It’s a question that comes up quite often — back in the 1960s a typical SF novel ran to 60,000 words (130-150 pages); one that topped 80,000 words was considered lengthy. But today, I’m more or less required by contract to hand in 100,000 word novels; and some of them are considerably longer. (At 145,000 words, “Accelerando” would have been considered a whopper back in the 1970s.) So what happened?

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Until the early 1990s, mass market SF/F paperbacks in the US were primarily sold via grocery store racks, supplied by local distributors (400+ of them). The standard wire rack held books face-out, either against a wall or on a rotating stand. And that’s where the short form factor novel became established. Thinner books meant you could shove more of them into a rack that was, say, three inches deep. Go over half an inch thick, and you could no longer fit six paperbacks in a 3″ rack. And there was only so much rack space to go around.

During the inflationary 1970s and early 1980s, prices of just about everything soared. The publishers needed to increase their cover prices to compensate. But the grocery wholesalers who sold the books insisted “the product’s gotta weigh more if you want to charge more”. They weren’t in the book business, after all, so just as buffalo tomatoes got bigger, so did paperbacks. (Even though this meant there was less room to go round in the wire racks.) You can only get so much milage by using thicker paper and a bigger typeface; so they began looking for longer novels.

Anyway. I began selling novels (in 2001-02) just as the trend for longer novels peaked. I’m actually writing shorter books than my earlier ones — my last two finished manuscripts ran to 102,000 and 107,000 words respectively, whereas my first three SF novels ran to 118,000, 138,000 and 145,000 words each. (On the other hand, I’m not necessarily writing less. Two bloated 150,000 word behemoths take nearly as long to write as three relatively slim 100,000 word novels, if you’ve got your future projects planned out well in advance.)

The DGLA will be presented for the very first time in 2009 for the best Fantasy novel of 2008. The award will be given to a work written in the ‘spirit’ of the late, great David Gemmell, a true Master of Heroic Fantasy.

And, we want YOU – the readers who love the genre to VOTE to decide who makes the Short-list!

On December 9th, I mentioned on the blog that I thought we had a decent chance of breaking $40,000. Then, we raised over $16,000 in the next two days, tearing past $50,000 and leaving me worried that I was going to have to take out a loan so I could cover my half.

A big piece of this was brought about by folks spreading the word on their blogs. Most notably, Neil Gaiman.

I’d heard through the grapevine that Gaiman was a bit of a Heifer supporter, so I sent him a little e-mail, asking if he’d be interested in mentioning it on his blog.

I should have realized that asking for something like this would be like sticking my tongue into…. well… into anything, really. In my experience, whenever you stick your tongue into something, the outcome is going to be either very exciting, very dangerous, or both.

This was one of those “both” situations. After his blog, Gaiman’s readers flooded over to participate in the festivities. Felicia Day mentioned it on her blog too. Plus, I know a lot of folks were finishing their own personal fundraisers and/or waiting until the very end to make their donations. Hence the crazy.

The big news is that Tor.com has published one of my short stories. As they have noted, this story–called “Firstborn”–was the first sf story I ever published. Though, ‘published’ is kind of a loose term here, as the story originally appeared in The Leading Edge, a BYU publication with a very limited print run. (This was after I’d graduated. The magazine asked me if I’d donate a story to one of their anneversary issues, and so I sent them this one, which I’d actually just finished writing.)

I’ve long been looking for a place where the story could reach a larger audience (when I was at BYU, The Leading Edge–despite having some very high quality fiction in it–had a distribution of under a hundred copies.) So I sent the story over to Tor.com, asking if they’d consider it even though it had appeared before in a small publication. Patrick enjoyed the story, and said he might be interested in it if we put it through some editorial work. Moshe, my editor, gave it a very strong edit (something it really, really needed.) A few months later, here it is! With an illustration by Donato, no less. I’m flattered.

I’m very pleased with how the story turned out. You who visit the blog frequently may have heard me say that I don’t think much of my short story writing skills. I think I’m best suited to long-form fantasy epics, but when I do turn my attention to short stories, they almost always come out as classic-style space operas. This story, and the one that appeared in Asimov’s earlier, are both good examples of this. (They also happen to be the only two good short stories I’ve written to date.)

I did an audio reading of “Firstborn” for Tor.com as well, though I don’t know when they’ll be posting that.

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Both are point-and-click adventure games by Revolution Software. Beneath a Steel Sky places you in the shoes of Robert Foster, the sole survivor of a plane crash in cyberpunk Australia’s Outback. Raised in the wasteland, you were forcibly “reintegrated” into the city. Now your plan is to get out. Lure of the Temptress is set in a fantasy world, where you become a peasant named Diermot. After an attempt to bring order to a rebellious town goes wrong, you’re flung from your mount and wake up in a dungeon. It is your duty to escape and rid the town of its evil enchantress and her minions.

The first thing I thought when reading it was, how cool is it going to be to see this on screen! I cannot wait. I also was surprised by how much they crammed into one episode. Prior to reading this, I was a bit concerned about the pacing of the episode, since in the book not a lot happens between the prologue and Bran’s fall. Benioff and Weiss have done a great job of getting all the important info in and keeping things interesting.

The other surprise to me was some of the changes to the story and additional scenes not seen in the book. With GRRM mentioning how faithful an adaptation it is, I expected it to follow the book a little more closely. For example, in the script, we don’t actually see Royce engage in combat with the Others, nor do we see undead Royce. Rather the Others surround Royce and Will and it is implied that they are killed.

Perhaps the biggest surprise to me was the addition of the scenes in King’s Landing. I think it works though. It is good that we are introduced to an important city in the first episode. Also introducing Tyrion in a brothel is, I think, hilarious and fits his character perfectly. Even though these scenes don’t appear in the book, Benioff and Weiss have done a great job with them, especially the dialogue between Jaime and Tyrion in the brothel. They really have captured the essence of the characters.

A few more details I found interesting. Regarding ages, Jon and Robb are listed as 17 in the script, Sansa as 13, Arya 11 and Bran as 8, Dany is listed as 15. All the other children seemed to be the same age as in the books. Was a bit odd when a 13-year old Joffrey was acting like a 17-year old Robb was no match for him. Also, the credit sequence, this very idea was proposed over at the Westeros forums. I wonder if David & Dan took it from there? Or if they had it in the script already? My script doesn’t have a date on it so I don’t know for sure. Also, no flashbacks. I think the history of the world is established well, even without the flashbacks. We get pieces of the story of the Rebellion, Robert and Lyanna, the Mad King, etc. through dialogue between characters and not through flashbacks or exposition. This is the way it should be though and it works well.

I’ve been writing professionally for nine years now, and, with the exception of a few short stories and my upcoming Star Wars novel, I’ve written almost everything in the shared, tie-in setting of the Forgotten Realms. Hence, I’ve been sensitive during these nine years to the claim — the conventional wisdom, really — that tie-in fiction sucks, or at least isn’t as good as non-tie-in fiction.

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Once upon a time, the conventional wisdom went like this: All tie-in fiction sucks. Later, it became, Well, maybe these particular tie-in novels do not suck as hard as other tie-in, but they’re still tie-in. Still later, this became, Well, these tie-in novels don’t suck at all, and are just good pretty good books by any measure. Now, one of the blogger/review sites that I consider one of the opinion leaders (Fantasy Book Critic) is able to write, in a review of Shadowrealm, that “Paul S. Kemp’s ability to do this with ease and grace marks him as one of the best fantasy authors writing today….”

I’m grateful to FBC for such a great review, but I’m not sure that there was enough intellectual space in the reviewosphere for that sentence to have been written five years ago. I think the reviewer’s peers might have sneered at such a claim. I have little doubt that some still do, but many, perhaps even most, probably don’t. The conventional wisdom has changed so much that it’s not recognizable. It’s been elbowed so hard that it’s got a bunch of cracked ribs and a broken jaw. I’m glad of it, and hope its staggered ass is soon sent to the mat for good.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.
Watchmen by Alan Moore
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
Black Man by Richard Morgan.

In such novels as King Rat, Perdido Street Station, and Iron Council, China Mieville established himself as one of the most original writers currently working in any genre. In his latest, The City & the City, Mieville has outdone himself, giving us a multi-layered urban fantasy of extraordinary complexity and depth.

The story begins when Tyador Borlu, senior detective in the Extreme Crime Squad of the city of Beszel, is called to the scene of a particularly vicious homicide. When the victim turns out to be a young female student with dubious political connections and a controversial history, the investigation spills over into the neighboring city of Ul Qoma. Once there, Borlu enters a labyrinth of violence and corruption that will alter the course of his career.

The City & the City is a brilliantly conceived, masterfully executed novel whose intricate plot encompasses myth and legend, political and cultural divisions, corporate greed, and the arcane forces that move behind the scenes of a beautifully realized urban landscape. Effortlessly blurring the boundaries between mystery, fantasy, and mainstream fiction, it is the most impressive, fully developed work to date by a writer of vast ambition and seemingly limitless gifts.

I did a lot of reading in the genre for a doctorate, and I found that I was getting jaded, too – when I looked at why, I realised that a lot of secondary world writers were setting up the world and the magic in the first book, and then just letting the story/politics/war run to its conclusion, without revealing anything new. As a reader, I wasn’t getting a constantly renewed sense of wonder about the world, and since I read epic fantasy as least as much for the world as for the plot, I was getting bored.I kept wanting someone else to read the third book for me and just tell me what happened. I am trying hard not to let that happen in the Castings Trilogy, but maybe that means I’m slowing the plot down…nothing’s simple. The great advantage epic fantasy has is that it’s – epic; like Tolkien, I wanted to try my hand a really long story

Square Enix just announced Dragon Quest X is coming to the Wii. Considered the most important game franchise in Japan, this Dragon Quest announcement is a huge win for Nintendo and its Wii console. Sure, X wouldn’t be the first Dragon Quest game to hit the Wii (the DQ spinoff Dragon Quest Swords was released on the platform earlier this year), but it would be the first true Dragon Quest sequel to hit a Nintendo console since Enix took the series to Sony’s consoles with Dragon Quest VII (PS1) and Dragon Quest VIII (PS2). It’s significant.

Unfortunately, few other details are known about the RPG yet, but Nintendo president Satoru Iwata (shown above with Square Enix president Yoichi Wada and Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii) was on hand and rightfully thrilled.

Interestingly, the new issue of EGM magazine has a rumor that Dragon Quest IX will also be appearing on the Wii, similar to how Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Echoes of Time will be playable on both the Nintendo DS and Wii. Whether this pans out or not, it’s clear Square Enix is moving more of its development resources over to the Wii.

My list of fantasy and sf book reviewers is woefully out of date. I need your help to fix that. But rather than go through the hassle of having you send me recommendations or sticking them in comments, what you can do is take the following list and stick it on your website, then add yourself to the list, preferably in alphabetical order. That way, I will be able to track it across the web from back links, and can add each new blog to my roll as it comes along. So take this list, add it to your blog, and add a link to your blog on it. If you are already on the list, repost this meme at your blog so others can see it, and find new blogs from the links others put up on their blogs. Everybody wins! Be sure to send the list around to others as well.