Short stories with avg. readingtime of 1-1.5h?

[arit]

Somehow I am not in the mood to read longer books at the moment, so I am looking for shortstories which can be read within 1-1.5h(yes I know some are reading faster than others ) before going to bed.

Could be something (post-)apocalyptic, steampunk, regular science fiction or horror.

Freebies prefered and Doctorow's already read

[carld]

Serial by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch, 8,000 words and a good read, unless you're squeamish about .... well anything.

Free at Amazon

Also here for other formats.

[tompe]

Charles Stross' short story collection Toast which should be available freely.

[Andybaby]

here http://freesf.blogspot.com/

you can find thousands of free short stories (and full length books) all rated of quality.

I don't use it that much, but that's cause I don't like short stories all that much

[carld]

Originally Posted by Andybaby

here http://freesf.blogspot.com/

you can find thousands of free short stories (and full length books) all rated of quality.

I don't use it that much, but that's cause I don't like short stories all that much

I've been to that site several times, and it always confuses the heck out of me for some reason.

Carl

[Renaldo]

Fictionwise carries a lot of short stories, lists them out by word count and average reading time.

[emellaich]

Will, I always answer questions like this with a trip to Baen, and the best place to start is their free library:
http://www.webscription.net/c-1-free-library.aspx

See:
Old Nathan
by David Drake

Original Edition of edited Godwin Stories

Original Edition of edited Schmitz Stories

Ring of Fire (Part of the 1632 series, and it makes more sense if your read the free 1632 first)

T.N.T:Telzey and Trigger, also the related collection:
Telzey Amberdon

Of course there are many more full length (and free) novels there.

[wayspooled]

The best anthology I've read which actually is ebook'd is Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century, selected and edited by Orson Scott Card. Widely available as an ebook.

Best collection I've read by a single author are "that is ebook'd" is
Neutron Star by Larry Niven


The best I've read period in the genres you mention are:

Future on Ice, also edited by Orson Scott Card
Folk of the Fringe, "written by" Orson Scott Card
Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years edited by Pamela Sargent
The Hugo Winners, Volume 4: 1976-1979 edited by Isaac Asimov
Strange Dreams, edited by Stephen R. Donaldson

And there is a 4 book series of military sci/fi which includes 3 novellas in each called Alien Stars (1-4, 2-4 have their own sub-name), published originally by Baen Books. Doesn't seem to be available on their site in ebook but it is very good. Serious and humorous stories. The authors include Joe Haldeman, Timothy Zahn, Nancy Springer, Robert Silverberg, Norman Spinrad, Gregory Benford, C.J. Cherryh, David Drake, Lois McMaster Bujold and Orson Scott Card.

[Sweetpea]

I love Robert J. Sawyer. And he has plenty of short stories (which I generally read between two novels). I think I've read most I can get from FictionWise right now.

[CleverClothe]

I have been a long time fan of Year's Best SF anthology series. They collect 25 of the best short stories and novelettes published in the previous year. They include short bios on the authors, and refer to some of the author's other works. They have a good mix of topics like cyberpunk, hard SF, etc. They also include stories from many countries, as long as it is in English or translated to English.

Most of them (12 of the 14) are available from FictionWise, BoB, etc.

There are some other highly praised anthologies for SF and Horror that I haven't tried yet.

[wayspooled]

just a bump for the folks asking for short story recommendations currently

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by carld

Serial by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch, 8,000 words and a good read, unless you're squeamish about .... well anything.

Free at Amazon

Also here for other formats.

Anything???

[PennyPie]

THAnks to all who made suggestions! THere's so many sites that I don't know about. Hey...is there a 'sticky' somewhere here that lists bunches of sites??

[pilotbob]

If your into Mysteries (or even if you are not) d/l the Sherlock Holmes Omnibus here in the MR library. 4 of the books are novels, but the other 4 are collections of short stories. Great reading.

BOb

[wayspooled]

Originally Posted by PennyPie

THAnks to all who made suggestions! THere's so many sites that I don't know about. Hey...is there a 'sticky' somewhere here that lists bunches of sites??

I haven't seen one. Wouldn't be a bad idea. But then we wouldn't have all this fun and community building going on every time someone new shows up and asks for a recommendation And we all start circling him like sharks around a raft - and tossing out favorites hehehe... :P But every once in a while, there's this great discussion that takes place.

You know about the Hugo awards and nominees at wikipedia and I'm sure you can find Project Gutenberg Here's a few you might not have run across.

There's this Locus Magazine thingie that has many tools -

Historical Novel Society

SF Site which has so many lost and hidden corners that the site mgr is afraid to make changes. Some good reviews there.

Fantastic Fiction with all it's bibliographies. Somewhat redundant with wikipedia but it has it's own flavor and charm and a few extra things. This is where I go to see what else someone has written.

An alternate window into the Fictionwise bookstore that I find easier to read is through Wildside Press 's Ebook store which is really just a better looking FW storefront - but I swear it works better!

The Detective and the Toga Not specifically ebook related but most of these authors now are getting their new books ebook'd.. If only the publishers go back and do the older ones :P But they don't because they don't sell as well.

Ditto - what I said above about Ancient World mysteries but now coming to a boat dock near you! McBook's Press Nautical Fiction.

Ibiblio - non-fiction

db.etree and the Internet Archive Why? Because reading ebooks isn't only about ebooks, sometimes it's about learning and these are occasionally useful sites that are related to digital text (and music and etc.) But they're part of the 80% of the web that the big search engines like google and yahoo aren't allowed to access.

There's a few to explore