Is short fiction (in SFF) relevant?

[RaceBannon42]

[quote name='RedRuin' post='1481533' date='Aug 15 2008, 09.35']*leaving for an intelligent board*

Bye[/quote]

Enjoy yourself! :)

[Stego]

Given that I read signifigantly more short fiction than the average reader, and given that I am one of the subscribers, still, to many of the magazines listed in the ealier posted lament, I feel I am able to say the following:

Most short fiction sucks.

In fact, I would submit that more published short fiction sucks than novels do. And I lean heavily on Sturgeons Law in everything. However, I believe firmly that 99%+ of short fiction is awful.

To say there is nothing wonderful to be found in short fiction is asinine, and I did no such thing. Link and Chiang and Ford and Lanagan and Stross have provided me with a mass of wonder in recent years, and Dozoi's Best of the Best ought to be required reading for all.

But these are such a small amount of the utter shite that is published. And even Chiang and Ford and Link are not always successful.

Is short fiction relevant? It can be. On insanely rare occasions. But even then, it is only relevant to a sickeningly small and ever-shrinking amount of people. At some point, sometime soon, a full half of Asimov's readers will be those who have been published in it in the past, and the other half will be those who soon wish to be. The numbers simply do not lie.

And that, is not 'relevant' to anything but a self-aggrandizing circle-jerk.

[Ran]

And how many novels are awful, Stego? We both know Sturgeon's Law.

It's not an argument for relevance or irrelevance of the mode of writing that some significant portion of it is crap. Otherwise, both short fiction _and_ long fiction would be irrelevant to the literary development of the genre. This is, of course, not true.

It's not "us vs. them". All the good literature written in the genre is good and relevant to the genre, whether it's short fiction or long fiction. Both modes are writing are relevant today, for some reasons that are similar and for some reasons that are dissimilar. Blowing short fiction off as irrelevant, or relevant only to a small group when that small group includes many of the best writers of past, present, and future, seems like a faulty approach to the facts.

[Shryke]

I think looking at the sales records and calling them equally relevant is also "a faulty approach to the facts".

[Ran]

The evolution and development of the genre is not founded on sales. It's grounded on short fiction. Bestselling authors do not, unless they are J.K. Rowling, come from nowhere in this genre. The vast majority of them got into the genre because of short fiction, they cut their teeth on short fiction, they stay current with short fiction. It's a far more vibrant field than long fiction, in some senses, because most of the wildest and wooliest ideas show up in short fiction first before they're tamed, refined, and presented in long fiction.

I'm going to ignore arguments from the point of sales from here on out. It annoys me to see intelligent people get suckered into measuring things by dollar figures.

[Shryke]

Why would you ignore sales? Beacuse they don't support your position? Sales are the best indicator we have of direct impact on the target audience.

As I said, I think short fiction only has a second hand relevance to the readers of SFF. Many (or most) authors cut their teeth of short fiction, and then move on to novels, where they actually get exposure to the larger reading base.

[cteresa]

Why ignore sales as being representative of what is relevant to the genre: take a look at current amazon bestsellers for the sf/f category

1 - Breaking Dawn
2 - The Host (Sort of a theme here)
3 - The Road ( ok, sort of sf, maybe)
4 - Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon ( I don´t even want to know. and yes, I have seen this type of thing shelved with sf)
5 - The Dark Knight Returns
6 - Batman the Killing Joke
7 - ah, good, one Terry Brooks novels. never thought I would be so glad to find one of his novels on such a list
8 - Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs ( Briggs is actually out of all of these, like Brooks, somebody who actually cames from the genre)
9 - Batman Year one
10 - Fahrenheit 451 ( no clue why, but yeah, true genre).

Arguments might be presented that yeah but this on the list because of this and so on, but it´s what the current list looks like.

Maybe people do not buy short stories, but the list above does not represent sf/f as a genre either. If sales are what important then maybe LKH/Feehan ( I am in pain writing this here)/Kenyon/Briggs are what is truly influential and relevant because after all they are what sells and people actually read. Now I don´t think that, but then again I can look at the list and think critically about what is really sf or not, what might be good, what might be interesting - and then again I also think short stories are important even if they can not outsell Stephenie Meyer or even Patricia Briggs.

[Shryke]

Your posted list is extremely flawed. It's a snap shot of a particular point in time from a particular location. You simply don't have enough data to draw any conclusions from that.

[Kalbear]

I think one of the big advantages short fiction gives is the ability for authors to go for things that are less commercially successful without as great a risk to their career or to their time in general. They can use the medium to explore ideas that might not work well in a larger scope, or simply try a different genre or PoV they haven't done yet. Think of them as a beta test of novels, if you like.

In that respect I think they're pretty relevant.

In the sense that they are shaping the books and community, I think they're becoming less and less relevant. Nowadays I don't believe that short fiction is the only real way to break into the SF/F world like it used to be. The primary use of it was that you could cheaply get published and break out into more mainstream work; that's no longer as important thanks to changing media. In that respect, short fiction is really irrelevant. In terms of overall themes and goals, I believe that all of media is switching to a longer format. Witness the success of miniseries with movie-level production content, the love of epic stories and series, the larger books the better. Few people want smaller stories. They want larger than life. Small stories are for the web, for quick digestion. They just don't work by comparison.

[cteresa]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1482012' date='Aug 15 2008, 20.49']Your posted list is extremely flawed. It's a snap shot of a particular point in time from a particular location. You simply don't have enough data to draw any conclusions from that.[/quote]

Sure it is just one data set. For comparison the NYT bestselling list, of right now

Hardcover Fiction
3 The Host
13 Star Wars - Clone Wars

Trade Paperbacks
7 The Road

MMPB Fiction
2 - some Feehan, not sure if sf or not, and sort of don´t even want to check what her books are
4 - Cry Wolf - Briggs


But hey not perfect, but it´s what I could find as absolute representative of right now. Some years ago Publishersweekly did a yearly roundup of american bestsellers, all books which had sold above a certain level, anybody knows if they still do it? It would be fascinating to take a look - and trust me I do check these sort of lists now and then and say Feehan/Briggs/etc ( the whole "urban fantasy") and I think it unlikely this week is a total blip.

I don´t know how much sff actually sells, and the umbrella of what seems relevant to fandom seems to not perfectly coincide to what sells and what is technically part of the genre. Which raises some questions

- in the 1970s, I heard guys like Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke had regular bestsellers and were essential part of the genre. What happened since then that we have sort of marginalized bestselling authors of our speculative genre? or what were the historical equivalents of say brooks and goodkind and urgh feehan ( john norman?!?)

- what is happening to sales of sf and fantasy and what is the demographics who buy it. And hw it relates to males perhaps reading less. and the new imprints specifically targeted at you guess it women ( Tor and Harlequin books started subsidiary imprints of "romantic sff" at almost the same time. interesting couple of publishing houses! I can never remember whose imprint is whose)

- if sales is what are important, are not a lot of very awful very bad books getting overlooked?

[Stego]

[quote name='Ran' post='1481841' date='Aug 15 2008, 14.16']The evolution and development of the genre is not founded on sales. It's grounded on short fiction. Bestselling authors do not, unless they are J.K. Rowling, come from nowhere in this genre. The vast majority of them got into the genre because of short fiction, they cut their teeth on short fiction, they stay current with short fiction.[/quote]


This simply is not true anymore.

Rothfuss, Erikson, Bakker, Lynch, Morgan, Mieville, Durham off the top of my head did not cut their teeth on short fiction.

There were generations that these statements were true. But it's not true anymore. Because short fiction is waning in relevancy.



(And please, for the love of all that is holy, do not infer than The Road is not Science Fiction.)

[cteresa]

I have not read The Road, but I don´t care either way ( I actually thought Cloud Atlas was very good as sf), though if the Road is sf, The Host has to be either, plus a bunch of YA stuff all which will outsell obviously a lot of "our stuff". But I do know some fandom-relevant people (GRRM actually discussed that example on that famous session here I have not still edited for the SSM, my bad)who do not consider The Road to be part of the genre, or meant to be.

About hmm "Rothfuss, Erikson, Bakker, Lynch, Morgan, Mieville, Durham", two arguments

- sure.just because some people did not find necessary to write short stories ( and who knows if they tried and got some written in a drawer or directory somewhere) does not mean it is not a valid route to follow or an important skill to adquire.

- apart from Mieville, not sure how much of an impact any of those has on the wider sf fandom. Some only wrote one book yet, maybe premature. And while they might be huge on this forum, we have talked about it before, but there are a bunch of sf-f $niches and sort of circles of people with specific likes and dislikes but not sure each represents a whole.

[Kalbear]

[quote]- apart from Mieville, not sure how much of an impact any of those has on the wider sf fandom. Some only wrote one book yet, maybe premature. And while they might be huge on this forum, we have talked about it before, but there are a bunch of sf-f $niches and sort of circles of people with specific likes and dislikes but not sure each represents a whole.[/quote]Yes, but they all have had a bigger impact on SF/F work than any of the aforementioned short writers have. Even with respect to the Hugos.

[Ran]

Stego,

Well, fair enough. You have a few writers who got in without writing short fiction. So did Stephen Donaldson. Doesn't mean all _that_ much. Especially when you consider the broader point that it's important to the genre in a formative sense for many new authors today. Lets take a couple you cite...


[quote]Morgan...[/quote]

To [url="http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/sfnews2/04_april/news0404_1.shtml"]quote[/url] him:

[quote]In old-school SF, Poul Anderson. [b]I read his Dominic Flandry short stories at an early age and they made a tremendous impact[/b]–it was the first time in SF that I’d come across morally ambiguous characters and situations with real emotional depth.[/quote]

Sounds pretty relevant.

[quote]Mieville...[/quote]

Cited influences include Wolfe, Moorcock, Lovecraft, Ballard, Harrison. Every one of them's written significant bodies of short fiction.

Sounds pretty relevant.

It's true that there are authors who are coming in who seem to have little or no contact with the short fiction of the day (Lynch, mainly, I'm thinking). But I can name you a dozen authors for every one of those who definitely have short fiction as a formative experience in their relation to the genre -- more so in SF than fantasy, to be sure, but we're talking about SF/F, not just one or the other -- and I think that's pretty relevant to where the genre's going today.

Do we really want to go ga-ga over the Robert Newcombs and Terry Goodkinds of the genre?

Kalbear,

Err, could you clarify -- which short fiction writers have had less impact than ... uhm, Lynch of the not-as-big-of-a-splash-as-you-would-think-from-this-forum?

[Kalbear]

That's an odd argument, Ran - you're saying that because current authors found the old short stories influential that the new ones are going to be influential? Different times, different worlds. The point is that people like Wolfe, Moorcock, Lovecraft, Ballard, Harrison wouldn't bother writing short fiction these days. Those people are Mieville, Bakker, Erikson, Morgan. There's no need to read short fiction for people to be daring any more, or to read up-and-coming authors who can't get published. That's what the internet is for.

You might as well argue that radio plays are relevant to film because Spielberg and Lucas listened to a lot of them growing up.

[quote]Err, could you clarify -- which short fiction writers have had less impact than ... uhm, Lynch of the not-as-big-of-a-splash-as-you-would-think-from-this-forum?[/quote]I'd say all the short fiction writers listed before have had less impact than Mieville. Same with Rothfuss. Possibly Erikson, though it depends on whether you're talking US or UK. Bakker's probably had less impact overall than anyone, though damnit he should have had more. Durham I can't speak intelligently about.

[cteresa]

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1482105' date='Aug 15 2008, 21.56']Yes, but they all have had a bigger impact on SF/F work than any of the aforementioned short writers have. Even with respect to the Hugos.[/quote]

More than Ted Chiang? whose short stories have inspired series by other people? Whose work gets quoted on scientifc work? I don´t see what you mean by impact! Or Kelly Link who edits and is involved in some interesting alternative stuff?

The only reason I can think you would say those other guys (apart from Mieville) got more impact on the field is if you argue they have been read more widely or made more money, or got more active fanboys. But if you go by that argument to proclaim they more influential than Chiang or Link, problem is what stops ( apart from taste.) from having Terry Brooks or Christine Feehan be the ones whose influence obliterates all of them! and bitch please, if one is allowed to object to some of those on regards of taste, so can I about Eriksson and more!

[Shryke]

Not to mention most/all of Wolfe, Moorcock, Lovecraft, Ballard, Harrison have written long fiction as well.

I mean, what's Wolfe best known for? Moorcock? And so on.

And as Kalbear says, if readers aren't reading alot of short fiction NOW, then what's going to influence authors of the future? Because those authors of the future are the people reading now (or in the future). And these people apparently aren't reading short fiction. Which means it's relevance and influence wanes yet more.

[Kalbear]

[quote]More than Ted Chiang?[/quote]Absolutely. Cory Doctorow has had a bigger influence than Chiang has.
[quote]Or Kelly Link who edits and is involved in some interesting alternative stuff?[/quote]I don't think 'being involved in some interesting alternative stuff' really justifies whether short fiction is relevant.

At that point, we're arguing whether or not a specific author rocks, not whether the format as a whole is healthy. And I think it's clear that as far as a global influence is concerned, short fiction is pretty backwater. Certain authors may rock the format but it's unclear whether they required the format to make it big or spread their word to others the way it used to be.

[cteresa]

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1482122' date='Aug 15 2008, 22.04']Those people are Mieville, Bakker, Erikson, Morgan. There's no need to read short fiction for people to be daring any more, or to read up-and-coming authors who can't get published.[/quote]


Mieville maybe. The others, you go to a local bookstore sf section and try to strike a conversation and chances are the answer will be "ah, who". They books might be stocked but so would say for example something on sale this week cecelia dart-thornton. I am not sure they will truly be influential. Time will tell.

BRW somebody who seems to have sparked a whole minisubgenre of her own is Laurel K Hamilton. Ironical, no? And people starting to write today, unless they are looking to write the next big doorstep epic edgy fantasy ( and I sort of hope not, I want something *new*. new trends) they might instead have been influenced by Whedon or Lucas much more than any of those guys. even Mieville.

[Kalbear]

[quote]Mieville maybe. The others, you go to a local bookstore sf section and try to strike a conversation and chances are the answer will be "ah, who". They books might be stocked but so would say for example something on sale this week cecelia dart-thornton. I am not sure they will truly be influential. Time will tell.[/quote]Go to a bookstore and try and strike up a conversation about Chiang. Hell, try and find his book collection.

[quote]they might instead have been influenced by Whedon or Lucas much more than any of those guys. even Mieville.[/quote]Okay...so you're arguing that short fiction is relevant because people are influenced by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Wars? I think you've lost the narrative here.