Short stories | Lecturia

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, claims to have traveled to the past and discovered the true cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction. With his account, Hornby challenges common theories and proposes a surprising and unconventional explanation for the fate of these prehistoric creatures, leaving his friends intrigued and questioning what they thought they knew about ancient history.

Ray Bradbury: The Lake

“The Lake” is a short, moving story by Ray Bradbury, published in May 1944 in Weird Tales magazine. The story follows Harold, a boy who makes his last visit to Lake Michigan before moving to the western United States. During that visit, he wanders away from his mother to remember his friend Tally, who disappeared in the lake a year earlier. Years later, Harold, now an adult and married, returns to the place of his childhood with his wife, unaware that fate has an unsettling and revealing experience in store for him.

Isaac Asimov: Exile to Hell

Synopsis: “Exile to Hell” is a short story by Isaac Asimov, published in May 1968 in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine. In a society where life depends on a complex technological infrastructure, damaging facilities is an unforgivable crime. While playing a game of chess, two programmers discuss the humanity of the most severe punishment under the law: exile, a relentless punishment that forces the guilty party to leave their familiar surroundings and be sent to an inhospitable place feared by all, where survival is an unbearable burden.

E. F. Benson: The Room in the Tower

“The Room in the Tower” is a short story by E. F. Benson, published in January 1912 in Pall Mall Magazine. It recounts the disturbing experience of a man haunted for years by a recurring dream: a visit to a mysterious house, a silent reception by an unknown family, and the relentless announcement that he has been assigned a room in an old tower. However, one day, what had until then been only a dream vision begins to manifest itself in his real life with increasingly disconcerting precision.

Arthur C. Clarke: Encounter in the Dawn

“Encounter in the Dawn” is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, published in June-July 1953 in the magazine Amazing Stories and collected that same year in the anthology Expedition to Earth. It tells the story of three scientists from the distant Galactic Empire who descend on a primitive, fertile, and mysterious planet, where they soon discover signs of intelligent life. Cautiously, one of them attempts to establish contact with a local inhabitant, initiating a bond between two civilizations separated by thousands of years of evolution but united by their shared humanity.

August Derleth: The Drifting Snow

“The Drifting Snow” is a vampire story by August Derleth, published in February 1939 in Weird Tales magazine. The story takes place in an old house in Wisconsin during a winter storm. Clodetta, who has just arrived with her husband, begins to sense an unsettling tension in the family atmosphere, marked by Aunt Mary’s rigid character and her strange prohibition against opening the curtains on the west side of the house after sunset. The mysterious rules imposed by the old woman make sense when Clodetta thinks she sees a figure in the snow.