What Happened To Short SF?

science_fiction sf

Mon Nov 16 11:08:14 -0800 2009

I'm currently making up my syllabus for Spring 2010, where I'll be teaching ENGL 191, Science Fiction, once again. I'm having a problem, though. Currently, the version of SF I'm teaching now ends w/ 2 novels: Snow Crash & Accelerando. The problem is that both of those books tip the scales at 400+ pages (470 & 415). This is especially a problem in a university environment where, as students start to get sucked into semester projects & final exams as the term concludes, the amount of time available for reading (esp. for an elective) starts to drop. So, essentially, at the same time their time is most impacted, I'm asking them to read over 150 pages a class period. As a comparison, I recently taught Patternmaster by Octavia Butler (a light 200 pages) & we had a great class discussion, as I suspect ppl actually read the thing. So, I'm starting to look into solutions for next Spring.

I thought about trying to teach a different book to conclude for Spring (I've also subbed in "Ownz0red" by Cory Doctorow, "Engineer's Dreams" by George Dyson, & "A Colder War" by Charles Stross in place of the much longer Stross novel) & I'd like to teach something current. The problem is there's nothing current that I want to teach under 400 pages in length. Seriously?

The two books I thought about teaching are Yellow, Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts (which is amazing, btw) & Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. Both fantastic books that are getting heavy praise. I'd be excited to talk about slipstream in the Roberts and steampunk in the Priest, but, god, they're both so long.

This got me thinking about the article, "Did Dune Ruin Science Fiction?" over at IO9. They summarize a forum argument on a different site whose essential gambit is:

Basically, people looked at it and instead of saying, "Wow – you can have this kind of massive family drama/economic intrigue/war story/mystical journey all in the context of SF", they said, "Dune must be awesome because it's really long."

So after 1965 all SF started to get really, REALLY, BIG. I mean, when I've lined up my copy of Dune with three SF books that had been written in the previous decade (Double Star and Starship Troopers by Heinlein, and Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement), all of them award winners, all of them critically acclaimed, and all of them barely adding up to the page count that is DUNE.

I can verify this, as well. For instance, I mentioned Patternmaster, published in 1977 at 200 pages. Butler's next to last novel is Parable of the Talents and weighs in at 488 pages. In fact, if you line up the Ace editions of her novels in chronological order of publication (as I just did), you can see them get visibly longer between 1977 and 1999. I could also talk about Sturgeon and Heinlein and how all of those novels are much shorter.

I've noticed over the last few years or so that many SF classes stop with Neuroromancer. I guess that's okay; Gibson's novel was a pretty big deal, but post-cyberpunk SF is also pretty interesting, rich, & (esp. in the case of British SF) shockingly good (it seems odd to teach an intro to SF class & not discuss the contemporary British renaissance). Now, after having gone through this exploration, I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't a part of some kind of anti-cyberpunk bias, but is instead a valid pedagogical position. Who really has the time / inclination to teach a 400+ page novel the last week of a class? Students are busy. We're busy. It's crazy.

So, what I'm thinking about doing is shuffling the schedule around and teaching Patternmaster again, but I'm wondering what can be done about this problem. It's especially frustrating as most of these really long, contemporary novels are really fast reads (I read 160 pages of Snow Crash yesterday), but how can you convince students of that? I know I had Stephenson's 470 pages hanging over my head all last week ("How am I going to find time to read this ... thing?"). I don't know the answer. I'd appreciate any thoughts.

Anyway, here's what I've got:

Books List

Class Schedule

  • All short stories and essays not linked are available as PDFs in Course Reserves on the CAT
  • All books are available at the book store
Date Reading For Class
1/12 First Day of Class
1/14 “Estrangement and Cognition” by Darko Suvin & “When It Changed” by Joanna Russ
1/19 “Towards a Definition of Science Fiction” by James Gunn & “The Gernsback Continuum” by William Gibson
1/21 “The Right to Lie” by Thomas M. Disch & “Beam Us Home” by James Tiptree Jr.
1/26 A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
1/28 A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
2/02 H.P. Lovecraft “The Horror at Red Hook” & Clark Ashton Smith “The City of the Singing Flame”
2/04 “Shambleau” & “The Dust of Gods” by C.L. Moore
2/09 The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett
2/11 The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett
2/16 “A Martian Odyssey” by Stanley Weinbaum & A.E. van Vogt “Enchanted Village”
2/18 “Mars is Heaven!” by Ray Bradbury & “Victory Unintentional” by Isaac Asimov
2/23 “‘All You Zombies—’” by Robert A. Heinlein & Exam Review
2/25 Midterm Exam
3/02 The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
3/04 The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
3/09 Spring Break
3/11 Spring Break
3/16 “Chronopolis” by J.G. Ballard & “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison
3/18 “Driftglass” by Samuel R. Delany & “Terminal Beach” by J.G. Ballard
3/23 “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain” & “The Screwfly Solution” by James Tiptree Jr.
3/25 Star Trek “Space Seed”
3/30 “In the Hall of Martian Kings” & “The Persistence of Vision” by John Varley
4/01 “Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler
4/06 “The Winter Market” by William Gibson
4/08 “Mozart in Mirrorshades” by Bruce Sterling
4/13 Neuromancer by William Gibson
4/15 Neuromancer by William Gibson
4/20 Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
4/22 Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts
4/27 “Ownz0red” by Cory Doctorow & “Engineers' Dreams” by George Dyson
4/29 “A Colder War” by Charles Stross
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