Science Fiction: The Short Stuff discussion

I'm sorry for getting this topic posted late -- the end of November! That gives us only fifteen days to nominate up to two stories we believe would make great reads for this group. Remember, the stories should be science fiction, not another genre, and they should be novella length or shorter. The easier they are to access and better known they are, the more likely they are to get votes. Happy New Year!

Dan wrote: "I'm sorry for getting this topic posted late -- the end of November! That gives us only fifteen days to nominate up to two stories we believe would make great reads for this group. Remember, the st..."

I'll nominate "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" by Cordwainer Smith. The story is included in the collections We the Underpeople, The Best of Cordwainer Smith, The Instrumentality of Mankind and The Rediscovery of Man and probably others. For those of our group who live in Canada, the story is in the public domain there and can be accessed through the fadedpage website.

I'll also nominate "Bad Medicine" by Robert Sheckley. It is included in The Masque of Mañana. It is in the public domain in the United States and is available on Project Gutenberg and LibriVox. The LibriVox audiobook is also available on YouTube.

Wonderful, David! Thank you for the nominations. I really like the fact they feature authors we haven't read from yet.

Does anyone else have any nominations? The floor is open for up to two from each member through December 15.

Okay, we have only two nominees, a short story and a novelette. So no need to run a poll. They win! I will find another award-winning novella to run as our third entry and open nominations for next group read.

The first two entries are written by dead white men who lived in the middle of the last century. Therefore, in part to balance things out I am choosing Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor's famous novella Binti from 2015. It won the 2016 Nebula and Hugo award (both of them!) for best novella.

One blurb puts it thus: "Nnedi Okorafor won her first Hugo Award for Binti, the first novella in a trilogy that blends space opera, Africanfuturism, and intergalactic diplomacy. Binti is the first member of the Himba ethnic group to be admitted into the Oomza Uni. She boards a transport ship to her new school, only for the vessel to be attacked by the Meduse aliens. Binti soon finds herself the lone human left to stand against a terrifying force, and she'll need both ancient technology and new discoveries to stay alive."