Sunday Book Discussion: Short Stories (and a review of the 2014 Hugo Nominees for Short Stories)

[inverarity]

So it's still a SBC, right?

I have finished reading the four nominees for Best Short Story for the 2014 Hugos, and I must say I find myself somewhat lacking in whelm.

If you were a sci-fi fan back in the Olden Days before the Internet began killing print magazines, you read a lot of your science fiction in magazine form. Asimov's, Analog, and

Comments

[ms_geekette]

I was also annoyed because the "science fiction/fantasy" element in all of them was thin.Well, it could be worse. The most recent Saturn Awards (which are for science fiction, fantasy & horror) gave several awards to Breaking Bad. They also had The Blacklist down for nominations, and no. (I was certainly confused b/c there were zero nominations for Orphan Black that I saw with those awards, too. Why just copy the Emmys with some extra wildcard nominations

[selenite]

For some Hugo nominees I get the feeling the story was aimed at a literary market, bounced, and had an SF/F element hastily tacked on to prepare it for submission to a genre market.

Picking a nit

[ed_rex]

...while I've read Virginia Woolf's only novel...

Typo? Woolf actually wrote nine novels.

Re: Picking a nit

[inverarity]

Oops. I must have been thinking of someone else, but now damned if I can remember who.

Edit: Snaps fingers. Yeah, I was confusing her with Sylvia Plath.

Re: Picking a nit

[ed_rex]

I've never read Plath, and it's been years a couple of decades since I've read Woolf, but I rather suspect the latter's shade might take issue with the error.

For what it's worth, I thought quite highly of both To the Lighthouse and The Waves when I read them back in high school. But memory has faded and I couldn't defend either of them now.

[l_o_lostshadows]

I think romance is the only genre I'd avoid short stories in. The handful of novellas I've read were already pushing it in building a relationship between the main characters.

After the second half of A Study in Scarlet, I'm hesitant to read another of the longer Holmes stories, but I'm not sure I'm ready to declare Doyle a better short story writer yet. (But, damn, he padded that thing.)

[paulliver]

When the premise of your stories is that the hero is smarter than everyone else, it's hard to come up with novel-length plot problems. Even in the BBC "Sherlock" they sometimes need mysteries within mysteries to keep Holmes busy.

[l_o_lostshadows]

Mysteries within mysteries is fine. Mystery, follow by part two: the killers lengthy explanation of why he did it, not so much.

I'm pretty sure he could have condensed the whole thing down to a page or two.

[ellaygee]

The only one of the nominations I've read is "The water that falls on you from nowhere." I liked it, but I thought the supernatural aspect could have easily been cut out without affecting the story much.

I used to read a lot of short fiction back in the day. Does anyone else remember Omni Magazine?

I bought an ebook compilation of Robert Silverberg's short stories that were published in the 1950's. The most fantastical thing in the collection were the author's notes, where he talks about supporting himself and his wife with sales of short fiction. And renting a 5 room apartment in Manhattan for $150 a month.

[paulliver]

I mostly read novels because I like complicated plots and lots of world building, too much to fit into a short story. It's probably why I'm more interested in the season long plot arc in TV shows than in the episodic episodes in shows like "Angel," "Once Upon a Time," and even "Longmire." It's why I like "Deep Space Nine" more than "Next Generation."

I'd rather read SF shorts than fantasy, because SF shorts are usually focused on the idea and fantasy shorts on the prose.