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I just finished reading the New Yorker science fiction issue, and--wow. Is this what the regular New Yorker is like for everybody else? Where all the articles are things you care about and the bylines are familiar and the fiction is interesting? I really liked the Jennifer Egan story, which alas is not online for the general public and anyway I think the formatting is important. I'm going to try to scan it later and share it. With warnings, which it needs.

Also it reminded me of how much I miss reading science fiction. I went through a period of a few years where, I didn't read hardly any SF novels because for some reason those have always been hard for me, but I read about twenty cumulative years' worth of "Year's Best Science Fiction" compilations--both the ones with that title and the "Year's Best SF" that were in easier-to-carry-in-my-purse mass market paperbacks, plus any other yearly or themed anthologies I found at the used bookstore. I really need to go back through all those anthologies to locate and make an index of all the stories that have stayed with me but whose titles and authors I don't remember. And one of my earliest science fiction experiences, at least the first encounter with SF that I remember (no, the second; the first was a series of Bruce Coville books--so the first grownup SF) was reading a collection of David Brin short stories my dad owned--I have no idea if these were actually any good, I'm kind of scared to go back and check because the memories are so intensely fond. And I've read every Ursula K. LeGuin short story in existence but none of her novels, on which basis I still feel comfortable declaring her possibly my favorite author of all time.

Anyway, though. Short-form SF. Any recommendations? Anthologies or all one author, new or less new or classic, although characterization and a minimum of fail are both important qualities for me. So maybe not that classic.

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Ted Chiang is awesome and very strange. You might not want a whole collection of just him though; most of his stories don't work for most people. I think "The Story of Your Life" is the best one to try, and you can find it in a collection called "Starlight 2", which also has an amazing story by Raphael Carter and one by Susannah Clarke.

Stories of Your Life and Others is actually one of the small handful of SF books I have read in recent years! I really really really loved it.

I really like Rachel Swirsky's short stories/novellas - the worldbuilding is great, and while individual characters can certainly be faily, the narrative is not. "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window", which won a Nebula, remains the only really good worldbuilding of a gynarchy and how that shapes the people in it that I've read. (I'm not using "matriarchy" here for plot-specific reasons).

Octavia E Butler's "Bloodchild and Other Stories" is one of my favorite collections. Creepy, though.

I am very fond of Ted Sturgeon, but it's hard to recommend him sometimes -- a lot of his stuff is...of its time in faily ways. (And a lot of it isn't, but any collection or anthology has a mix, you know?) But he wrote some seriously excellent stuff, often bordering on horror.

So this is kind of backdooring your request, because Lois McMaster Bujold arguably writes the MOST EPIC OF ALL EPIC SF, but her novellas set in the Vorkosigan Saga universe are LOVELY. Three really great ones are anthologized in Borders of Infinity - the first, "The Mountains of Mourning," was the point when I really fell for her as a writer, and the second, "Labyrinth," is so awesome that I put it on the syllabus of my freshman comp course last semester.

Seconding Starlight 2, although it's SF and fantasy, not just SF.

And seconding the Vorkosigan books as exactly the sort of thing that would set their hooks into your brain. From what I know of your tastes, I cannot imagine you not becoming fannish about this series. If you're interested, start with Shards of Honor. It's one of two possible starting places; the other is The Warrior's Apprentice. But I think you'd want to meet Cordelia first. And there's some great fanfic based on them too. You can get the ebooks free from Baen, except for Memory for some reason.

Some specific short story recs:
Ted Sturgeon, 'A Saucer of Loneliness'
James Tiptree Jr, 'Houston, Houston, Do You Read?'

Oh and hey, I have a spare copy of an LGBT SF anthology called Worlds Apart. It's got some good stuff and some stuff I bounced off. If you want it, PM me your address and I'll send it along.

James Tiptree, Jr!!!!

HELLS YEAH.