Reminiscing about got me to do a little trivia research. The "short short" story often quoted verbatim — "The last man on Earth sat alone in a locked room. There was a knock on the door." — is actually only a plot device in a longer story called (December, 1948, Thrilling Wonder Stories). It later became a radio play. But the two sentence "story within a story" became an urban legend and many people today, including writers, believe this was published separately by Brown and holds the record as the shortest story ever written.
In July 1957, clearly as a response to Brown's tale, Ron Smith produced what he called "A Horror Story Shorter by One Letter Than the Shortest Horror Story Ever Written": The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a lock on the door.
Brown's apocryphal version of the story was subsequently submitted anonymously to a short story competition on NPR — and won!
Yet Brown may not have come up with this story idea himself. It had been around in various forms for over a hundred years. Thomas Bailey Aldrich presented his version around 1870:
"A woman is sitting alone in a house. She knows she is alone in the whole world; every other living thing is dead. The doorbell rings." Diverging slightly from the theme, but still essentially the same story, is this, which apparently is a well known British ghost story:
"He sat alone in the dark, afraid. Someone put matches in his hand."
Other extremely short SF tales use different themes. One is entitled "Sign at the End of the Universe". The text reads "This End Up" but is of course printed upside down.
On Thursday, January 11, 2001, The Jerusalem Post reported the following truly "amazing story":
The highly acclaimed Guatamalan novelist Augusto Monterroso won this year's Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world, and worth 15 million Spanish pesetas, or about $77,500.
"Monterosso's winning short story runs to the length of just one, nine-word sentence: 'When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.' That works out to an unprecedented $8,611 per word, which should surely also win Monterosso an entry in the next Guinness Book of Records.
The story originally appeared in 1959 in Obras completas (y otros cuentas), which translates as Complete Works (And Other Stories).
Forrest J. Ackerman's contributed a much shorter story in the June 1973 issue of the now defunct, "Vertex: The Magazine of Science Fiction" (1973-1975). Entitled "Cosmic Report Card: Earth", it simply reads: F
Other hacks immediately rushed to print with other one-letter stories. It was simply too easy a game to play.
But the shortest story ever written is Edward Wellen's "If Eve Had Failed To Conceive", (in an anthology series called Orbit 15, published in 1974 by Harper & Row) which contains absolutely no text whatsoever. (Other stories may tie for first place, but none can ever be shorter than this.) Another story with identical text is called "After the War".
But, world records aside, Brown remains much more fun for me than
the hacks who tagged along.
Professor Jones had been working on time theory for many yeras.
"And I have found the key equation," he told his daughter one day.
"Time is a field. This machine I have made can manipulate, even
reverse, that field."
Pushing a button as he spoke, he said, "This should make time run
backward backward run time make should this," said he, spoke he as
button a pushing.
"Field that, reverse even, manipulate can amde have I machine this.
Field is a time." Day one daughter his told he, "Equation key the
found have I and."
"Years many for theory time on working been had Jones Professor."
Walter B. Jehovah, for whose name I make no apology since it really
was his name, had been a solipsist all his life. A solipsist, in case
you don't happen to know the word, is one who believes that he himself
is the only thing that really exists, that other people and the
universe in general exist only in his imagination, and that if he quit
imagining them, they would cease to exist.
One day, Walter B. Jehovah became a practicing solipsist. Within a
week, his wife ahd run away with another man, he'd lost his job as a
shipping clerk and he had broken his leg chasing a black cat to keep
it from crossing his path.
He decided, in a hospital, to end it all.
Looking out the window, staring up at the stars, he wished them out
of existence, and they weren't there anymore. Then he wished all other
people out of existence, and the hospital became strangely quiet, even
for a hospital. Next the world, and he found himself suspended in a
void. He got rid of his body quite easily and then took the final step
of willing himself out of existence.
Nothing happened.
Strange, he thought, can there be a limit to solipsism?
"Yes" a voice said.
"Who are you?" Walter B. Jehovah asked.
"I am the one who created the universe which you have just willed
out of existence. And now that you have taken my place-" there was a
deep sigh "-I can finally cease my own existence, find oblivion, and
let you take over."
"But-how can I cease to exist? That's what I'm trying to do, you
know."
"Yes, I know," said the voice. "You must do it the same way I did.
Create a universe. Wait until someone in it really believes what you
believed and wills it out of existence. Then you can retire and let
him take over. Good-by now."
And the voice was gone. Walter B. Jehovah was alone in the void
and there was only one thing he could do. He created the heaven and
the earth.
It took him seven days
"I heard a rumor," Sangstrom said, "to the effect that you-" he
turned his head and looked about him to make absolutely sure that he
and the druggist were alone in the tiny presecription pharmacy. The
druggist was a gnarled gnomelike little man who could have been any
age from fifty to one hundred. They were alone but Sangstrom dropped
his voice just the same "to the effect that you have a completely
undetectable poison."
The druggist nodded. He came around the counter and locked the
front door to the shop, then walked toward a doorway behind the
counter. "I was about to take a coffee break," he said. "come with me
and have a cup."
Sangstrom followed him around the counter and through the doorway
to a back room ringed by shelves of bottles from floor to ceiling. The
druggist plugged in an electric percolator, found two cups and put
them on a table that had a chair on either side of it. He motioned
Sangstrom to one of the chairs and took the other himself. "Now," he
said "Tell me. Whom do you want to kill, and why?"
"Does it matter?" Sangstrom asked. " Isn't it enought that I pay
for-"
"THe druggist interrupted him with an upraised hand. "Yes, it
matters. I must be convinced that you deserved what I can give you.
Otherwise-" He shrugged.
"All right," Sangstrom said."The whom is my wife, the why -" he
started a long story. Before he had quite finished, the percolator had
finished its task and the druggist briefly interrupted to get coffee
for them. Sangstrom finished his story.
The little druggist nodded. "Yes I occasionally dispense an
undetectable poison. I do so freely; I do not charge for it, if I
think a case is deserving. I have helped many murderers.
"Fine," said Sangstrom, "Give it to me then"
The druggist smiled at him. "I already have. by the time the coffee
was ready I decided that you deserved it. . It was, as I said, free.
But there is a price for the antidote."
Sangstrom turned pale. But he had anticipated-not this, but the
possibility of a double-cross or some form of blackmail. He pulled a
pistol from his pocket.
The little druggist chuckled. "You daren't use that. Can you find
the antidote" -he waved at the shelves-"among those thousands of
bottles? Or would you find a faster, more virulent poison? Or if you
think I'm bluffing, that you are not really poisoned, go ahead and
shoot. You'll know the answer within three hours when the poison
starts to work."
"How much for the antidote?" Sangstrom growled.
"Quite reasonable. A thousands dollars. After all, a man must live.
Even if his hobby is preventing murders, there's no reason why he
shouldn't make money at it, is there?"
Sangstrom growled and put the pistol down, but within reach, and
took out his wallet. Maybe after he had the antidote, he'd still use
that pistol. He counted out a thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills
and put it on the table.
The druggist made no immediate move to pick it up. he said "And one
other thing-for your wife's safety and mine. You will write a
confession of your intention-your former intention, I trust- to murder
your wife. THen you will wait till I go out and mail it to a friend of
mine on the homicide detail. He'll keep it as evidence in case you do
decide to kill your wife. Or me, for that matter."
"When it is in the mail it will be safe for me to return here and
give you the antidote. I'll give you paper and pen. . .
"Oh, and one other thing-although I do not absolutely insist on it.
Please help spread the word about my undetectable poison, will you?
One never knows, Mr. Sangstrom. The life you save, if you have any
enemies, just might be your own."
Imagine ghosts, gods and devils.
Imagine hells and heavens, cities floating in the sky and cities
sunken in the sea
Unicorns and centaurs. Witches, warlocks, jinns and banshees.
Angels and harpies. Charms and incantations. Elementals,
farmiliars, demons.
Easy to imagine all of those things: mankind has been imagining
them for thousands of years.
Imagine spaceships and the future.
Easy to imagine; the future is really coming and there'll be
spaceships in it.
Is there then anything that's really hard to imagine?
Of course there is.
Imagine a piece of matter and yourself inside it, yourself, aware,
thinking and therefore knowing you exist, able to move that piece of
matter that you're in," to make it sleep or wake, make love or walk
uphill.
Imagine a universe-infinite or not, as you wish to picture it- with
a billion, billion, billion suns in it.
Imagine a blob of mud whirling madly around one of those suns.
Imagine yourself standing on that blob of mud, whirling with it,
whirling through time and space to an unknown destination.
Imagine!The End
Solipsist
Hobbyist
Imagine