Short Story / Novelet / Novella
Reviews at Troynovant;
listed by Author
  

The marginal economics of science fiction publishing, colliding with the long-term creativity required to develop a consistent otherworld, weghted down science fiction from its beginnings. Even before the earliest true SF magazine began in 1926, authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs went in for episodic development across the months and years of magazine issues. They had a clear precedent in the Sherlock Holmes stories. The value of the series approach — for authors, editors, publishers, and readers — carried easily into books when book publication became common for science fiction and fantasy (labeled as such) beginning in the late 1940s.

Some sequences are covered as a whole at Troynovant, others piecemeal. A key component may feature in the history of science fiction. Some series integrate smoothly, essentially as multi-part novels or story arcs that really should be read in order even when not written in order; others are looser or more independent. The best of these series are colossal syntheses of imagination.
  

We apply no arbitrary length threshold; generally these stories are too short to have appeared as separate books. We try to note a story's original publication (often in a magazine) and its inclusion in single-author collections, but generally not inclusion in anthologies. Some links below are to story discussions within reviews of collections or anthologies.

[ alphabetical by story author; story title; reviewer ]

  
[Athens. Theseus' palace.]

Hippolyta (to Theseus):

But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy;
But howsoever, strange and admirable.

William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream, 5.1.23-27

  
We are more interested in excellent or distinctive work than the merely timely or fashionable. Quality is always in season, and often more topical and entertaining than currency or fashion admit. Thus, we aim to refer and amuse, rather than to announce and forget. We avoid spoiling surprises in reviews that recommend; other works take their chances.