watching star trek and reading short story collections like cordwainer smith’s reminded me of my ambivalence about novels being regarded as superior to short stories.
so much of science fiction and fantasy comes from short stories that it gets sad that bookstores will only feature novels and maybe the few anthologies of famous writers.
i remember feeling conflicted about this when i started reading japanese fiction when they used to not distinguish 小説 by their length. in japan, 小説 can mean anything: novels, short story collections, etc. i bought some short story collections “by accident” and it first annoyed me, but now i felt like i was juvenile and biased. i like to think i’m over it, but the prestige of novels still looms over my head.
maybe people would read more if they got to read more short stories. novels are too much a commitment and a bad novel can seriously burn people out. i might be romanticizing japan’s magazine culture a lot here too: it must’ve been fun to expose yourself to different kinds of writers by subscribing to a magazine.
i know online english magazines exist and i read them once in a while, but they don’t feel the same. it’s iunno sad that there is an implicit bias for novels. short stories are cool too. but i still need to convince myself of that truth.


