Read I, Robot

Psychohistory predicts the fall of the Galactic Empire and Hari Seldon plans for it; Asimov's trilogy begins.

Earth colonises Mars in linked stories; Bradbury's melancholy frontier.

A city whose happiness depends on one child kept in a cellar, and the few citizens who leave rather than accept the terms.

Two constructor robots build machines that write poetry and simulate kingdoms; Lem's comic fables.

The twelve Strand stories, A Scandal in Bohemia to The Copper Beeches.

Ten young Florentines tell a hundred stories while the plague rages; the first modern prose.

Scheherazade keeps herself alive with Sinbad, Aladdin and Ali Baba, a story a night.

The Lady with the Dog, Ward No. 6 and the rest; the short story as we know it.