Why aren't there more short Sci-fi and Fantasy?

[Sarah]

Ravi wrote: "I have always enjoyed the punch way Arthur C. Clarke ended his short stories with a kicker. Sometimes it was a twist to the action, sometimes a chiller of a line. And he ended several of his novels..."

I've read a few of those on Daily Science Fiction. Something about their format encourages it, and a lot of their stories have a classic feel to me.

[David Majlak]

Not to shamelessly plug this in, because I wrote it up just for the sake of doing so, (and it's free) but I turned one of my wife's dreams into a really short fantasy story that I think anyone would enjoy.

It's called Gun Manifesto, it's about 2200 words, and if you have a smashwords account you can get it free. The ending is fun too.

Sorry this is the only way I can contribute :( but the thread is looking for short stories. OH! I just remembered, I think there's a collection of short fantasy I've read called Spell Fantastic, which I enjoyed once when dinosaurs were still around...

[Ravi]

Sarah Pi wrote: "Ravi wrote: "I have always enjoyed the punch way Arthur C. Clarke ended his short stories with a kicker. Sometimes it was a twist to the action, sometimes a chiller of a line. And he ended several ..."

Hi Sarah, yes, that's a good way to describe them, "a classic feel". Did you read The Sentinel? That was the one that he and Stanley Kubrick then spinned out into the movie and the novel, which Clark wrote simultaneously with the script, "2001 - A Space Odyssey".

A friend of mine played ping pong with Clark after the writer settled in Sri Lanka. Said he was down-to-earth but practically revered by the government and officialdom for having chosen their country to retire in.

[Hugh]

Ravi wrote: "I have always enjoyed the punch way Arthur C. Clarke ended his short stories with a kicker. Sometimes it was a twist to the action, sometimes a chiller of a line. And he ended several of his novels..."

I try to do this. Not sure how successful I am at it. Clarke really turned me on to the feeling a reader could have at the end of a story -- that mix of satisfying completion and wondering what happens next. He was a master.

As for the short SF story, I think it's coming back. I've been talking with agents and producers in Hollywood, and this is what they scout for screenplays even more than novels. Call it the PKD effect if you want, but I think they understand that a 1-hour read better translates into a 2-hour viewing than trying to go from 12 hours and cut back.

[Hugh]

Brenda wrote: "There seem to be no lack of writers of short SF, nor reachers. Where there is a gap is a way to make any money thereby."

I thought the same thing, which is why I did zero promotion behind the short stories I tossed onto the Kindle store. But guess what? I was wrong. I quit my day job because of those short stories. They outsell everything else I've ever published. And even at 99 cents (which leaves me with a mere 35 cents per buy), I'm making enough to write full-time.

Here's a good article about this new publishing model and what it might mean for the future: http://thinkingscifi.wordpress.com/20...

[[deleted user]]

How long are these short stories you're selling, and how quickly do you write them?

[Hugh]

Each entry got longer as the series progressed. The first story was ~12,000 words, the second ~20,000, the third ~30,000, the fourth ~40,000 words.

The fifth, which was written under intense pressure (I was getting a dozen or so emails a day demanding to know when it would be out) clocked in just under 60,000 words, which more than qualified it as a novel. It took me a month to write, revise, and edit. That required eight to ten hour days, every day, weekends included. It was one of the nuttiest things I've ever done (and also one of the best things I've ever written).

I just received the proof copies of all five stories bound into a single book. That book is 540+ pages. It took me six months to write.

I hope that answered your question. I'm currently working on the first story in my next series. It should end up around 15,000 words and take a month to write.

[[deleted user]]

It does, thanks. Very interesting and congratulations :)

[Cynthia]

It's awfully hard to build a whole world and culture in a short story and to me, that's the most un part of writing science fiction or fantasy.

[Brenda]

The traditional way is to write several short stories in the same world/culture. This handily allows for gathering them all together into one volume later on. A good example would be I ROBOT by Isaac Asimov or TALES OF THE WHITE HART by Arthur C. Clarke. The trick of course is to bring that world/culture to life in a very tight compass, over and over again.

[Hugh]

Brenda: Agreed. I've been getting nothing but compliments for my world-building in the WOOL series, but it's a gradual process. As a reader, I tend to drift off during info-dumps. I want to do some of the work myself.

I, ROBOT is a classic example. One of my favorites.

[Sarah]

Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus is another good one. Three linked novellas.

[Hugh]

^ Nice. I like how the title and the structure of that one go together.

[Brenda]

It is also pleasant to (in theory) get paid once for the short work, and then a second time for the collected volume. But that is a hat trick, quite difficult.

[Kenny]

Elle wrote: "As a short sci-fi and fantasy writer, i find it hard to find other people like me. All my reviews have been great except everyone always ask me why I don't make my stories longer. I always reply "B..."

I agree! Though I don't think there is a true shortage I do think the current market is negatively impacting the publishing of short SF. I'm also seeing an emergence due to ebook/epublishing of more short stories (check out the short stories on Amazon and B&N and many other sites) and I'm hoping it will continue to grow as I'm moving into that world myself. :)

The short story is my all time favorite and not just SF (though that's where I started) I love mainstream and literary short fiction as well. There's nothing better than a great short story.

As someone mentioned - Ted Chaing is amazing! His "Story of Your Life" totally blew me away cause it is in 2nd person future tense. http://www.freesfonline.de/authors/Te...

Another of my favorites is LeGuin - The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas. http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas...

Frost and Fire
Rescue Mission
A Rose for Eccclesiastes - https://www.msu.edu/user/carterca/ros...
...
...
(okay now I'll go back and read the rest of the thread. :) )

[Kenny]

Trike wrote: "Al wrote: "I think it was Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) who was asked how long it would take him to prepare a 5-minute speech. He estimated 3 weeks. "Well, how about a 15-minute address?" Sam estimated ..."

"Yep, That's the Sticky Bit!"

[Kenny]

Hugh wrote: "Ravi wrote: "I have always enjoyed the punch way Arthur C. Clarke ended his short stories with a kicker. Sometimes it was a twist to the action, sometimes a chiller of a line. And he ended several ..."

One of the best is: Rescue Party: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/07...

:D

[Paul]

Speaking as an author of more than 30 science fiction short stories, and (at present) five novels, I can tell you one key reason why there aren't more short stories:

You can get at most, say, $700 for a 7000-word story, and it goes out of public view as soon as the magazine puts out its next issue. There is somewhat better now with online publishing, but for a novel you would get 10 times that amount and more for a 70,000-work, and if it is successful, it can stay in print for years (even longer now with ebooks - my novel The Silk Code from 1999 was out of print for a year, and another publisher picked it up as a Kindle last month).

I actually love writing short stories, in many ways more than novels. And I still write and publish short stories - see, for example, http://buzzymag.com/extra-credit-by-p... - but the economics and longevity of novels are powerful pulls for an author in that direction.

[Ramon]

I suppose that first we would have to agree on the meaning of "short". There are many people for whom "short" means less than 10,000 words.

I write both long books and short stories, though in my case my novellas are between 40,000 and 60,000 words (I call that short because my novels range between 100,000 and 250,000 words).

Now, I also got the complaint from readers for my SciFi series of novellas that I should write a longer book, but on the other hand I also got readers saying how adequate the size was for people who did not have a lot of time. So... I try to accommodate the needs for both types of readers by combining every five novellas into a "volume". As this is priced lower than the sum of the individual novellas, many readers wait until a new volume is published. I don't know whether this is the best approach, but most of my readers seem to like it.

Probably there is not a "good" (or even single) answer to the question...

[Trike]

Ramon wrote: " I try to accommodate the needs for both types of readers by combining every five novellas into a "volume". As this is priced lower than the sum of the individual novellas, many readers wait until a new volume is published."

I think this is part of the problem: we associate longer books with better value. Even though I know better and I'm constantly saying "this book could have been 200 pages shorter", I still fall into that trap of thinking $15 for a 250-page book is too expensive and instead look at the 590-page tome.

Some of my all-time favorite SFF works are short stories, but as someone mentioned upthread the financial incentive just isn't there for authors. With most readers preferring bigger books in general and series in particular, short stories have fallen out of favor and no one pays for them any more.

Based on the author comments in the various short story collections I've bought over the years it's pretty clear that payment for shorts has been stagnant (and even declined) over the past 50-60 years. Asimov and Ellison have offhandedly remarked that in good years where they sold 8 or 9 short stories that they were able to buy a car or pay rent for the year with the money they'd earned.

So if someone earned $2,000 from story sales in 1960, that's practically the cost of a brand-new Chevy Impala, which went for $2,700. You'd earn about the same amount of money for the same amount of sales in 2016, but an Impala this year cost $27,000. I doubt two grand could even buy you the heated seats option nowadays.

[Raymond]

I think the main reason for this is simply that publishers do not want short stories. Like Ramon and Paul I enjoy writing short stories but my publisher pretty much laughed at me when I suggested releasing a volume of them.
It was not until my fifth novel came out that I was able to finally persuade them. "There is just not a market for short stories" I was told. Unluckily for me they were right as the collection sold only a fraction of the numbers of my novels. In a strange way, however, this was a good thing as it made me think of how to get my short stories out there. Once there was a healthy magazine business as a market for short stories and I looked into it. I have now bought a defunct sci-fi/fantasy magazine that will be relaunched next year with a new name, format and team (including some well known names). I have spoken to most of the specialist shops in the UK and they will all stock it, as will many other shops and retailers (though it will only be a quarterly print). Like many of these things, today, It is not destined to make much money but we have found a way to fund it for a few years until it makes a mark.

[Trike]

Exactly. These magazines once ruled the roost and had circulation in the millions. I doubt that the combined sales of all short story publications today matches the monthly sales numbers of any of the specialty mags from the 1950s.

[Raymond]

Trike wrote: "Ramon wrote: " I try to accommodate the needs for both types of readers by combining every five novellas into a "volume". As this is priced lower than the sum of the individual novellas, many reade..."

I agree Ramon, I certainly make less money from short stories now than I once did, despite the fact more of them see the light of day, but like you there is a financial consideration and I hesitate to spend money on something short. Typical tight fisted Scotsman.
Yet, like you, I find that many longer novels are padded with superfluous material just to reach the required length and I must admit (Shame Faced) to having done that myself in a couple of novels.

[Ramon]

Raymond, glad to hear about the magazine. Anything that promotes reading merits an applause. All the luck in the world.

I am an Indie by choice. The first book I published was from my point of view so beautiful that I could simply not lose control of it by giving it to an editor. It's true that I could have earned much more money (though it sells quite nicely), but I never wrote to earn money in the first place. And the reviews have sometimes been outright moving. So, honestly, I do not care much if short stories pay less or not. In my case, money is not a driver, as I already have a good job.

But the fact that I am an Indie also means that I can choose (or not) to bundle my short stories. I have already a hard core of fans (in Spanish, not yet in English) that grab every novella that I release for my SciFi series as soon as I publish it. Others prefer to wait for the bundle. And I have a bunch of very short 2,000-10,000 word) stories which IMHO are too short for individual publication, which I will eventually publish as a bundle.

I never padded my books with superfluous material, rather just the opposite, though sometimes it does cost me a lot to remove it. For example, for my next book (which, being close to 900 pages, I will have to divide into two), I have one chapter that does not contribute much to the story, but is some of my best writing. Should I remove those 30 pages or so? It's a difficult decision.

I've never pretended to make a living out of my writing. I started writing with 14 years, and never stopped. Now I am 60, and still have the urge to write. Short stories or long books... honestly, I do not care. I write because writing is fun! And if the readers like it, that's a boost for my ego as well as an immense satisfaction. Not to forget that I have made marvelous friends with total unknowns because they once wrote me to tell me how much they had liked one of my books and wanted to meet with me in person. That, my friends, can never be payed with money!