a little something more!

My family taken and being bitten by a blood drinker changes my life. Now I walk the night to enforce the laws and convents of the kingdom and the councils. Some times it is just to show my presences and others it is my judgement dark creatures seek. And then there are those that would bring chaos and I must take a life to make a final judgement.

So the baby had a pet monster. And so nobody but baby could see it. And so a couple of men dropped out of thin air to check and see if the monster was licensed or not. So what's strange about that?

In the not-so-far future, an AI Engine struggles with its own existence, while a famous Law Master finally gets his heart's desire.

Something of the wonder that must have come to men seeking magic in the sky in days long vanished.

Once, wars were won by maneuvering hired fighting men; now wars are different--and the hired experts are different. But the human problems remain!

The gadget was strictly, beyond any question, a toy. Not a real, workable device. Except for the way it could work under a man's mental skin....

If Ollie knew the work he was doing, he would have resigned--if resigning were possible!

No wonder he'd been so interested in the talk of whether our people accepted these theories!

Jason started out as a farm boy and ends up owning a fleet of spaceships. This is his story.

Amy Ballantine has a talent... and sometimes it lets her know more than she needs to know.

Stories of the old West were filled with bad men who lived by the speed of their gun hand. Well, meet Buck Tarrant, who could outdraw them all. His secret: he didn't even have to reach for his weapon....

From_ where _had these attacking Indians come? Out of a long forgotten and dim past? Had their medicine man seen the one supreme vision?

Varta, the last of the virgin Maiden of Asti, is watching her world die. The barbarians of Klem have hunted Memphir to its death and even here, in the forgotten mountain retreat of Asti, Varta can smell the stench of the fires of their destruction. It's time to leave.

Hunted and hated in two worlds, Hradzka dreamed of a monomaniac's glory, stranded in the past with his knowledge of the future. But he didn't know the past quite well enough....

After all--they only borrowed it a little while, just to fix it--

To upset the stable, mighty stream of time would probably take an enormous concentration of energy. And it's not to be expected that a man would get a second chance at life. But an atomic might accomplish both--

It has happened a hundred times in the long history of Earth--and, sooner or later, will happen again!

A story in the Asteroid Hunters Universe
In the not to distant future.

A stellar communications repairman is sent to repair a beacon on a planet, and discovers that its presence had a profound influence on the planet in question. Needing to deal with a locally evolved sentience and a bizarre ritual, the repairman needs to use his best plan to complete his mission and end up alive and whole too.

He was tired of people--a "human interest" columnist, who specializes in glamorizations of the commonplace and sordid is likely to get that way. So. this starship seemed to offer the ideal escape from it all

A story in the Asteroid Hunters Universe
Space age Lost Dutchman.

Collisions in space have consequences. This is a tale of such an event in another solar system, and what happened to a planet-bound race as a result.