Best GRRM Short Stories

[Plain, Simple Tailor]

I'm making my way through the Dreamsongs collections to fill that ASOIAF-sized hole in my heart, and I wanted to see everyone's opinions on what they think the best GRRM short stories are. 

Right now, out of the ones I've read, my favorites are (in no particular order) The Second Kind of Loneliness, Nightflyers, The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr, With Morning Comes Mistfall, and his Twilight Zone script, "The Road Less Traveled". 

(I haven't read Sandkings yet, so it's not on the list) 

EDIT: Oh my god, I completely forgot about The Ways of Cross and Dragon, which I adored when I read it. 

[Jo498]

The prologue and first story of "Tuf Voyaging" (SciFi, don't remember the exact titles) are very good. The rest is readable and pretty good but most of the time a step or two below that beginning (some get preachy and predictable). Other than that I only read the first two dunk & egg and one from an older "Aces"? collection I hardly remember anything about that last one.

[SeanF]

I haven't read all his short stories/novellas.  So far, my favourites are In the Lost Lands, Sandkings, and The Pear-Shaped Man.

[Peadar]

I loooooove that monster collection of stories. My favourites are -- in no particular order -- The Monkey Treatment -- Who am I kidding? This is the best.

Unsound Variations

The first Dunk and Egg story.

I have a soft spot for The SandKings and many others too.

[Wilbur]

GRRM's 70s and 80s short stories are excellent.  Furthermore, if you have time to read through the entire Thousand World tales the overall story arcs are very telling in terms of what we see in ASOIAF.

Some of my favorites are:

Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels, 1973

In the House of the Worm, 1976

The Men of Greywater Station, 1976

Sandkings, 1979

The Plague Star, 1985 (Became the first full chapter of Tuf Voyaging)

The Pear-Shaped Man, 1987

The mixture of elements of horror within the conventions of science fiction in all of the stories above is very effective, and his continual return to the main themes of his writing, but from different viewpoints, makes reading his pre-ASOIAF very rewarding once you have it all in front of you at once.

For someone reading the stories as they came out in 197X or so, however, they must have been tremendously unsettling and counter-cultural.

 

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Thought I don’t generally like horror.  I really enjoyed “Sandkings”.

[Maithanet]

Meathouse Man, Pear shaped Man, and Song for Lya are all quite memorable. 

[williamjm]

It is an excellent collection, with the possible of exception of some of the earliest stories I thought every story in it was good or very good.

My favourites included The Hedge Knight, Sandkings, A Song for Lya, And Seven Times Never Kill Man and The Skin Trade

[D_P]

my favorites were...sandkings, nightflyers and meathouse man.  obviously i enjoyed many more but these were the ones that had me saying, "holy shit! that was awesome."

[SeanF]

Meathouse Man I found very unpleasant, without being particularly gripping.

i'd add The Skin Trade to the ones I recommended above.  Also, The Stone City.

if I  had to choose one, it's In the Lost Lands.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Martin is a better short story writer than he is a novelist.

Anyway, my top three are:

• The Way of Cross and Dragon
• In the Lost Lands
• With Morning Comes Mistfall

[Jo498]

6 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Martin is a better short story writer than he is a novelist.

I think this is one reason why SoIaF has basically failed (or very probably will fail) and never be finished properly. While he did well for three books, already in them the short-story-like parts are often among the best ones, e.g. the first (in the first book actually both the "prologue" north of the wall as well as next chapter with the beheading are basically short stories) and sometimes last chapters. Overall it shows that he is both good at and loves these shorter forms, often more vignettes than even real short stories. But this feature, combined with the multi-viewpoint technique (so we often get a distracting, completely unimportant episode to introduce an unimportant character like Hota, only because we need a another viewpoint in Dorne) makes the already too long and sprawling narrative ever worse and ever less focussed on the longer plot lines.

[Wilbur]

If you do read through GRRM's short works, I highly recommend Preston Jacob's series of analytic videos on The Thousand Worlds stories.

 

[Aurane]

My 5 favorite non ASOIAF short stories, in no particular order, are:

• The Pear Shaped Man
• Sandkings
• With Morning Comes Mistfall
• A Song For Lya
• The Meathouse Man

[Annara Snow]

Aside from the Dunk and Egg novellas:

Sandkings, A Song for Lya, The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr, Meathouse Man, The Second Kind of Loneliness, Nightflyers...

[sologdin]

the pseudonymous items were best, such as 'a rose for emily,' 'the yellow wallpaper,' and 'the purloined letter.'

[Falconer]

A Song for Lya
And Seven Times Never Kill Man
Unsound Variations

I like Dunk, and I like Tuf, but the above stories are the ones that I keep thinking about.

[Larry of the Lawn]

On 9/4/2019 at 12:51 PM, sologdin said:

the pseudonymous items were best, such as 'a rose for emily,' 'the yellow wallpaper,' and 'the purloined letter.'

Yes, don't forget "Sonny's Blues", "a Good Man is Hard to Find" and all the stuff he published as Raymond Carver.