Whatever Happened to Size Doesn't Matter?
by Michael Gallant

If you are anything like me, you've always taken comfort in that pronouncement. The knowledge that talent, patience, timing, careful attention to detail, charm and flair were far more important than simple length.

I am, of course, referring to heroic fantasy stories. These days, it seems that writers feel... inadequate if their fantasy fiction isn't a massive, thousand page epic in which the forces of good and evil battle for ultimate victory and decide the fate of the world.

Guys, it doesn't have to be that way. Writing an epic trilogy is like buying the red Ferrari and getting hair plugs. You may think it makes you irresistible, but if you couldn't hack it in a short, don't think a hundred thousand words of padding will save you.

As an editor, I have noticed a sad lack of short fantasy. We get plenty of short science fiction, and short alternative pieces, but the fantasy section is sorely lacking. Just to prove a point, we've run three novel length serials and one two-part story in the fantasy section. Only one serial has run in any other part of the zine. We have also broadened the scope of "fantasy" beyond the traditional sword and sorcery boundaries.

Yes, a lot of this is because we are a cool, cutting edge publication, but some of the reason is that very few people are willing to write decent sword and sorcery shorts. Writers and readers cheerfully accept science fiction shorts. Analog and Azimov's are filled with them. Short horror stories are easy to come by. Somehow, sword and sorcery tales can't seem to feel comfortable under fifty thousand words.

When I complain about the dearth of such material--usually on about the fifth beer, when I get maudlin-- the usual explanation I get from acquaintances is "Fantasy doesn't really lend itself to a short."

There are two reasons people might think this. The first is that they are idiots. The second is that they have forgotten their history.

Maybe it isn't entirely the fault of the fans. The fascist, running-dog publishing industry has poisoned the minds of a generation of readers. If you scan the fantasy section of the local large chain bookstore today, you are likely to find few short works, and not even many single volume stories. Check out the big names. Jordan's Wheel of Time series has got to be fifteen thousand pages by now. I think Terry Brooks is down to The Gynecologist of Shannara for unused titles. David Eddings characters have appeared in more installments than Jason from Friday the Thirteenth. Okay, so them being immortal is some excuse, but that doesn't explain how Donaldson's Thomas Covenant unbelieves his whiny ass through a skillion volumes. Long about the four hundredth page, I think even the biggest skeptic would just shut the Christ up and accept that his disease is gone and these people think he's the frigging Messiah. Me, I'd accept my amazing recovery and godhood in about two pages, but as an editor, I have an ego that needs its own ZIP code, so I may be the exception. And maybe, like Groucho not wanting to belong to any club that would have him as a member, Covenant doesn't want to be the savior of any group of spineless codependants who still revere him even though he treats them like shit for a thousand pages.

I am not trying to disparage any of these authors. Much. Well, except for Donaldson, but I had a long bus ride home from Parris Island with only the Covenant series for entertainment and I hold a grudge.

I will freely admit that many of the great sagas are worth reading. Hell, some of them are brilliant. Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Amber, The Black Company, Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series, all of these I eagerly devoured and to this day reread every so often. But it seems that the same profit lusting impulse that leads to Scream 3 in the theaters drives the fantasy book trade. It's a sad commentary when you ask a friend about a series and he replies "The first six or seven books are good. After that it gets redundant."

The sad part is that quote didn't come from my fevered imagination, but from an actual conversation with a friend of mine who reads almost every new fantasy book as soon as it comes out.

The great names of early fantasy worked mostly in short stories. Robert E Howard's Conan, and his less famous heros Solomon Kane, Bran Mac Morn, and Cormac Mac Art all existed only in shorts. Only in the posthumous "collaborations" of scavengers did Conan novels come about. Edgar Rice Burroughs and Karl Edward Wagner are known for their short fiction. Likewise Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser stories and Moorcock's Elric saga were magazine shorts at their conception. Later, these stories were compiled into book length sections and sold as series. In fact, Fafhrd and the Mouser were recently re-repackaged into three books instead of five, now that the average paperback length has increased. I am thankful that they are available at all.

If I wanted to, I could drone on, padding this list and sounding like an authority, but as this editorial looks back longingly to the days of brevity, I will simply make the point that modern fantasy has its origins in the "pulp" magazines that flourished from the 1920's on through the 1970's. Most of these are gone now, and the few survivors struggle for subscribers. The only good sized venue left for these is, ehem, the web.

With the large houses leaning more and more toward the great epic, where even a trilogy is seen as kind of short, it remains for us to keep the flame alive.

There is nothing wrong with a long fantasy. We've published three serialized fantasy pieces so far, and did so because we felt they were worthy tales. All I am trying to say is that writers need to let the story be the length it is. Not every hero needs to save the world from the Dark Lord. Some of them just need to steal a jewel from an accursed temple. A hero who makes a lousy Conan in twenty pages is going to be a lousy Frodo in a thousand. Just give us something good to read.

It's not the word count. It's what you do with it.

And if I hear anyone say that fantasy short stories just aren't viable, I will beat them savagely with a stack of Conan reprints.

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