to continue rereading parts of Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization;
to continue reading for the first time SM Stirling's The Desert And The Blade and Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol;
other activities, of course.
There are at least three paces for prose fiction:
leisurely;
intermediate;
non-stop action with constant cliff-hangers.
I suppose that there is really a spectrum.
The Desert And the Blade is "leisurely" because Stirling has commendably cut back from constant combat, allowing his readers to savor a slower and statelier pace. By contrast, The Lost Symbol is one long cliff-hanger. Although I am hooked, Brown will hold my attention only until the end of this novel.
What is Anderson's characteristic pace? Usually, he gets it just right. We are neither slowed down nor swept along but enabled to focus on the fascinating content.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree with what you said about Anderson and Stirling. Most times Anderson gets his "pace" exactly right. Even if I used to to think some of his books were TOO short. But I came to realize how MUCH he managed to pack into even a short novel like THE REBEL WORLDS or THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS. Which makes me puzzled about how some readers thought Anderson focused too much on background description and not enough on "action." I suppose such readers prefer "non-stop action with constant cliff hangers."
And Stirling certainly prefers the "leisurely" way of writing a novel! Since he writes well, I don't mind and I enjoy his long books. Sometimes I do get bogged down when he goes into the minute details of how to run a farm at an approximately 1870 level of technology.
Sean
Fiction requires conflict, but physical conflict is only one sub-category of it -- and any physical conflict must necessarily involve a conflict of ideas, because human action begins with thought and feeling. Character and conflict are two phases of the same thing, from an author's point of view.
By the way, up until the 1970's, there was a stringent publisher-imposed limit on the size of most SF/F books. 70,000 words or so was strongly preferred. Tolkien helped break this limit, and now 100-150,000 words is more common.
Electronic publishing seems to be breaking down the strict boundaries between shorter and longer fiction, by the way.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree! As long as people are going to read fictions, conflicts of various kinds in these stories will be needed. But I like how GOOD writers, such as you and Anderson, can put MORE into your works than simply action/adventure tales.
Yes, for a time, say from about the 1920's to the '70's, I have heard of how most publishers, for reasons I don't understand, placed stringent limits on the sizes of SF novels. Albeit, that was not true of all writers and genres. I used to be a big mystery fan and I recall now how the novels of Dorothy L. Sayers and John Dickson Carr must have been over the 70,000 words limit.
Also, I'm pretty such many of the books of H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, two other authors I like who wrote mostly before the 1920's, wrote books with more than 70,000 words. So, pre 1920's publishers were more tolerant of longer novels. And Haggard and Kipling both wrote stories some would now call SF.
Sean
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