|
|
|
|
|
| SFReader Forums > SF Fiction and Art > Science Fiction > I miss the good old days | Forum Quick Jump
|
| 
Jaqhama
Adventurer
      
Date Joined Oct 2007
Total Posts : 510
| Posted 3/29/2008 11:57 AM (GMT -5) |   |
Gustavo said...Have to agree with everything said here about the length of modern sci-fi vs. pulp age at the novel length, although I have to admit that the revival of Space Opera of late has me hopeful. It also seems that "traditional" Sword & Sorcery in which a big barbarian goes through enormous numbers of bad guys with an obscenely proportioned sword has also come and gone. And yet, I can't help but feel that today seems to be a golden age for heroic fantasy. Robert Jordan (yes, he died, but his series goes on), Raymond Feist, George RR Martin, Terry Goodkind (yes, I know his writing isn't up to par, but millions of people disagree with me), Terry Brooks, David Farland (aka Dave WOlvereton, who used to be a science fiction writer), etc. Seems that we've got huge quantities of choice. And yes, the books are a bit more bloated, but they seem to have found the right balance between literature and action to give us some great stuff. So maybe things AREN'T all that bad. After all, the old stuff is still available...
I don't read much 'epic' sword and sorcery fantasy these days. I prefer the old authors.
I have read, and do like many of David Gemmel's books. The Drenai series.
In recent years I've strayed away from fantasy and concentrated on fictional thrillers and military adventure stories. Authors like Chris Ryan.
I must say one of my fave novels of recent years is The Descent by Jeff Long.
Action/adventure/military sci-fi.
Strong characters, evil villians, an exotic underworld location...a dark and eerie book.
You can read some of my stories here:
Swamp Story. Down South. Florida Haze.Wild Justice...
| | Back to Top | | |
 |
darkbow
Rabbit lord
Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1696
| Posted 3/29/2008 2:45 PM (GMT -5) | | You might like them, and plenty of people do, put those 1000 pager doorstrops were not common before ... hm, oh, let's say the early 1990s, maybe the late 80s. LOTR of course was long, being the grandaddy of them all, and Brooks' Shannara books were pretty big, but most 80s fantasy I'd hazard a guess was in the 300 to 400 page range. And prior to the 80s? Try 200 pages or less for the most part, and you often could buy them for less than a dollar.
Not criticizing anyone's reading tastes here. I've read plenty of thouse 1000 pagers myself, but I'll generally prefer those shorter works from the 70s from guys like Andrew Offutt, Don Pendleton, etc.
"Steven Spielberg and The Magic Box" upcoming at The Ranfurly Review.
"Peter Piker the Pankin Man" upcoming at Big Pulp
"Walking Between the Rain" at Every Day Fiction
| | Back to Top | | |
|
erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4539
| Posted 4/2/2008 1:59 PM (GMT -5) | | | | |
|
rimworlder
Stablehand
Date Joined Mar 2008
Total Posts : 41
| Posted 4/3/2008 8:30 AM (GMT -5) | | | a couple of comments:
first - set-up fees are pretty fixed, regardless of the length of the book, so the additional cost of longer versus shorter is kind of moot.
second - I suspect that larger books has more to do with shelf-space and number of units purchased than it does book production costs.
A 'case' of thousand-pagers has say, 6 units in it, while a 'case' of 200 pagers has 30 units in it. If both books are retail 7.99 at a 55% discount to the re-seller, than to stock the large book costs them $21.60 (3.60 per unit) and a case of the smaller books costs them $108...
(Made up numbers for illustrative purposes)
Along with that, they can "fill" their racks with far fewer titles going with the larger books.
Third - one piece of cover art, versus multiple.
On the other hand: if you figure readers read and consume at some kind of a regular rate, larger books means FEWER purchases, just on time spent to read alone... | | Back to Top | | |
|
Jaqhama
Adventurer
Date Joined Oct 2007
Total Posts : 510
| Posted 6/8/2008 7:11 AM (GMT -5) | | | | |
| 32 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2 |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Thursday, November 20, 2008 5:08 PM (GMT -5)
There are a total of 84,555 posts in 6,891 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 18 new threads and 192 reply posts. View Active Threads
| | Who's Online | This forum has 1307 registered members. Please welcome our newest member, David Cohen.
12 Guest(s), 5 Registered Member(s) are currently online. Details
T A Markitan, RHFay, Jordan Lapp, crystalwizard, Shade53 |
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP2
dotNetBB © 2000-2008
(c) SFReader |
|
|
|