Hugo question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Are novellas and novelettes distinct enough that there has to be two categories?

[added later]

If you are here because of "James Nicoll questions whether there should be four written-fiction Hugos. Comments over there, please." note that is inaccurate. In theory we could another written category to make up for the loss of one. Best YA novel, for example.

Comments

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I've read both longish short stories and short novellas, and then learned afterwards that they were "actually" novelettes. I don't really see any inherent nature of a novelette except in purely abstract terms of word count. The tripartate distinction of short, medium, long makes sense to me, in parallel to the single-EP-LP division in the music business.

Logistically, if there 's so much good short fiction being published in the year that the Short Story and Novella categories can't contain enough nominations, then I can see an argument for what seems essentially like a "longer short story" category. But it isn't really related to the nature of the form for me.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

the single-EP-LP division in the music business.

The what now division?

A single is a collection of 1-5 songs.

I gather from listening to old people and audiophiles talking about their "records" that an LP is basically "an album" (generally a collection of all the music that the artist has produced since their last album PLUS little vignettes that might add some sort of theme to the collection of songs as a whole).

I have no idea what an EP might be though, beyond something that might be called "an extended play", but extended from what?

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

I'm old enough to know this: a single is a two-sided disk with one song on each side. An EP (extended play) disk may have two songs per side for a total of four. These were popular in Europe; not so much in the U.S. They ran at 45 revolutions per minute; hence also called '45s'. An LP (aka long play; generally called "album")were larger disks holding 6-7 songs per side, for total of 12-14 songs (mostly 12 in the U.S., 14 in Britain; which is one of the reasons early Beatles U.S. LPs differed so much from their British counterparts). These ran at 33 revolutions per minute. Album probably derives from the early 78s (78 revolutions per minute). 78s were also single-sided disks, but they were about the size of an LP. They would be sold in albums containing multiple records in individual sleeves within the album. (My uncle left me some of those.)

[hrj.livejournal.com]

The 78s I still have are double-sided.[1] (I wasn't sure whether your "78s were also single-sided" was intended as "78s could also be single-sided as well as double" or intended to be read as exclusive.)

(Expanding on your description) It was an entirely different musical experience when you had to flip a disk in the middle of a symphony movement because the movement as a whole was too long for one side. There are still certain pieces of music where my brain expects a pause at certain arbitrary points. The play-order of the multiple disks would be set up with sides 1:n, 2:n-1, 3:n-2 etc. so that you could stack them on the doohickey to drop automatically in order to listen to the first half of the entire album without having to fiddle with things and then flip the stack to listen to the second half similarly.

[1] A children's "introduction to musical appreciation" album entitled "Rusty in Orchestraville" about a little boy who didn't want to practice his scales and the piano whose feelings he hurt thereby.

[lindadee.livejournal.com]

You are correct: 78s were double-sided disks. I meant to say single song pe side.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

What is this "song" that you treat as the basic unit of music :-) ?

[bedii.livejournal.com]

If memory serves, the design team that developed the CD based the maximum recording time on Beethoven's 9th, which was extremely popular in Japan: they wanted to make sure that you could get the whole symphony on one CD so they could capture the audiophile market in Japan.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

If memory serves, the design team that developed the CD based the maximum recording time on Beethoven's 9th...

If memory serves, Peter Goldmark designed the 33.33 RPM LP record with a similar constraint in mind. Maybe he was trying to assure he could get a whole movement on one side.

Here's a picture:

Dr. Peter Goldmark, who developed the Long Playing record, actually has nothing whatsoever to do with record business. [...] However, he grew exasperated at the breaks that came every time his player changed a disk.

[bedii.livejournal.com]

Neat little overview--and the article on Satchel Page a few pages along is even better! Here's the "Cecil Adams" take on record formats: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/228/why-are-record-speeds-33-45-and-78-rpm

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

Even in the era of LPs, I had (and still have) some complete opera recordings designed for the auto-changer (to give "doohickey" its technical term). So, a three act opera where each act fills two sides, the first disc will have the first half of Act 1 on one side and the second half of Act 3 on the second side.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

What lindadee says is true. Even after the main consumption of music moved on from vinyl to cassettes and then to CDs (and now to downloads, streaming, youtube sensations, etc.) a lot of musicians and labels organized their releases along those lines.

A "single" was a lead song, usually one from an album, with a few extra songs packaged along with it. The extra songs were usually outtakes, or covers, or things that didn't fit on the album. An EP is a collection of songs that lasts for maybe twenty or thirty minutes, usually without a single in the foreground--it's not a short punch like a single, but not an extended production like an album. They were very popular in indie music for a long time, as a way for bands or musicians to release music quickly without putting together a whole album. Usually an EP was either a bunch of songs that don't quite fit together, or a side thought. The album/LP was the main release, the elaborated thought.

Nowadays these distinctions are technologically even more irrelevant, but some musicians still organize the way they record and release music in that way--usually musicians who got their start in the pre-digital era, granted. I predate the digital era myself, but the general breakdown still makes sense to me: a thought; a single extended thought; an elaborated thought that includes room for some side avenues. They're still arbitrary distinctions, of course.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I have a CD of a Tom Petty album where at the halfway mark he says something like "If this was an LP or a cassette you'd have to get up to flip it now, so here's a pause."

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I had that same CD! Or my housemate at the time did. I'm realizing now I haven't seen it around in years, so it might have been his.

[kshandra]

It's from Full Moon Fever.



I worked in a record store (where? The Wherehouse!) when it was released, and I remember how amused I was the first time I heard it.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

Lots of musicians I know -- including many in their 20s -- still put out EPs. Cheaper, quicker, simpler, keeps your name out there (as you said).

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

I'm unconvinced that adding more eligible stories to a category which has had it's short-list truncated due to highly diverse nominations will 'solve the problem'.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

When I saw the short story shortlist truncated, I thought it meant the category was falling out of favor, but the most recent stats show that it's actually the second most popular category. First is novel, third is dramatic-long, then the order of the rest varies between nominations and voting.

Number of ballots cast for the 2012 Hugos

		Nominations	Votes
Novel			958	1664
Novella			473	1493
Novelette		506	1418
Short Story		611	1615
Related Book		469	1298
Graphic Story		344	1091
Dramatic-Long		603	1613
Dramatic-Short		524	1395
Editor-Short		481	 970
Editor-Long		363	 982
Pro Artist		402	1156
Semiprozine		362	1048
Fanzine			329	 802
Fan Writer		363	 899
Fan Artist		217	 932
Fancast			328	 829
John W. Campbell	405	1175