across the network: Kyle Brady: Blog  |  Kyle Brady: Fiction  |  Kyle Brady: Status  |  Kyle Brady: Stream  |  Kyle Brady: Projects  |  Kyle Brady: Profile contact
across the internet: on Twitter | on Facebook | more...

Self:

Musings on SciFi Book Length

January 3, 2009 by Kyle Brady
Tags: ,
As required by the FTC, a Full Disclosure is available - this piece adheres to the Code of Ethics

subscribe to Self posts:  rss - email


There's been some discussion recently about the length of books in SciFi, both past and present... along with the details of who/what/why/when/how/where, and whether or not having longer books is a good idea.

I posted a lengthy response on an io9 overview of the "debate", and thought it was re-post worthy:
Who said that longer books are bad?

I prefer the well planned, thought out, and complex lengthy SciFi novels of today to alot of the shorter "wham, bam, thank you mam" stuff that was seen previously.

If you're a good author, then you write until your story is done.  As much as people pretend it isn't true, the originators of SciFi were not very good authors- they had good ideas and great imagination, but had trouble with plot, dialogue, and the idea of a character as an individual.  If you need examples of this, just thumb through any of the "original greats".

People like Stross, McDevitt, etc. are good examples of great and far-fetched SciFi ideas that are turned into not only great novels, but novels of epic proportions.  Some of the greatest novels of modern times has the same "feel" of scope that is found in Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" series, with all the best parts of SciFi.

And this is supposed to be a bad thing?  Please.

I'm not even going to get into the current state of Fantasy's book length.  Completely different... story.


Self posts are about me (Kyle Brady), in one form or another.
Kyle can be found on Twitter and MySpace, or reached via email.

subscribe to Self posts:  rss - email

submit to reddit Add to Mixx! Share on Facbeook Retweet
Printable Version Printable Version

More Self Pieces

see more...


Commenting Rules

The following is a basic set of rules that are enforced for all commenters.

Any violations of these rules will result in comment deletion, user bans, or both.

  1. No excessively foul language.
  2. No racist remarks.
  3. No SPAMing, unrelated linking, or otherwise unnecessary promotion of outside material.
  4. No trolling.
  5. Be respectful.
  6. Be valuable.
  7. Feel free to respond, argue, or counter-point an article - but do so coherently and intelligently.
  8. Use a personal nickname, commenting account, or moniker. Do not use your business' or website name/account.
  9. Do not trackback/pingback to this post unless your content is relevant.
also available as a standalone page

  • I'm with you. In fact, ANY book should be as long as it takes to tell the story. Look how long the Harry Potter books got. Were we bored? No! Even after Page 926 I hated to see it end. Same with Christopher Paolini's 4-book Inheritance trilogy. He made a live video on his website explaining that the story just wasn't ready to end, and that even though he loved long books there was a limit as to how much one volume could reasonably cover. Who the heck was debating the "con" side of long books?
  • Hi Mary,

    All very true.

    Charles Stross pretty much started this debate [ http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/200... ], which continued in the comments on his blog, and blogs elsewhere.

    But it's not a new debate... Stross just added his authority/weight to the argument, which seemed to be pretty successful at gaining attention for the "Issue".

    --Kyle
blog comments powered by Disqus
Kyle Brady: Blog
coherent thoughts on diverse topics


Site Navigation:
About Columns Ethics Rules Contact




  • Advertising








Search