Is short fiction (in SFF) relevant?

[Stego]

I'd love to see a piece of short fiction become relevant, btw. I'd love to get excited at a new copy of Analog in my mailbox.

Lobsters might be the last piece of short fiction really worthy of discussion and bringing relevancy to short SF/F. Before that? I have no idea.

And let's not dance around sales, please. These people write to get paid or they write for other writers. Writing for other writers does not make one relevant.

[Larry.]

Except as far as it acts as a workshop (with pay) for many?

Something occurred to me this afternoon that I thought I'd throw out before I resume lesson plan organization: If a literature teacher (and I've been one before) were to want to include elements of SF/F in a story to present to a class and to teach that story along the models required of most HS English teachers (standards, benchmarks, learner expectations, etc.) which would be the best vehicle for doing so, short stories or novels (excluding Bradbury's work here just for the hell of it)?

Mind you, it'd have to be as rigorous of a unit plan as any other lit unit, so it wouldn't be "read this and we'll discuss in a week for a class period." I might be biased by my experiences with it, but I'd almost certainly use short fiction instead of a novel for a plethora of reasons. But perhaps others could make the case for SF/F novels being a better learning vehicle than SF/F short stories in the classroom?

[Ran]

Reading Asimov's "The Immortal Bard" as part of English class in 6th grade turned me on to SF in a big way, and mostly I ran through short stories before I tackled the novels.

I think short stories are obviously more useful in a class context with a crowded literature list and students of uncertain attention spans.

[Stego]

Sure. But ease in teaching to people with questionable interest is not a way to judge relevancy, IMO. :D

[Ran]

There are a multitude of factors in what makes literature, or a particular mode of literature, "relevant" within some arbitrary context. I think ease with which it can be introduced to people is certainly one of those factors. It's not the only one, however.

[Larry.]

If something acts as a "gateway", I'd have to say it's relevant. If it weren't for certain short stories I read in my lit classes, I highly doubt I would have read much fiction. But things vary for people, I know, but in judging relevance, I suspect it would have to deal more with how stories are transmitted than anything else.

[Kalbear]

With the popularity of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and quite a few YA novels, I think the days where SF/F needs some boost by reading it in school as short stories are very much done.

Once again, short SF/F might have acted as a gateway for further reading (and for further writing) a while ago. I don't believe it's particularly relevant in that any more. The question isn't whether it was relevant for you. The question isn't whether dead authors have inspired you, because, well, they're dead. It's not like they're going to be producing any more of that.

[Larry.]

Many of the short story authors I read in school were alive back then. Still remember reading some of Vonnegut's short fiction in class. Incidentally, my first exposure to Martin was via "The Pear-Shaped Man" when it appeared in OMNI and I read it during study hall in my school's library. So there were live authors that many of us were exposed to during that time. And as others have said, many aspiring writers take the MFA/workshop route to honing their craft. If anything, SF/F short fiction has become part of "the institutions" than anything else.

[Kalbear]

[quote]Many of the short story authors I read in school were alive back then.[/quote]You're missing the point entirely.

The point is that whether or not [i]you[/i] were influenced by short fiction 30 years ago (or 20, or 15, or whatever pedantic number you'd like to add) [i]has no bearing[/i] on whether anyone would be influenced by it today.
Or more accurately, whether someone who would be influenced by short fiction today would not otherwise be influenced by SF/F in other places. No one has said that short fiction can't influence someone; the question is whether it has been superceded in that notion by other sources of fiction. That's kind of the point of why we have asked whether it's relevant or not. I'll repeat it just in case you missed it the last few times:

The relevance of something now is not determined by the relevance of something in the past.

[quote]If anything, SF/F short fiction has become part of "the institutions" than anything else.[/quote]I think that's incorrect. Short fiction has become less institutionalized and more niche. Fewer people write in the form, and fewer people write a lot in the form. Short story collections are much smaller in terms of overall sales, popularity and influence than they have been, and when they are big they tend to be anchored by well-known long fiction authors. Again, sales doesn't mean relevance, though it's certainly a factor. But excluding sales, and noting that the gateway aspect (for both reading and writing)has been effectively removed as a requirement (in other words, there are other ways to get there that many do), what else is there?

[Larry.]

I didn't "miss" it as much as I turned it around a bit. Writers today are usually influenced by those who wrote when they were growing up. Some of those same authors are writing today as well. So what exactly is the difference in our opinion on that point?

As for the "institutions" part, well, let's see...Clarion, Clarion West, Clarion South, Wofford's recent Shared Worlds, Odyssey, Iowa Writer's Workshop, and those are just in addition to the various MFA/Creative Writing programs, many of which focus on the short fiction form, some with a SF/F writing path. I believe UNC-Greensboro is one, if I'm not mistaken. One could blithely argue that all things are "niche" to an extent, but when there are SF/F authors who have been and are university professors (despite whatever argument one wants to make about the "literati" hating SF/F, there have been for decades quite a few genre-associated profs), I have to disagree with your point. As for sales decline, that's true virtually across the board in all genres and forms of fiction writing; non-fiction sales now make up the majority of titles published and sold each year and the percentage is growing. Want to argue that the novel form is somehow irrelevant now? I'd think not, and as you state towards the end, apparently you don't believe sales is the sole determinant. But you still haven't really addressed the issue I raised, which is the use of short stories as the #1 way that most readers are introduced to fiction (school systems). Whether or not the children [i]like[/i] it or are [i]inspired[/i] by it might be of some relevance, but the sheer numbers of those exposed to it tends to increase the odds that a "Monkey's Paw" type story is going to be remembered years later more than a random novel or five that might be read over the course of one's post-education life...

[Kalbear]

[quote]Writers today are usually influenced by those who wrote when they were growing up. Some of those same authors are writing today as well. So what exactly is the difference in our opinion on that point?[/quote]The difference in opinion is that just because authors of today were influenced by authors in the past who focused or wrote a lot of short fiction does not mean they will also write a lot of short fiction, nor does it mean that new authors in the future will be primarily influenced by current author's short fiction works. For example, just because Richard Morgan was influenced by short fiction does not mean he's going to write a lot of short stories. And he hasn't. Mieville, Erikson, Bakker, Rothfuss, Abercrombie, MacDonald, Chabon...none of these people write a particularly large amount of short fiction (or any, in some cases). The new authors of the future aren't going to be influenced by the current author's short fiction simply because [i]there just isn't that much of it[/i].

So stop assuming that because buggy whips were useful when you were a kid means that they're going to be useful now. The internet has changed things, as have societal norms.

[quote]But you still haven't really addressed the issue I raised, which is the use of short stories as the #1 way that most readers are introduced to fiction (school systems).[/quote]

Harry Potter trumps that by several orders of magnitude. Lord of the Rings does as well. Star Wars does too, if you'd rather go there. Hell, Erin Hunter's Warriors series does more for the genre. Ask a kid today what their first introduction to SF/F was. Furthermore, the stigma of reading SF/F is gone. It's not only okay to read it, it's downright expected for kids to read it. That might change, but entertainment wise geekery is cool again.

Sales-wise, short fiction has declined significantly compared to overall fiction and SF/F. It's not an across-the-board argument. It's gotten worse faster compared to the SF/F as a whole. It is less of an overall percentage of SF/F readership.

[quote]As for the "institutions" part, well, let's see...Clarion, Clarion West, Clarion South, Wofford's recent Shared Worlds, Odyssey, Iowa Writer's Workshop, and those are just in addition to the various MFA/Creative Writing programs, many of which focus on the short fiction form, some with a SF/F writing path. I believe UNC-Greensboro is one, if I'm not mistaken. One could blithely argue that all things are "niche" to an extent,[/quote]To an extent? Seriously, you're saying that those aren't niches, or could only be vaguely argued about them? None of those are necessary for people to become published. None focus on making a career of writing short fiction; they all use short fiction as a tool to write bigger things. Of the people that move on from these workshops, how many write short fiction as their primary authorship?

[Larry.]

I think it's safe to say this could continue for some length in circles. We have a difference of opinion, perhaps colored by various circles of influence. I just happen to see vital, vivid, active form continuing; you do not, it seems. I'll just leave at that, as I just don't have the energy right now to continue this conversation tonight.

[Ran]

Kalbear,

Ted Chiang's one of the best short story writers working in SF, and he's definitely a Clarion graduate.

Paolo Bacigalupi and Benjamin Rosenbaum are a couple of others, if you want people first published in this decade.

The fact that there are writers today who don't need to first publish short fiction to get published in novel form merely fits into what I've repeatedly said: that the shift in the relevance of the long and short modes is now more equal. Short fiction used to be mostly the whole ball game. Now long fiction is certainly, commercially, more of the ball game ... but there are plenty of writers _still_ who write short fiction primarily, or whose short fiction careers are established before they venture into long fiction.

It's relevant to most writers working today, and it'll be relevant to most writers working tomorrow, and by extension it'll be relevant to most readers who end up reading those writers who owe at least some part of their careers to short fiction, whether as the thing that got them into the genre to begin with, or a teaching tool at Clarion, or as a means of establishing a name for themselves. That last may become less relevant, but I don't think so. The boom in on-line short story publication seems to me to be pretty viable.

[Werthead]

I think this has been touched on before, but it's something I agree with:

The importance of short stories as a 'gateway' to SF&F has declined over the past 30-40 years for the simple reason that if you ask people [i]now[/i] what got them into the genre, they will almost certainly say through watching films or television when younger, sometimes with a direct correlation (i.e. a [b]Star Wars[/b] fan seeing the films, moving onto the books and then picking up a non-[b]Star Wars[/b] Roger Macbride Allen or Timothy Zahn SF novel and then going on from there). I think you could say that TV and film has replaced the influence of the short story over the past generation or so.

[Ran]

I think it'd be easier to ask writers publishing now whether this is, in fact, the case rather than assuming it to be true. I'm not sure that it is in fact true, to be honest, that there are a significant number of new writers today who watched Star Wars then went on to pursue working in writing SF stories/novels.

Anyone want to contact Rothfuss, Lynch, Abercrombie, Schroeder, Edelman, Scalzi, Bear, Monette, etc?