Re: Man, did I put the fox in amongst the chickens...



On 2007-03-30, J.Pascal penned:
There are tons of magazines, just not a lot of short fiction
magazines (and I think that goes across genres, just at a guess.)
Why? Because people who like to read like to read long stories?
That's a guess too, but look at the average length of a novel
compared to a while ago. There are still some pretty thin
Harlequins but other than that it seems like it's just the reprints
of older books on the shelves that are thin anymore.

As a reader, I love short stories, but I have to admit I don't buy
them as often as I do novels. I have a subscription to F&SF, which I
enjoy. I don't subscribe to the other usual suspects, mostly because
I'm not crazy about hard sci fi. I like to buy the Year's Best
Science Fiction anthologies.

Maybe I'm just ignorant. If I'm looking for fantasy and ... soft? sci
fi short stories that are printed (I spend enough time on a computer; I
don't want my pleasure reading to happen on a screen), where else should
I be looking?

I suspect that per word, paperback novels are a lot cheaper than short
stories. Could be wrong.

One thing I keep meaning to do, but don't, is keep a list of books
that sounded interesting from the book reviews in F&SF and pick those
up. Surely that would cut through the massive amounts of crap on the
shelves. I don't know why I don't do that.


--
monique
.



Relevant Pages

  • Re: Longest Series Youve Read
    ... I've wondered about the Jessie Stone books. ... Since reading a couple of his short stories, his humor is starting to interest me. ... I intend to read all the Scudder stories in ER, and I'll keep the Ehrengraf stories in mind, too. ... So many writers who are better at the short forms have to pay their bills with novels, and some of them end up abandoning their strengths. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Whats in a Series?
    ... Asimov's Foundation books are all in a single series, the stories ... That may apply to the current run of spin-off novels, ... The majority of Star Wars books form parts of on-going serials, ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Longest Series Youve Read
    ... Why did the Universe intrigue you enough to spend more time reading ... Spenser are these powderpuffs, and the stories have no real emotional impact on Spenser, I'm outta here. ... I had similar feelings about Travis McGee mixed with exasperation at the inserted diatribes and the sense after reading three novels I'd read the same one three times. ... I also made an attempt at the Maj Sjowall-Per Wahloo Martin Beck books but didn't past three or four, much as I liked them; never read enough Maigret to say I'd tried. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Which of these authors is still worth reading?
    ... I've looked at his books in the used book stores, ... A reviewer needs to know the name, and have an idea of his work -- ... Having read the Eric John Stark stories is a plus, ... I've read a few novels and a bunch of ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Best writers I havent yet read
    ... Keep meaning to try - many of his books are at least interesting to ... of Romanticism - greater confidence in, ... At the other end of the Romantic spectrum, stories like "The Price ... I'm not sure about any of the novels. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)