{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4050", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 4050, "subject": "limitations of short fiction", "messages": 5, "voices": 3, "first": "2003-06-25T18:53:55+00:00", "last": "2003-06-28T04:07:03+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2003-06-25T18:53:55+00:00", "subject": "(urth) limitations of short fiction", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Sam Keyes wrote:\nSo maybe it's not that Wolfe is weaker in short stories,\nbut rather that short stories, formally, are usually weaker--or, I ought\nto add, weaker at asking the questions and playing the games that Wolfe\nlikes to do, which are usually on a grand scale." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now this is something I find interesting, and I don't recall it coming up\nbefore.\n\nYes, the limitations of the short form -- for example, it seems to be more\nor less impossible for any serious \"world building\" to be in a short story.\nThere just isn't enough =room= and every word counts double. This means, I\nthink, that short fiction often has \"Hitchcock landscapes\": if you show\nMount Rushmore, then the protag is going to be in danger of falling off of\nit; if you show a field of corn, then that crop-duster biplane is going to\nthreaten the protag. Everything in every scene is a loaded Chekov's Gun,\nand they all go off \"sooner\" rather than \"later.\"\n\nThis is not to say that Gene Wolfe is interested in \"world building,\" but\nthis is a case I immediately thought of in terms of scale (short story\nversus novel). IIRC, in one of his essays on writing (in CASTLE OF DAYS, I\nthink) Gene Wolfe has a line something like \"if it is about a world, then\nit is a novel.\"\n\nSo if an sf short story has a \"beanstalk\" orbital elevator, then either the\nprotag's car has to fall off of it (or threaten to fall off) or some\nterrorist has to break the \"rail\" it so it falls down and around the world\nin a RED MARS-style equatorial apocalypse.\n\nWhat holds for the physical sciences also holds true for the soft sciences.\nJack Vance's \"The Moon Moth\" is a classic of societal world-building, but\nalas, it is also a novelette (rather than a short story). Even so, I will\ncontinue: upon examination one sees how all the cultural stuff is given for\nthe direct purpose of the story, which itself is pretty slight when shorn\nof all the Vancean detail.\n\nLe Guin's \"Semley's Necklace\" (novelette? I don't know) does the neat\ntrick of telling a story of two worlds and four or more cultures with\nvirtually no \"world-building\": she does it by using only off-the-shelf\nstuff, in a clever way. Shorn of details, the story itself is pretty\nslight, as in the case of \"Moon Moth,\" but from a completely different\napproach.\n\nJust a few thoughts.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Richard Horton", "address": "rrhorton at prodigy.net" }, "date": "2003-06-27T13:12:30+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) limitations of short fiction", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 11:53:55 -0700, you wrote:\n\nLe Guin's \"Semley's Necklace\" (novelette? I don't know) does the neat\ntrick of telling a story of two worlds and four or more cultures with\nvirtually no \"world-building\": she does it by using only off-the-shelf\nstuff, in a clever way. Shorn of details, the story itself is pretty\nslight, as in the case of \"Moon Moth,\" but from a completely different\napproach." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Semley's Necklace\" is just barely a novelette, at some 7700 words --\nbut I don't think parsing short story/novelette distinctions at that\nlevel is useful.\n\nOne of the neat things about \"Semley's Necklace\" is that the\n\"off-the-shelf\" stuff includes fantasy conventions such as fairies and\ntrolls. It's an old trick to give those science fictional rationales,\nbut Le Guin does so very gracefully, and the story turns on a\nparticular fairy legend, given physical possibility by scientific\nmeans, and it does so very nicely. (All of the novel (_Rocannon's\nWorld_) expanded from \"Semley's Necklace\" is the same sort of thing,\nand it remains slight but graceful and enjoyable. And beautifully\nwritten.)\n--=20\nRich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard.horton at sff.net\nHome Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton\nAlso visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online =\n(http://www.tangentonline.com)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2003-06-27T19:54:14+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) limitations of short fiction", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rich Horton wrote:\n\"Semley's Necklace\" is just barely a novelette, at some 7700 words --\nbut I don't think parsing short story/novelette distinctions at that\nlevel is useful." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Normally I would agree with you, except for three points:\n\n1) the categorical distinctions are made professionally for publication and\n(subsequently) awards, even if we readers don't much distinguish beyond the\nscales of \"short story\" and \"novel\" in general;\n\n2) granted that the main comparison is to Gene Wolfe's novels, still, I\ndon't believe anyone is complaining about Gene Wolfe's novellas (17,500 -\n40,000 words), or novelettes (\"Alien Stones,\" \"Forlesen,\" \"The Haunted\nBoardinghouse,\" etc.) I think they are limiting themselves to short stories\n(where the wordcount <= 7,500 words);\n\n3) searching for a readily grasped comparison for the scale-differences in\nnovels and short stories, I was trying to think up \"world-building\" short\nstories (where world-building seems almost exclusively the province of\nnovels) and was surprised/frustrated in that the couple I could think of\nwere in fact novelettes (which kind of proves my notion, in a way)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "One of the neat things about \"Semley's Necklace\" is that the\n\"off-the-shelf\" stuff includes fantasy conventions such as fairies and\ntrolls. It's an old trick to give those science fictional rationales,\nbut Le Guin does so very gracefully, and the story turns on a\nparticular fairy legend, given physical possibility by scientific\nmeans, and it does so very nicely." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Precisely: she uses stock sf and fairy tale stuff, and because each item\nhas a bookload of association behind it (from space adventure tales to\nBrothers Grimm) she is able to tap into \"world-building\" power without the\nwordcount. It's all done by association. And yes, she does it so well it\nis as though she had invented the mode. The later \"Winter's King\" is\nsmoother, having the developed Le Guin style, and is obviously a treatment\nof the same story, but lately I'm not sure that it is the better of the two.\n\nIs \"Semley's Necklace\" based on a specific fairy legend? I did not know\nthat! (I thought Le Guin was using elements, not importing wholesale.)\nPlease name the story for me.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Anthony Ferrara", "address": "ajferrara72 at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2003-06-27T20:08:57+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) limitations of short fiction", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A great master of \"world-building\" in the short story form, in my opinion, is R.A. Lafferty. In a few pages he can evoke a whole world and even a whole universe for the matter.\n \nAnthony\n\nMichael Andre-Driussi wrote:\n \nPrecisely: she uses stock sf and fairy tale stuff, and because each \nitem\nhas a bookload of association behind it (from space adventure tales to\nBrothers Grimm) she is able to tap into \"world-building\" power without \nthe\nwordcount. It's all done by association." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Richard Horton", "address": "rrhorton at prodigy.net" }, "date": "2003-06-28T04:07:03+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) limitations of short fiction", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Fri, 27 Jun 2003 12:54:14 -0700, you wrote:\nRich Horton wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "\"Semley's Necklace\" is just barely a novelette, at some 7700 words --\nbut I don't think parsing short story/novelette distinctions at that\nlevel is useful." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Normally I would agree with you, except for three points:\n\n1) the categorical distinctions are made professionally for publication and\n(subsequently) awards, even if we readers don't much distinguish beyond the\nscales of \"short story\" and \"novel\" in general;" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, yes (though the \"publication\" categories are notoriously loose\n-- I've just been reading a 1961 issue of Galaxy with a 5500 word\nstory proudly labelled \"novelette\", and I note that in the old pulps\nyou sometimes saw 10,000 word stories bannered \"Complete Novel\")." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "2) granted that the main comparison is to Gene Wolfe's novels, still, I\ndon't believe anyone is complaining about Gene Wolfe's novellas (17,500 -\n40,000 words), or novelettes (\"Alien Stones,\" \"Forlesen,\" \"The Haunted\nBoardinghouse,\" etc.) I think they are limiting themselves to short stories\n(where the wordcount <= 7,500 words);" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'd argue that there is a useful short story/novella distinction, such\nthat at somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 words, perhaps, there is a\n\"phase change\", if you will, or a qualitative difference in forms.\nIt's a loose distinction -- a 15,000 word story could be in form a\n\"short story\" but a 10,000 word story a \"novella\".\n\nAll I really meant was that I didn't think it important that \"Semley's\nNecklace\" is 7700 words but another story might be 7400." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "3) searching for a readily grasped comparison for the scale-differences in\nnovels and short stories, I was trying to think up \"world-building\" short\nstories (where world-building seems almost exclusively the province of\nnovels) and was surprised/frustrated in that the couple I could think of\nwere in fact novelettes (which kind of proves my notion, in a way)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I shall have to try to come up with a world building short -- but I do\nthink your notion is reasonable -- the longer the story, the more\nbuilding you can do, in general." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "One of the neat things about \"Semley's Necklace\" is that the\n\"off-the-shelf\" stuff includes fantasy conventions such as fairies and\ntrolls. It's an old trick to give those science fictional rationales,\nbut Le Guin does so very gracefully, and the story turns on a\nparticular fairy legend, given physical possibility by scientific\nmeans, and it does so very nicely." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Precisely: she uses stock sf and fairy tale stuff, and because each item\nhas a bookload of association behind it (from space adventure tales to\nBrothers Grimm) she is able to tap into \"world-building\" power without the\nwordcount. It's all done by association. And yes, she does it so well it\nis as though she had invented the mode. The later \"Winter's King\" is\nsmoother, having the developed Le Guin style, and is obviously a treatment\nof the same story, but lately I'm not sure that it is the better of the two.\n\nIs \"Semley's Necklace\" based on a specific fairy legend? I did not know\nthat! (I thought Le Guin was using elements, not importing wholesale.)\nPlease name the story for me." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think I expressed myself poorly. The overall plot is as far as I\nknow not specifically that of a given fairy tale, but it turns on a\ncommon legend about fairies ... I will elaborate after spoiler space\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe one where you go \"under the hill\" for a night and you return years\nlater." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard.horton at sff.net\nHome Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton\nAlso visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)\n\n-- " } ] } ] }