LadyButterfly she/herWhat would you pick?
SnokenKeekaGuardWhatever you choose, post right there š
vzqqMany people have a visceral reaction to Palahniukās Guts, but it never hit me particularly hard. That and the underage incest impreg fantasies, it was always a bit of a turn off.
Honestly, for me, nothing beats good old Edgar Allan Poe, and heās already in the syllabus.
I had started reading his short story collection (that contains Guts, forget what its called) back in high school after reading like three of his other books in a row (Lullaby, Survivor and Fight Club), and I was just burnt out on the shock factor thing.
Never finished the collection.
There will come soft rains, I presume, is what inspired that post. It has done a number on many a child
We read The Yellow Wallpaper and that was pretty effed.
LerajeCame here to say this. The Yellow Wallpaper is definitely unsettling.
Either that or any of Shirley Jackson's short stories.
SanguineParHa ha, great minds, Iāve just said The Lottery!
mycodesucksThe Jaunt
Had to scroll to the bottom to finally find this. Scrolled longer than you think! LONGER THAN YOU THINK!
I only recently discovered Shirley Jacksonās The Lottery, but I think that would need to be in the conversation.
A Modest Proposal traumatized one girl in my class.
We all had to write our own versions, trade them randomly, and read them aloud. She ended up with mine: Have the death row inmates build a prison on the moon, then turn off their air supply to complete their sentence. (Wrote it before Iād read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)
She finished reading, and exclaimed āWhat is WRONG with you!?ā She knew it was mine because of how hard I was laughing at her panic.
I was outdone by the quiet girl who included a recipe for ākitten kurryā in her essay though. I really should have tried to get with her, lol.
AceFuzzLordIf weāre talking the one by Dr. Johnathan Swift, about selling poor people babies and kids for food, then I absolutely agree. I just found and read it on Gutenberg and it was a little disturbing, in an interesting but absolutely messed up way.
Peak satire
In my highschool German class we read Kafkas āMetamorphosisā, it gave me weird dreams for weeks.
In a literary sense itās a masterpiece, simple yet intricate. The first sentence alone is genius :
āAls Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen TrƤumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandeltā
āAs Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insectā.
No backstory, no explanation, the reader is left with the same confusion as the characters. Then the societal observations he weaves in are sharp yet puzzling.
I recommend it highly, but be prepared for strangeness and being left with an uneasy feeling.
Kafkaās story is crazyā¦ He wrote all this amazing shit, but refused to publish it. His dying wish to his best friend was to destroy all of his work. Kafka died penniless.
His friend read the work, and was so blown away that he defied his best friendās dying wish, and published his work.
Damn near anything Ray Bradbury wrote. I swear he just wanted to traumatize anyone that read any of his work.
ĆbercomplicatedShoot, you beat me to it. I was going to recommend The Long Rain, which I read when I was 12 or so and it certainly traumatized me. (I love it now though)
The entire collection is fantastic though. I highly recommend!!
I must need to read more, last short stories I read (maybe listened) were relatively tame about being on Mars I think, so possibly not the right collection. Maybe I didnāt quite get their message either. Did listen to Something this way comes, which has its disturbing parts but not overly but nicely geared for a younger audience for sure. That said I started reading Stephen King and watching horror movies much younger than is probably expected, think first Nightmare on Elm Street was before 10 heh, King books were later of course.
The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin
Space might be the final frontier but it is by no means forgiving
I am a huge fan of hard sci-fi, but always hated Cold Equations.
The FTL ships can drop out of Hyperspace close enough to a planet for a rocket propelled ship to reach it, but the big ship canāt just drop the cargo off or have a purpose built cargo shuttle drop it off?
How do they unload the big cruisers anyway? Land the whole big ship?
The big ships run on such a tight schedule and rocket fuel is so precious due to weight that the computer calculates the fuel requirements to the milligram, but doesnāt allow for alternate landing sites? These supplies are supposed to be critical, but if your pilot canāt find a perfect spot instantly, or gets blown off course by a gust of wind, heās going to crash and die on the way down? The fuck kind of emergency response is that. Like sending a food truck with no brakes.
The weight of a human when compared to cargo and vehicle dry mass is negligible. A margin of error for landing would easily account for the deltaV required to decelerate 100kilos.
The tightest moon landing, fuel wise, was Apollo 11, and even they probably had about 45 seconds of fuel left when they finally touched down. At the time it was thought to be 15 seconds, but later analysis found a fault with the fuel level sensor thatās caused it to read lower than it should.
Even in the 60s, NASA made sure there was enough fuel to allow the astronauts to pilot to a good landing site. And in Apollo, every ounce counted, the margins were extremely tight.
It would be a better story concept as a long haul trip where food, water, and oxygen would be used at twice the intended rate and thatās why the stowaway had to go. But fuel should not have been the primary reason.
If i remember right thereās a dystopian bend to it, like itās not about the scarcity of the fuel and more about maximizing profit at the cost of outrageous risk for those who canāt afford it
The Giant KoreanThe Cask of Amontillado messed me up a good bit. Being sealed into a wall would be a horrible way to die.
Great story, but I think I read this one in school
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
ikiddI had to read this again, tremendous story.
Come and See by Soviet Union
dandelion
This has been on my watch list for a while now
Boomer Humor DoomergodMy freshman college English prof assigned House of Leaves.
It was awesome watching the preppy kids descend into madness
That is not a short story lol
Crazy book though.
I donāt know about scary, but I would assign Teddy by J. D. Salinger.
Also, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce.
Another one I really like that I feel like nobody else has ever read is: After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned by Dave Eggers (itās written from a dogās POV)
I guess this is more āshort stories that I likeā lol
After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned by Dave Eggars (itās written from a dogās POV)
Man, the title and brief synopsis has been enough to fuck up my day, thanks.
Itās actually more fun than youād expect lol
The Dweller in the Gulf by Clark Ashton Smith.
āThe Long Rainā by Bradbury was the one that stuck with me.