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

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

And when I read a Peter Hamilton cluster of bus-crushers, I am never struck by how the story needed 1600 pages for world-building and characterization but rather by the all-consuming mystery of when the plot is going to show up.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

Well, clearly SOME books are unnecessarily thick. It's probably safe to cut out 800 pages out of any Tad Williams book, for instance. But as a general rule, I'd rather have one of the 400-600 page books of modernity than the 200 page books of olden days. Rendezvous With Rama is a nice skeleton of a story, but it's hardly a full book.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, Tanith Lee's Sabella is a compellingly-crafted jewel, and I can't imagine it any longer without ruining it.

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

Somewhere between page 600 and 1000 of the first book, these days. ;-)