The Death of Short Fiction Redux

[truepenny]

First, Warren Ellis posted the circulation numbers for Asimov's, Analog, F&SF, and Interzone.

Then, Cory Doctorow blogged ideas for increasing the circulation of and/or interest in the quote-unquote Big Three.

Whereupon John Scalzi asked, Why bother?

Meanwhile, Jeff VanderMeer got people talking this weekend about the other kind of Death of Short Fiction.

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I was called for jury duty yesterday. Empaneled, even, and dismissed after the voir dire. Without going into details, let's just say that it was a salutary reminder for me of how few people are even aware of short fiction, in or out of the speculative fiction genre, much less concerned about its vitality and quality-of-life.

We are in a very small teapot, ladies and gentlemen.

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I have noticed that the Death of Short Fiction is a topic that comes around pretty regularly in the sff community, like periodically we have to look up and go OMG TEH SKY IS FALLING!!! OH NOES!!!11!1! There are other topics that do the same thing, and really I think it's the mark of any community that lasts more than a couple of months: the things we can't solve, we keep coming back to. --Is the sky still falling? --Yup. Sky's still falling. The fact that we reiterate ourselves doesn't mean the sky isn't falling; it just means that it's falling very slowly and we still haven't figured out a way to prop it up.

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I agree with Cory and benpeek that a big part of the problem is that the culture of short fiction in sf is an endangered species. (Notice what I said: "the culture of short fiction in sf.") The soi-disant Golden Age of Science Fiction (to generalize grandiloquently) was a time at which sf readers and writers and editors were building community via the magazines they read and wrote for (both pro and fan). It was the only game in town. Now, as Cory says, if you find a story in a print magazine you like, your ability to build a discussion about it is seriously constricted simply by the fact that the medium of reading and the medium of communication are no longer working at the same speed. It's like the Heinlein story about the twins, where one gets sent out to colonize the stars and the other one stays on Earth and every time space-faring!twin gets to communicate with his brother, at subjective interludes of what, a week? a month? his brother is years older and more bitter. You can't have a conversation like that.

Also, I think, part of the niche that short fiction once held in sf culture has been taken over by TV. Not in the barbarians-at-the-gate sense, but just because, if you like a TV show, you know that when you watch it (or, you know, within a certain period, TiVO willing and the creek don't rise), the other people who like the show are also watching it. The next day, you can find people discussing it--either online or people at work or at school, depending. Add spoilers to taste. Once again, the nature of the medium makes the generation of conversation natural and relatively effortless.

To reach a wider audience, short fiction in sf needs to shift its model of transmission. This is not an insoluble problem, although--as John points out--it is up to the magazines to follow that decision tree.

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The other question that's lurking about in these conversations is, what is it exactly that writers think they're doing when they write short stories?

Which is a good question.

We certainly aren't doing it for the money. Even at the most generous rates, you simply cannot sell enough short stories in a year to make it financially rewarding. There aren't enough markets; there aren't enough readers; and--the ironic underbelly of the Death of Short Fiction discussion--there are more than enough contributors. (I would love to see comparisons on submissions and subscriptions in a year, if someone could figure out how to crunch the numbers.) Economically--as Stephen King points out in the introduction to one of his short story collections--short stories make no sense.

John, as ever, is thinking about the matter very pragmatically, in terms of career. I think, and have thought for some time now, that the myth of building a career through short fiction is just that. A myth. I think the world of short fiction is a great place to learn to be a professional writer--in the sense that it teaches you how to deal with rejection and the nuts and bolts of the business side of things, which at the rate book-publishers move ... well, let's not go there. Certainly, some short fiction sales can boost your confidence, and certainly they give you some publication credits to put in your letters to agents and editors, and maybe--MAYBE--they'll generate you some name recognition when the envelope gets opened at the other end. But you can't cash in your short story chips at the novel table. A career as a novelist is dependent on--wait for it--your ability to write a novel. Which is not the same thing as writing a short story.

These days, if you want to create a name for yourself, you're better off starting a blog.

But, okay, I write short stories, and I have to admit I was reading John's post going, Career? This was supposed to be about my career? Because that's not why I write short stories, and it's not even why I sell them.

(I should say here that I adore John Scalzi. It was truly a privilege and a pleasure to lose the Campbell to him. So the fact that I disagree with him should not be read as some sort of anti-Scalzi slam. Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.)

Of course, it's also true that I write a great many more short stories than John does (the count of short stories sold stands at either 32 or 33, depending on whether you count the two co-written with matociquala as one each or a half each), so it may be that he can regard this particular corner of the genre with better detachment than I can. Or it may be that I don't think, most of the time, in terms of having a career. Even though, yes, I do, and I know it. I'm not disingenuously claiming that I am an artiste and above such things. But as far as short stories are concerned, I think in terms of "I can write stories and people will pay me for them. And then other people will READ them. And maybe even LIKE them. OMG." Because, really, for me that's what short stories boil down to. I write them because I love them; I sell them because I can, and even getting paid peanuts is better than nothing. And because they do find readers.

And because, if you do something wild and daring in a short story, and it's a miserable failure, that's a lot easier to recoup from than the same phenomenon in a novel. Short stories are a playground, a dance, a carnival. You can try on every mask in turn. And I would love for sf culture to find its way back to watching this Mardi Gras parade.

Comments

[jaylake.livejournal.com]

You are wise, as usual.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

As a reader, not a writer: I prefer novels to short stories, generally. I still read a lot of short fiction, both in anthologies and in the magazines. And when I read a story I particularly like, if the bio info says that author has a novel out, I am definitely going to seek out that novel. I read a lot, and am always looking for new authors I can love.

So for people who write both short and long fiction- the short can act as an opening to the long, for readers as well as the publishing pros.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I'm just here for the canapes.

Which is to say, I think you make very good points. It ties into my idea that short fiction is the club scene, currently--it's by writers and for writers, and it's where the churn is.

The churn, of course, being the place that things grow and change and alchemy happens.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

What? There were canapes here before I got here? You ated them all!

I disagree that short stories are 'by writers and for writers' because I am not, and am never likely to be a fiction writer, but I love short stories. The Chains That i Refuse was one of the best books I read last year, my limited shelf space has a high proportion of short fiction collections by writers as diverse as you, Lewis Shiner, Jim Kelly, Karen Fowler, Howard Waldrop, Lucius Shepard, Richard paul Russo, Kelly Link, Leigh Kennedy and as many more again. These are the writers I find interesting, the ones I want to proselytize, and its as much for their short fiction as their novels (much more so in some cases). But I don't read the magazines anymore. Here in smalltown England its hard to find them without driving 70 miles round trip, and I dont have the money to gamble on a subscription (never have had it.) Interzone just doesn't look good to me right now, and in the past alienated me with some of its editorial decisions/attitudes. So I read blogs like this, hear about things around the net, look them up, sometimes get lucky. I hadn't read a single piece of your short fiction before I bought Chains, but I'd liked Hammered, and things you wrote on here intrigued me, so when I found a copy I grabbed it, flicked through, looked fun, and bought it. As I said, it was a wise move, but the point is, I got lucky with you. I met you in Glasgow, that made me aware of your name. I am almost certainly missing out on many other fine stories but they aren't coming to my attention. I could go looking, but I could be spending that time going looking for new music, or catching up on the laundry, or walking the dog. How are the short fiction magazines going to find me?

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*g* The club scene is by writers and for writers, not so much the individual short stories.

Although many readers don't read short fiction anymore.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Interstellar Master Traders stopped selling SF magazines?

I'm so glad I left Lancaster.

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

Yeah, at some point when I was all dropped out of things around the late 90s maybe? So perhaps Its my fault.. :-(

As a kid I used to buy SF books and Marvel comics in the newsagents in Milnthorpe, and at one time they used to get Interzone in for me too.

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

GUD (http://www.gudmagazine.com/) ships conveniently to smalltown England, subscription or no, and you can try us out with PDF (either the full mag, or a free piece of your choice).

I'm a short fiction magazine trying very hard to find people like you. ((well, okay, "I represent"))

And I'd love other suggestions to help find you, besides trawling these wonderfully opportunistic (for me) "The Sky is Falling" threads. Can't quite afford a 30 second segment on the Sci Fi channel just yet... ;)

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

mmmm canapes (http://images.google.com/images?q=canapes&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGLH&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi)

[mirrorthaw.livejournal.com]

Don't forget to try the chocolate fondue.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

If you're cooking it, dude, I'll eat it.

[romp.livejournal.com]

What if fanfics are short stories?

Based on a couple years spent among writers, I formed a theory that writers often find one form--short story, poem, novel--a better fit than others. For example, I feel like my zoom lens is set close in at word level so I can't pull far back and anything with a plot is beyond me. Or maybe it's just laziness.

Maybe there never were very many people who write short stories?

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's not that there are not very many writers. There are hundreds of thousands of writers, easily--I feel fairly confident at that (though perhaps Duotrope has a better guess).

The problem is whether there are many short fiction readers or not... and if there are, whether they're interested in supporting some subset of the short fiction writers through magazines (print, online, ...) or donation boxes, or... what. Or if short fiction will eventually be "truly" art only for the artist's sake (and you know, those very few who read it).

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I mostly don't have short story shaped ideas. I've sold... a few. I've just realized I've lost count. But maybe six? As a writer, short stories are not my form. What I feel exactly the way you say about is poetry -- if someone's giving me actual money for poetry, that I'm just going to produce naturally as the otter produces attar of roses, well, isn't that cool.

But as a reader, I like reading short stories. When I lived not ten miles from where pigeonhed lives I read F&SF and Asimov's all the time, and Dozois's Year's Best SF every year without fail. I still do -- I don't subscribe to any SF magazines (except Locus, which doesn't count) because what I really like is being able to just walk into a shop and have the thrill of seeing a new one is out and pouncing on it to see if it has a Robert Reed story in it. And a new Dozois's Year's Best feels like a great big box of chocolates. I also do the thing where I read a short story and watch for novels from that person. I've been doing this for the last twenty years at least.

And the more I think about it, the less I think I'm doing it for the "churn", even though I think there are exciting things being done at short lengths. I think I do it because I love reading SF and there are writers (Tiptree, Waldrop, Varley, Turtledove, Chiang, Reed, etc.) who do their best and most amazing stuff at short length because it is the best form for them.

But I seldom come across conversations about short fiction, you're absolutely right there. I wonder if this is something it's possible to do something about -- more convention panels, more online discussion?

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

Definitely need to work out the "more conversation" thing. Bring the conversation online, bring the authors online (where willing) to discuss... breed discussion... working on it for GUD (http://www.gudmagazine.com/). :) Meanwhile, just jumping from conversation to conversation to see what ideas we can try to use or implement. :)

[jimvanpelt.livejournal.com]

Nice post. I think I write short stories because they're all little exploratory adventures. Explorations into myself and explorations in craft. There's a big introspective part of writing stories for me, where at some point in the writing I start to consider why this material is important to me, what is my engagement with it? This makes me a part of the writing-is-cheaper-than-therapy school of writers.

Another motivations for writing is that I find the craft side cool, fun and challenging. Every story is an experiment in material and word arrangement. When the craft works, the sum of the words is so much greater than its parts that there's a little thrill of excitement. Every successful story makes me feel like, "Oh, my god, I did the trick again."

There are other motivations, of course, like writing being integral to my self image, or the attention of others to what I have done, or to take part in the good battle the people I grew up respecting took part in, or money (the money is not totally insignificant--it won't move me into a better house or even buy a car, but a couple thousand extra dollars a year in writing income isn't something to be ignored).

I don't think I've ever felt the motivation I hear sometimes, like, "My characters insisted I tell their story," or "I must write or I will die." Still, I have a niggling pressure once a story seed germinates within me to get the story out. I'm not sure all the time if the urge to push is akin to child birth, a bowel movement or expunging an alien, but there's a definite sense of urgency to tell the story.

Short form and long

[(Anonymous)]

I kind of gave up worrying about the end of the world and the short story market problems a few years ago. I write what I write and I sell what I sell and if the two overlap, then I eat. John and I once discussed the idea that the short markets were important as a way for young authors to learn the craft but I'm no longer convinced of that because the two skill sets (short and long) are so very different.

On an unrelated note, I have been informed that the Mole and Bear show will be joining me at Penguicon again this year. Color me giddy.

MKeaton

Re: Short form and long

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

The fact that we reiterate ourselves doesn't mean the sky isn't falling; it just means that it's falling very slowly and we still haven't figured out a way to prop it up.

Well put.

To reach a wider audience, short fiction in sf needs to shift its model of transmission. This is not an insoluble problem, although--as John points out--it is up to the magazines to follow that decision tree.

Or work out a model of "immediacy" for the discussion. But yeah.

And because, if you do something wild and daring in a short story, and it's a miserable failure, that's a lot easier to recoup from than the same phenomenon in a novel.

Very true--the sandbox thing is coming up a lot. Some people do amazing, breathtaking work in their sandboxes, that would be lesser for being recreated outside said sandbox. :)