The story is called "Story of Your Life" and it is in a semi-eponymous collection titled "Stories of Your Life and Others". The book is fantastic; there a couple other stories within ("Hell is the Absence of God" and "Tower of Babylon") that would also make for great movies.
Currently reading "The Story of Your Life and Others", and enjoying every page. Each short story is beautifully written and reads like a Black Mirror episode. One of the best books I've read this year.
There's quite a few options since his work is public domain. I've got this leatherbound one from Barnes and Noble.
Amazon also has a cheaper option.
And if you have an ereader, his stories are all in the public domain so you can get them for free.
It's called Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. It's in his short story collection Stories of Your Life and Others, which you can buy on Amazon. It's worth it just for this story, but all of them are excellent. Ted Chiang is often cited as the best living SciFi author to never have written a novel.
https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Your-Life-Others-Chiang/dp/1931520720
Sure! You have a lot of ways to start with Lovecraft. He was a very prolific writer, almost exclusively short stories. These days you can pick up "complete" collections of his stuff. However, these tend to be pretty bulky and, if you find that you don't care for his stuff, it'll be a bit of a waste.
Here's what I did: I started with a smaller paperback collection of some of his most essential stories. Amazon still has it: https://www.amazon.com/Best-H-P-Lovecraft-Bloodcurdling/dp/0345350804/
Once I got hooked from reading that, I picked up Necronomicon which is the most well known collection of Lovecraft, though even more complete versions have been released in recent years (even the Necronomicon doesn't have every story he wrote).
If you don't want to commit to a book yet, you can read many of his stories for free online. You can find a bunch hosted here: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/
And here are the ones I would recommend starting with, these are some of his most well known stories:
The Call of Cthulhu
The Shadow over Innsmouth
At the Mountains of Madness
The Rats in the Walls (Darkest Dungeon's entire premise and setting are heavily inspired by this story)
And here's a gentle warning/heads up: these were written almost a century ago, and some of the language used will sound a bit foreign. Some things would even be downright controversial if written today. If you've read any Mark Twain you might know what I mean. Just appreciate the sheer imagination of the author and the awesome ways in which he describes unimaginable horrors.
One of the comments intrigued me into buying some of Lovecraft's books. Found his complete works on Amazon for around 12$. Awesome find if you're interested. It's roughly 1100 pages.
The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft https://www.amazon.com/dp/0785834206/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apa_DXpOybAVYD5ZG
I don't know the exact bookmark, but here are some tips to try to narrow it down.
Since it's an unabridged audiobook, it should be in the same order as the paperback version. The Amazon page for the paperback allows you to see a preview of the book (click the cover to "look inside") and there is a table of contents in the preview. "Story of Your Life" is the 4th story in the book. You might be able to infer how much to skip ahead (e.g. the book is about 10.5 hrs long, there are 8 stories, if there are chapter separations in the audiobook, you might be able to guess from the chapter marks, etc.). After that, you can adjust the speed of the audiobook to "fast forward" to the story that you want.
Here's one for $15. I own this edition. It doesn't have his revisions, but it does contain his primary works. The cover isn't anything special, but at least it's hardback.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0785834206/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I'd like to recommend Ted Chiang's short story Hell Is the Absence of God which is contained in his short story collection Story of your Life and Others (Goodreads - Amazon)
It is set in a world where the Abrahamic god of the Old Testament actually exists and behaves just as described, like a crazed maniac. There are Angel visitations and the existence of hell and heaven is proven.
I really like the fact that there is a group of humanists who rebel against such a god,and willingly go to hell in order to live an honest life where everyone else just obeys in order to get into heaven when they die.
He pretty much only wrote short stories and one novella (Mountains of Madness). You can get a complete collection of his fiction pretty cheaply from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Fiction-H-P-Lovecraft/dp/0785834206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471620319&sr=8-1&keywords=complete+lovecraft
If you don't mind ebooks, all of his stories are in the public domain.
If you’re into classic horror, this is a book with some the works of H.P Lovecraft. I love diving into it when I don’t want to be immersed in a whole new book, but craving a new story. It’s not the full collection but a good start. H.P Lovecraft, Amazon.
Really kinda shocked at how little it cost; to put it in perspective I read Faulkner's As I Lay Dying a month ago and that cost $15 for a 250ish page trade paperback. They can't be making too much money off this one, lol
Its also nice to see this has some of his lesser known stories as well. Pretty much complete near as I can tell for his standard adult fiction stories. Link for anyone interested: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Fiction-H-P-Lovecraft/dp/0785834206
You can get The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft on Amazon for about $12, which is kind of hard to beat price-wise, but might be kind of intimidating. "The Call of Cthulhu" is probably his most well known story. "At The Mountains of Madness" gets a little more into the cosmic horror, and is my personal favorite.
Completely off topic, but this reminds me of the book "Machine of Death". Basically there's a machine that takes a small blood sample and prints out the way you're going to die.
But it's never as clear cut as you think. It could say "Old Age" and you think you're fine until your a great-grandparent. Suddenly, two days from now you're run over by a car driven by an elderly man. Old Age was responsible for your death.
Anyway, it's a collection of short stories all following the premise of said machine. Some are really funny, some twisted, some depressingly sad, but it (and it's followup book) is a great read.
This is the best Lovecraft collection IMO and it's dirt cheap. There's only one story about pharaohs (I forgot the title) that's not included but it's worth every penny.
Start playing Arkham Horror the Card Game. I'm only half joking.
I would actually recommend picking up one of the many best of Lovecraft collections. I would recommend this one. It's pretty easy to find cheap in used book stores, covers off 450 pages of his best most iconic stuff, and if you like it, theres a few more in the series by the same publisher to round out the mythos: https://www.amazon.com/Best-H-P-Lovecraft-Bloodcurdling/dp/0345350804/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=2I0ZMP5EQ9TTG&keywords=best+of+lovecraft+macabre&qid=1663311357&sprefix=best+of+lovecraft+mqcabre%2Caps%2C173&sr=8-1
> I think I’m asking my better half for expanse for Christmas.
you should!!! Such a great series.
make sure you get the novellas as well.
They have a novella compendium.
Memories Legion
shout out to /r/TheExpanse as well.
I assume you've read Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others? If not, definitely do so. Otherwise, you might like the stories of Jorge Luis Borges; The Library of Babel is one of my favorites.
Artemis by Andy Weir is not great, it was kinda fun but his other two are leaps and bounds better books.
They released all the novellas in a collection called Memory’s Legion a few months ago.
According to a review on Amazon who criticized the version I bought, this version is more complete: HP Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction Barnes & Noble Compilation volume, ISBN 9781435122963.
I bought this one:
The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft (Volume 2) (Chartwell Classics, 2) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0785834206/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_3ZXQ2NY3H8EQSNGD6091?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
And it’s fine by me. :)
I hope I helped.
There may be three or four that kind of count as "lesser" stories, but I think overall this book would really fill the bill for what you're looking for.
Content list:
The Rats in the Walls
The Picture in the House
The Outsider
Pickman’s Model
In the Vault
The Silver Key
The Music of Erich Zann
The Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Colour Out of Space
The Haunter of the Dark
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dreams in the Witch-House
The Shadow Out of Time
I started with this collection in middle school. Everything in here is good.
Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation: Stories, by Ted Chiang.
Most people I know who love Piranesi also love Ted Chiang's work. He has two collections of short stories out: Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation: Stories. It's sci-fi and fantasy, and his stuff is thoughtful, heavy, and beautiful, often leaving you metaphysically dizzy.
I always recommend this one, but there's also this spreadsheet detailing which books have which stories.
Check out some stories by Ted Chiang. They're short stories but have lots of meaning, so if you only read 50 pages you've read the whole story.
An anthology of short stories called The Living Dead, edited by John Joseph Adams. It was one of the best anthologies I've read for having a uniformly high quality of story, and it has some of the freshest and most interesting takes on the zombie genre anywhere. John Langan's "How the Day Runs Down" alone is worth the price of the book. I recommend it constantly. Unfortunately the second one didn't live up to the first.
/u/Extension_Bee3776 if you haven't read this book yet I am pretty sure you'll love it:
https://www.amazon.com/Machine-Death-Collection-Stories-People/dp/0982167121
The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. No dates, no details. Just a slip of paper with a few words spelling out your ultimate fate -- at once all-too specific and maddeningly vague. A top ten Amazon Customer Favorite in Science Fiction & Fantasy for 2010, The Machine of Death is an anthology of original stories bound together by a central premise. From the humorous to the adventurous to the mind-bending to the touching, the writers explore what the world would be like if a blood test could predict your death. But don't think for a moment this is a book entirely composed of stories about people meeting their ironic dooms. There is some of that, of course. But more than that, this is a genre-hopping collection of tales about people who have learned more about themselves then perhaps they should have, and how that knowledge affects their relationships, their perception of the world, and how they feel about themselves. Features thirty-four stories by Randall Munroe, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Tom Francis, Camille Alexa, Erin McKean, James L. Sutter, Gord Sellar, Jeff Stautz, David Malki !, Ryan North, and many others. Features illustrations by Kate Beaton, Kazu Kibuishi, Aaron Diaz, Jeffrey Brown, Scott C., Roger Langridge, Danielle Corsetto, Ramón Pérez, Karl Kershl, Cameron Stewart, and many others.