Science fiction stories shorter than novels | Hacker News Reader

Science fiction stories shorter than novels

bitmason.blogspot.com

46 pointsghaff11 comments

If you’re looking for this sort of thing in audio form, I highly recommend podcasts such as Escape Pod, the Drabblecast or Lightspeed.

They do a phenomenal job picking new stories, are well-produced, and are free (listener supported, often creative commons licensed).

Their back catalogs are online; between them, 1000’s of episodes are available.

They mostly run recent works, but mix in classics here and there. If you don’t like one’s mix of stories, many similar audio fiction podcasts are available as well.

How does one read these, without spending a fortune on the anthologies they appear in? I'd love to read "Houston, Houston, Do You Read", but don't want to spend $15 for the book containing it, full of stories I'm not currently interested in. Suggestions?

Your best bet is to get the books out of a public library. I get hundreds of dollars worth of books out every year, and it is awesome.

Alternatively, there is a Kindle Unlimited service, or the competitor Kobo Plus (and maybe other competitors), where you pay a subscription fee and can access as many books as you want. Not everything is available, but I believe there's a decent selection.

Is that really the best bet? A simple googling of the title will get most of these books immediately.

(Infact, I doubt any of these won't be accessible that way.)

Public libraries deserve support.

This is a great post idea. I’ve been mostly consuming audiobooks and have noticed that the obnoxious subscription token model makes it only sensible to consume long books, but I do like shorter stories as well.

I’d like this post made for every genre.

You may be missing alot. I might be getting old, but to me the quintessential vehicle for science fiction was always the short story.

There are just so many ideas that came out that didn't need a full novel length treatment.

What do you think of Asimov's long novels that create worlds, populate them across millennia and then show an interplay between characters?

I listen to audiobooks a lot when exercising or doing work around the house. Still, I recommend reading too. It's just a more intimate, focused experience. I even tink that the fact that it requires focus to read is a very healthy thing in a world of constant notifications and distractions.

(2020)

back here again? c'mon

Discussion less than a year ago, 266 pts, 103 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959648

Reply on news.ycombinator.com