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PARSIMONY

                                                             May 26, 1992
There's a barrier at the beginning of every story
that takes effort to penetrate.  You need to learn
something about the characters, the style of
writing, and get a sense of the direction of the
plot before you get can get drawn into the story.

  With Science Fiction and Fantasy this barrier
  is even larger, since fewer things are given:
  you also need to understand the social and
  technological premises of the story.  If you're
  reading for "escape", then most of the effort
  is spent at the beginning, and the payoff is
  whatever follows.

              So you get series. And
              really *long* books.
              Sometimes you get series
              of long books.

It used to be assumed that entertaining
fiction should have as few words as
possible, because people with poor reading
skills would be intimidated by massive         There's an Algis Budrys theory
tomes.  Now, the opposite idea seems to be     that the "unnecessary" verbiage
in play.                                       in bestsellers gives poor
                                               readers a chance to catch up.
                                               
                                                  LUDLUM
So, once upon a time, novels were
tight, parsimonious, like say:
   Delany's "Babel-17"                (Though... there was a converse
   Algis Budrys' "Rogue Moon"         problem: abrupt, forced endings
                                      tacked on when the arbitrary
                                      page limit was near.)
Now they tend to be sprawling,
overweight monstrosities.

It seems to me that everything
reads like it's in need of
cutting, even a lot of the        For example Pamela Sargent's
books that I like.                _Venus of Dreams_ and _Venus of
                                  Shadows_ both drag in places.



                   So, how about creating a new
                   Hugo category for books over
                   a certain length?

                   "Bloats" wouldn't be a
                   bad name, though I have a
                   certain fondness for
                   "Damn Fat Books".





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