Ophiucha
Auror
Having the beliefs set forth in the work itself doesn't necessarily bother me.
I find his to be a bit too heavy-handed to get past. I read a lot of political SFF, from all sides of the political spectrum (one of my favourite authors is an anarchist, which I'm not), but they don't tend to make the villains such blatant and cartoonish strawmen like in Empire. And let's not get into the atrocity that is Hamlet's Father... even his most dedicated supporters couldn't defend that one. I definitely avoid buying his work because of his political actions in real life, but let it be said that his recent dip into political activism has also had a dreadful effect on his writing. Which is a shame, because despite how little I like his politics, Ender's Game is still a pretty good book and it's a shame he's not writing things of that calibre any more.
On the interest of staying on topic, some other short stories:
The Birthmark, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I love everything by Hawthorne, be it science fiction or novels about red alphabetic symbols, but this one is probably my favourite. I love Georgina and I like how Hawthorne presented the main character's desire for perfection. I feel like he was speaking from a personal place with a few of those lines, as I feel the same way as the main character sometimes about my writing.
The Wife's Story by Ursula K. LeGuin. I can't describe it too much without giving away the ending, but it's about a wife who begins to suspect that something is amiss with her husband. Short and sweet, but the twist works well with how short the story is. Any longer and you'd catch on, so I think it really illustrates how the shorter medium can be used for a good fantasy story.