Weird Tales Books-Best Short Shorts

Best Short Shorts edited by Eric Berger

Best Short Shorts is a collection of short, short stories from Scholastic Book Services, published in several printings from 1958 until at least an eighth printing in 1967. There are thirty-five stories in the book, about one-third of which are from Collier's. Others are reprinted from The American Magazine, Liberty, Senior Scholastic, Seventeen, and This Week--what you might call mainstream titles. A few of the tales are from books or magazines of fantasy and science fiction. I'll list only those stories here. Finally, there are stories from tellers of weird tales, including "Code of the Underworld" by Jim Kjelgaard and "Two Were Left" by Hugh B. Cave.

Best Short Shorts edited by Eric Berger

(Scholastic Book Services, 1967, 183 pp.)

• "A Battle Over the Teacups" by August Derleth (Oriental Stories, Summer 1932)
• "August Heat" by W.F. Harvey (The Beast with Five Fingers, 1947)
• "The Open Window" by Saki (The Short Stories of Saki, 1930)
• "The Voice from the Curious Cube" by Nelson Bond (No Time Like the Future, 1955)
• "The Dreamer" by Alfred Coppel (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Apr. 1952)
• "The Fun They Had" by Isaac Asimov (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Feb. 1954)
• Plus 29 other short short stories.

Best Short Shorts, edited by Eric Berger (1967), with some odd cover copy and an unknown cover artist.

Text and captions Copyright 2011, 2023 Terence E. Hanley