Robyn's channel (maybe Robin?) which I mentioned at the end of this video is called 'Bookends and Biscuits' for those who want a take on genre fiction from a youthful reader early on her SF journey.
Thankyou :) this was a wonderful discussion to listen to and am very much looking forward to hearing more discussions from two grumpy old men lol! Agree that its good when a series is finite (easier to get through) but also you can sometimes tell when a story line has been stretched or changed because its been popular and they been asked to extend. Sometimes a story should just be what it is xD (also you were correct its Robyn!)
@@bookendsandbiscuits Hi Robyn, glad you enjoyed it. As you can tell, I get fed up with waiting for series to end before I read them,,,,then they never end! LOL
My dad used to always keep a SF book in his jacket pocket. He will pick them up from the bargain bin. The short size and cheap publication of the pre90s books suited him perfectly. It was the everyday accessibility. He didn't have time to pull out a tome. He was often reading between engagements. If he was sitting in someone's office (waiting on a judge or a doctor - he was a workman's compensation doctor. ) or waiting in an airport or any line. SF was a pocket full of escape from the medium of life. A tome requires too much commitment.
I totally agree on the shorter books thing. My goal is to read more, and to catch up on many of the SF/fantasy authors I ignored in the early 80's/early 90's before I gave it all up. So small books are the way to go so I don't get disheartened or distracted as easily. This feels even more important as I have just recently finished the three Saga Elric books and Citadel of Myths I got for Christmas, which felt like an endurance test towards the end! So I'm now looking forward to getting on with much smaller books and I've picked up plenty to read via your channel. It's really given me some focus! Many thanks. Paul.
Cheers Paul. Much as I enjoyed 'Citadel', the opening couple of tales were far better than the later narrative I thought- several people have said to me it felt padded and a bit tortuous and I think this is fair comment.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I think the point I almost lost my mind was the 5-6 page stream of consciousness of a Chaos God. I suppose it was meant to be sanity wrecking! I did enjoy the pulp feel of the 'up the Amazon to find the blood sucking plants' story though :)
I love how a longer text can explore the micro within the macro from multiple perspectives such as War and Peace but I always follow these with a nice shorter work for complimentary texture.
I think this works very well with social novels by the absolute masters of the form. Although it's a series, I found this with Zola's work. And as you say, reading a novella after something massive is an effective strategy to keep reading fresh.
I don't feel much about it. I find Kim very worthy, stuff and dull, though I have a fondness for his early work despite its flaws- Three Californias (his first, thematic trilogy) is his most interesting work, but he's just a well-meaning humanist constructor of 'serious' bestsellers to me...and again, with padding.
KSR's earlier shorter books are his best - like The Wild Shore. His more recent tomes are just bloat. The Mars Trilogy is, however, something entirety different. Given the major themes covered, like exploration, colonization, colonialism and, biggest of all, the questions over Terraforming, the books actually merit their length to some extent as they have a huge story to tell. But be warned, I have read all three twice and they are hard work.
I’ve been a subscriber for a while now and just wanted to say how much I’m enjoying these free flowing discussions. I’m fairly new to SF and I’m learning so much- still making my way through your 100 must read book. Keep the excellent content coming.
This was a very enjoyable discussion. My attitude has always been if you're going to do a big book, you better have the goods. Some do, many don't. As a reader I'm always impressed by what an author can achieve in a small space of text, whether short story or novel. Take Crash by J.G. Ballard; the whole thing is bursting with ideas and energy. Ballard conveys so much with really very few characters and scenes. Not one word is wasted.
Hello Grumpies! An interesting discussion, but one in which you miss, or ignore, the most obvious reason why the early books by the old SF hands were short. It was basically to meet publisher requirements. When the mass market paperback boom began, soon after the end of World War 2, publishers were publishing to price points, because people didn't have much spare cash. In America these price points were 25 cents, 35 cents, and in the UK 1/6d and 2/-. This meant page count limitations had to apply, and paperbacks were expected to be less than 192 pages. Longer SF books were published in hardcover, but they were often abridged for their paperback editions. I generally hate the progression to long books as much as you do, but sometimes a story demands length. I think unnecessarily bloated books suffer from what I call Stephen King Syndrome, in which an author writes a novella, then rewrites every sentence into a paragraph, every paragraph into a page, and every page into a long chapter. The weighty modern space operas, which are so popular now, are not SF at all really, they're what I call techno-fantasy, because they are not based on believable scientific rationales.
All true and thanks for that James. I think we touched on the magazine origins of much classic SF which is akin to this point- but I really wanted to focus on how bloated things have become (again, because of publisher perception of the market). Agree re the King point and again, the Space Opera as Non-SF was one of PKD's things wasn't it, as I think I've mentioned several times here. I'm inclined to agree with you on this, but as I have a definite theory about Fantasy as being distinct from anything tech-based, I'll still include it myself...though I do wish it would die a quiet death!
I am pretty old (born in 1959). I've been reading SF for 50 years. I don't have a strong preference for long vs short. I like Stephenson, for instance and I think Anathem is fantastic. But shorter novels and even novellas can be wonderful too I'm really enjoying this channel.
I have this weird experience these days in that I tend to resent really long books, even while I'm really enjoying them! There are so many books I want to read; a situation made much worse by the internet & BookTube, that I can't help but feel the 1000 page epic is preventing me from reading 3 other books. I was born in 1956, so I am well familiar with the age issues.
Agreed. I actually believe that many younger readers have basically never read anything really short and of high quality (in any genre) because of the obsession in publishing with 'the new' - itself a phenomenon I'll be looking at. Good to have you here as ever, Dave.
11:15 maybe as far as speculative fiction is concerned but the likes of Hardy, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dumas and Hugo to name a very small sample show the desire for sprawling works.
Yes, though with Dickens it is important to keep in my the circumstances of publication: many of CD's longer works are so long because they were popular magazine serials and editors encouraged him to stretch them out as sales were boosted by them. They still work, however.
Really enjoyed this, Steve. I agree, bigger books can be something of a turn-off. I much prefer older, shorter novels. It's a bit like albums released on CD back in the 90s. Many bands were putting out 70+ minutes of music on a disc (a double album basically). Way too long in most cases. I still think 35-40 minutes is the right length for an album. Back to books, I recently re-read The Time Machine (my old 1976 Pan edition) and was surprised it was just 122 pages long. I certainly didn't feel it needed to be any longer. Anyway, more grumpy old men meet-ups soon, I hope.
Your CD analogy is germane - I used to laugh at the idea that Prog bands did nothing but 25 minute tracks according to journalistic cliche, then Britpop bands go and make 70 minute albums....rock music as a form doesn't work in slabs of over 50 minutes, I find. Same for novels- how many really need to be 350+ pages long....
@@outlawbookselleroriginal 300+ pages books are tainted with fillers, that a good author, who knows how to write concisely, will avoid. And I found that especially in SciFi, only protagonists get the total package of character/psychological development, while the side characters are described just sufficiently enough to provide a short book. :)
@@freiabereinsam- -As a model, I agree this is the way it works best for SF. But as you'll have found, there are a greater proportion of SF novels over 350 pages up the closer you get to the present, which pretty much proves they are artificially long to fit publisher's thinking about readers who want 'value for money'. You'll notice that reviews of Adrian Tchaikovsky's novellas usually include statements like ' a lot of money for a short book' even when it's a signed numbered limited hardcover, which i think shows how interested in size many contemporary readers of SF are- and as I say, this became a big thing from Banks onward.
Completely. Singletons are the very essence of SF- a great resolution via a conceptual breakthrough that blows the mind at the end is far more satisfying than the endless repetition the series mentality likes - an example of this is Pohl, whose 'Man Plus' is a fantastic example of this. His 'Gateway' was and is still hugely popular, but the three sequels (probably needless) have been out of print for decades, perhaps indicating how pointless they were.
Your point about the size due to character and cast of thousands was why when I read Dune it put me off back when it came out in the 80's? Up to then I was reading John Brunner (here in NZ if I came across his big books, I avoided them), Michael Moorcock, E E Doc Smith, Roger Zelazny, even when I read Dhalgren, and Nift the Lean, they were big books with many characters that I had to slog through but found I enjoyed. Now love Peter F Hamilton.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal. Yes, he is different, and I also like Neal Asher both as you say are examples of packing, but I really enjoy. I didn't like big books, but they are the stuff available.
Listening to what you say about the improving quality and television and combining that with long vs short novels, what I've noticed with some series is severe bloat because they try to tell that a story that might traditionally be told over two hours 30 years ago, to 10 hours in 2023 in order to artificially fill the time. Plotting is stretched to it's limit. Perhaps there is a connection, unless it feels long, it's not considered epic, compared to the old story telling mode of, an episode a week or an SF novel a week. Maybe I'm just rambling!
Good topic to discuss. I go for circa 350 pages or less than can be read in one week. If it is not a page-turner I switch to next most promising & appealing book.
I do wonder if people who love brick novels are worn down eventually because I do tend to find that more experienced readers get tired of them eventually. I'm 36 and I've always been wary of them and I honestly like it when a writer simply doesn't write novels at all, even though I do like a good novel. Unrelated: have you seen the title of Garth Nix's new book? It's called The Sinister Booksellers of Bath (it's the sequel to The Left-Handed Booksellers of London).
Yes, I think it's often better for a writer to 'lay out' for a while and not produce anything. Re the Garth Nix book, I hosted a memorable bookshop event with Garth (and Joe Abercombie) in Bath pre-pandemic, when he mentioned that his next book would be the 'The Left Handed Booksellers of London'. We've since interacted online and several times in the last year joked about me and my colleagues maybe being the inspiration for his latest effort....
I have a rule: if a book doesn’t fit in my side pocket of my jacket (I always keep a book at hand), it is not worthy to read, unless it’s something like infinite jest by Foster Wallace 😄
Although Peter F Hamilton and Neal Asher have large books and I agree padding which I bypass. I have found novel ideas that keep me hooked. PFH Polity is an idea of society run by AI also a theme Ian M Banks explores, as does Doctor Who which I find fascinating (who developed it first?). EE Doc also explored universe sized societies but used Psionics but his colloquial style of writing is now painful to read. His character Nadrek was to me really interesting as was his exploration of space outside of our Universe and development of FTL.
Yes, but very good writing should preclude padding - if the ideas themselves are that strong (and I'd say few Space Operas after the 1970s add much conceptually except in tech detail - Ken Macleod is someone I like who does this and Charles Stross is a stimulating read too), then they're more interesting if a writer has aspirations to be better as a stylist- an example of this is M John Harrison's trilogy, which is challenging and idea-based on all sorts of levels. I'm not totally averse to series but there are length limits for me personally - let's be honest, Asher and Hamilton will keep pumping out these big books if they sell (fair enough) but they are at the conservative end of things I'd say rather than being really innovative. They do bear the tincture of comfort reads and familiarity, but then none of us are totally immune to this- for example, I like Brian Stableford's 6 Hooded Swan books, but even as an omnibus they're only just a but bigger than an average Hamilton. Be interested to see what you think of Stross and Hannu Rajaniemi....thanks for your comment!
Agree with everything you guys said, but I blame the editors. Read any review of any modern book, genre or not, and you will almost always be confronted with "sags in the middle", "meanders" etc.
Great chat - bloat also gets my goat. There are some exceptions of course - Infinite Jest struck me as a particularly good long novel that justified its length but by and large, brevity is indeed the soul of wit. On a side note, cinema also seems to me massively bloated these days, especially when it comes to popular stuff such as Marvel. Peter Jackson may be to blame... anyway, love the conversations you two have, look forward to watching more.
I also prefer shorter novels and with some exceptions I usually avoid series, which has meant that I've read very few SF novels published after the 1980s. When I look at the shelves in new-book bookstores, aside from reprints like SF Masterworks, the SF all seems to be patterned after fantasy novels, with both genres featuring giant books in series. There are some long books that really need and deserve the length, but most books just don't have enough to fill all that space.
Exactly: again, it's a commercial model based on publishers thinking they know what readers want and that SF & F readers are the same - well, they haven't been the same people since the 70s! I never met many Tolkien fans (and that's the model we can pare it back to) who are say avid PKD readers. The philosophical underbellies of SF & F are actually totally different in my view - one experimental, the other reactionary (generalising here of course).
I wonder if the Malazan sequence could be considered bloated... probably, by some or many readers. I loved the sequence mostly because all the common tropes and stereotypes were continually challenged and broken. The Wheel of Time on the other had could definitely be considered padded, but still, a beautiful story.
Malazan has an interesting structure, the looping back in time for example and it's well written, but let's face it the books are huge and there are too many of them, same as with all Fantasy for decades. 'Revolvo' is SE's most groundbreaking book.
@@erikpaterson1404 You may struggle to find it. It was a limited edition hardcover novella from PS Publishing, an SF story in the vein of William S Burroughs or David Cronenberg.
Well, I really like Aldiss, but I prefer his shorter works. I'm generally not wired for the series things, but I think Graham read them and enjoyed them. I did the first one and have all three, so maybe one day...
I think I'll get more of his short ones done first, unless I find a copy of Spring and give it a whirl. I hate piling up books 📚, don't go hunting till you know you are going to read them I say.
It seems that the Quartermass series by Nigel Kneale, and his other works, seems to have been the major SF on screen in the UK, other than Doctor Who, that influenced a whole generation. Unfortunately Kneale's influence wasn't as profound in the US.
Yes, Kneale is seminal over here to readers of a certain age. Most people under 50 have no idea who he is though- shame, as for me, he's one of the most important SF writers ever.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal my first experience with Nigel Kneale was Quartermass and the Pitt. I watched it with my two sons on TV and we were blown away. Later I got VHS tape of the film, and eventually the Blue Ray version. I have subsequently seen some of the other Quartermass films, The Stone Tapes, which especially creeped me out. Recently I purchased his book of stories, reprinted, Tomato Cain. Nigel Kneale is overdue for a revival.
I know nothing about the industry demands or the artistic merits of length, but having written a novel in 1980 on a manual typewriter, compared to writing novels today on a computer, it is easy to see why longer novels are so common today. It is just so much easier to do. So why not?
@@timbobill7279 Thanks for taking the time to comment. With hundreds of BookTube channels like this one, readers today have many more ways of consuming and enjoying books. I doubt that readers are less capable today. They may have different tastes, and certainly many more ways of consuming stories. But really, readers are readers. As for the length of SF books, I think the main reasons for shorter books early on was that 1) many of those writers were trying to make a living writing, 2) many of the markets they sold to, magazines and later mass market paperbacks, wanted shorter pieces, 3) in order to write and sell enough stories, they had to write fast, and that meant writing shorter works. Brunner and Silverberg, for example, wrote hundreds of novels in their careers. I really doubt that in many cases, SF writers saw any artistic merit in shorter novels. It was expediency. In literary fiction, with authors having a year or more to produce books, they produced longer books. The genre pulp writers of today, the indie-publishers, generally pump out shorter novels every couple of months, if length is an issue.
@@timbobill7279 - based on what I've seen in almost 40 years of bookselling, while it's a generalisation, I'd say you are correct: screens are much more prevalent now and young people have seen so much more on them before they become serious readers that their expectations of SF- and other genres- are often formed by screens. I've noticed how the definitive late teenage reads of my day - beat generation, serious SF etc- are now not read by many until their late 20s or early 30s.
'Why not?' is indeed a relevant question. But 'Why?' is similarly relevant. Are bigger books better was our starting point. In SF, quality winds out over quantity because of how SF is structured- novum, paradigm shift, cognitive estrangement, conceptual breakthrough (see my Elements of SF video series) all come up in truly mindblowing SF. In an ongoing series, you don't get the resolution of the latter, just a Soap Opera structure- this is closer to mimesis (realism) than the philosophical structure of quality SF. The number of stunning short stories in the SF canon without sequels is testament to this.
@@chucklitka2503 Your point re expediency and deadlines is well made and true, but your observation of 'many more ways of consuming stories' could be rendered as 'text is text'. There is actually less experimental writing in SF now than there was 55 years ago and while you may be referring to e-readers, there used to be fiction in newspapers and magazines and books, so a different platform makes no difference apart from the quality of experience and personal preference. What is true is that readers now are more distracted- we are all more distracted than we were because of tech. Distraction from reading by other media and the influence of much more TV/film and computers- my screens thing again - before readers become big readers- is a quantum change. My daily experience as a bookseller confirms for me that there are proportionally fewer readers of innovative and literary SF than before.
Should have called this one “Size Matters?” 😂 Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar is one of my favorite long books because it keeps the story interesting by approaching it from various angles. Also enjoyed River of Gods and want to read more by the author.
That's a good title suggestion, Kris- you're right....I like 'Zanzibar' too. Have you ever read 'USA' by John Dos Passos, the book Brunner borrowed the structure techniques from. I read it immediately after 'Stand' - interestingly, it's a trilogy, reflecting what I said about big books as standard being a more recent phenomenon (it was published in the 1930s I think). It's very good.
I would agree with everything you said about those massive space operas. I just avoid them now and mostly read shorter and older stuff. I am one of the first to get sarcastic about fantasy readers wanting endless volumes set in the same worlds and featuring the same characters. I don't like 1000 page books. But... If I look at my shelves I do see many long series of novels, issued in bite-sized doses of about 300 pages, all of which I keep going back to. I'm talking about several different genres. I bought everything that Philip Kerr wrote in his Bernie Gunther series. I follow both of Charles Stross' series to the end (the Laundry books and the Merchant Prince series). I buy all of Kim Newman's Anno Dracula books and all of Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May detective stories. And you buy every Mick Herron book. So how is that different to buying one huge volume. I think the difference is that all of these series progress from book to book. Characters alter and sometimes die, and there seems to be a progression of ideas that actually change things. In particular, Stross' Laundry books started as parody "spy meets Lovecraft" books but move on to something much darker, until the main character is almost unrecognisable by the end. (You never mention Stross. Is he just not to your taste? He is one of the few current writers that I buy automatically.) So maybe if they broke those huge books down to several smaller volumes which wouldn't strain your wrists, you might read them.
Yes. I like Charles' work too, I loved 'Accelerando' particularly and keep meaning to do something about it. And Mick's books do vary and shift- the way River is pretty much the focus of the first two, the way that characters loop in from 'Reconstruction' and 'Nobody Walks' (which as far as I'm concerned are Slough House canon)- though I do feel Mick's work has grown gradually more caper-based and formulaic since 'Real Tigers', you cannot fault his ability with characters and ensemble casting.
I've just been reading his 'Desolation Road', which is beautifully written and inventive but it's just not engaging enough for my taste- it's 349 pages long and after 120 pages, it was like having nothing but cake to eat- the novelty wore off. It's not a bad book, just not to my taste. I must say though that 'River' is much more my kind of subject matter, so one day...
Gentlemen, I agree with many of your points about the bloat of modern S.F., but I can't help but feel that you are skirting the real reason why we have an aversion for large books. We are old. For an example, when you are young, you can invest in Brandon Sanderson's (B.S. for short) latest mega-series without qualm. When you dodge every day the Grim Reaper's scythe, you wonder whether you will finish B.S. and must judge whether reading B.S. is a prudent use of the time left to us. Yes, I think overblown character driven novels are unappealing, because they are essentially fantasy novels that have switched a dragon for a spaceship. They have no new ideas. Style...I would rather read a good British novel than an American one because generally the British have greater precision in the use of language. Just my rant, can't wait for part 3.
I watched the entire video hoping to figure out what was wrong with me that I cannot stomach the massive volumes being produced nowadays or have any patience for the ridiculously long drawn-out fantasy series that almost literally never end. But nothing is wrong with me ... I'm just old (more than a decade older than either of you) and simply don't have the time left to invest in slogging through all the massively padded (and I agree with you, they ARE padded) prose. Like theantiquarian5984 (amusingly) said in another comment, I'm kind of busy "dodging daily the Grim Reaper's scythe" and can't imagine locking my time into books that are going to take me weeks or months to read and leaving the shorter, more exciting, books unread. I, too, grew up as an avid reader of the short and to-the-point science fiction that was idea-driven, not character-driven. I want to be presented with an intriguing premise and then see how the characters handle or are overwhelmed by it; I don't care one whit about their private lives, their relationships, or their personalities (except as they relate to handling the alien invasion, the devious A.I., or the interplanetary political turmoil). If I pick up a book that is too voluminous to hold for any extended period of time all I can think of is how many shorter and faster-paced books I could read while "wasting" my time slogging through a gigantic doorstop. I sometimes wish I could, but facts are facts ... I just don't have the time. And thanks for the Foucault reference on Delany. I have most of Delany's books and it never occurred to me. 👍😃
I think age is a factor, but I personally have NEVER been impressed by many long books and believe that the real measure of a writer is how good they are at short stories. Agree with so many of yr points!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Yes, yet another reason I love Harlan Ellison as much as I do (and Bradbury, and others). It doesn't take an encyclopedia to tell a good story, and when it's finished you should be disappointed and immediately craving more from an author, not forcing yourself to endure it while lamenting "is it over yet?" Cheers. 🤓
We were discussing your point about large books and we agree as a commitment it's definitely got to pay dividend. Its hard to guarantee a good use of time. However if the first few chapters are gripping and layout a story I would only keep reading if it continued to develop this original premis of the story. I hate it when I've been cheated by the beginning of a story only to reach the end with no answers to the original questions. If I'd invested 1000 pages in that, I'd be very mad 😠. So long books only if I'm sure of a payoff. Looking forward to more grumpy discussions. 😠
Glad you enjoyed it, more grumpy stuff to come LOL. Well, this ties into my point re sequels too: books are big and in series usually for commercial rather than artistic reasons. And great SF is usually marked by a stunning Conceptual Breakthrough at the end of a story (the 'payoff' as you call it)- see my 'Elements of SF' series. Without such a resolution, you have poor SF. When it allows itself to be spun out over multiple volumes, that's just the tedious transplantation of the quest motif from Fantasy - which isn't anything to do with SF, Fantasy being driven by the readers' wish-fulfillment for the anachronistic and wishful thinking. 'Moby Dick' is a big book because it experiments with form by inserting what are almost essays into the narrative. 'Dune' and the like simply go on and on....when you look at Herbert's other work (which hardly anyone else does, most of it having been out of print for decades) you'll notice a lack of sequels: there are none because those books didn't sell well enough for his publishers to demand sequels.
Perhaps the modern reader has more time on their hands along with being inclined to bingeing, and also tend to be introverted thus leading to the immersion in such long sagas instead of going out 4 nights a week carousing. These three factors might begin to explain the trend towards longer, bigger books in the genre.. But I strongly suspect that streaming services and the advent of the iBooks and such (digital book media, et al) have a business model that works better with a long format. Contrast that with the hustle-bustle lives of people of the 50's through the late 80's, who had to get their SF fix in smaller doses, imposed by the lifestyle they led, and the fact the digital world hadn't yet materialized, the print media being the only game in town. Speculation of course, but these themes seem poignant to me without knowing precisely why. Just a hunch! I was cured of Delaney after receiving as a gift, Dahlgren and reading it in one fell swoop. Not my cup. Regardless, your fellow in this discussion is a well of knowledge, and on a technical production note, I had trouble hearing him as compared with your voice, OB. Just a friendly observation. You keep good company. As always, I never miss a post because I find your channel to have outstanding content, production quality and especially presentation. Cheers.
I'll get Graham nearer the mic next time. Yes, he knows his onions and we've been counter-recommending stuff to each other for decades, on the SF and mainstream sides both. On the social changes re length, I don't think you're wrong- I feel all these things enter the melange, but publisher behaviour and perception of the mass market is my personal bugbear- I think the saddest thing in the world of books is that there are unpopular things which people would love if they'd just try them. Luckily, a lot of people who feel the same way gather here! Take care, mate!
Perhaps the length of Stephen King's increasing long works like The Stand was also a spur to larger tomes. The Stand was fine for me as it was quite plot driven, but I gave up on "IT" after 300-500pp of back-story. Long-lived series like Dr Who or Star Trek (and comic books!) eventually gain a soap-opera depth of character stories - eventually realised in the MCU 's > 100 hours of interwoven film and TV. Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy really pissed me off. I neared the end of the loooong first volume, wondering how it was going to be resolved, only to find on the last page, that it was the start of a series - mentioned nowhere on the cover. After finally getting through volume 3, the story was wrapped in a couple of pages in a most unsatisfactory manner.
Any given Neal Stephenson book since The Diamond Age should be savagely edited by at least 40-50 percent. Perhaps the most overrated writer in SF history.
Robyn's channel (maybe Robin?) which I mentioned at the end of this video is called 'Bookends and Biscuits' for those who want a take on genre fiction from a youthful reader early on her SF journey.
Thankyou :) this was a wonderful discussion to listen to and am very much looking forward to hearing more discussions from two grumpy old men lol! Agree that its good when a series is finite (easier to get through) but also you can sometimes tell when a story line has been stretched or changed because its been popular and they been asked to extend. Sometimes a story should just be what it is xD (also you were correct its Robyn!)
@@bookendsandbiscuits Hi Robyn, glad you enjoyed it. As you can tell, I get fed up with waiting for series to end before I read them,,,,then they never end! LOL
My dad used to always keep a SF book in his jacket pocket. He will pick them up from the bargain bin. The short size and cheap publication of the pre90s books suited him perfectly. It was the everyday accessibility. He didn't have time to pull out a tome. He was often reading between engagements. If he was sitting in someone's office (waiting on a judge or a doctor - he was a workman's compensation doctor. ) or waiting in an airport or any line. SF was a pocket full of escape from the medium of life. A tome requires too much commitment.
I totally agree on the shorter books thing. My goal is to read more, and to catch up on many of the SF/fantasy authors I ignored in the early 80's/early 90's before I gave it all up. So small books are the way to go so I don't get disheartened or distracted as easily. This feels even more important as I have just recently finished the three Saga Elric books and Citadel of Myths I got for Christmas, which felt like an endurance test towards the end! So I'm now looking forward to getting on with much smaller books and I've picked up plenty to read via your channel. It's really given me some focus! Many thanks. Paul.
Cheers Paul. Much as I enjoyed 'Citadel', the opening couple of tales were far better than the later narrative I thought- several people have said to me it felt padded and a bit tortuous and I think this is fair comment.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I think the point I almost lost my mind was the 5-6 page stream of consciousness of a Chaos God. I suppose it was meant to be sanity wrecking! I did enjoy the pulp feel of the 'up the Amazon to find the blood sucking plants' story though :)
I love how a longer text can explore the micro within the macro from multiple perspectives such as War and Peace but I always follow these with a nice shorter work for complimentary texture.
I think this works very well with social novels by the absolute masters of the form. Although it's a series, I found this with Zola's work. And as you say, reading a novella after something massive is an effective strategy to keep reading fresh.
Another great one. The Hamilton I read was Pandora's Star. The longest, dullest book I've ever finished. Wonder how you feel about KSR's Mars trilogy.
I don't feel much about it. I find Kim very worthy, stuff and dull, though I have a fondness for his early work despite its flaws- Three Californias (his first, thematic trilogy) is his most interesting work, but he's just a well-meaning humanist constructor of 'serious' bestsellers to me...and again, with padding.
KSR's earlier shorter books are his best - like The Wild Shore. His more recent tomes are just bloat. The Mars Trilogy is, however, something entirety different. Given the major themes covered, like exploration, colonization, colonialism and, biggest of all, the questions over Terraforming, the books actually merit their length to some extent as they have a huge story to tell. But be warned, I have read all three twice and they are hard work.
I’ve been a subscriber for a while now and just wanted to say how much I’m enjoying these free flowing discussions. I’m fairly new to SF and I’m learning so much- still making my way through your 100 must read book. Keep the excellent content coming.
Thanks Ashley, you're very welcome!
This was just so exquisitely good - worth multiple re-watches!
Many thanks, Steve- more like this to come, more frequently.
This was a very enjoyable discussion. My attitude has always been if you're going to do a big book, you better have the goods. Some do, many don't. As a reader I'm always impressed by what an author can achieve in a small space of text, whether short story or novel. Take Crash by J.G. Ballard; the whole thing is bursting with ideas and energy. Ballard conveys so much with really very few characters and scenes. Not one word is wasted.
Agree 100%
Hello Grumpies! An interesting discussion, but one in which you miss, or ignore, the most obvious reason why the early books by the old SF hands were short. It was basically to meet publisher requirements. When the mass market paperback boom began, soon after the end of World War 2, publishers were publishing to price points, because people didn't have much spare cash. In America these price points were 25 cents, 35 cents, and in the UK 1/6d and 2/-. This meant page count limitations had to apply, and paperbacks were expected to be less than 192 pages. Longer SF books were published in hardcover, but they were often abridged for their paperback editions.
I generally hate the progression to long books as much as you do, but sometimes a story demands length. I think unnecessarily bloated books suffer from what I call Stephen King Syndrome, in which an author writes a novella, then rewrites every sentence into a paragraph, every paragraph into a page, and every page into a long chapter.
The weighty modern space operas, which are so popular now, are not SF at all really, they're what I call techno-fantasy, because they are not based on believable scientific rationales.
All true and thanks for that James. I think we touched on the magazine origins of much classic SF which is akin to this point- but I really wanted to focus on how bloated things have become (again, because of publisher perception of the market). Agree re the King point and again, the Space Opera as Non-SF was one of PKD's things wasn't it, as I think I've mentioned several times here. I'm inclined to agree with you on this, but as I have a definite theory about Fantasy as being distinct from anything tech-based, I'll still include it myself...though I do wish it would die a quiet death!
I only read books under 300 pages .Over that page count,it stops on the bookshops shelf.
Graet Discussion,keep 'em coming
Cheers Victor!
I am pretty old (born in 1959). I've been reading SF for 50 years.
I don't have a strong preference for long vs short. I like Stephenson, for instance and I think Anathem is fantastic. But shorter novels and even novellas can be wonderful too
I'm really enjoying this channel.
Thanks Peter. Been reading SF for fifty years myself too- started very young!
I have this weird experience these days in that I tend to resent really long books, even while I'm really enjoying them! There are so many books I want to read; a situation made much worse by the internet & BookTube, that I can't help but feel the 1000 page epic is preventing me from reading 3 other books.
I was born in 1956, so I am well familiar with the age issues.
Agreed. I actually believe that many younger readers have basically never read anything really short and of high quality (in any genre) because of the obsession in publishing with 'the new' - itself a phenomenon I'll be looking at. Good to have you here as ever, Dave.
11:15 maybe as far as speculative fiction is concerned but the likes of Hardy, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dumas and Hugo to name a very small sample show the desire for sprawling works.
Yes, though with Dickens it is important to keep in my the circumstances of publication: many of CD's longer works are so long because they were popular magazine serials and editors encouraged him to stretch them out as sales were boosted by them. They still work, however.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal true
Really enjoyed this, Steve. I agree, bigger books can be something of a turn-off. I much prefer older, shorter novels. It's a bit like albums released on CD back in the 90s. Many bands were putting out 70+ minutes of music on a disc (a double album basically). Way too long in most cases. I still think 35-40 minutes is the right length for an album. Back to books, I recently re-read The Time Machine (my old 1976 Pan edition) and was surprised it was just 122 pages long. I certainly didn't feel it needed to be any longer. Anyway, more grumpy old men meet-ups soon, I hope.
Your CD analogy is germane - I used to laugh at the idea that Prog bands did nothing but 25 minute tracks according to journalistic cliche, then Britpop bands go and make 70 minute albums....rock music as a form doesn't work in slabs of over 50 minutes, I find. Same for novels- how many really need to be 350+ pages long....
@@outlawbookselleroriginal 300+ pages books are tainted with fillers, that a good author, who knows how to write concisely, will avoid. And I found that especially in SciFi, only protagonists get the total package of character/psychological development, while the side characters are described just sufficiently enough to provide a short book. :)
@@freiabereinsam- -As a model, I agree this is the way it works best for SF. But as you'll have found, there are a greater proportion of SF novels over 350 pages up the closer you get to the present, which pretty much proves they are artificially long to fit publisher's thinking about readers who want 'value for money'. You'll notice that reviews of Adrian Tchaikovsky's novellas usually include statements like ' a lot of money for a short book' even when it's a signed numbered limited hardcover, which i think shows how interested in size many contemporary readers of SF are- and as I say, this became a big thing from Banks onward.
I could not agree more. We need more shorter and stand-alone SF/F books, please!
Completely. Singletons are the very essence of SF- a great resolution via a conceptual breakthrough that blows the mind at the end is far more satisfying than the endless repetition the series mentality likes - an example of this is Pohl, whose 'Man Plus' is a fantastic example of this. His 'Gateway' was and is still hugely popular, but the three sequels (probably needless) have been out of print for decades, perhaps indicating how pointless they were.
Your point about the size due to character and cast of thousands was why when I read Dune it put me off back when it came out in the 80's? Up to then I was reading John Brunner (here in NZ if I came across his big books, I avoided them), Michael Moorcock, E E Doc Smith, Roger Zelazny, even when I read Dhalgren, and Nift the Lean, they were big books with many characters that I had to slog through but found I enjoyed. Now love Peter F Hamilton.
Interesting - Hamilton seems quite different to me than the others you cite, But that's being an individual, you can never tell!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal. Yes, he is different, and I also like Neal Asher both as you say are examples of packing, but I really enjoy. I didn't like big books, but they are the stuff available.
Listening to what you say about the improving quality and television and combining that with long vs short novels, what I've noticed with some series is severe bloat because they try to tell that a story that might traditionally be told over two hours 30 years ago, to 10 hours in 2023 in order to artificially fill the time. Plotting is stretched to it's limit. Perhaps there is a connection, unless it feels long, it's not considered epic, compared to the old story telling mode of, an episode a week or an SF novel a week. Maybe I'm just rambling!
No, I think you're spot on!
Good topic to discuss. I go for circa 350 pages or less than can be read in one week. If it is not a page-turner I switch to next most promising & appealing book.
Yep, life is short and there are a lot of great short books out there.
I do wonder if people who love brick novels are worn down eventually because I do tend to find that more experienced readers get tired of them eventually. I'm 36 and I've always been wary of them and I honestly like it when a writer simply doesn't write novels at all, even though I do like a good novel.
Unrelated: have you seen the title of Garth Nix's new book? It's called The Sinister Booksellers of Bath (it's the sequel to The Left-Handed Booksellers of London).
Yes, I think it's often better for a writer to 'lay out' for a while and not produce anything. Re the Garth Nix book, I hosted a memorable bookshop event with Garth (and Joe Abercombie) in Bath pre-pandemic, when he mentioned that his next book would be the 'The Left Handed Booksellers of London'. We've since interacted online and several times in the last year joked about me and my colleagues maybe being the inspiration for his latest effort....
I have a rule: if a book doesn’t fit in my side pocket of my jacket (I always keep a book at hand), it is not worthy to read, unless it’s something like infinite jest by Foster Wallace 😄
Seems reasonable. I can think of only a few books over 400 pages which needed to be that long and which are sublime.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal exactly! Thanks for the video, enjoyed it very much, also I’d like to hear your friend‘s opinion more often 👍🏼
@@freiabereinsam- - We're already discussing three further clips like this and there won't be such a big gap next time!
Although Peter F Hamilton and Neal Asher have large books and I agree padding which I bypass. I have found novel ideas that keep me hooked. PFH Polity is an idea of society run by AI also a theme Ian M Banks explores, as does Doctor Who which I find fascinating (who developed it first?). EE Doc also explored universe sized societies but used Psionics but his colloquial style of writing is now painful to read. His character Nadrek was to me really interesting as was his exploration of space outside of our Universe and development of FTL.
Yes, but very good writing should preclude padding - if the ideas themselves are that strong (and I'd say few Space Operas after the 1970s add much conceptually except in tech detail - Ken Macleod is someone I like who does this and Charles Stross is a stimulating read too), then they're more interesting if a writer has aspirations to be better as a stylist- an example of this is M John Harrison's trilogy, which is challenging and idea-based on all sorts of levels. I'm not totally averse to series but there are length limits for me personally - let's be honest, Asher and Hamilton will keep pumping out these big books if they sell (fair enough) but they are at the conservative end of things I'd say rather than being really innovative. They do bear the tincture of comfort reads and familiarity, but then none of us are totally immune to this- for example, I like Brian Stableford's 6 Hooded Swan books, but even as an omnibus they're only just a but bigger than an average Hamilton. Be interested to see what you think of Stross and Hannu Rajaniemi....thanks for your comment!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I've read Harrison, Stableford and enjoyed them. Stross I have just become familiar with.
What about the TV Show The Prisoner? How influential was that one?
Agree with everything you guys said, but I blame the editors. Read any review of any modern book, genre or not, and you will almost always be confronted with "sags in the middle", "meanders" etc.
Well yes, editors being the people at publishers impinging on authors to write to a formula-exactly my point.
Great chat - bloat also gets my goat. There are some exceptions of course - Infinite Jest struck me as a particularly good long novel that justified its length but by and large, brevity is indeed the soul of wit. On a side note, cinema also seems to me massively bloated these days, especially when it comes to popular stuff such as Marvel. Peter Jackson may be to blame... anyway, love the conversations you two have, look forward to watching more.
Cheers Michael! Yes, there are exceptions re bloat. Agree re cinema.
I also prefer shorter novels and with some exceptions I usually avoid series, which has meant that I've read very few SF novels published after the 1980s. When I look at the shelves in new-book bookstores, aside from reprints like SF Masterworks, the SF all seems to be patterned after fantasy novels, with both genres featuring giant books in series. There are some long books that really need and deserve the length, but most books just don't have enough to fill all that space.
Exactly: again, it's a commercial model based on publishers thinking they know what readers want and that SF & F readers are the same - well, they haven't been the same people since the 70s! I never met many Tolkien fans (and that's the model we can pare it back to) who are say avid PKD readers. The philosophical underbellies of SF & F are actually totally different in my view - one experimental, the other reactionary (generalising here of course).
I wonder if the Malazan sequence could be considered bloated... probably, by some or many readers.
I loved the sequence mostly because all the common tropes and stereotypes were continually challenged and broken.
The Wheel of Time on the other had could definitely be considered padded, but still, a beautiful story.
Malazan has an interesting structure, the looping back in time for example and it's well written, but let's face it the books are huge and there are too many of them, same as with all Fantasy for decades. 'Revolvo' is SE's most groundbreaking book.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal love your critique. Thank you. I'll check out revolvo. Lovely!
@@erikpaterson1404 You may struggle to find it. It was a limited edition hardcover novella from PS Publishing, an SF story in the vein of William S Burroughs or David Cronenberg.
Aldiss's Heliconia is on my bucket list, but is it worth it? Is it worth the time investment?
Well, I really like Aldiss, but I prefer his shorter works. I'm generally not wired for the series things, but I think Graham read them and enjoyed them. I did the first one and have all three, so maybe one day...
Loved them, and I don't like many of his novels
@@mike-williams -Interesting!
I think I'll get more of his short ones done first, unless I find a copy of Spring and give it a whirl.
I hate piling up books 📚, don't go hunting till you know you are going to read them I say.
😅 d Ed Z 52:14
It seems that the Quartermass series by Nigel Kneale, and his other works, seems to have been the major SF on screen in the UK, other than Doctor Who, that influenced a whole generation. Unfortunately Kneale's influence wasn't as profound in the US.
Yes, Kneale is seminal over here to readers of a certain age. Most people under 50 have no idea who he is though- shame, as for me, he's one of the most important SF writers ever.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal my first experience with Nigel Kneale was Quartermass and the Pitt. I watched it with my two sons on TV and we were blown away. Later I got VHS tape of the film, and eventually the Blue Ray version. I have subsequently seen some of the other Quartermass films, The Stone Tapes, which especially creeped me out. Recently I purchased his book of stories, reprinted, Tomato Cain. Nigel Kneale is overdue for a revival.
I know nothing about the industry demands or the artistic merits of length, but having written a novel in 1980 on a manual typewriter, compared to writing novels today on a computer, it is easy to see why longer novels are so common today. It is just so much easier to do. So why not?
Easier to produce but not any easier to consume.
If anything adults are less capable readers these days than they were 40 years ago.
@@timbobill7279 Thanks for taking the time to comment. With hundreds of BookTube channels like this one, readers today have many more ways of consuming and enjoying books. I doubt that readers are less capable today. They may have different tastes, and certainly many more ways of consuming stories. But really, readers are readers.
As for the length of SF books, I think the main reasons for shorter books early on was that 1) many of those writers were trying to make a living writing, 2) many of the markets they sold to, magazines and later mass market paperbacks, wanted shorter pieces, 3) in order to write and sell enough stories, they had to write fast, and that meant writing shorter works. Brunner and Silverberg, for example, wrote hundreds of novels in their careers. I really doubt that in many cases, SF writers saw any artistic merit in shorter novels. It was expediency. In literary fiction, with authors having a year or more to produce books, they produced longer books. The genre pulp writers of today, the indie-publishers, generally pump out shorter novels every couple of months, if length is an issue.
@@timbobill7279 - based on what I've seen in almost 40 years of bookselling, while it's a generalisation, I'd say you are correct: screens are much more prevalent now and young people have seen so much more on them before they become serious readers that their expectations of SF- and other genres- are often formed by screens. I've noticed how the definitive late teenage reads of my day - beat generation, serious SF etc- are now not read by many until their late 20s or early 30s.
'Why not?' is indeed a relevant question. But 'Why?' is similarly relevant. Are bigger books better was our starting point. In SF, quality winds out over quantity because of how SF is structured- novum, paradigm shift, cognitive estrangement, conceptual breakthrough (see my Elements of SF video series) all come up in truly mindblowing SF. In an ongoing series, you don't get the resolution of the latter, just a Soap Opera structure- this is closer to mimesis (realism) than the philosophical structure of quality SF. The number of stunning short stories in the SF canon without sequels is testament to this.
@@chucklitka2503 Your point re expediency and deadlines is well made and true, but your observation of 'many more ways of consuming stories' could be rendered as 'text is text'. There is actually less experimental writing in SF now than there was 55 years ago and while you may be referring to e-readers, there used to be fiction in newspapers and magazines and books, so a different platform makes no difference apart from the quality of experience and personal preference. What is true is that readers now are more distracted- we are all more distracted than we were because of tech. Distraction from reading by other media and the influence of much more TV/film and computers- my screens thing again - before readers become big readers- is a quantum change. My daily experience as a bookseller confirms for me that there are proportionally fewer readers of innovative and literary SF than before.
Should have called this one “Size Matters?” 😂 Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar is one of my favorite long books because it keeps the story interesting by approaching it from various angles. Also enjoyed River of Gods and want to read more by the author.
That's a good title suggestion, Kris- you're right....I like 'Zanzibar' too. Have you ever read 'USA' by John Dos Passos, the book Brunner borrowed the structure techniques from. I read it immediately after 'Stand' - interestingly, it's a trilogy, reflecting what I said about big books as standard being a more recent phenomenon (it was published in the 1930s I think). It's very good.
I would agree with everything you said about those massive space operas. I just avoid them now and mostly read shorter and older stuff. I am one of the first to get sarcastic about fantasy readers wanting endless volumes set in the same worlds and featuring the same characters. I don't like 1000 page books.
But... If I look at my shelves I do see many long series of novels, issued in bite-sized doses of about 300 pages, all of which I keep going back to. I'm talking about several different genres. I bought everything that Philip Kerr wrote in his Bernie Gunther series. I follow both of Charles Stross' series to the end (the Laundry books and the Merchant Prince series). I buy all of Kim Newman's Anno Dracula books and all of Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May detective stories. And you buy every Mick Herron book. So how is that different to buying one huge volume.
I think the difference is that all of these series progress from book to book. Characters alter and sometimes die, and there seems to be a progression of ideas that actually change things. In particular, Stross' Laundry books started as parody "spy meets Lovecraft" books but move on to something much darker, until the main character is almost unrecognisable by the end. (You never mention Stross. Is he just not to your taste? He is one of the few current writers that I buy automatically.)
So maybe if they broke those huge books down to several smaller volumes which wouldn't strain your wrists, you might read them.
Yes. I like Charles' work too, I loved 'Accelerando' particularly and keep meaning to do something about it. And Mick's books do vary and shift- the way River is pretty much the focus of the first two, the way that characters loop in from 'Reconstruction' and 'Nobody Walks' (which as far as I'm concerned are Slough House canon)- though I do feel Mick's work has grown gradually more caper-based and formulaic since 'Real Tigers', you cannot fault his ability with characters and ensemble casting.
River of Gods is a splendid book.
I've just been reading his 'Desolation Road', which is beautifully written and inventive but it's just not engaging enough for my taste- it's 349 pages long and after 120 pages, it was like having nothing but cake to eat- the novelty wore off. It's not a bad book, just not to my taste. I must say though that 'River' is much more my kind of subject matter, so one day...
Gentlemen, I agree with many of your points about the bloat of modern S.F., but I can't help but feel that you are skirting the real reason why we have an aversion for large books. We are old. For an example, when you are young, you can invest in Brandon Sanderson's (B.S. for short) latest mega-series without qualm. When you dodge every day the Grim Reaper's scythe, you wonder whether you will finish B.S. and must judge whether reading B.S. is a prudent use of the time left to us. Yes, I think overblown character driven novels are unappealing, because they are essentially fantasy novels that have switched a dragon for a spaceship. They have no new ideas. Style...I would rather read a good British novel than an American one because generally the British have greater precision in the use of language. Just my rant, can't wait for part 3.
You have a point there! Time is all we have!
I watched the entire video hoping to figure out what was wrong with me that I cannot stomach the massive volumes being produced nowadays or have any patience for the ridiculously long drawn-out fantasy series that almost literally never end. But nothing is wrong with me ... I'm just old (more than a decade older than either of you) and simply don't have the time left to invest in slogging through all the massively padded (and I agree with you, they ARE padded) prose. Like theantiquarian5984 (amusingly) said in another comment, I'm kind of busy "dodging daily the Grim Reaper's scythe" and can't imagine locking my time into books that are going to take me weeks or months to read and leaving the shorter, more exciting, books unread.
I, too, grew up as an avid reader of the short and to-the-point science fiction that was idea-driven, not character-driven. I want to be presented with an intriguing premise and then see how the characters handle or are overwhelmed by it; I don't care one whit about their private lives, their relationships, or their personalities (except as they relate to handling the alien invasion, the devious A.I., or the interplanetary political turmoil). If I pick up a book that is too voluminous to hold for any extended period of time all I can think of is how many shorter and faster-paced books I could read while "wasting" my time slogging through a gigantic doorstop. I sometimes wish I could, but facts are facts ... I just don't have the time.
And thanks for the Foucault reference on Delany. I have most of Delany's books and it never occurred to me. 👍😃
I think age is a factor, but I personally have NEVER been impressed by many long books and believe that the real measure of a writer is how good they are at short stories. Agree with so many of yr points!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Yes, yet another reason I love Harlan Ellison as much as I do (and Bradbury, and others). It doesn't take an encyclopedia to tell a good story, and when it's finished you should be disappointed and immediately craving more from an author, not forcing yourself to endure it while lamenting "is it over yet?" Cheers. 🤓
This *is* in fact 2 grumpy old men kvetching about long books. It's kinda awesome.
More to come, Comrade!
We were discussing your point about large books and we agree as a commitment it's definitely got to pay dividend. Its hard to guarantee a good use of time. However if the first few chapters are gripping and layout a story I would only keep reading if it continued to develop this original premis of the story. I hate it when I've been cheated by the beginning of a story only to reach the end with no answers to the original questions. If I'd invested 1000 pages in that, I'd be very mad 😠. So long books only if I'm sure of a payoff. Looking forward to more grumpy discussions. 😠
Glad you enjoyed it, more grumpy stuff to come LOL.
Well, this ties into my point re sequels too: books are big and in series usually for commercial rather than artistic reasons. And great SF is usually marked by a stunning Conceptual Breakthrough at the end of a story (the 'payoff' as you call it)- see my 'Elements of SF' series. Without such a resolution, you have poor SF. When it allows itself to be spun out over multiple volumes, that's just the tedious transplantation of the quest motif from Fantasy - which isn't anything to do with SF, Fantasy being driven by the readers' wish-fulfillment for the anachronistic and wishful thinking. 'Moby Dick' is a big book because it experiments with form by inserting what are almost essays into the narrative. 'Dune' and the like simply go on and on....when you look at Herbert's other work (which hardly anyone else does, most of it having been out of print for decades) you'll notice a lack of sequels: there are none because those books didn't sell well enough for his publishers to demand sequels.
Perhaps the modern reader has more time on their hands along with being inclined to bingeing, and also tend to be introverted thus leading to the immersion in such long sagas instead of going out 4 nights a week carousing. These three factors might begin to explain the trend towards longer, bigger books in the genre.. But I strongly suspect that streaming services and the advent of the iBooks and such (digital book media, et al) have a business model that works better with a long format. Contrast that with the hustle-bustle lives of people of the 50's through the late 80's, who had to get their SF fix in smaller doses, imposed by the lifestyle they led, and the fact the digital world hadn't yet materialized, the print media being the only game in town. Speculation of course, but these themes seem poignant to me without knowing precisely why. Just a hunch! I was cured of Delaney after receiving as a gift, Dahlgren and reading it in one fell swoop. Not my cup. Regardless, your fellow in this discussion is a well of knowledge, and on a technical production note, I had trouble hearing him as compared with your voice, OB. Just a friendly observation. You keep good company. As always, I never miss a post because I find your channel to have outstanding content, production quality and especially presentation. Cheers.
I'll get Graham nearer the mic next time. Yes, he knows his onions and we've been counter-recommending stuff to each other for decades, on the SF and mainstream sides both. On the social changes re length, I don't think you're wrong- I feel all these things enter the melange, but publisher behaviour and perception of the mass market is my personal bugbear- I think the saddest thing in the world of books is that there are unpopular things which people would love if they'd just try them. Luckily, a lot of people who feel the same way gather here! Take care, mate!
Perhaps the length of Stephen King's increasing long works like The Stand was also a spur to larger tomes. The Stand was fine for me as it was quite plot driven, but I gave up on "IT" after 300-500pp of back-story.
Long-lived series like Dr Who or Star Trek (and comic books!) eventually gain a soap-opera depth of character stories - eventually realised in the MCU 's > 100 hours of interwoven film and TV.
Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy really pissed me off. I neared the end of the loooong first volume, wondering how it was going to be resolved, only to find on the last page, that it was the start of a series - mentioned nowhere on the cover. After finally getting through volume 3, the story was wrapped in a couple of pages in a most unsatisfactory manner.
Yes, King was part of it too. But those 1960s books we named- the three campus bestsellers- were the gamechangers!
Tom Clancy got Mitchneritus which then spread like a plauge into everything else. Now the short novel average is 500+ pages. Curse Mitchner!
Yeah, Michner was one of the guilty- I recall selling his books in the mid 80s...they went on and on and on....not good!
Any given Neal Stephenson book since The Diamond Age should be savagely edited by at least 40-50 percent. Perhaps the most overrated writer in SF history.
And I generally prefer long novels.
I do think you have a point. I'm rarely moved to read Neal these days, even though he's a great guy in person and fascinating to have a beer with!