I’m the type of reader who hates having to put down a book before I’ve finished a chapter, which means that when I’ve only got a few minutes to spare I often turn to social media instead of reading. But sometimes instead of scrolling I want to optimize that time and that’s where flash fiction comes in to save the day—or, rather, the minutes. If you’re also looking to make the most of your fragments of free time with some short but impactful sci-fi goodness, here are seven of my favorite very short stories.
The longest piece included on this list comes in at 2,100 words, which will take the average reader roughly seven minutes to read. All of these stories are available for free online and provide the perfect quick escape into another world while you’re waiting before an appointment or taking a short break from work. Or you could just read through all seven stories right now; it won’t take you very long! And if you’re currently behind on your yearly reading challenge and want to count these towards your goal, I certainly won’t judge…
They’re Made Out of Meat by Terry Bisson
It’s not easy to build a whole sci-fi world within a limited word count, so some flash fictions play around with restrictive formats. Terry Bisson uses this approach in “They’re Made Out of Meat,” which consists only of dialogue between two unidentified characters. If you want to go in knowing as little as possible then stop reading here; but read on if you need more convincing to give this story a few minutes of your time…
The bulk of the conversation is one alien attempting to convince the other that humans are, as the title indicates, entirely made out of meat, but both are baffled that this is even possible. How could meat think?! Their short chat is not only a funny glimpse into an outsider’s perspective on human life, it is also surprisingly philosophical.
“Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” by Caroline M. Yoachim
This short story, published in Lightspeed, is the longest one on the list, but trust me when I say that the seven minutes you’ll spend reading it are well worth it. The story is told in the style of a Choose Your Own Adventure book (do you really need more reason than that to give it a go?), casting the reader as an employee aboard a space station who is attempting to get medical care after being bitten by an alien bug (which is never good). Yoachim’s story is hilariously self-aware. She lovingly pokes fun at silly sci-fi tropes and makes the real-world difficulties of navigating hospitals comical as she plays with the narrative style of the story.
“When the Yogurt Took Over” by John Scalzi
There are a lot of science fiction stories about what would happen to humanity if the world was taken over by robots or aliens. John Scalzi takes the road less traveled in his short story on the same theme, imagining a future where sentient yogurt is the thing that takes us over. If the concept of a smart dairy product ruling humanity makes you chuckle, then you’re in for a treat! In just 1,000 words it manages to be both amusing and thought-provoking. If Scalzi’s tale ends up coming true then I, for one, welcome our new yogurt overlords.
“When the Yogurt Took Over” was adapted into an episode of Love, Death & Robots—an animated sci-fi anthology show on Netflix that you need to check out if you haven’t already. Most of the episodes, which are all done in different animation styles by different studios, are adapted from short stories so it’s a goldmine for discovering authors you might not have heard of or read before.
“Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor” by Grady Hendrix
These days Grady Hendrix is best known for his excellent horror novels, but years before My Best Friend’s Exorcism and The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires were penned, he wrote (amongst other things, obviously) a little sci-fi short about an astronaut crash-landing on an alien planet. The bulk of the story is a transcript of the conversation between the astronaut and an optimistic but not-very-helpful A.I. Crash Advisor. Hendrix often likes to add a generous dash of comedy into his work and this sci-fi story is no different. Many of the laughs come from the references to well-known stories—which are rarely explicitly named—that the Crash Advisor brings up in trying to find a solution.
“Wikihistory” by Desmond Warzel
The idea of using time travel to go into the past to kill Hitler has been explored many times: Doctor Who tackles it in “Let’s Kill Hitler”; The Twilight Zone did two different versions of the story, in “No Time Like the Past” and “Cradle of Darkness”; and even Deadpool gives it a go in a Deadpool 2 post-credits scene. Desmond Warzel’s Wikihistory offers another fun spin on this trope. It is told entirely through posts on a forum for members of the International Association of Time Travelers, complete with usernames and timestamps.
In Warzel’s version, Hitler is necessary to the development of time travel so his role in the original timeline must be preserved. Unaware noobs keep killing him though, and so a more experienced member has to repeatedly go back in time to save his life. Basically, think of Hitler like a Wikipedia page that people keep messing with, that then has to be fixed. “Wikihistory” puts its format to excellent use, and is as much a comment on online forum culture as it is an amusing take on the Kill Hitler trope.
“In the Forests of Memory” by E. Lily Yu
All of the stories on this list so far have had a comedy element, but if you’re looking for some short form content that takes a more serious tone then check out E. Lily Yu’s “In the Forests of Memory.” Yu’s story is set in a future where graveyards have had an upgrade: pre-recorded holograms allow the living to interact with their departed loved ones. The story follows an old woman, called Sunny, who is homeless and has chosen to live in one of these cemeteries because it provides relatively safe shelter. She spends her days avoiding the security guard and talking to the holograms of the dead. It’s an earnest and honest look at how we remember the dead, but also at how we care (or, rather, don’t care) for the living.
“Presence” by Ken Liu
If you’re in the mood for another poignant story, then “Presence” by Ken Liu has got you covered. It’s about an immigrant protagonist struggling with the decline and death of their mother, but it’s told in the second person, which makes their emotions feel personal. Our unnamed protagonist lives in America, far away from their dying mother, and so can only visit her through what is essentially a timeshare robot. Liu expertly captures the feelings of helplessness and guilt that come with trying to be there for someone who is facing death. In just 1,723 words, “Presence” gives a sci-fi flourish to a heart-wrenching narrative about how immigration shapes both personal identity and familial relationships.
***
There are countless amazing short stories out there, so please leave your personal favorites in the comments!
Lorna Wallace has a PhD in English Literature and is a lover of all things science fiction and horror. She lives in Scotland with her rescue greyhound, Misty.
The Great Silence, by Ted Chiang is simultaneously about the Fermi Paradox, interspecies communication, the Anthropocene and human beings desire for connection.
https://electricliterature.com/the-great-silence-by-ted-chiang/
My first thought was Asimov’s ‘About Nothing’, which is so short that it can be read off a medium-resolution image.
John Valley’s The Manhattan Telephone Book (Abridged). The story takes a few minutes to read. Recovering from the kick in the head takes a lifetime.
“The Choice”, by W. HIlton-Young. Forgot which antho I found it in 50 years back, but it might be available via the magic of Google.
Liked the yogurt story.
Frederik Pohl’s “Day Million” (1966).
Interesting list. My recommendation would be The Egg by Andy Weir (The Martian, Project: Hail Mary). Not sure it’s SF, or fantasy, or something else, but it’s interesting, and very short.
Fredric Brown made a veritable cottage industry out of these.
I knew one was nagging at me … and it came back – LeGuin’s Those Who Walk Away from Omelas. Incredibly short and devastating in its gut punch.
STET, by Sarah Gailey.
OUCH.
https://firesidefiction.com/stet
Most of the stories in Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales fit our host’s definition, although a few run longer — e.g. Kornbluth’s “The Altar at Midnight”, which may have gone in because they wanted to have something of his and “The Words of Guru” was too disturbing. I’m especially fond of “The Available Data on the Worp Reaction”; every now and then I go “Whee!” to myself very softly.
@9: I agree about the punch of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, but I’m not sure it’s that short; like the Kornbluth above, it takes 8 pages (~350 words/page in the formats used then) in most versions.
My favorite in this category is The Nine Billion Names of God, by Arthur C Clarke.
There will come soft rains by Ray Bradbury (1950 I think). Growing up in the late 70s and 80s, when we were under threat of nuclear war all the time, it really hit home that there was no hope if we pulled the nuclear trigger. I still remembered the premise decades after reading it.
Rereading it with my 12-year-old last week (trying to encourage reading) what struck me now is how the automated home that merrily continues it’s daily routines basically describes modern life today, with a Siri/Alexa voice chirping in with your schedule and cooking breakfast, oblivious that everyone is dead. My kid didn’t understand how radical it was that this was written 70 years ago but thought that their robot vacuum cleaners (which look more like metal mice or rats) were cooler.
The other thought that went through my mind is that it’s set in August 2026. I really hope this isn’t predicting the future.
https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There%20Will%20Come%20Soft%20Rains%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdf
I’ve read “They’re Made of Meat” which I enjoyed a lot. Will need to check out the others.
I can also recommend “The King of Beasts” by Philip José Farmer, which is very short.
There’s the story that invented Mary Robinette Kowal to the western world: “Evil Robot Monkey”, which is something like 800 words, and her reading of it is 6:49. She didn’t have to be a puppeteer to have written that story, but it helped.
@12 I’m not sure Clarke’s “Nine Billion Names” (brilliant though it is) can be read in seven minutes
I’ve always enjoyed this version of They’re Made Out Of Meat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6JFTmQCFHg
@12 and @15 “Read in 7 minutes” – how do you quantitate that for different readers? I have copies of “The Nine Billion Names of God” in a number of places – the one I looked up was in Clarke’s “The Other Side of The Sky”, and it’s 6 pages long, but very fine print. In “The Science fiction Hall of Fame”, edited by Robert Silverberg, it comes in at 7 pages and half a dozen lines.
@9 and @11 I have “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” in “The Wind’s 12 Quarters, Vol. 2”, and it comes in at about 8&3/4 pages.
For a long time, my average long-term speeding read is about a page a minute. I just finished the Book of Words series by J.V. Jones – 3 books respectively 552/598/688 pages. I’m a bit OCD about some things, so I note roughly when I start and finish reading, and I maintained a page/minute over the whole series. So I guess a 7-minute read for me is about 7 pages, but it depends on print size and how complex and difficult the book is to read. There is stuff that is fairly light and easy and big print, possibly pictures like my copy of Narnia, and I’d go through faster than that. There are books that are complex in places that might take me longer on the first read, but that I have read many times (Left Hand of Darkness, Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land all spring to mind) and a reread will go very quickly.
But that’s me – you may read faster than me or slower. My 67-year-old brain sometimes wanders, and in my 20s I did some speed reading training that probably pushed me to about 25-50% higher than where I am now. I’m not sure I appreciated things better or worse at the time. Does it matter, so long as we enjoy our reading? Only a tiny bit – the faster I read, in the long term the more books I can read.
So I think the title of the article is a bit of a discussion point, rather than having to be absolutely precise, for every person – let’s just look at relatively short stories that are absolutely awesome and be thankful when people recommend ones we haven’t yet read. Both of these stories you have mentioned fit the bill, and had I not already loved them I would have been grateful for their recommendation.
Someone help me please!
Reading about “In the Forests of Memory” reminded me of a short story I read sometime in the last few years, but I can’t remember what it’s called. It also involved holograms in a cemetery. A younger man goes to visit the grave of his grandfather (or uncle, or something like that) and finds that the older, dead relative spends his time flirting with the other dead holograms. And then the dead guy gives the younger guy some sort of assignment that he himself can’t take care of because he can’t go outside a certain radius from his own grave. I think he needed the younger man to move some money around for him or something. It was a fun story, and now it’s bothering me that I can’t remember what it was called!
@17: The 2nd paragraph of the article suggests a count (2100 words) as well as a time. ISTM that’s slow, but I have no idea how average I am (or how much comprehension I lose by reading rather faster). The intro to Fifty Short… claims inspiration from glossy-magazine stories that fit on one page (~1000 words), but I suspect most of their choices are longer.
Many thanks for this feature! I also love short stories, and short-short stories, flash fiction, etc. Regarding the anthology mentioned by “Chip137,” Fifty Short Science Fiction Tales, there is also another one, “100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories,” ed. Isaac Asimov, Martin Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander (Avon, 1978).
I love that others here have already named many of my old favorites. Here are a few old classics I think a list of this sort should not be without:
”When We Went to See the End of the World,” by Robert Silverberg.
”The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World,” by Harlan Ellison.
”Aye, and Gomorrah,” by Samuel R. Delany.
Nature, the science journal, publishes an 800-900 word SF story every week. Here’s a lighthearted example by someone I know. “Box 27.”
There’s a lovely site called Daily Science Fiction which offers up a short story more or less per day (depending) and works on the subscription model. Some stories miss, but only a small number.
The story when the yogurt took over is interesting.