A quick gripe about categories
Prompted by a) a mild disagreement with nancylebov about whether or not "Magic, Inc." is urban fantasy, and b) news from Midamericon II that Jack Williamson's "Darker Than You Think" was misclassified as a novelette when it is, in fact, a novella, and has been dropped from the Retro Hugos in favour of A.E. van Vogt's "Vault of the Beast".
I can't really blame Midamericon for this - I've seen "Darker Than You Think" classed as a novelette myself, and couldn't really argue with that (I only had the expanded novel-length version, and I couldn't give you an exact word count on that, either.) However, it does illustrate something of an issue... the short form classifications (short story, novelette, novella) are not really all that useful to the casual reader like myself, and I am inclined to wonder whether they ever were.
They make a great deal of sense from a pulp magazine editor's point of view, of course. Those guys had to put together one (or several) magazines of a known, fixed size every month, they had to fit stories into them like a sort of literary jigsaw puzzle, and it was a big help to them if they could work with pieces of an easily determined size. (Isaac Asimov mentions that one of the reasons his first story, "Cosmic Corkscrew", got rejected was its awkward length - 9,500 words, too long for a short story but not quite a full-sized novelette.) And, once these categories were set up... well, when the Hugo Awards started, it made perfect sense to present awards for each of the known, pre-defined, publishing categories.
The various classifications of genre and subgenre, too, make a lot of sense from the point of view of a marketer deciding where to pitch a book, or a publisher trying to put a consistent list together, or a bookseller deciding which shelf something goes on. They are a useful marketing tool. (And, of course, some people just like to build categories and classify things, and who am I to deny them their pleasures?)
I'm just not convinced these classifications - by length or by subgenre - are useful to the people down in the trenches of literature: the readers who read stuff and the writers who write it.
There is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between short fiction and novel length; the skills required to construct a successful story in a narrow compass are different from the ones needed to make a book-length narrative hang together. Some authors make conscious choices only to work at a particular length (Jorge Luis Borges famously didn't do novels, for example.) But, refining down to the publishing categories... is there a different reading experience between a long-ish short story and a short-ish novelette? Does the reader even notice word count, beyond the basic perception that one story might be longer than another? Does the writer bring different tools to bear on a 17,500 word story than they do on a 6,000 word one?
Similarly, with subgenres... it's always seemed to me that they're mainly a way of saying "if you enjoyed this book, you may also like...." Which might be helpful to the reader - if genre considerations (similarities of story type, similarities of setting) are a major factor in their reading choices. Are they, though? My last few purchases have included the second "Kothar the Barbarian" omnibus, the complete works of William Blake, and Sven Hassel's Legion of the Damned, so it's clear that genre considerations are not the only thing driving my reading choices... but I'm a deliberately omnivorous reader, so I'm probably a bad case to generalize from. You can, probably, work out a particular kind of book that will appeal to me, but you'd have to consider a fair number of different factors, some of which are independent of genre... probably. I know, though, that there are readers who base their choices on genre, and who get irritated with books that don't conform to the genre rules. (Sometimes, they get so irritated they start up campaigns to sabotage literary awards over it, but never mind.)
As for the writers... do they, too, work differently if they know they're aiming at a particular genre or subgenre? I've always thought that Iain Banks, to take the obvious example, was pretty much the same on style and quality whether he was writing with his middle initial or not. Similarly, I've read some varied genres from the likes of Harry Harrison or Theodore Sturgeon, and I can't put my finger on any point where I could say "they're doing this because they're not writing SF, here". Of course, maybe I'm just not acute enough as a critic. And, also of course, writers are all individuals, all work in their own ways, and respond differently to the constraints of a genre.
How much difference do categories make? Ultimately, I suppose, I don't know. Interesting question to think about, though, while I go off and find "Vault of the Beast". (Up to 17,500 words... that's enough room for 22 plot twists, by van Vogt's theory.)
I can't really blame Midamericon for this - I've seen "Darker Than You Think" classed as a novelette myself, and couldn't really argue with that (I only had the expanded novel-length version, and I couldn't give you an exact word count on that, either.) However, it does illustrate something of an issue... the short form classifications (short story, novelette, novella) are not really all that useful to the casual reader like myself, and I am inclined to wonder whether they ever were.
They make a great deal of sense from a pulp magazine editor's point of view, of course. Those guys had to put together one (or several) magazines of a known, fixed size every month, they had to fit stories into them like a sort of literary jigsaw puzzle, and it was a big help to them if they could work with pieces of an easily determined size. (Isaac Asimov mentions that one of the reasons his first story, "Cosmic Corkscrew", got rejected was its awkward length - 9,500 words, too long for a short story but not quite a full-sized novelette.) And, once these categories were set up... well, when the Hugo Awards started, it made perfect sense to present awards for each of the known, pre-defined, publishing categories.
The various classifications of genre and subgenre, too, make a lot of sense from the point of view of a marketer deciding where to pitch a book, or a publisher trying to put a consistent list together, or a bookseller deciding which shelf something goes on. They are a useful marketing tool. (And, of course, some people just like to build categories and classify things, and who am I to deny them their pleasures?)
I'm just not convinced these classifications - by length or by subgenre - are useful to the people down in the trenches of literature: the readers who read stuff and the writers who write it.
There is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between short fiction and novel length; the skills required to construct a successful story in a narrow compass are different from the ones needed to make a book-length narrative hang together. Some authors make conscious choices only to work at a particular length (Jorge Luis Borges famously didn't do novels, for example.) But, refining down to the publishing categories... is there a different reading experience between a long-ish short story and a short-ish novelette? Does the reader even notice word count, beyond the basic perception that one story might be longer than another? Does the writer bring different tools to bear on a 17,500 word story than they do on a 6,000 word one?
Similarly, with subgenres... it's always seemed to me that they're mainly a way of saying "if you enjoyed this book, you may also like...." Which might be helpful to the reader - if genre considerations (similarities of story type, similarities of setting) are a major factor in their reading choices. Are they, though? My last few purchases have included the second "Kothar the Barbarian" omnibus, the complete works of William Blake, and Sven Hassel's Legion of the Damned, so it's clear that genre considerations are not the only thing driving my reading choices... but I'm a deliberately omnivorous reader, so I'm probably a bad case to generalize from. You can, probably, work out a particular kind of book that will appeal to me, but you'd have to consider a fair number of different factors, some of which are independent of genre... probably. I know, though, that there are readers who base their choices on genre, and who get irritated with books that don't conform to the genre rules. (Sometimes, they get so irritated they start up campaigns to sabotage literary awards over it, but never mind.)
As for the writers... do they, too, work differently if they know they're aiming at a particular genre or subgenre? I've always thought that Iain Banks, to take the obvious example, was pretty much the same on style and quality whether he was writing with his middle initial or not. Similarly, I've read some varied genres from the likes of Harry Harrison or Theodore Sturgeon, and I can't put my finger on any point where I could say "they're doing this because they're not writing SF, here". Of course, maybe I'm just not acute enough as a critic. And, also of course, writers are all individuals, all work in their own ways, and respond differently to the constraints of a genre.
How much difference do categories make? Ultimately, I suppose, I don't know. Interesting question to think about, though, while I go off and find "Vault of the Beast". (Up to 17,500 words... that's enough room for 22 plot twists, by van Vogt's theory.)