Stories That Span Books

In the con­text of some com­plaints about the late­ness of George R. R. Martin’s next book, which is one in a series, nov­el­ist Charles Stross offers some insight into the writ­ing of book-spanning stor­ies. Read more →

Charlie’s Diary: Bang, Bucks, and Delivery in Recompense

Charles Stross has pos­ted some typ­ic­ally thought­ful com­ments on the nature of length in fic­tion. What, exactly, is a short story and how does it dif­fer from a novel? Can a novel itself be a chapter?

It’s a tru­ism of the writ­ing busi­ness that short stor­ies are not like nov­els. There are any num­ber of nov­el­ists who simply can’t work effect­ively in the cramped space of a short story; and there are many writers for whom the short form is their nat­ural métier and the wide vis­tas of a novel seem impossible to fill, an invit­a­tion to agoraphobia.

This is some­thing I think about as I write the third book in a ‘uni­verse’ that I’ve put together as I go along. I don’t really have plot threads con­nect­ing the books, though some char­ac­ters overlap.

Also of interest are some of Mr Stross’s com­ments on the con­ven­tion behind the nomen­clature of stor­ies. For me, flash fic­tion is about 100 words in length, which is why my fic­tion flash pod­cast is about a minute in length, on aver­age. But what do I know?

(Via Charlie’s diary.)

Reviews to die for

The anti­pope — Charles Stross — has been brave enough to post his most neg­at­ive Amazon reviews.

‘The writ­ing is some of the worst I have ever exper­i­enced.’ (Accelerando)

‘Reminds me of cheap SF com­ics of the 50s and badly writ­ten online adven­ture games.’ (Halting State)

Déjà Vu had one abso­lute stinker of a review, and it was writ­ten for Interzone by Martin Lewis. It was his first review for Interzone and, as I under­stand it, his last. I can’t find it on the web and I cere­mo­ni­ally burnt my copy…but I think it said some­thing like, ‘Tedious char­ac­ter­isa­tion, awful dia­logue, gen­er­ally so bor­ing I wanted to poke my eyes out’.

(Via Charlie’s Diary.)

Science fiction and fantasy novelists

Via, Charles Stross’s blog, I’ve just stumbled across a meta-blog of sci­ence fic­tion and fantasy nov­el­ists. It seems that blog­ging authors occa­sion­ally pen art­icles for this site and, so doing, advert­ise their wares. Noteworthy among the writers are Charles Stross (obvi­ously), Simon Haynes (we share the same agent), Jeff VanderMeer, and Scott Lynch. For those inter­ested in sci­ence fic­tion and fantasy, it should be a use­ful resource.