What Ails the Short Story. (this link will probably die at some point so read it while you can).

His take: the short story is alive, but not well.

I don't know how much of this applies to the speculative genres, since he's mostly referring to literary stories, but I thought it interesting none the less, and echoes some of the opinions we've expressed here.

Of particular interest, I thought, is that the primary people who buy short story magazines are people who want to get published in them. In fact, I've heard elsewhere, both from the magazines and writers, that as an aspiring writer I should "do my part" to keep the magazine alive, that is, to subscribe. This seems to me to create an odd cycle that feeds into itself, but becomes ever smaller and more exclusive. Wouldn't it be better to try to write stories that appeal to a larger audience? Is that even possible?

Anyway, I thought the article worth reading.

[This message has been edited by annepin (edited September 30, 2007).]

Well, someone else somewhere else also posted a link:

http://tinyurl.com/2qphgb

The problems with most lit journals is that they really are just filled with writers writing for other writers. Which creates these closed circuits of what OSC calls "Performance Writing."

I think the market for short fiction will get even smaller, though, as people get used to watching episodes of _The Office_ on 1.5" iPod screens.

If the story is good, I want more time to sink into it, to wallow around in the place, the mood, hang out with the characters.

If it doesn't do any of the above for me, why would I want to read it in the first place?

I much prefer novels. The latest crops of short stories in the f and sf magazines...they rarely print stories that interest me. They seem for the most part, depressing. Or even stupid...???? I can't pin down one single problem that permeates the market but it's there. They seem to be trying to be more literary rather than action-adventure ideas? More social fiction ideas? Something.

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I think the market for short fiction will get even smaller, though, as people get used to watching episodes of _The Office_ on 1.5" iPod screens.

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So I guess maybe we should be thinking of switching to writing screen plays instead!

I think it might be a matter of people now wanting the big stories, like Harry Potter, and Lord Of The Rings, and Pirates Of The Caribbean. Like arrika alluded to, short stories just don't hold the attention of today's readers as well. I have to admit that while I enjoy a good short story from time to time, I'll usually buy a novel at a bookstore rather than an anthology of shorts.

I suppose I would grade the Spec market for short fiction to be stronger than the literary market for one overwhleming reason - the big names in sci-fi and fantasy still write short stories. I really can't name a lot of the bigger names in lit fiction who do the same, and I think that the draw of the big names can drive short fiction sales. What was the last short story that Salman Rushdie wrote? Don DeLillo? Brett Easton Ellis? Hellingway and Fitzgerald both worked in short fiction, and many current Spec Fiction authors still work in the form. As for the four names King pointed out as major short fiction names - Gay, DeVita, Pollack, and Kyle - why haven't I ever heard of any of them? Do I not run in the right crowd?

My ideas tend to be too big for a short story, or if they fit into a short story, they don't have much of a spark.

Short stories tend to disappoint me more often than anything, though there have been some gems. I'm often surprised at what does get published as short stories.

Also, I think it is considered 'uncool' to buy literary journals unless you're literary. In the age of Face, Loaded and Zoo (all British popular magazines), more 'arty' mags are ignored as frivolous. Writers, of course, think literature is cool--so we do keep the market afloat. But there are, with spec-fic mags, those sci-fi/fantasy addicts that collect anything related to their hobby, and who will buy every spec-fic magazine out there. So maybe we're selling to two niches instead of one :P But the good thing is that collector-types are loyal and will tend to buy a series of titles from the same company/writer/journal, even if they're not very good, just for completion's sake.

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I much prefer novels and the latest crops of short stories in the f and sf magazines...they rarely print stories that interest me. They seem for the most part, depressing. Or even stupid...????

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My own opinion is that spec magazine short story editors are trying really hard to be very, very literary. If I wanted to read New Yorker stories I'd pick up the blinking New Yorker. In spec magazines I want to read pure spec, and for much to much of the genre you don't find speculative fiction there, especially in fantasy magazines. Instead, you find ersatz literary stories. So I don't buy them. Sorry, Mr. King, but I'm not going to support magazines that have, in my opinion, given up or sold out on the genre they are supposed to support.

Maybe they, at least in part, aren't selling because they aren't enjoyable to read.

http://slushmaster.livejournal.com/71644.html

In this post, he talks about a kind of fantasy called Surrealistic Fantasy, which is some kind of subtle fantasy so hidden, that even he says he did not think it was fantasy at all at first.

So here we have a slush editor who is selecting a type of story even he had doubts of belonging in a genre magazine for fantasy. What does that say about magazine editors and the types of stories they are selecting? If even an editor can't decide whether it's fantasy or not, how do they expect readers to? To make matters even worse, Realms of Fantasy claims to be a traditional fantasy magazine who publishes epic fantasy. It seems to me they're doing nothing of the sort.

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Either way, I'm sure some readers were scratching their heads at "Bread Crumbs & Stones" and "Mother Moves In" by Deborah Wheeler, wondering what such tales were doing in a fantasy magazine.

If you rewind to ten years ago, I would have been one of these people. Actually, I would have sneered derisively, convinced this was literary fiction with no place whatsoever in a magazine like Realms of Fantasy. Whether they like it or not, even traditionalists will recognize things like urban fantasy & magic realism as fantasy literature. It's just of a sort they don't like. But some people don't get surrealism, not if it's supposed to be fantasy literature. It all comes down to whether you're willing to accept stories that often rely heavily (or solely) on metaphors and symbolism to achieve the fantastical (again, the disclaimer of a simplistic definition).

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So it's no surprise to me that the short story is languishing. For me, most of them are not worth paying money for, and if I wasn't attempting to write short fiction myself, I wouldn't bother. I guess maybe they're just not "my thing".

I can't speculate as to whether it is the choice of editors, or that the editors have little to choose from. Even most "best of" anthologies are usually a chore. But I will try the anthology edited by King.

Edit: And I no longer even try to sell short stories to the supposed "top fantasy markets" which have sold out on fantasy, in my opinion. Most of what they publish is barely fantasy and nothing I want to either read or write. I am afraid I truly believe that Mr. King missed at least half the problem with the short story market. I'm not saying he didn't have a point. But he ignored the issue of the fact that most of those magazines don't have stories in them that I would read except as an exercise in masochism. If people enjoyed reading them, maybe they wouldn't be hidden.

As Kevin J Anderson and his wife Rebbeca said in a recent podcast: "Be nice to everyone." The first reader might be there today, but he might become the editor of a major publication house tommorow.

Realms of Fantasy--now wouldn't you think a magazine with a name like that would want to publish fiction that is identifiable as fantasy. But noooo.... They want to "educate" their reader to think stuff that isn't fantasy and has no fantasy elements is fantasy -- cuz it's LITERARY. Well, as a reader, I was offended.

I repeat-- snot nosed editor. But I will freely admit it isn't a good idea for a writer to go around telling editors what your opinion of them is. My response, however, was as a reader, and I think it's past time for readers to speak up to the idiocy that editors are doing.