Short is not small

[threemonkeys]

I am not as obsessed (insane?) as the folks contributing to lastshortstory, but I do like reading short stories. They are how I got into reading sf and the appeal remains. Unlike some people, I don't think that they are an endangered species, but their commercial viability died a long time ago. No writer is going to get rich writing short fiction. Heck, no writer is even going to scrape a living at it - you have got to be writing novels. Even a successful novelist can struggle to get collections of their short work out there. Look at Jack McDevitt. He is one of the top writers in harder science fiction these day. Of currently active authors, he is the best around at taking the spirit of what science fiction used to be all about and presenting it in a way that is relevant to modern audiences. While his novels are picked up by major publishing houses, his collected short stories were not wanted by them. Ships in the Night is published by Altair Australia, who with the best will in the world are not major players. I'm glad they made the effort though.

It is fairly common that an author who writes both shorter and longer works will be better than one than the other. Sometimes the shorter form will give an author more freedom and really let them spread their wings. In other cases, the short form is constricting - the author needs the scope of a novel to fully develop their ideas. Based on the stories in Ships in the Night, I would say that McDevitt shades a little to the latter. The stories are well crafted but a little predictable and seem to lack a bit of character development. In support of this, the longest story, the title story, is pretty much the best. Only a short piece called Report from the Rear shows the sharp sting that characterises the best short stories. But remember these stories are only weaker compared to his novels - a field where he excels. Thus from my point of view this collection is certainly worth reading. I wonder if the folks on lastshortstory agree.