I know I've asked this before

[james_davis_nicoll]

I was reading a mystery last night that turned out to be a lot shorter than I expected because the manuscript pages were single-sided. The book turned out to be less than 280 pages long. Despite this lack of length the author managed to fit an entire plot between the two covers.

It's comparatively rare for an SF novel to be that short and nearly unheard of for a fantasy novel to be under 300 pages. I've also never seen a mystery that came close to the brick-like dimensions of many F&SF novels. There seems to be a hard limit of about 400 pages over in mystery.

Mysteries also eschew the cliff-hanger ending and the book-fragment approach, which I greatly appreciate.

Does it make sense to ask why modern [1] F&SF readers appear to prefer longer lengths than do mystery readers?

1: I have a number of older books upstairs that come in under 200 pages and like the mystery they all have complete plots.

Comments

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

If you want good story, good s-f and good characterisation you need longer books

Or better writers.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

Naah, you need the room.

Even the best writers can't hit all three in the space of your average Golden Age novel length. I've read several of Heinlein's juveniles for the first time this year, _Red Planet_ _Tunnel in the Sky_, _Farmer in the Sky_ and _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_ and what struck me about all of them was how thin the plots and characters were. Not badly done, but only sketched out.

It's the same with whatever other Golden Age sf writer you care to name. They always stint on something.

[connactic.livejournal.com]

I felt the same way with Pangborn's _Davy_. What there was of it was very good, but I felt he had to cut out so much to fit into a publishable length.