I’ve just released a new collection of short stories–The Last Bus and Other Stories. These 26 stories span almost the length of my 50+-year writing career, from “The Park” in 1972 to “Spare Parts” and “An Evening Stroll” in 2021.
As in my first collection, The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories, The Last Bus is divided into sections for Science Fiction and Fantasy, Horror, and Literary/Mainstream. Also, as in my first collection, I’ve included commentary before and after each story giving some background about the story. Some of these stories have been previously published, but for most this is their first publication.
It’s always difficult to design a cover for a short story collection, especially when the collection contains stories ranging through several genres. The first reaction is to illustrate one of the stories. If it can be the title story, so much the better. I tried this, but the covers didn’t work. Since some of these stories contain ghosts and phantoms, I decided to go with a phantom face in the trees as sort of a general statement.
A few of the stories in this collection are:
Games Machines Play—A computer holds a college student hostage until he complies with a peculiar request.
An Evening Stroll—While walking in the fog one evening, a college professor inadvertently turns back the clock on his own life.
Spare Parts—On the eve of his wedding, something odd falls out of Mike Thayer’s ear, and he learns a shocking truth about himself.
Safety First—Not only is William Fawth’s car programmed to help him develop safe driving skills, but it has an attitude that grates on his nerves.
The Last Bus—Local businessman Wilson Brakhage offers tours of the wreckage of the worst tornado disaster in Nebraska’s history.
Blood—Are the cattle mutilations the work of a cougar, or is there a darker, supernatural force at work here?
Obsession—A visit to the doctor makes 29-year-old Chuck convinced that he’s growing old. Judi needs to snap him out of it before it destroys their marriage.
Keeper of the Shrine—A college student who works the night shift in a photofinishing plant learns a life lesson from a dead spider.
The Last Bus and Other Stories (ISBN: 9798861015325) is available as an eBook ($2.99) and a trade paperback ($12.95) from most online booksellers.
This is by no means a definitive list of the best science fiction short stories ever written, mainly because I haven’t read every science fiction story ever written, and I’m sure there are many, many of them that would be on this list, but I haven’t read them yet, so they’re not on this list. Also, I’m defining “short story” as anything that can be read in one sitting if one desires, so some of these “short” stories are pushing 15,000 to 20,000 words.
I’ve selected these stories because I first read them years ago, and they stuck with me. In my mind, staying power makes a story classic. Some of them I’ve read several times over the years, others just a couple of times or only once, but they all left an impression on me. The stories are not in any particular order, except for “The Cold Equations” and “Flowers for Algernon”, which are my favorite all-time science fiction shorts, in that order.
There are a couple of omissions that I should acknowledge. One is that there are no Robert A. Heinlein stories on my list. Heinlein was a decent storyteller, but a terrible writer, and it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever see him on one of my lists.
The other omission, which I regret, is that there are no women writers on this list. But that can’t be helped; it was the nature of the genre at the time I was beginning my SF journey. In those days there were few women writers in the genre, and of the ones who were writing, none of their stories that I read stood out for me. There is a time travel story, written by Barbara Bartholomew and published in Analog Science Fact/Science Fiction in the mid- or late 1970s, which I’d love to put on this list; however, I can’t remember its title, and I’ve been unable to find it through an online search. It’s a pity because I really liked that story.
Also, the links are for convenience to help you locate the stories. They are not affiliate links–I don’t get paid if you click on them. In fact, you don’t have to buy the books to read the stories as long as there is a library near you. I regret that used bookstores and libraries may be the only source of some of these stories because they appear to be out of print; however, I could not in good conscience exclude them for that reason. Fortunately, a few of these stories were collected in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I, which is available in print and digital.
1. The Cold Equations, by Tom Godwin: This is a difficult story to describe without giving away too much information. It is about the interaction of a teenage stowaway and the pilot of an Emergency Cargo Ship delivering medicine to a group of researchers. The ship has enough fuel to take one person to its destination, but not two. The story revolves around the pilot’s efforts to save the stowaway’s life–she stowed away to see her brother, who is one of the researchers–rather than order her into the airlock and ejecting her into space as regulations require. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.
2. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes: This novelette is about Charlie Gordon, a mentally retarded young man who becomes a genius after undergoing an experimental operation. The problem is that the improvement is only temporary. Keyes expanded this story into a novel, which goes into more detail, but the novelette is short and sweet. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.
3. The Star, by Arthur C. Clarke: This is perhaps Clarke’s most famous story. It was pretty controversial when it was originally published in the mid-1950s. Many critics called it blasphemous. Rejected by all of the major SF magazines, “The Star” finally found a home at a new, low-paying magazine. But Clarke had the last laugh. “The Star” won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1955.
4. It’s a Good Life, by Jerome Bixby: This story is about a young boy who holds a town hostage because he has the ability to do things with his mind–control the weather, make a rat eat itself, and do things to people who do or think things that he doesn’t like. It was chillingly adapted for the Twilight Zone in the early 1960’s. The novelette is just as chilling but offers a little more depth than the adaptation. Loss of depth is a common problem when stories are adapted to film. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.
5. What’s it Like Out There?, by Edmond Hamilton: Hamilton is a vastly underrated writer, partly because he wrote lots of space opera novels during the pulp era to make enough money to keep the lights on, but he has written many imaginative and thought-provoking stories like this one. He wrote “What’s it Like Out There” in the early 1930s but couldn’t sell it because the editors thought it was too bleak. Twenty years later the revised story, although still bleak, finally made it into print. It contrasts the public’s romanticized idea about space travel with the harsh realty experienced by a crewman recently returned from Mars.
6. The Pedestrian, by Ray Bradbury:This short little gem is about the consequences of taking a walk in the evening in a future world where everyone stays home and watches TV, and going out at night is considered aberrant behavior. This story is included in Bradbury’s collection The Golden Apples of the Sun.
7. There Will Come Soft Rains, by Ray Bradbury: This story about a “smart house” that has continued serving its occupants long after the occupants, and the rest of the world, have perished in an atomic war can be found in Bradbury’s Mars story collection/novel The Martian Chronicles.
8. The Little Black Bag, by C.M. Kornbluth: This story concerns a 25th-Century medical bag that is accidentally sent back in time to the mid-20th Century. By the 25th-Century, morons make up the majority of the population, and the few remaining smart people are their keepers. So the medical instruments must be simple so the moron doctors can use them–you just set the dials to diagnose and treat an illness. When the bag is accidently sent back in time, it falls into the hands of disgraced Dr. Full, who has been a wino for the past 20 years, ever since he lost his license to practice. Dr. Full wants to use the bag to do good, but his partner has dollar signs in her eyes. This story was also dramatized by Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, substantially rewritten, but both the prose and the film versions are worth checking out. You can find this story in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.
9. Microscopic God, by Theodore Sturgeon: A story about an eccentric inventor and recluse named Kidder–the owner and sole inhabitant on an island off the Atlantic coast–who creates a race of microscopic people who mirror human beings but have shorter lives and evolve faster than humans. This rapid evolution gives them the ability to invent technology much more quickly than full sized humans–this ability comes in handy when an evil banker attempts to use one of Kidder’s inventions (or, rather, the microscopic people’s invention) to conquer the world. I loved this story when I first read it in high school, and it has held up well over the years. You can find it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. I.
10. Allamagoosa, by Eric Frank Russell: This humorous story knocked me out of my chair the first time I read it. Apparently, it appealed to a lot of science fiction fans, who gave it a Hugo Award in 1955. It seems to be quite scarce now, but you may be able to find a copy of it in one of the early Hugo Award Winners books at the library or a used bookstore. It is also in the sadly out-of-print collection The Best of Eric Frank Russell. The story centers around what turns out to be a typo and the hilarity that ensues when the spaceship Captain, preparing his ship for an inspection by an Admiral, tries to cover up the fact that he has no idea what an Offog is. But the thing that really makes this story great is that it centers around the nuts and bolts and the bureaucracy of operating a spaceship, which one doesn’t often see in SF stories.
11. Dear Devil, by Eric Frank Russel: This novelette is about how a Martian poet named Fander, stranded on Earth long after an atomic war did unfortunate things to the planet, helps the Terran civilization start to rebuild itself. It can be found in the sadly out-of-print collections The Best of Eric Frank Russel and Creatures From Beyond, edited by Terry Carr. Put this on your list when searching for used books online or at your local used bookstore.
12. The Bicentennial Man,by Isaac Asimov: This story, about a robot’s quest to be legally declared a human being was made into a film starring Robin Williams. You can find it in The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories–unfortunately out of print—in a library or used bookstore or possibly in another collection of Asimov stories.
For information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
Stories from the Heartland, the fifth volume of the Nebraska Writers Guild’s (NWG) annual Voices from the Plains series, was released the first week in December. The anthology contains short stories, poetry, flash fiction, nonfiction, novel excerpts, and memoirs written by NWG members.
My story “A Place of Their Own” is included in the short story section. I wrote this story for a writing workshop at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) in the summer of 1976. The story is set in my first apartment. I polished the prose because I am, I hope, a much better writer now than I was 45 years ago. I also updated it, giving my characters cell phones and increasing the rent slightly. For instance, in the story Chris and Jennifer pay $100 a month for the apartment; when I lived there, I paid $67.40. Why it was $67.40 is something known only to my landlord and God. Why not $65 or $70, or even $67 or $68. What was the 40 cents for?
The Kindle eBook of Stories from the Heartland is $3.99 and the paperback is $18.99. It can be purchased from Amazon and Barnes & Noble and may be available from other online dealers.
About a week after Stories from the Heartland came out, the NWG released Flashes on the Plains, the organization’s first flash fiction anthology.For this collection, flash fiction–what we called short short stories in the olden days–are stories of 1,000 words or fewer. There are 18 stories in this book, which makes it no more than 18,000 words of fiction, which makes it a slim volume–67 print pages counting Margaret Lukas’s introduction but not counting the index of stories and authors.
I have two stories–“An Evening Stroll” and “Spare Parts”–in this anthology, and I wrote both of them in the spring of 2021. I called on my subconscious to write “An Evening Stroll”; by thinking about it intensely before I went to sleep at night, my subconscious turned it over while I slept, and when I woke up I had the story. Your subconscious can be a great tool if you put it to work.
The eBook of Flashes from the Plains is $1.99 and the paperback is $8.99, and it can be purchased from Amazon .
The NWG is one of the oldest continuous writers organizations in the United States. It was founded in 1925 and counts Mari Sandoz, Bess Streeter Aldrich, John G. Neihardt, and Willa Cather among its first members.
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
The Fourth Volume of the Nebraska Writers Guild’s annual anthology was released in early December, 2020. The list price for the eBook is $3.99, the list price for the paperback is $16.99, and both versions are now available from Amazon
Voices From the Plains, Volume IV, features 42 authors and 75 creative works, broken down into the categories of poetry, essays, short stories, nonfiction, excerpts from novels, memoirs, and flash fiction. My story “It Gets Lonely on the Third Floor” is included in the short story section.
Voices From the Plains, Vol. IV, is dedicated to the memory of Cort Fernald, who passed away in 2020. Cort was a driving force behind the Voices from the Plains series.
One of the oldest continuous writers organizations in the United States, the Nebraska Writers Guild was founded in 1925 and counts Mari Sandoz, Bess Streeter Aldrich, John G. Neihardt, and Willa Cather among its first members.
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
Voices From The Plains, Volume 3, the Nebraska Writers Guild’s annual anthology of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry–an annual publication from the Nebraska Writers Guild–was released earlier this month. The list price for the ebook is $3.99, the list price for the paperback is $16.99, and both versions are now available from Amazon. Voices from the Plains, Volume III, features 48 authors–one of them with work under his/her real name and under a pen name.
There are:
Thirty-four poems
Three essays
Twenty-two short stories [including my own Twilight Zone-esque story, “The Last Bus”]
One nonfiction book excerpt
Five novel excerpts
All but two of the authors currently live in Nebraska.
One of the oldest continuous writers organizations in the United States, the Nebraska Writers Guild was founded in 1925 and counts Mari Sandoz, Bess Streeter Aldrich, John G. Neihardt, and Willa Cather among its first members.
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
Just in time for Halloween (sort of), my latest horror story, “Unblinking Eyes,” is online in the Nov. 1 issue of Theme of Absence, along with myauthor interview. It would be best if you didn’t read this story after midnight when you are alone in the house and the wind howls like a lost soul around the eaves and bony fingers of barren tree branches knock against windows and the creaking you hear in the basement and attic might be the house settling…or on the other hand…
Enjoy the story!
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
This is my list of classic and modern horror stories for Halloween to get you into the mood for the creepiest time of the year.
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. When I was a kid, I wished I had been born on Halloween and was a tiny bit jealous of my cousin, Linda, who actually was born on October 31.
I’m a traditionalist about the trappings of All Hallows Eve. No misunderstood vampires or witches with hearts of gold for me. Give me a rotting corpse, rats scurrying through subterranean tunnels, or a vampire planning to snack on a priest and his entire congregation, and I’m happy.
You’ll find all of these creatures of the night–the decaying corpse, the scurrying rats, and the midnight snacking vampire–in the stories on this list of classic and modern horror tales. I first posted it several years ago on a previous blog but have tweaked it over the years, adding some stories and links and making sure the links already in place still work.
One of the latest additions is my own story, “What’s Wrong with Being a Nurse?”. Since this list’s beginning, I have followed an unwritten rule against shameless self-promotion, but I finally broke down and included “Nurse” because of comments I’ve gotten from readers.
It is almost an impossible task to make a list of good horror stories because there are legions of them, and there are many authors who aren’t on this list and probably should be. But in the interests of keeping the list manageable, I will only note a few of my favorites–although if I continue tweaking it and posting it every Halloween season for the next 20 years, the list may grow to a ponderous size.
The stories are listed in approximately the order in which they were published, ranging from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in 1820 to “What’s Wrong with Being a Nurse?” in 2011. NOTE: I don’t receive any compensation when you click on a link (I do, however, receive a royalty if you buy The Moaning Rocks, which contains “What’s Wrong with Being a Nurse?” because it is my collection and is currently in print). The links merely suggest where you can find the story if you’re of a mind to.
This is a well-crafted story by one of the first masters of the American short story. With his richly-detailed descriptions of the settings, the people, and the food, Irving transports the reader into his tale of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman.
I first encountered this short gem in class when I was in elementary school. Poe, like Irving, also did much to develop the style of the American short story. He wrote many other stories that are worth a read, but “The Tell Tale Heart” is one of my favorites. Also check out “The Cask of Amontillado”, another tale which I encountered in elementary school.
This is my all-time favorite horror story, probably because it doesn’t show, but rather implies, and the implications are chilling. I also read this one (or my teacher read it to the class; I can’t remember which) when I was in elementary school. Teaching horror stories in elementary school seems to have been a trend when I was young.
I have never been a huge Lovecraft fan because, even though he wrote in the 1920s and 30s, his style was reminiscent of authors writing a century earlier. Also, he struggled with dialogue, so there isn’t much of it in his stories, which can slow the pace. That said, his imagination has generated many stories which have kept generations of readers awake at night. The inside of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s mind must have been a scary place indeed. “Pickman’s Model” has been dramatized on Cabinet of Curiosities, Guillermo del Toro’s eight-part Night Gallery-like anthology series that started streaming on Netflix on October 25, 2022. This series gives new meaning to the phrase “Netflix and chill.”
This is another one of my favorites. WhenJeff Mason and I edited our anthology of original horror stories, October Dreams: a Harvest of Horror, we wanted to publish a classic story, and we chose this one because it had been out of print for years. Now OD has been out of print for years (although you can still pick up used copies on Amazon and other used book outlets), but fortunately this story is online in its entirety. The Graveyard Rats has also been dramatized on Guillermo del Toro’s eight-part Night Gallery-like anthology series that started streaming on Netflix on October 25, 2022.
“Interim”, “The Lake”, “The Emissary” and others by Ray Bradbury
Interim was my first choice for our OD classic horror story. Originally published in Bradbury’s first collection, Dark Carnival, it had been out of print for years. But while we were preparing our anthology, it was reprinted in a collection of stories from Weird Tales magazine, so we went with our second choice, “The Graveyard Rats.” Also, “The Lake,” “The Emissary” and the other stories in Bradbury’s collection The October Country are eerie journeys into the unknown.
I saw the Rod Serling’s Night Gallery segment based on this story before I read the original. I highly recommend it, both the story and the Night Gallery adaptation.
Stephen King has filled several volumes with many excellent short stories. “Children of the Corn” is from his first collection, Night Shift. “Survivor Type”–about a man, stranded on a deserted island with no food, who eats himself–is from King’s collection, Skeleton Crew.
This gruesome little gem (only about 175 words), which had appeared in a magazine a short time before Jeff and I published it in October Dreams, can be read on the author’s blog.
Published for the first time in OD and out of print for years, the author has recently released this 12,000-word novelette in digital and paperback. Bob Rodden was strongly influenced by Stephen King and Ray Bradbury and those influences show in this story. “Sun Tea” is about a subtle invasion and is strong on ghastly horror with a few surprises.
I decided to include this story on this list because of the reactions it has gotten. It was my wife Cheryl’s favorite, and my niece Jennifer told me that it’s a “very disturbing story,” which is what I was going for–it is a horror story, after all. It is about a little girl who wants to be a human sacrifice. You can find it in my collection The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories.
Humorous Horror Stories for Halloween
It’s a very rare thing to find a humorous horror story, but there are a few around. Here are two of my favorites:
“A Case of the Stubborns”by Robert Bloch opens with the ominous line: “The morning after he died, Grandpa came downstairs to breakfast.” For the rest of the story, the grandson tries in various ways to convince Grandpa that he is, in fact, dead and should go upstairs and lie down like any self-respecting corpse. The thing that finally convinces the old gentleman is simple yet unique. Although this is a light-hearted story, the element of horror is not ignored as Grandpa decays throughout the narrative with certain body parts failing off of him at inconvenient times. Bloch was also the author of Psycho, which was the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 film. This story is included in Bloch’s collection Such Stuff as Screams are Made Of .
“Aqua Sancta” by Edward Bryant is a short little gem about a priest and his congregation who have been imprisoned by a vampire for a midnight snack. The story ends with the priest’s unique solution to the problem. It can be found in 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories.
IMAGE: The Grim Reaper, by Joleene Naylor, cover from the first edition of my collection, The Moaning Rocks and Other Stories.
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
If you’re a fan of horror, I highly recommend the No Sleep Horror Podcast. Each episode is a collection of horror stories by various writers, dramatized by voice actors and complete with sound effects and mood-setting music. The episode I linked to is S12E12. The second story (beginning at about the 18:20 mark) was written by Sarah Rodden, daughter of Robert Rodden II, who I published in October Dreams: A Harvest of Horror 30 years ago.
This is Sarah’s first professional sale. It is called “Recalculating”, and after listening to this story you’ll never trust your GPS again.
Just a caution, though, these stories are not for children. So send the kiddies to bed, settle down with a glass of wine, and leave the lights on.
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
Voices From The Plains, 2nd Edition, was published in early December, 2018. Book launches were held in Lincoln and Omaha and other events are planned around Nebraska. This anthology contains fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from more than 60 Nebraska Writers Guild members–including an excerpt from Empath, my young adult dystopian novel-in-progress. One of the oldest continuous writers organizations in the United States, the Nebraska Writers Guild was founded in 1925 and counts Mari Sandoz, Bess Streeter Aldrich, John G. Neihardt, and Willa Cather among its first members. Pick up an eBook ($4.99) or a paperback ($19.99) online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or at selected bookstores around Nebraska.
For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.
I’ve just released a new collection of short stories–The Last Bus and Other Stories. These 26 stories span almost the length of my 50+-year writing career, from “The Park” in 1972 to “Spare Parts” and “An Evening Stroll” in 2021.
Stories from the Heartland, the fifth volume of the 
About a week after Stories from the Heartland came out, the NWG released 
