Reddit mentions: The best historical fiction anthology books

This is like the third time I've recommended this book but it's perfect for what you're looking for. Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang has a couple of stories that fit your criteria and they're excellent. The titular story and also "Liking What You See: A Documentary" are both set in present or near-future worlds. Here's a link for the latter so you can determine if you like his writing.

I'm about half way through my flintlock fantasy novel The Blood of Kings. Haven't written anything all week and starting to feel withdrawals, which is good. Hopefully will get more done soon.

In other news, I have my short story collection (historical and speculative fiction) up for free on Amazon. Somehow got 80 downloads in the 11 hours it's been free since this morning, thank you Amazon rank inflation Gods.

I can't believe no one has mentioned the most important collection of short SF published in the last few decades: Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang.

Another great single author collection, if you can get it, is Greg Egan's Crystal Nights.

Also, I highly recommend the New Space Opera anthologies, volumes One and Two. Some of the best recent hard SF published anywhere.

It's called Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. It's in his short story collection Stories of Your Life and Others, which you can buy on Amazon. It's worth it just for this story, but all of them are excellent. Ted Chiang is often cited as the best living SciFi author to never have written a novel.

https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Others-Chiang/dp/1931520720

Eating Mammals by John Barlow was pretty amusing. I truly enjoyed it. It's three novellas (short novels, usually under 150 pages) rather than short stories though.

I literally didn't have to leave my chair to pull it off my shelf to double check the title ( :) ) but you can find this, and several other excellent Ted Chiang short stories in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others. I was going to go through and recommend some specific stories from the collection... but it turns out I loved all of them.

The first in what I hope will be a series of stellar Ted Chiang adaptations!

ANYONE who is into beautiful, idea-centric sci-fi will benefit from the book this is based on! http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Others-Chiang/dp/1931520720

Stories of your life and Others

by Ted Chaing

Some of the best sci-fi short stories I've ever read. 'Stories of your Life' was just fantastic.

Arthur C. Clarke - The Collected Short Stories.

Nothing else can compare to how those things made me feel when I was growing up.

Beyond that, Ted Chiang's "Stories of Your Life: And Others" is an absolute masterpiece. Absolutely astonished the man's not better known- he's that rarity- a sci-fi author that writes beautifully.

Have you considered short stories?

If you're into SF, it's a major side of the genre. There's eleventy billion collections of them out there, but Stories Of Your Life And Others is awesome, and small enough to get through over a short period.

I've recently read two books that I absolutely fell in love with:

1.) Stories of Your Life and Others: http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Others-Chiang/dp/1931520720/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413578672&sr=8-1&keywords=stories+of+your+life+and+others

2.) Neuromancer (A classic that I've just gotten into): http://www.amazon.com/Neuromancer-William-Gibson/dp/0441569595/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413578739&sr=8-1&keywords=neuromancer

Looks like $21.95 CAD? I'm not sure if that's a good exchange rate or not :)

Louis La'mour writes good westerns if you want something different. https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Short-Stories-Louis-LAmour/dp/0553392263/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1542463958&sr=8-2&keywords=louis+lamour+books+paperback

If you're not familiar, I think you would probably enjoy the stories of Ted Chiang.

The Apple It's good!

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang.

The short story "Understand" (part of that collection) may be my favorite of all time.

Stories of Your Life and Others. My favorite.

It was published by Tartarus Press, who luckily enough offer ebook versions for some of their very expensive limited print books so that the average person may actually read them.

Amazon

Ted Chiang's short stories are worth a read, especially if you're looking for something with a more professional written tone.

I've also got my short story collection up for Free on Amazon. It's historical fiction, but I have some fantasy elements in one of the stories (The Trench) and I often forget to put it on sale through KDP so I thought I'd post a link here.

Long Island Press article:

https://www.longislandpress.com/2019/04/30/in-floyd-harbor-author-joel-mowdy-brings-mastic-beach-to-page/

Order your copy here:

https://www.amazon.com/Floyd-Harbor-Stories-Joel-Mowdy/dp/1948226111/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_sspa?keywords=floyd+harbor&qid=1556793997&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1

si le gusta leer creo que un buen regalo podría ser el libro de cuentos "War by Candlelight" de Daniel Alarcón, un peruano criado en California que escribe hermosa, corta y contundentemente.

Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins.

not academic material, but, if you are into sci-fi, Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others
http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Others-Chiang/dp/1931520720

author has a compsci background from Brown, and I find that his stories encompass elements that would appeal to any compsci-minding individual

There is a short story collection that serves as a semi-sequel

http://www.amazon.com/The-Apple-Crimson-Petal-Stories/dp/0857860852/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383061439&sr=8-1&keywords=michel+faber+the+apple

Start with His Frontier Stories collection. You can also check out this audio drama I uploaded: Riding for the Brand. This story is read by Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Waylon Jennings, and is complete with sound effects.

Sad news. For anyone who has not read Trevor, I recommend his collections After Rain and Cheating at Canasta. He was also a great novelist; my favourites of his are The Story of Lucy Gault (possibly his most tragic, Chekhovian work) and the flawed but still enormously compelling The Children of Dynmouth.

You might be interested in this short story collection -- Colonial Horrors: Sleepy Hollow and Beyond!

Pretty much anything by Ted Chiang, especially "Story of your Life" and "Hell is the Absence of God". His anthology Stories of Your Life and Others is incredible.

I'd like to recommend Ted Chiang's short story Hell Is the Absence of God which is contained in his short story collection Story of your Life and Others (Goodreads - Amazon)

It is set in a world where the Abrahamic god of the Old Testament actually exists and behaves just as described, like a crazed maniac. There are Angel visitations and the existence of hell and heaven is proven.

I really like the fact that there is a group of humanists who rebel against such a god,and willingly go to hell in order to live an honest life where everyone else just obeys in order to get into heaven when they die.

Close.

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
DISREGARD THAT

Sim, eu leio tudo em inglês. Eu não conhecia esse The Three Body Problem, to vendo agora e parece bem legal, eu estava justamente precisando de um novo livro pra ler esse feriado, valeu pela dica!

Outros livros que eu ja lí e recomendo:

• The Story of Your Life and Others: Um livro de contos do autor Ted Chiang. O conto mais conhecido do livro inspirou o filme Arrival que saiu ano passado (como de usual, o livro é ainda melhor). Os contos são hard sci-fi, cada um com inspiração em uma área da ciência. Matemática, física, computação, linguistica, biologia, etc.
  
  
• Learning The World: Uma história de sci-fi, primeiro contato em que os humanos são tratados como os alienígenas novamente. A história se divide entre o que acontece dentro da nave levando os humanos, principalmente na perspectiva de uma garota que fica escrevendo no seu blog os acontecimentos, e um cientista professor astronomo do planeta 'alien'. Os humanos estão colonizando sistemas solares vizinhos e construindo Dyson Spheres, mas nunca encontraram vida inteligênte e estão convencidos que estão sós no universo. Os 'aliens' são criaturas parecidas com morcego e vivem em uma sociedade parecida com a pós revolução industrial. O autronomo observa um ao longo dos anos um 'asteróide' com movimento irregular se aproximando do planeta e o povo fica doido. Os humanos descobrem que tem vida inteligente no planeta e ficam doido.
  
  
• Spice and Wolf: Uma série de livros que contam a história de um mercante viajante em um mundo que lembra a europa medieval. Em uma das cidades ele encontra por acaso uma garota que se diz a deusa da colheita. A história se desenvolve ao longo dos livros com os dois fazendo uma longa viagem até a terra natal da garota, se envolvendo em diversos acontecimentos, oportunidades de lucros, e perdas no caminho e ganhando mais conheicmento. Eu absolutamente amo a dinâmica entre os dois, como eles desenvolvem amor pelo outro mas de forma bem sutil, e como eles nunca chegam ao seu destino, encontrando toda oportunidade para se desviar, porque no fundo não querem se separar um do outro. É uma história que junta mistério, romance, e vários conceitos de economia. Fizeram um anime da história também, mas só cobre até o livro 6 se não me engano.

I'm not going to pretend to be some incredible reader, but usually when I'm reading a book or some such, I find it pretty easy to find manipulative B.S. I had to read this for an English class not too long ago. It's a set of stories that to me, were just manipulative bullshit. By the end of that book I felt used and dirty. I think it's weird I never noticed that about these comics though. These comics really affected me.

You can read my short story ‘Long Live the King’ on Amazon Kindle for 99p.

The final days of King Henry V are here. As he fights the pain of a wasting disease he considers his reign, his actions and his legacy. He has spent a life-time at war. But was it all worth it?


Long Live the King https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07WN8GLL9/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_tbqwDbQVARH4Z

Lengthy word dump comment part 1:

/u/Rinarin and /u/Princess_Tutu - Hello!

I’ve been sitting on quite a bit of material with the intention to write something up for a good while. I then wrote it up and got nervous about posting it. So as soon as I hit enter, this will be me.



The literature refs of Bungou could easily be seen in a ‘turtles all the way down’ manner with symbolism and connections you could choose to read into at every layer. The references are present in everything from chapter titles, to a character’s physical design (Chuuya’s hat, Ranpo’s Sherlock outfit), to character motivations, personality, ideology, and interactions with other characters. Even minor, single episode side characters can sometimes be traced back to a real component of literature (referring mainly to some Edogawa stuff here). The characters designs often throw off an anachronistic vibe when set against the modern world. This intentionally reflects the 19th and 20th centuries dress reminiscent of the writers' times.

I’ve stuck to just the Port Mafia Akutagawa here for this comment since others have already written up some summaries on the others: parts 1, 2, and 3. I included generic Content through episode 11 and some spoiler tagged mentions for episodes 11 and 12. You can read this ep 12 discussion comment for some good insight on that one (that guy/gal is also way more eloquent than me, lol). I left out some tie-ins that I felt gave away a bit too much for the second cour.

For clarity, A!Character and R!Character refer to the anime and real life versions, respectively. Most of my reference material came from this mammoth book by Donald Keene. It weighs a lot. I carried it and other Japanese lit books across a giant parking lot in 100F+ weather. This is how much I am a nerd. /cry

Ryunosuke Akutagawa – Rashomon

Themes/Works

Akutagawa’s early works were generally rewrites of numerous multi-cultural tales placed in a historical setting. He preferred to keep his personal life out of his writing and remain detached from the subject. Stylistically, he often deliberately tricked or misled readers, blending illusion and reality, truth and fiction. A famous example is “In a Grove”, where a conflicting series of testimonies are given for the ‘same’ course of events. Akutagawa was particularly critical and doubtful of human virtues and society on the whole. A!Aku’s abilitiy is derived from his other famous short story, “Rashomon” (not to be confused with the movie which is actually based on In a Grove…go figure). Like a lot of artists, Akutagawa didn’t strike fame for his work until after his death.

His personal life was something of a hot mess. His mother went insane shortly after birth, and he long felt a sense of neglect and abandonment by her. He also came to immensely fear that the same fate would befall him. It totally did. His later years were distinguished by plummeting physical and mental health, including hallucinations, intense nervousness and anxiety, and a regular sense of impending doom. In the end, he committed suicide.

A (USA) public domain audiobook reading of “Rashomon” in Japanese is available here

There are at least two official English translations: 1 – 2

Tie-ins

A!Aku’s personality is heavily drawn from the real, who was described as something of an aloof but precocious individual with a cynical sense of humor. A!Aku’s chronic cough, preoccupation with death and fate, and his persona that flirts with the edge of sanity certainly seem to mirror the R!Aku’s life as well. I suspect his looks too given this description of a photograph, “gaunt face, hollow eyes…and an expression of despair”.

A!Akutagawa’s driving need for recognition from Dazai and his resentment of Atsushi for getting that recognition is also reflective of the real. R!Aku greatly admired the writer Soseki Natsume, and after working up some courage, adorably became a disciple of Soseki’s and regularly attended meetings. Unfortunately, R!Aku had shit friends that regularly criticized his works, outright telling him to give up writing. In one of his few autobiographical based pieces, “A Life Spent at Frivolous Writing”, one of the characters gets fed up with being compared to his publisher’s other writers and declares that ‘[he] and I are not the same kind of man’. So both real and anime Akutagawa were pretty sensitive to comparisons with their peers.

[Bungou Ep 12](/s "Real Aku's early writing was heavily influenced by Mori Ougai, so it's incredibly fitting that A!Ougai is the Mafia's and Akutagawa's boss. One critic even described Ougai as having created Akutagawa.") He was also criticized as having a ‘lack of originality’, which is pretty lol given some of the comments that A!Aku doesn’t seem all that smart in contriving plans. Real Aku didn’t much care for plot details anyway.

R!Akutagawa’s writing philosophies also opposed those of Naturalism, for which Kunikida Doppo is considered to be an inventor of (in the Japanese tradition). So yeah, no surprise their anime selves don’t like each other. R!Aku and R!Tanizaki also had an authors’ argument over the importance of plot, wherein Aku thought that how the story was written, its overall poetic structure, was more important than plot details. Their anime selves have already started bitching at each other.

Regarding “Rashomon” and A!Akutagawa’s ability, the basic story plot is that a man finds himself debating whether to starve to death or become a thief. (This should sound familiar to a different character.) In the end, the man steals the clothes off a woman to survive. She, herself, had been in the middle of stealing off some dead bodies to survive. I don’t know how clear the anime made it to other people (I can be dense), but the coat Akutagawa is wearing is the actual source of his ability. So there’s a lot to be said here for how Atsushi ended up wimping out of his thievery and choosing the path where the weak have a right to live, while Akutagawa ‘took the coat’ and sees little regard for those weaker than him in his path to survival.

Edit: I guess if you see this in your inbox you might not see that I replied to myself with the rest, so:

more Mafia, last and best