I grew up reading SF short stories, mostly from the Gold and Silver Age. That was the primary form of the medium, then, fostered by a healthy SF periodical biz. Now short stories are a lot more uncommon, with novels (and, more importantly, novel series) the primary medium.

Stross demonstrates why that's unfortunate with this 2009 collection of some of his shorts (and an introduction that analyzes quite nicely why the form is so wonderful). While not every tale is a hit out of the park, it is full of some lovely meta-speculative stories where the meaning and reality of what's going on slowly peels away like an onion, often revealing things both wonderous and awful beneath. There's also the ridiculous to go with the sublime, including a Jeeves-like story that became the trial run for Saturn's Children.

Good stuff.