The Short Story Is Dying
Jeff:
I hear the short story is dying. Pass it on.
Evil Monkey:
Thanks. Psst. The short story is crying. Pass it on.
Evil Cat:
Wha? Psst. The short story is lying. Pass it on.
Evil Lizard-Skink:
Okay. Psst. The short bored is lying. Pass it on.
Evil Weezil:
Huzzah! Psst. The lort shoring is flying. Pass it on.
Evil Bumblebee:
Voila! Psst. The vort shore is denying. Pass it on.
Evil Earthworm:
Ssssaaah. Psst. The vortmord is decaying. Pass it on.
Evil Silverfish:
Yavoh! Psst. The lamord is delaying. Pass it on.
Evil Fleas:
Plieez. Psst. The lame is flying. Pass it on.
Evil Monkey:
What? The lame are flying? Okay. Jeff, the lame are flying. Pass it on.
Jeff:
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Evil Monkey:
Oh. It is dead, then…
Jeff:
It’s just resting.
Evil Monkey:
Resting.
Jeff:
It’s tired of being abused and mis-used and contorted out of shape and forced to fill a shape and made to tell a theme and chided into dance and goaded into bad decisions. It wants to rest. And it wants to grow more naturally. It wants the dull and the boring to leave it alone. It wants the controlling and the stay-at-homes to leave it alone. It wants a cup of water and a handful of dirt and long lazy day in the sun, in the shade, maybe with a good pen and a clean sheet of paper and a rising sense of something coming, something coming soon, something new.
August 13, 2007 at 9:03 am
Silverfish say Yavoh. This pleases me.
August 13, 2007 at 9:26 am
Yeah, it just seemed right. And I’m not exactly sure why.
jeff
August 13, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Hi Jeff. Thanks for the linkage.
By way of clarification, the referenced post is not so much about the death of short fiction (which is a silly battle cry of exaggeration) as it is a way to gather information about why, as magazine publishers claim, their readership is down.
The comments are illuminating. At least to me. If they are representative of all readers, then the response is more tepid than I would have thought. I love the short, sharp shock of short fiction and often see novels as short stories that are in serious need of a diet. It befuddles me that other people don’t get the same jolt from short fiction. To each his own, eh?
August 13, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Yeah, I agree, but Evil Monkey’s always absurdist and into exaggeration.
But if people aren’t reading magazines, then that also indicates to me a kind of death of short fiction.
jeff
August 13, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Tricked! You’ve won this round, evil monkey…
>> But if people aren’t reading magazines, then that also indicates to me a kind of death of short fiction.
That is the logical conclusion to draw. I wish I had answers, but I don’t. I doubt there is a direct relationship between how much short fiction people buy versus how much they read. Lots of stuff can be had for free these days, perhaps enough to whet the appetites of casual short fiction readers. Maybe they are even reading more because of it — who knows? But magazine subscription numbers won’t show that.
We are also left to wonder, perhaps through exaggeration as well: if people are buying less short fiction, then those markets will pay less. Therefore it will not be a viable market for writers, thus decreasing the amount of short fiction, etc., etc. and on-and-on.
The market (as this admitted outsider see it) seems to be changing. Into what, I cannot say.
August 14, 2007 at 3:00 pm
“Short fiction is trying?”
August 14, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Video games. We just don’t have readers filling the ranks like we’ve had in the past. Many youngsters who might otherwise be readers are not; they’re playing video games. You can see it at conventions - all the readers are grayhairs, the young fans media-centric. But I recently had some success turning a 35 year old gamer onto SF - he digs it. He’s even been waving his arms about a collection from Alastair Reynolds. So maybe there’s hope? Quality is an issue though. There really isn’t all that much good SF/F being published in the US. Seems to me all the good stuff’s from the UK, and there’s far too little of that. About the only short fiction I read is the Dozois Year’s Best, which is my birthday present each year. Not much can go wrong there! The magazines are just too short on good fiction. Invariably I flip through them all, without fail set them back. If I accidentally miss a good story it’ll be in one of the year’s best anthologies anyway. (Maybe reliable editors of “best of” collections are killing off the magazines? Just kidding, I think.) For what it’s worth, my wife prefers short fiction and is a tireless advocate for the form. She’s all the time finding Jeff’s stories I’ve missed. If you haven’t read Richard Christian Mattheson, do. Joyce Carol Oates has a pretty mean left hook too, you’ll never see it coming. All I’m suggesting is there’s an awful lot of dreck floating around out there and it’s damn hard to sort through it to find what’s worthwhile. But it’s out there.
August 15, 2007 at 11:32 am
Begad, but that’s a true and a clever word that you and your little creatures have spoken there, Mr VanderMeer.
The short story is dying and certainly it is the fault of all those hopeless feckin eejits, kicking all hell out of it and churning out any auld tripe whenever they feel like it.
The time has come for the creation of a short story secret police force, and you, sir, are being offered the post of Head of Covert Surveillance.
Should you accept, it will be your role to root out these gobshites and hooligans capable of such mindless literary violence. Their pens will be duly annulled.
In your good hands, sir, that most fragile and endangered of species, the short story, would surely remain safe!
And the very, very best of luck with Shriek: The Movie