Science fiction & fantasy short stories suitable for English lessons

[pseudomonas]

I spent the weekend with a friend who is an English teacher (that is, teaching literature to native English speakers, not teaching English as a second language), and in talking about texts, it emerged that their school doesn't really have much in the way of science fiction / speculative fiction / fantasy taught at any point, and they thought that it might be nice to study some for an upcoming short-story set of lessons, but they were not as conversant with those genres as with more traditional literature. So, I asked on Twitter (see first comment), and will ask again here, since I know any number of you are involved in SFF fandom, and because it makes a better repository for discussion:

What SFF short stories would you recommend for an English teacher to study with a class of 13-14-year-olds?

Comments

Extracts of comments from Twitter

[pseudomonas]

lizwithhat: How to Serve Man. The Nine Billion Names of God. The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. Franchise. Marionettes, Inc. All ones I read at that age and can still remember by name, so they definitely made an impact

marnanel: P J Plauger's "Child of all ages" [themes thought particularly appropriate for that age-group]

ArdsleyWooster: Asimov's "Nightfall". Or there's a whole set in the anthology "21st Century Science Fiction" - some are suitable.

marnanel: http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

[Non-public] "I liked a lot of Fred Pohl's 50s stuff at that age -- simple high-concept, funny stuff. Don't know if it'd appeal now."

miss_s_b recommended Ursula Le Guin and http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/Books/Smoke+%2526+Mirrors/

pseudomonas: my top-of-head thoughts were Lem, Egan, Asimov...

Re: Extracts of comments from Twitter

[sparrowsion]

Big second to "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas".

I kind of want to suggest "Aye, and Gommorah" on the grounds that that's a great age for it to have impact, but it would be a brave teacher to take it on.

[matgb]

Do you want classic SF or modern stuff? Allamagoosa is always fun from the classics
http://web.archive.org/web/20080124051440/http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/russell/russell1.html

for modern stuff tor.com publishes a lot of fun stuff, including short story spinoffs of novel series (Scalzi and Stross have had good stuff up there), or just look at Hugo nominated/winning stuff from any year except this year.

[hilarita]

Yes - whatever short Stross was nominated for Hugos last year (Equoid? I'm rubbish at remembering titles). Full of references to other bits of literature that Eng. Lit. teachers can get all excited about, and also fun.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

We read 'A Sound of Thunder' by Ray Bradbury in my English class.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I just read The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami, and immediately thought of this question.

[rowan]

I am not very conversant with the SFF genres but I enjoyed Jackalope Wives very much when I read it recently.

I read a volume of short stories by Louise Lawrence at about that age. I recall being impressed by the vocabulary used at the time, and again, found it very enjoyable. I think it was Extinction is Forever; sadly out of print now. LL wrote Children of the Dust which I think was commonly a GCSE set text in the 1990s.