Quote:
Originally Posted by bluepeter
I'm not bothered. It should be as long as the subject requires, and no longer. I'll read as long as it keeps me engaged.
I remember reading Stranger in a Strange Land in 1975. That was the version as originally published, with about 400 pages. When the unedited version (about 650 pages) was published (late '80s? early '90s?), of course I read it. In my view, the extra length added nothing but more words. Sadly, my copy of the original, shorter, version was lent to a friend and destroyed in a house fire. And it is, as far as I know, no longer available and is therefore irreplaceable.
|
Given how popular that book was, there's probably a lot of older copies floating around. I read it in the early 1970s too. It was one of the books that convinced genre publishers that there was a market for longer novels. When James Michener's Shogun was published, the publisher didn't even know if it could be bound in a single volume. It was, and was a *huge* bestseller.
When I was working at Tor in the 90s, there was no mandate about length, but there was an expectation that for certain types of 'commercial' fantasy (i.e., Tolkein-derivative) that bigger was better, sales-wise. For myself, I liked leaner fiction, and recall that trying to get writers to make substantial cuts could be painful. I work in academia now, it is less painful.