Short stories by Fantasy Authors

xoriel77 · December 22, 2024, 06:08:42 PM

My wife and I separately own volumes 1 and 2 of 'Legends', published by Harper Collins. They're probably out of print but have some great short stories by Orion Scott Card, Terry Goodkind, Robert Silverberg, etc.

GnosticGoblin · December 22, 2024, 07:50:06 PM

The only one I came across worth talking about is by the author of the tome White Crow featuring the same characters, but short stories. Its called Soldiers and Scholars by Mary Gentle. There are some really good stories in it.

Crusader X · December 22, 2024, 07:50:58 PM

There are three volumes of a short story anthology called Renegade Swords that you might like.

finarvyn · December 31, 2024, 06:16:17 AM

As others have noted, short stories used to be a big thing. Now, not so much.

Robert E Howard wrote almost exclusively short stories. Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser" is pretty much all short stories. If you can find "Tales from the Magician's Skull" (sort of a magazine series by Goodman Games) those are all short stories.

Persimmon · December 31, 2024, 11:00:04 AM

There's a 9 book series of short stories called Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy, that they sell on Amazon. There's also a magazine they sell called Savage Realms Monthly.. The quality isn't consistent, but there's a lot out there. Additionally a few metal heads publish novellas and short stories that are available on Amazon. Just search under "Swords & Sorcery."

Zenoguy3 · December 31, 2024, 12:33:34 PM

Larry Corriea writes novels mostly, but he also writes and curates anthologies of short stories that take place in the setting of his novels. He's published a few of the short stories and looks like even one of his books free here. I highly recommend him.

some are high fantasy, most are not so much high fantasy as urban fantasy, think classic monster movies but instead of a doctor or antiquarian the protagonist is an army ranger.

David Johansen · December 31, 2024, 01:43:42 PM

What Good Is a Glass Dagger? Larry Niven
The Rule of Names Ursula K LeGuin
Mazerian The Magician Jack Vance
The Dragon Lords Jack Vance (okay really sf about genetic engineering)
Swords of the Purple Kingdom Robert E Howard
The Sadness of the Executioner (so this, if I remember right is Fafard and the Gray Mouser but not Lieber)
Nightfall Issac Asimov and Maurien Birnabaum After Dark George Alec Effinger (you must read both)

Sooo many more I can't recall the name and author of or even where I read it.

Dragon Magazine had a couple good ones and plenty more bad ones, I particularly recall Catacomb which predicted MMORPGS.

cbaratz · January 07, 2025, 04:41:01 PM

Quote from: Cathode Ray on December 20, 2024, 12:30:37 AMThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has usually 4 Fantasy stories. In the 90s, urban fantasy was big. I hear today it's very low quality, but back issues dating back over half a century are at archive.org

I'm glad someone mentioned this! It's still a great publication and could use more support to keep it in print.

Ruprecht · January 07, 2025, 08:41:51 PM

Karl Edward Wagner has a number of Kane short stories. Dark Fantasy if you haven't heard of the stories.

They short stories were bundled into a book called Night Winds
The Novellas were bundled into Death Angels Shadow.

Most Kane books are hard to get or insanely high priced in hardcopy but recently the books have showed up for Kindle at reasonable prices on Amazon.

Omega · January 07, 2025, 09:06:16 PM

Quote from: Nicephorus on March 03, 2006, 02:46:41 PMDuring the pulp era, short stories were the norm. Robert Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and the like have most of their works as short stories.

Now days, not so much. Compared to 70 years ago, there is a much bigger paperback market and a much diminished magazine market.

Very. I have a few of these. Kat had more.

Check out "shared universe" efforts like Thieves World and Liavek (sp?) series. These are anthologies.

Also Fantasy short story collections used to be all over back in the 70s and 80s. I have a few of those as well.

TSR had some in Dragon and at least 4 of the Dragonlance novels are anthologies. I had a few before losing interest. Later TSR acquired Amazing Stories and theres lots of fantasy shorts in that.

But if you go way back the old pulps featured fantasy and about everything else.

Cathode Ray · January 08, 2025, 03:06:40 PM

Quote from: cbaratz on January 07, 2025, 04:41:01 PM
Quote from: Cathode Ray on December 20, 2024, 12:30:37 AMThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has usually 4 Fantasy stories. In the 90s, urban fantasy was big. I hear today it's very low quality, but back issues dating back over half a century are at archive.org

I'm glad someone mentioned this! It's still a great publication and could use more support to keep it in print.

Good to know there's still good coming from it.

Omega · January 09, 2025, 03:49:38 AM

Surprisingly Amazing Stories survived TSR and wotc AND Paizo, and is apparently still putting out books in some form as of fairly recently.