A comparison of the short stories the good corn and the great leapfrog contest

Of course there are more anthologies than these twenty (though I hope no high-profile ones) and in addition to nationality, the data is also skewed by publication dates (which also couldn’t be avoided), but I think the below still gives a good picture of the most-collected short stories of the past 30-odd years.

On re-reading ‘the Alien Corn’ it is rambling and ill-structured, distasteful in its racial stereotyping. But back then, in the hands of a teenager who knew nothing, it was bearer of a message of might and truth; all know disappointment.

Nigel Patrick plays the eponymous ‘Mr Knowall’ in the middle film Trio. On their television showing years later I wondered over the name of the character’s name ‘Kelada’ as it obviously read ‘a Dalek’ backwards. The first of the films, Quartet, features a young Dirk Bogarde in a story called ‘the Alien Corn.’

The quality of any short story depends on how well these elements have been employed. An example of a short story that successfully employs these elements is “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. “The Lottery” is a story about human atrocities that happen within a village.