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

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

The reason we have longer science fiction books now than we had in the socalled golden age is that the average sf reader has become smarter and more demanding, no longer willing to put up with cardboard characters and a generic plot for the sake of a cool idea. If you want good story, good s-f and good characterisation you need longer books.

[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.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

no longer willing to put up with cardboard characters and a generic plot

Dude, no really.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I like how you were able to post that with a straight face. Of course every generation of fan thinks its better than the one before, so....

I've honestly seen no improvement in plotting and characterization, much less world building in the last twenty-five years; I have however seen a great increase in the baroqueness of same. That is, instead of doing the job in a hundred words, authors have learned to do the same thing in five hundred. Likewise, if three main characters is good, eighteen must be even better!

Take "A Song of Ice and Fire": the world building is no better then that of say "The Broken Sword": in fact the world Martin comes up with is nonsensical. But Martin surrounds that nonsensical world with so much verbiage that readers tend to miss the flaws in the worldbuilding. Likewise, take the characterization of someone like Cersei; Martin surrounds her with so much extraneous detail that it takes a while before one realizes that she's the same stereotypical "bitch queen-mother" that we've seen in the literature for decades.

So largely I'd say it's a matter of authors shovelling a crapload of words to try to hide the flaws in their work, rather than an improvement on the part of the readers.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

That's simply not true at all. A really good writer can work with economy of expression and have good work in less words. I tend to view having to use more words to put the same thing across that you could in fewer as a sign of 'throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks' writing.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Who was it who wrote "I am sorry this letter is so long, I did not have time to make it shorter"?

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

Maybe this has to do with the demise of the pulps and the short story? So-called, at least. So in one sense, the writers are getting better, or at least the slush pile isn't quite so dreadfully bad. But they also don't have much practice at economizing, nor have felt the need to do so as keenly as in the days of yore.