Short Stories in the 2024 Tagset

[donutsweeper]

A compilation post for poems and short stories, available in either written or audio form, in the tagset with links on where to find them (or more information about them) if possible.

Please comment with ones I've missed or if a different translation or version of a canon is preferred. Generally speaking, I've gone with writer's digest definition of a short story being under 30k words.

18 Foot Leash - Porpentine Charity Heartscape

The Attic - A. M. Burrage

Art in the Blood - Brian Stableford

Ballad of the Mari Lwyd - Vernon Watkins

Better Living Through Algorithms - Naomi Kritzer (also has an audio version available)

Calf Cleaving in the Benthic Black - Isabel J. Kim (also has an audio version available)

Casting the Runes - M. R. James

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came - Robert Browning

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

The Court Magician - Sarah Pinsker (also has an audio version available)

The Cthulhu Navy Wife - Sandra McDonald

Darling and the Cinderella Club - Anonymous (AO3 work)

De vilde Svaner | The Wild Swans - Hans Christian Andersen

Doctor Eszterhazy Stories - Avram Davidson (see promo post comment)

Fandom For Robots - Vina Jie-Min Prasad

FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion Of Your Thesis Defense (McSweeney's Post) - Luke Burns

Farmer Giles of Ham - J.R.R. Tolkien

A Guide for Young Ladies Entering the Service of the Fairies - Rosamund Hodge

Growing Things - Paul Tremblay

Homecoming is Just Another Word for the Sublimation of the Self - Isabel J. Kim (also has an audio version available)

Hauntings - Vernon Lee (characters nominated are from two of the short stories, A Wicked Voice and Oke of Okehurst, available in the collection via Gutenberg here)

I Am AI - Ai Jiang

Incompetent Time-Travelling Saxophone Haters (Tumblr Post)

The International Society of Infallible Detectives - Carolyn Wells (set of five short stories, available to borrow here from archive.org; three of the stories available by themselves: The Adventure of the Lost Baby, The Adventure of the Mona Lisa (HathiTrust's scanned version and an audio version), The Adventure of the Clothes-line)

Jorinde und Joringel | Jorinde and Joringel (Fairy Tale)

Kilmeny - James Hogg

Lake of Souls - Ann Leckie (Novelette)

Lucifer's Wife - Eleanor M. Ingram

Midnights - Rainbow Rowell

Miss Mack - Michael McDowell (also has an audio version available)

mulberry down!! - Nicole Kornher-Stace

The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde - Mary de Morgan

oh Charlie Harper we love you get up - spit_kitten (AO3 Work, originally posted here)

Rude Litterbox Space - Mary Robinette Kowal

Sandkings - George R. R. Martin

Seventy-Two Letters - Ted Chiang (pdf, audio version)

The Story of Conn-Eda (Folk Tale) (or pdf of scanned book here)

A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman

A Tale of Future Crime (cohost post) - jackapedia

There is No Antimemetics Division - qntm

The Thirteenth Dancer - Leah Cypess

Thurnley Abbey - Perceval Landon

Tlön Uqbar Orbis Tertius - Jorge Luis Borges

To Sail Beyond the Botnet - Suzanne Palmer (also has an audio version available)

Top 5 Rat Movies I Made Up - John Paul Brammer: Legends of the Great Below (newsletter with plot descriptions/short reviews of the made up movies)

The Vampyre - John William Polidori (audio and DLable annotated text in various versions here)

The Very Pulse of the Machine - Michael Swanwick (also has audio version available)

Wikihistory - Desmond Warzel

Wind Will Rove - Sarah Pinsker

Wulf and Eadwacer (old English version, modern English translation one, two, three)

A Year and A Day in Old Theradane - Scott Lynch

Yudah Cohen Series - Rebecca Fraimow (Three short stories - "Further Arguments in Support of Yudah Cohen’s Proposal to Bluma Zilberman", Shaina Rubin Keeps Her Head Under Circumstances Nobody Could Have Expected, and Gitl Schneiderman Learns to Live With Her In-Laws, the last two have audio versions available as well)

赠答诗 | Poems Composed in Reply - 金车美人 (弘农) | Beautiful Woman in a Golden Carriage (Hong Nong) promo post comment with links to original and translations

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for compiling the list! There is also The Court Magician by Sarah Pinsker

https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-court-magician/

[donutsweeper]

Added, thank you!

[primeideal]

I Am AI: Ai Jiang is a novelette, pretty sure it's paywalled.

Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius: Jorge Luis Borges https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Borges-Tl%C3%B6n-Uqbar-Orbius-Tertius.pdf

To Sail Beyond the Botnet: Suzanne Palmer (22k, novella): https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/palmer_05_23/

Wikihistory: Desmond Warzel https://www.abyssapexzine.com/wikihistory/

[donutsweeper]

Added, thanks!

[snowynight]

For Hauntings - Vernon Lee, the nominated characters come from two short stories in the book: A Wicked Voice and Oke of Okehurst.

Link to Hauntings - Vernon Lee on Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9956

[donutsweeper]

Added, thanks!

[nomadicwriter]

Miss Mack - Michael McDowell (available in both written and audio form here).

[donutsweeper]

Added, thanks!

[amphipodgirl]

The International Society of Infallible Detectives is a set of five short stories; available free to read on archive.org with an account: https://archive.org/details/sherlockholmesin0000caro/

[donutsweeper]

Added! I was also able to find three of the stories available separately so I've linked those too.

[violet_pencil]

A Tale of Future Crime (cohost post) - jackapedia

A short text in the format of a fake back-cover blurb (note that the first thing on the page is an image, but if you scroll down, there is alt text that's much easier to read.)

https://cohost.org/chrisfulkerson/post/1117269-a-tale-of-future-cri

[donutsweeper]

Added, thanks!

[sweetsorcery]

Thanks for making this list!

Further info for:
The Attic - A. M. Burrage, (first published in 1924)
Available very cheaply in Kindle format. And there's a great audio recording on both YT and Spotify by Richard Mitchley.

Casting the Runes - M. R. James
Several ghost story YT channels have readings of this, with Black Dog Chronicles and Bitesized Audio probably being the best.

This is another short story:
Thurnley Abbey - Perceval Landon (first published in 1908)
Online Text: https://www.hauntedcrossroads.com/stories/perceval-landon/thurnley-abbey-perceval-landon/
Online Audio available on several YT channels (I recommend Bitesized Audio), and a very atmospheric one by Sam Devereaux (on Spotify)

I have more info about all of those, and direct links to audio, in my 'Dear Writer' Letter.

[donutsweeper]

Added Thurnley Abbey, thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie is a novelette.

[donutsweeper]

Googling this, it looks like its a collection of short stories and over 400 pages so wouldn't fit under the 30k words for things in this list.

[tryphaine]

“Lake of Souls” is the title story of the book (not linked to any of the other stories, as far as I know), and is in the tagset as a discrete canon, although I don’t think it is available anywhere except in the collection.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry, I should have made my original comment clearer - while it is a short story collection, the exact wording in the tag set is "Lake of Souls - Ann Leckie (Novelette)", so only the novelette the collection takes its title from has been nominated.

[donutsweeper]

I can't find anything that lists how long the story Lake of Souls is, only the length of the book in general. If you can confirm it's 60 pages (30k words) or less, I'll add it to the list.

[(Anonymous)]

It's 39 pages.

[donutsweeper]

Great, I'll add it in then!

[tryphaine]

Doctor Eszterhazy stories - Avram Davidson: recurring pulp character and setting for many stories, many of which are linked in this promo post.

Lucifer’s Wife - Eleanor M. Ingram (described as a novelette, but well under 30,000 words)

Mercury Company Stories - Eleanor M. Ingram: the characters nominated include the main characters of the short story “The Duel”.

[donutsweeper]

From what you posted in the evidence post it looks like the Mercury Company Stories - Eleanor M. Ingram includes numerous things other than just the short story so it doesn't really fit this list but I have added the other two.

[hekateras]

There is No Antimemetics Division - qntm

Readable for free here: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub

This is a collection of short stories, some tightly connected and some loosely. The background reading and core There Is No Antimemetics Division stories are about 17k.

[donutsweeper]

Added, thanks!

[hekateras]

Probably not needed now that it's been added but mentioning it anyway:

A potential source of confusion is that There Is No Antimemetics Division is also the name of the entire series (I think?) published in print, which is over 30k. But generally speaking, because of the format, when I and others nominate it for exchanges, we don't expect people to have read every story in the series, especially since it includes work by various authors aside qntm, etc (this being the SCP Foundation wiki). The "core" stories, as I said, are well within length.

Thank you for adding it!

[naomikritzer]

"Better Living Through Algorithms" is a short story and available free online: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_05_23/

[donutsweeper]

Added, thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

18 Foot Leash - Porpentine Charity Heartscape is 14k words (at least it is when I copypaste from my pdf into a word counter, and it's described as a novelette on the below itch page) and can be found in the short story anthology Torture Works, available here:

https://porpentine.itch.io/torture-works

[donutsweeper]

Added, thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

The King in Yellow is a short story collection, it looks like two different ones are nominated in the 2024 tagset.

[donutsweeper]

As a collection it is over 30k words so I didn't include it on the list.

[larryhammer]

Kilmeny - James Hogg is a narrative poem -- it can be found many places, and https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/kilmeny looks as good a text as any. I should get write up a promo post.

(Not a banner year for poetry fandoms ... )

[donutsweeper]

Added, thanks!

[catchmeifyoucreon]

In Parenthesis - David Jones is a prose-poem, text available in full from the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.13580

[donutsweeper]

At 224 pages, even if the majority is poetry, it looks like it'll be longer than the 30k word limit for this list.

[machiavellijr]

Scott Lynch's 'A Year And A Day in Old Theradane' should fit the bill at just under 19k words: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/a-year-and-a-day-in-old-theradane/

[donutsweeper]

Added, thanks!

[morbane]

Thank you!

Adding The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde - Mary de Morgan - this is the first story in a short story collection, available on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38976/38976-h/38976-h.htm

[donutsweeper]

Added, thanks!