You've got the whole thing in bite-size; it's like a cupcake as opposed to a full cake. The world of the short story is intense, a quick plunge into a universe crafted just for this story, and then you’re right back out. And if you don’t take a minute to think about what you just read, it’s as if it never existed. Without all of the extra elements it takes to sustain a novel, great short stories are intimate and contained, a snapshot of unexplored terrain with a deeper and narrower mission than a novel could aim for. Its focused plot will ignite a question, a thought, but doesn’t take the time to put it out: we’ve got to move on.