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

[barberio.livejournal.com]

There just appear to be natural lengths for different kinds of story.

I decided to give myself a challenge. I wrote a military science fiction noir murder mystery.

It's come in at too long for a 'normal' detective novel, and too short for a 'science fiction' novel. Seriously, considering the 80,000 printed word count that most publishers use as their cut-off, I'm stuck trying to find 10,000 words in an already finished story.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

To follow on to this...

There are two reasons that Detective novels are shorter.

The first is pacing. A detective novel is generally focused, and tightly paced, sidelines to the plot are truncated 'red herrings', sub plots tend to distract from the main 'mystery' rather than embellish so are avoided.

The second is that once the mystery you started the story with is uncovered, the story is over. It can be extended, but everything after the mystery is uncovered is going to be epilogue to the main story.

[redbird]

I have Dorothy Sayers novels that seem to be counterexamples: not that the story doesn't end quickly, but the bits about length and even focus. (At which point I note that, as peake pointed out a few months ago, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is a rather good novel about the aftereffects of World War I, disguised as a mystery. And Busman's Honeymoon is, as the author noted, a love story with detective interruptions. But consider Have His Carcass with regard to length, compared to some of the earlier books about Wimsey; less cardboard and a longer book.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

True. But as I've discovered, it's very hard to step outside the standard model of a detective story while still being a detective story.

ps. Yes. I keep meaning to start reading Dorothy Sayers, and it was on my research list. But it just keeps slipping my mind that I need to read those...

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

I always read Sayers for the banter and erudition. The mystery part just keeps getting in the way. (Dog collar? Seriously?).

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The second is that once the mystery you started the story with is uncovered, the story is over.

I read something in the last year where this wasn't true. The last third of the book was spent dealing with the consequences of learning who did it. I thought it was an interesting approach (but obviously not so interesting that I can remember the name of the book).

[barberio.livejournal.com]

I'd probably have to say that'd feel like two separate stories to me.

Of course, on reflection, things are also complicated by stories that use McGuffins, albiet those tend to simply play around with where the true 'mystery' starts.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

There just appear to be natural lengths for different kinds of story.

Or for different reading-purposes. If what you want out of a book is a snappy plot that resolves itself, shorter lengths work. If what the reader wants, though, is to immerse in a vibrantly-detailed world in great depth and wallow around in it while characters do stuff, doorstops definitely make sense.