The Complete Stories

What Hacker News says

1. godelskiSep 2025
   That story had a profound impact on me when I read it as a kid. It encouraged me to learn for the sake of learning and to not get worked up over some test result. Many times the test is measuring something different than you think, than even the testers think. It encouraged me to look at things differently, so find more depth. To realize that to make things different you also have to do things differently.

   Reading again as I've become older I can see Asimov's call to fix education in the US and how much he resented the growing anti-scientific movements. As a child I thought it would be cool to belong to this elite group of "tape makers" (people who create knowledge)[0]. But as an adult I realized the naivety and grotesqueness of a society constructed in such a way. It is inhumane because it turns man into machine, with only a few being allowed to even be given the chance to explore the world around them.

   It's a really good read. I highly recommend. It's old Sci-Fi, so can be rough, but I feel it has aged well. It's under 50 pages, so easy to finish in a single sitting. It's in Asimov's "The Complete Stories Vol I" if you find a copy, but you can find it online or I believe it is also in "The Asimov Chronicles". It's also HN, so I hope everyone knows ways to get those...

   Btw, the Wiki[1] has spoilers. Do not read the paragraph starting with "Suddenly a stranger appears" nor the one that follows. Here's a short non-spoiler version instead: In the 66th century, school doesn't exist and instead people are educated through a direct download into their brain. They learn to read at 8 and are fully educated at 18, allowing them to live their lives as children do. Our protagonist, George, differs than his peers, being a nerd and using his new found ability to read to read whatever he can get his hands on. At 18, children are fully educated, tested, and then assigned careers by their aptitudes. George stands out, his test results suggest he is mentally challenged, is not given a designated career, and thus is not allowed to be further educated. Not being fit for any career or education, they commit him to psychiatric ward where he'll live out the rest of his days.

   [0] In some sense I still do. I have a deep passion for research and my dream job would be somebody giving me money to just explore my ideas. Probably not too far off from what people imagine a tenured professor does, though that's quite different from what one actually does.

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_(novella)

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2. milchekJun 2022
   For those who haven’t read much Asimov and enjoy short stories like this one, check out his book “The Complete Stories Volume 1.” There are some really entertaining and prescient sci-fi short stories in it.
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3. plantsDec 2021
   Some of my favorite fiction books and short story collections in no particular order:

   1) Collected Fictions by Borges

   2) The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka

   3) The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

   4) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

   5) 9 Stories by J.D. Salinger

   6) 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme

   7) 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

   8) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

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4. rpgmakerMar 2016
   I started to read Asimov relatively recently and I've found that I prefer his short stories over his novels. There is a very good and comprehensive collection that I've been reading for a while now, reading one or two stories every once in a while. I really recommend it: http://www.amazon.com/Isaac-Asimov-Complete-Stories-Vol/dp/0... http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Stories-Vol-2/dp/0385420781
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5. kmaitreysJan 2026
   I have it in print. As part of Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories Volume 1 (Published by Harper Voyager)
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6. johnfnSep 2020
   Wow, turns out I still have it on GitHub, including the results I ground out 8 years ago. The script probably doesn't work, but the results are still good:

   https://github.com/johnfn/GoodReadsScraper

   Particularly, load bigdata.js into nodejs and then run a command sort of like this to parse out the results, filtering out young adult/romance/religion stuff/comics:

       bigdata.filter(f => f.ratings > 5000 && !f.genres.includes('Young Adult') && !f.genres.includes('Religion') && !f.genres.includes('Romance') && !f.genres.includes('Sequential Art')).map(f => f.title)
   

   I get some pretty interesting stuff. First result is the Constitution... OK, fair enough... but the next 10 or so are:

       'A Song of Ice and Fire',
       'Collected Fictions', (by Borges)
       'The Name of the Wind',
       'Infinite Jest',
       'The Complete Works',
       'The Way of Kings',
       'The Wise Man\'s Fear',
       'Ficciones',
       'A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold',
       'The Complete Stories',
       'Labyrinths',
       'Don\'t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!',
       'The Hiding Place',
   

   Is it an amazing list? Eh. Is Name of the Wind better than Infinite Jest? Probably not. They're both fantastic books, though! And still, it's way better than Listopia. Also, this data is 8 years old. I bet it would be way better if I were to clean it up and run it in 2020.
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