"Favorite SF Short Story Or Novella (Final Round)" Topic

Sad. I've read everything on the list. They're all famous, which presumably is the point, but there's nothing here which would have make my top 20. Except for the Ellison--and I don't care for Ellison--there's not even anything I would have regarded as the best story by that author.

Sample size is very small; less than a hundred. I'd expect different results with more voters or a requirement to have actually read all the listed stories. I think some on the list are actually full size novels; I should have left out the word "novella" in the poll and just made it about short stories.

You're only saying that to make me happy, USAFpilot. Pretty sure it's three short stories and two novellas. (The Time Machine was 84 pages on first book publication and my least annotated Mountains of Madness is 99.) That's complicated by Orson Scott Card using the same name for the short story and the novel--but anyway, about as close to being on point as one can expect of a TMP poll. But it's pretty consistent in two regards: the titles are better known than, say, "Requiem" "Shadow over Innsmouth" and "In the Country of the Blind" and they're mostly something with an associated movie.

Heaven forbid someone should have to read even a short story.

Nightfall makes all the lists solely based on nostalgia.
I first read it with anticipation, knowing it was "The Greatest", and was very disappointed.