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Guy de Maupassant: Father Milon
“Father Milon” (Le Père Milon) is a short story by Guy de Maupassant published on May 22, 1883, in the newspaper Le Gaulois. Set during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, it tells the story of an elderly Norman peasant who lives with his family on a farm occupied by German…
Shirley Jackson: The Witch
“The Witch” (The Witch) is a short story by Shirley Jackson, published in 1949 in the collection The Lottery or The Adventures of James Harris. The story takes place inside a train carriage, where a boy is traveling with his mother and baby sister. While the mother tries to remain…
Edogawa Rampo: The Caterpillar
“The Caterpillar” (Imomushi) is a disturbing short story by Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo, published in January 1929 in the magazine Shin Seinen. It tells the disturbing story of Tokiko’s life with her husband, Lieutenant Sunaga, a former Japanese soldier who was seriously wounded in the war and is now reduced…
Ray Bradbury: The Long Years
In “The Long Years,” a short story by Ray Bradbury published on September 15, 1948, in Maclean’s and later collected in The Martian Chronicles (1950), Mr. Hathaway and his family are the only inhabitants of a desolate Mars. Twenty years ago, the Great War on Earth left the red planet…
Mario Vargas Llosa: A Visitor
“A Visitor” (Un visitante) is a short story by Mario Vargas Llosa, published in 1959 in the book Los jefes. It tells the story of the unexpected arrival of a man nicknamed El Jamaiquino at a lonely farmhouse where Doña Merceditas, an older woman, lives on the edge of the…
Ray Bradbury: Night Meeting
“Night Meeting” is a short story by Ray Bradbury, published in 1950 in The Martian Chronicles. Set on Mars, colonized by humans, the story follows Tomás Gómez, an Earth colonist traveling along an old Martian road on his way to a party. On his way, he stops to contemplate the…
Edgar Allan Poe: Silence—A Fable
In “Silence” (Silence—A Fable), a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in 1838 in Baltimore Book, a demon tells a story about a desolate region in Libya near the Zaire River. A disturbing landscape marks this land: a sickly river, gigantic water lilies, and a dark and turbulent jungle,…
Isaac Asimov: Big Game
In “Big Game,” a short story by Isaac Asimov published in Before the Golden Age (1974), a group of friends in a bar discuss a time machine that has sent a mouse into the future without any harmful effects. The conversation takes an unexpected turn when one of them, Hornby,…
