Okay, let’s stir the pot a bit.
Back in my audio days, we used to ask our dealers and our customers a simple question: “What do you hate most about your gear?” And, based on the answers to this question, we’d frequently create products that drove stunning business growth.
Because it really isn’t important what they’re thrilled with. What matters is what they hate. Hate is a red-hot emotion that drives change.
So, let’s extend this to science fiction.
Let’s all answer the question: “What do you hate most about short science fiction?”
I’ll start.
I hate that so many stories are so damned small. It’s like there’s an unwritten rule: “We want to be respected by the literary establishment, so we should stick to small characters, doing small things, in small ways. And, since these characters can’t really affect the outcome of their world, let keep the ideas small, and the overall scenario somewhat hopeless.”
And yes, I know there are exceptions to the rule. And yes, I know that lots of people don’t really care for Big Characters doing Big Things with lots of Big Ideas flying around. And no, I’m not saying we should base our next Sci Fiction off of this sole idea.
But what I’d like to hear is your answer. What do you hate most about short science fiction? Let me know. Pass this along to your friends. Have them pass it along to their friends.
And maybe we’ll start getting some of the answers we need.
November 10th, 2007 /
November 10th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
I can’t think of anything I hate about it offhand, but I tend to hate individuals more than groups, and that holds true for short science fiction as well as anything else.
But it’s a great question, and I’d love to see what all people contribute.
From purely the “how in the hell do we market short fiction” angle, GUD did a little fishing here:
The Life and Times of a Startup Magazine
November 10th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
To be upfront, I am a writer of short science fiction. My justification is that there are ideas out that are not Big Ideas, but they are interesting in themselves. And you can’t stretch them into a longer story or a novella. It’s like, you shouldn’t try to stretch a 30 second caveman commercial into a 30 minute show.
Now, what do I hate about short stories? I would have to agree with you on decrying the “literary establishment.†I have read some stories, I mean, I have read some things which are nothing more than a wonderful flow of words devoid of anything remotely resembling a plot or even an idea. Those should be avoided. But my biggest pet peeve would be stories that just end. I don’t know how many times I’ve been enjoying a story because of an interesting concept or character, but am disappointed when the author – out of the blue – ends the story in a bland, meaningless, or incomprehensible way. Now, I’ve read novels and novellas that have done that, but I do think it happens more in short stories because the author – in an attempt to be brief or literary – forgets that they are supposed to be telling a story.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:15 am
I both write and read science fiction. The short story is my favourite form.
That said, I have a few, okay a lot of, pet hates.
Stories that start with a character in an Interesting Situation, then go into flashback to tell me how they got there.
Stories in first that should be in third (also vice versa, but that’s much rarer).
Yep, stories that just stop. I’m not sure their authors are trying to be literary–okay, maybe some of them are, but I think a lot just see the wordcount looming and panic.
Stories that tell, tell, tell relentlessly. I have a brain. Let me use it!
Stories that keep reminding me of salient facts. I have a memory, too!
Stories where the author realises belatedly that they forgot to foreshadow something and so they shove it in right there, regardless of whether it fits.
I could go on….
November 11th, 2007 at 2:45 am
I think that short SF has lost touch with the “common” reader by cutting out the bridge between familiar life and amazing futuristic visions. If you look at Golden Age science fiction, those authors spoke to children as well as to adults. They invited new readers of SF by using everyday language and taking the reader away from their familiar world/culture step by step instead of all at once.
I see a lot of modern SF, particularly short stories, that throw the reader headfirst into the amazing future without setting it up first. The reader is bombarded with alien terms, too many ideas, and self-referencing tropes of the genre. These stories don’t invite new SF readers. They speak only to the shrinking niche of hardcore SF fans, most of whom probably became addicted due to a story that reached beyond the genre conventions.
November 11th, 2007 at 11:27 am
I’m totally with Abby on this one. Science Fiction these days isn’t very welcoming to new readers at all. (Myself included.) Literary stuff is uninteresting and at time monotonous. The rubber science that some call blasphemy is what pushes my mind. I don’t care if it isn’t possible, it very well might be someday if I put my mind to it, so bring on that blasphemy!
Short fiction needs to be bigger, more accessible, less stigmatic and way more entertaining on its purest level or it’s just a wasted, uninspiring artform. There’s no reason it can’t be big, fun and easy to digest all at the same time.
November 12th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
I think that there’s tons of great short sf, and that there’s way more interesting stuff going on in the short stuff than in the long.
I’m talking about Ray Vukcevich, Kelly Link, Theodora Goss, and so on.
I hate how you get short fiction, by picking up stapled folios at conventions or in five-pound anthologies.
Strange Horizons excepted.
November 12th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
I dislike short SF printed solely on the basis of the author’s name. It’s probably not as common as a couple of decades ago. But I constantly read stories that I can’t remember a few minutes later, or that are predictable, or that make me comment, “I could have done it better.” There are only a few media for short stories, and lots of SF writers. Let’s pick some better stuff for the magazines.
November 13th, 2007 at 6:51 am
What I hate most about short science fiction (okay, any science fiction), four things:
1. Half-baked tech - or worse, nicely-baked tech solutions where a large rock is the better solution.
2. “Message†stories where a moral judgment made against society is the central theme – man’s inhumanity to man, natural resources are being depleted, money doesn’t buy happiness; that kind of thing. We get it already – we suck. Short stories are particularly prone to this.
3. Science fiction where science/technology is not important to the story. Simply converting a projectile weapon into a “lazgun†and shooting out someone’s third eye doesn’t work. Do that AND make a lame story and I will fly my gyrocar to your floating cloud cabin, grab your “lazgunâ€, and drill a hole in your pet skark’s nourishment receptacle.
4. The inability to introduce a robot into the story. Optionally, an alien or a time-traveler. All three would be quite nice.
November 13th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Okay, really and truly–my biggest problem with short science fiction at the moment is not enough people seem to be buying my magazine.
I set up an informal poll with vizu, because I’m curious. I’d love it if people filled it out, spread it far and wide, etc, etc. Most people I could get interested in responding to this poll are writers, so it will initially be very skewed, I presume. So the more people you can send it to, the better an idea we might get.
What is your influence on the world of written fiction?
November 13th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I hate the expectation that if short SF is going to survive, that it’s up to me, the consumer, to shell out subscriptions for magazines that fail to kick me in the head. I hate the guilt trips, the feeling that I’m supporting someone’s hobby rather than someone’s business. I hate not being able to read before I can buy. I hate PDFs and locked formats and every technological hurdle that keeps me from reading a goddamn story. I hate the lack of balls (or ovaries, whichever works), whether it’s narrative balls or publishing balls or the balls to stand up on a rooftop and take SF’s rightful place as the literature of ideas.
Hate, of course, is the flip side of love.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
I’m with Adam about the guiltripping. And let me add that it’s especially annoying to shell out for a subscription and either have it get lost in the mail all the time or have the magazine go belly up halfway through the sub (and you know that money will never be refunded). It’s especially annoying when a magazine that pays little or nothing to its authors expects me to buy what they’ve got just so I can figure out what they want.
Annoying things about stories–the folks above me have all made good points. Let me just weigh in on my own pet peeves:
1. “Jetsons” stories: Fantastic, amazing technology or an incredibly alien situation–and everybody in the story acts as if they are White, straight, middle-class, Protestant, capitalist Americans. Or at least the protags do. Even when they are living on the opposite side of the universe.
2. “Rube Goldberg” stories: The author uses a highly complicated, high-maintenance technology to solve a problem when a sharp stick would do the job. And the most egregious example is that too-oft-told tale of the amnesiac protag being tortured by a repeating no-win scenario, only for us to discover at the end that said protag inadvertently caused an apocalyptic disaster and is now being punished by the survivors. As if they’d have nothing better to do with their remaining time and resources.
3. “Cliffhanger” stories: Meandering around a situation and then simply ending, the protag having changed not a whit, and learned nothing. A variation is the story where the protag has a chance to change and chooses not to (or dies first). If you’re going to tell me a story about a magical door to Somewhere, you’d better take me through it.
4. “Noble Savage” stories: An individual or group is established as nobler, more sensitive, more virile, more tolerant, more loving, etc. than Us, but being the Other, still must die by the end of the story. The author will frequently mask his/her bigotry with much angst, wringing of hands and hurt/comfort. But the upshot is still “Manifest Destiny Rules” and the Other still ends up extinct.
5. “No Guts, No Glory” stories: All verbal pyrotechnics and no content. You can tell these by a certain emptiness and sense of “That’s it?” at the end. The author forgot that the point of a story is to…tell a story. Or, conversely, stories that are told in a boring, conventional manner when the concept desperately cried out for experimentation. These are usually loaded with Tell because they needed the extra contextual info that a different POV or unusual language would have brought. Imagine “Fondly Fahrenheit” without the POV shifts.
6. “Cardboard Bad Guy” stories: Stories where the unlikeable protag is made into some kind of superhero by reducing everyone around him/her to one-dimensional cutout sidekicks who are cowardly, intolerant, self-serving, hysterical, stupid, etc. An especially annoying variant on this is the “Message” story where antagonists are portrayed as evil/misguided solely because they disagree with the protag.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
I’m going to second Buffysquirrel, as the single biggest peeve of mine currently in short fic is the mode of:
1) Interesting start/ Enticing hook/ Bang! Bang! Bang!
2) all righty, let’s sit back and do a nice long indodump and backstory so we’ll know where the hell we are.
3) And now we can finally get on with the story, all 2 pages thereof that remains.
Lately, as soon as I hit #2 I stop reading. A writer does this to me too consistently, I skip said writer in future.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:42 am
I’ve recently bought sample copies of a whole pile of sf/f/spec/h mags. I’m still making my way through a lot of either excellent or so so stories.
What bothers me most, and maybe it’s because of all that dark horror and fic, but, well, don’t people love each other anymore? LOL.
That’s one of the qualities I love about Spider Robinson’s works. His characters often have genuine love for each other ‘and’ he adds in the ‘robot, the alien, or the time traveller.’ Or more often, the telempath, the sex addict, or the talking dog…
I’ve recently picked up two collection of short stories, Ray Bradbuy and Philip K Dick. What a range of story plots and characters.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:22 am
I hate short fiction that tries to do what a novel is supposed to do: Develop a character and a situation.
For me, short stories have to have a Wow factor - a brain-bending idea or image. It doesn’t have to be realistic, it has to be new and strange. And accessible.
And I prefer to read about a protagonist I like and stories that are optimistic. Much short fiction has neither. It feels as though many of the short stories I encounter are designed to appeal to Other Writers rather than Jo Public.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:36 am
My pet hate is characters I could care less about. If I don’t care about the characer, I’m not going to care about their problem. There are several ways to stop me caring about a character:
1) S/he is pure cardboard.
2) S/he is ridiculously powerful or virtuous so I can’t empathise at all.
3) S/he is unlikeable, eg selfish and self-righteous without redeeming features.
The other thing I hate (but see less of) is piddling little problems I don’t care about either. “Oh no! I’ve broken a finger nail!”
And the third one is a problem that doesn’t get resolved.
If you give me a character I care about, with a problem I care about, and produce a satisfying ending, I’ll even forgive (short) infodumps or the western-moved-out-into-space.
That said, a good idea is definitely a BIG plus.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:38 am
All right, first the qualifier: I DO like short fiction, and yes, I also write it. Having said that, my only real gripes with the current state of SF shorts are:
1. Political bias. I have strong political opinions (I’m a conservative in case anyone wonders) and respect everyones right to have their own. But I’m getting very tired of reading story after story which are little more than thinly disguised polymics on why one party or the other is wrong, stupid and to blame for all the world’s ills. Like salt, a little satire is a good thing, but too much is lethal.
2. Stories for stories sake. I like inovation as much as the next guy or gal, but I don’t have patience with stories that are only showcases for a ‘new’ idea, but forget little things like character, plot, action…
November 14th, 2007 at 6:53 am
Justin brings up an important point, as does Kaolin from GUD, in his own poll:
Is there anyone who *just* reads short fiction out there anymore? That is, someone who is *not* also a writer?
I’ve always been both a reader and a writer.
Is this entire field one big echo chamber?
November 14th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Bashing literary stuff serves no purpose but to preserve the small pond of SF for its self-imagined big fish. Short SF is homogenized by the same old editors and the same old standards — Big Names first, all others mimic Big Names — and this renders it bland. When was the last time you felt the frisson of a Sense of Wonder? Breathtaking ideas are too few these days. As Wm. Gibson points out, you can’t really write SF anymore; technology and its impact change too fast. To revitalize short SF, we need fresh approaches, new voices, and a far less-insular, far more inclusive attitude about what makes good SF. Without those things, it will continue to fade. What does written SF do better than Audio / Visual SF? Answer that with your fiction and you may have a chance.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:30 am
I think the problem is that Joe Public does not buy spec fic short story magazines. Only writers and wannabe writers do, for the most part. We’re effectively paying ourselves.
And therefore, stories are written for other writers, rather than for readers. They’re too polished, too neat, too bland. We need an alternative . . .
Cheers
November 14th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Warren Ellis reports subscription numbers from Asimov and Analog as being 15117 and 23732 respectively (for 2006). Even with overlap, are there that many writers out there?
I think you’re running into the same logic trap that discussions about the Internet run into: the population reached by those discussions (i.e. people on the Internet who are engaged in those sorts of conversations) are a fraction of the entire available population.
I wonder how many readers of your blog aren’t writers? What percentage is that of your total visitors? Do you think that number may be atypical of the reading community at large?
Gordon had an interesting comment on Paolo’s blog (sorry to yank this cross-site), where he suggests that decreasing subscribers does not necessarily correlate to decreased profits (see the comments of Part 3 of Paolo’s discussion of SF magazines). Which makes me wonder if we’re missing the forest for the trees. It’s not that science fiction is boring us, it’s that we’re no longer the target audience. We’re the minority now, and what we want to read isn’t where the market is trending.
(And, yeah, how you doing? Sometimes I do suddenly come out of hiding.)
November 14th, 2007 at 11:19 am
If the poll doesn’t reach all those people who read short fiction but don’t write it (and it’s exceedingly unlikely that it would), there’s still the chance it will tell us something interesting. Keeping in mind the demographic that the poll reaches, what statistics can we decipher?
At 138 votes (which, sure, is not that much yet), we’ve got a trend among short fiction responses:
86% write short fiction
87% read short fiction
71% buy short fiction.
I’d love to see that broken into “folks who have published for money”, “folks who have published for the love”, and “folks who haven’t published”. But those are other polls…
And other folks have mentioned wanting to see gender divides (writers / readers / published writers). Age divides might be nice as well.
That’s talking a much more serious poll. But I’d like to think this is a start, at least for discussion.
More discussion (of the poll) on Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
I popped in from nowhere, so apologies for “crashing” this interesting discussion!
I buy books for a living– I’m a national-level Buyer. To put this discussion of the shrinking short-form sf market into context, the market for *any* genre of short story (or poetry) is increasingly small. SS just is not the favored written form at this point (from a sales perspective). And the ss anthologies of even the most popular writers sell fewer copies than their novels. When I am presented an anthology, my sales history does not support a buy at the same level as a novel.
Arguably, graphic literature is the new, favored short-form. And sf genre stories in this form are extremely popular in Europe, though less so in the US. I think that trend has more to do with the overall attitude of the country than anything else. My father, a physicist, fondly remembers classic sf tales as stories full of wonder and hope. I don’t think that science makes anyone particularly hopeful right now, and so the tone has changed.
Back to the original topic: what do I hate about sf short fiction? Two things:
(1) Short stories that are written like novels. For me, a good ss is the epiphany. Where a novelist takes 200 pages to reach climax, the ss author takes 20. I don’t want a lengthly build up or complicated battle. But I do want powerful characters at the point of great change or discovery, short-handed in a way that draws me in immediately.
(2) SF is a difficult genre for most readers. We are cast into the middle of something completely alien and asked to understand, to accept. Therefore, authors of speculative fiction have the most responsibility to ensure that the reader has a grounding point. Some part of the story must be so normal, so recognizeable that the reader can interpret the world through that aspect. We can’t read about an alien planet from the point of view of an inhuman mind. I hate it when the reader is left adrift with no touchpoint.
November 16th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Lots of good comments here. I am a writer and reader of both shorts and novels (preferring novels all around). For the most part, I buy magazines to research the markets, and have found myself shying away from some simply because the stories were so utterly forgettable that I wasn’t sure I really wanted to be associated with that market even if I could manage to break in. If I found a mag where I absolutely loved the stories, I would subscribe.
Here is what I see as a trend in ss, but also, regrettably, in much of what I see on bookshelves in the major chain bookstores:
1) Completely forgettable stories. Last year I collected all the genre mags I could find and read them all cover to cover. That included Analog, Asimov’s, F&SF, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and some zines. Only one story from Analog and two from Weird Tales stick in my mind today. Vaguely. The one in Analog stuck because I was surprised that they would publish something like that. None leaped out as mind-expanding, make-me-think stories like those in my anthologies from the Golden Age. A few from On Spec made me go “huh?” Not the reaction you want in the reader.
2) The stories all look the same. The “in” thing seems to be uber-slick, hyped-up, hep language and fast-talking, one-dimensional characters doing not much of anything. The emphasis seems to be on the writing rather than the story. I find this on the workshop that I moderate. Critters are too often wowed by the writing and can’t spot the technical flaws–like a total lack of plot. I suppose I expect better of editors, but perhaps my expectations are overblown. If their lit classes taught them to focus on the beauty of the words and not the tale, then that is what they will look for.
3) Stories trying too hard to be cool. Writing that is in love with itself. The old-fashioned tale with a distinct beginning, middle, and logical, satisfactory ending seems to be off the editorial radar. Now they have to be “break-out” leading-edge stylistic wonders that may win some award but have little resonance with the audience. Give me a writer like Connie Willis with “Firewatch”, who understands how to make a reader care, not a Name with a rant s/he can get away with because s/he is a Name. I want a story to linger in my mind like the favorite scent from my childhood, popping out at unexpected moments forever after and flinging me straight back into wonder.
4) Boring characters. Unrealistic characters. Cardboard characters doing uninteresting things (but oh so beautifully written). Even the jack of diamonds shows a whole new picture when you flip him over. Most of these cardboard cutouts are only printed on one side.
5) Unlike some, I don’t mind stories that end in doom if it is designed to make you think rather than to torture the characters. But yeah, whatever happened to the noble art of making something good happen? Saving the world? Being heroic, patriotic, spiritual, or otherwise unfashionably virtuous? Have we, as a society, become so PC that we cannot defeat even the evil overlord because it might make him feel bad? Stories where nobody wins seem to be vogue. See 1, 2, and 3 above.
I have to wonder if the audience is truly driving this stuff (if I see ONE MORE novel with dragons in it I will do something violent), or if editors are convinced this is what the public wants, and are afraid to break the mold. Most probably believe they are being bold and visionary, but based on the sameness across the board in so many different markets, I can’t agree. I can’t believe that no one out there wants to read or be inspired anymore. It’s just that so few stories being published these days are actually inspiring.
November 20th, 2007 at 10:59 am
[…] Here’s an intentionally provocative post from Jason Stoddard*, who suggests that we might get some interesting ideas about improving genre short fiction by saying what we hate about it: “Back in my audio days, we used to ask our dealers and our customers a simple question: “What do you hate most about your gear?†And, based on the answers to this question, we’d frequently create products that drove stunning business growth. […]
November 20th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Hmm. Interesting question. I don’t think there’s anything I “hate” about short science fiction. My tastes change from time to time, but I’m always able to find someone new who is entertaining.
Unlike most of the reading public (evidently), I prefer short stories to novels. Maybe that’s because I have less time to read, or my ability to suspend disbelief during a novel has waned with age. There was a time, from about the time I first could read until I finished college that anything and everything fascinated me. All books were equally engrossing. Now, it takes quite the book to really hook me. The last one that blew me away was Connie Willis’s PASSAGE. Oh, I enjoyed Stephen King’s LISEY’S STORY.
As far as being a reader goes, I couldn’t be happier with the state of short science fiction.
November 20th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
As far as being a writer goes, I wish more people’s taste were similar to mine. Short story writers ought to be the literary world’s equivalent of rock and roll stars. They should be paid more, and there should be groupies.
November 20th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
There should be drug addictions publicized on Fox News?
So much we’re missing out on!
November 22nd, 2007 at 8:07 am
[…] http://xcentric.com/2007/11/10/what-do-you-hate-most-about-short-science-fiction/ […]
November 22nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
[…] The two posts which inspired me; - “What Do You Hate Most About Short Science Fiction” - Hub Magazine’s post that alerted me to it. […]
November 24th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Its just gotten too dull. Maybe its because i am getting older and have read so much, but I see the angles coming and rarely finish a book anymore. maybe because any success brings a huge flood of copycats till a neat idea makes me violently heave.
Maybe too many are being published so its all overkill.
Maybe the newer technolgies are adding flavor and elements to stories that words alone just don’t satisfy.
November 24th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I am not a writer and my reading is purely for pleasure. I rarely read recent short sci-fi because it is rarely a pleasure. I get more enjoyment from novels and better still, series.
In the my business we use the term “self-critiquing maneuver.” Most readers know it when they don’t enjoy a story. Some are even smart enough to avoid that author later. I am more willing to spend my time and money where the payoffs have been best.
I hate short stories which are not first a good story. As was implied previously, you can write a story for any reason. If you want to sell it for money, a significant group of others needs to enjoy reading it. Impressing other writers is not enough. (yes, I believe there are 10,000+ sf writers out there.)
Write a good tale and I’ll buy it, so will a few hundred thousand others. Write Sci-Fi well and your fellow writers will sing your praises to each other.
April 27th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
[…] Stoddard has asked “What do you Hate Most about SF Short Fiction?”. I must say, I was disappointed with the responses. There’s no consistency among the […]