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

Technology.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Could some of the growth in book length be due to technology. Manuscripts were once delivered to the publisher in ink on paper format. Actual human beings had to convert it into a printable form, probably several times. This makes the act of including something in the final product a result of at least one conscious choice. I think these days works are submitted electronically so each exclusion requires a conscious choice.

Re: Technology.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I think these days works are submitted electronically so each exclusion requires a conscious choice.

Your think is wrong.

Publishers will take in an electronically-delivered MS ... if it's one they already issued a contract for. (My UK editors all gleefully brandished Sony Readers at me when I dropped in on them last month: saves them lugging briefcases full of dead tree betwixt home and office if they want reading matter on the commuter run.) And they require it, these days, when it's time to send it to the (external, third-party, outsourced) typesetting department.

But unsolicited submissions are an entirely different matter. If you let folks submit electronically, then half of them -- the half who don't read your submission guidelines or don't think they apply to *them* -- will spam the entire industry senseless with megabyte sized email attachments.

PS: This is not to say that word processors haven't made it easier to write longer books, and indeed TNH has opined that this factor alone caused the average slush submission to grow by 10% during the 1980s. But it's not a primary cause.

Re: Technology.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

And to further confuse things, Asimov's only accepts short stories in hardcopy manuscript form.

Though that may be because Asimov's is possibly run by idiots more than anything else.

Re: Technology.

[galbinus-caeli.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the correction and amplification.