Readers
Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Summary: "Novella Chapbooks", 2004
One of the welcome "new" publishing staples of recent years is the novella-length chapbook. I say "novella-length", and I must immediately acknowledge that many of these are novelettes by Hugo/Nebula definition. (And that some of these publishers also do novels in much the same format.) I say "chapbook" and I must immediately acknowledge that the traditional definition of chapbook does not necessarily encompass books like the fine PS Publishing trade paperback editions. And I say "new" and I must acknowledge that such books have been occasionally published for a long time -- it just seems to me that within about the past five years these books have become much more popular, mostly as a result (I assume) of the efforts of Peter Crowther and PS Publishing. I welcome this in particular because it creates new markets for a story length I find very congenial for SF.
In 2004 I saw nine books that I put in this category. These are:
From PS Publishing:
- Jigsaw Men, by Gary Greenwood
- No Traveller Returns, by Paul Park
- My Death, by Lisa Tuttle
- Mayflower II, by Stephen Baxter
From Aqueduct Press:
- Changeling, by Nancy Jane Moore
From Golden Gryphon:
- Mere, by Robert Reed
- From Soft Skull Press:
- Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf, by Paul Fattaruso
From Subterranean Press:
- The Dry Salvages, by Caitlín Kiernan
- From Big Blind Productions:
- Eschersketch, by Stephen L. Antczak and James C. Bassett
Of these the Reed and Antczak/Bassett stories are novelettes, at in the neighborhood of 13000/14000 words each. The others are novellas, mostly pretty long at over 25000 words (only Moore's story, 21,000 words, being shorter).
Looking over this list I am struck by the fact that I really enjoyed all these stories to some degree or another. I was most disappointed by Kiernan's The Dry Salvages, somewhat ambitious SF about exploring a distant world -- that degenerated (as I saw it) into unconvincing horror.
Antczak/Bassett's Eschersketch is rather slight but often clever, about a nerdy computer programmer who tries to impress a hot co-worker by programming a new machine to make 3-D models of M. C. Escher drawings. (It's notable for one thing by raising the prospect of a standard-issue Analog romance (geek gets cute smart girl) and treating that prospect with skepticism.)
Moore's Changeling is about a Texan girl who mysteriously can visit another dimension. She forgets this ability until her life is changed by an accident that leaves her paralyzed, and by years of bitterness and self-abuse. In the other world she discovers secrets about her own self, and about her parents. I thought the story started strongly and intriguingly, but that the rather flat ending failed to live up to the promise of the opening.
Reed's novelette is another of his stories of the huge Galaxy-circling Ship. In this case a child is marooned on an alien planet, and grows up rather twisted, with suitable effects once she reaches the Ship.
Paul Fattaruso's Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf is a very surrealistic story, in 59 short chapters, about dinosaur society, a miraculous shortstop, statisticians and lucky men, murders, a strange ex-president, and a host of other things. I liked it -- it's very weird and sort of sweet and mystical and often offbeat funny.
All the PS Publishing offerings that I read were good work. (They published a few more that didn't look as interesting to me, though I noticed that James Lovegrove's Gig, two linked novellas bound back to back, got some praise.) Greenwood's Jigsaw Men is a neat alternate present in which Frankenstein's process was real tech, and duplicable, and used to make soldiers and such like. Also used, present day, for grotesque porn. The plot is driven by a not terribly involving murder mystery, but the backstory is pretty cool. Tuttle's My Death concerns a present day writer who becomes intrigued by the history of a woman writer of the preceding decades, a writer who for one thing was the "muse" for a notable painter, but later a significant novelist on her own. Park's No Traveller Returns is of course about exploring the afterworld -- it's a bit wry, sometimes dead serious but sometimes just offbeat -- good stuff, not great.
Best of all these stories, and one of the best novellas this year, is Stephen Baxter's Mayflower II, a generation ship story focussing on a man who has his life extended in order to better monitor the succeeding generations of the "crew" of the ship.
Stats: these represent 9 stories, 7 novellas and 2 novelettes, for a total of 216,000 or so words.
