How Long Do You Think a Sci-fi Novel Should Be?

[Dr. Drib]

I think we can all finally agree on how long a novel should be.

[AuzelMakadam]

Interesting question, because the page-count answer changes with the premise. High-concept SF seems to want compression: the premise is the engine, and once it is established, extra pages mostly dilute it. Zamyatin's We does its whole surveillance-state arc in about 200 pages, Forster's The Machine Stops lands harder in 30 pages than most trilogies do in 900, and Babel-17 is short too. Battlefield Earth is the counterexample everyone here already flagged - it just keeps going after the book is over.

I am finishing a dystopia draft at the moment and deliberately kept it novella-length, around 20k words, partly for that reason: the hook (one murderous hour per day, enforced by a virus) does not need 400 pages, it needs a tight spiral where every scene converts.

Which makes me wonder - is the modern 400-500 page norm really a story decision, or a publishing-economics one (hardcover needs to feel worth $28)? Someone above mentioned books written to a page-count target, and I suspect that is exactly where the bloat comes from.

[Sirtel]

Personally I like my books on the slower side, and therefore longer. I want to have the time to immerse myself in the book and its characters. Instant adrenaline on the first page is fine, if the pace slows down some after that, but I don't much like novellas and short stories built solely on the plot - they're over before I start to enjoy them.

Of course people are different. I'm a slow, quiet person and prefer to live my life slowly and quietly (that's one reason I hate social media, it's too fast and noisy for me). Others want more excitement and adrenaline.

(Edit: I have not read Battlefield Earth and am not going to, as I dislike alien invasion themes and dystopias in general)

[AuzelMakadam]

Fair point, Sirtel. The immersion argument is the strongest case for length, and I get the 'over before I start to enjoy them' feeling — though I'd frame the good novella differently: not a sprinter, but the same pace over a shorter track. The Old Man and the Sea is slow in the best sense, it just declines to pad. What changes is density per page, not speed per chapter.

And yes, leaving a world early when you wanted to stay is its own kind of bad ending.

Has a long book ever flipped that for you, where you could actually feel the padding while reading?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by AuzelMakadam

Has a long book ever flipped that for you, where you could actually feel the padding while reading?

Of course. And there have been novellas I've enjoyed. There are always exceptions.

[Courant]

Originally Posted by AuzelMakadam

Interesting question, because the page-count answer changes with the premise. High-concept SF seems to want compression: the premise is the engine, and once it is established, extra pages mostly dilute it. Zamyatin's We does its whole surveillance-state arc in about 200 pages, Forster's The Machine Stops lands harder in 30 pages than most trilogies do in 900, and Babel-17 is short too. Battlefield Earth is the counterexample everyone here already flagged - it just keeps going after the book is over.

I am finishing a dystopia draft at the moment and deliberately kept it novella-length, around 20k words, partly for that reason: the hook (one murderous hour per day, enforced by a virus) does not need 400 pages, it needs a tight spiral where every scene converts.

Which makes me wonder - is the modern 400-500 page norm really a story decision, or a publishing-economics one (hardcover needs to feel worth $28)? Someone above mentioned books written to a page-count target, and I suspect that is exactly where the bloat comes from.

There are different theories, novels have gotten shorter in recent years, and one theory I have heard is that they are getting rid of the padding. Googling it got me a bunch of hand wringing about short attention spans that appear to assume everyone is reading literary fiction (although genre fiction tends to be longer). The genre with the most length is fantasy, with romantasy typically being longer than romance. Besides the bargain, longer books are more prestigious, and especially for fantasy, the most famous ones are longer. I also heard that independent books are shorter, probably because they don't add padding to meet the requirement of a literary agent.

[Maxbet]

I think classic science fiction offers some interesting examples here. H.G. Wells managed to explore some remarkable ideas in relatively short novels like The Time Machine, while books like Dune need considerably more room for their world-building.
One thing I've noticed is that reading digitally makes a long book feel a little less intimidating. Without a thick physical book in your hands, you tend to focus more on the story than the page count.
I'm curious whether others feel the same way about longer novels on an e-reader.

[JSWolf]

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is too long. It's about 565,223 words.

The Stand: Complete and Uncut by Stephen King is about 472,376 words and it is in no way too long.

Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard us about 428,750 words. It's 428,750 words too long.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Maxbet

One thing I've noticed is that reading digitally makes a long book feel a little less intimidating. Without a thick physical book in your hands, you tend to focus more on the story than the page count.
I'm curious whether others feel the same way about longer novels on an e-reader.

Not really. I've never found long books intimidating. I liked them on paper and I like them as ebooks.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Maxbet

One thing I've noticed is that reading digitally makes a long book feel a little less intimidating. Without a thick physical book in your hands, you tend to focus more on the story than the page count.
I'm curious whether others feel the same way about longer novels on an e-reader.

For me, the length of the book is not a real consideration and definitely not intimidating. Before ebooks, I read a single volume binding of Lord of the Rings and I read short stories in Astounding Science fiction and most of it's kin. Moving to ebooks, the only thing I found was that I could carry a significant chunk of my library without needing a moving van.

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by Maxbet

I think classic science fiction offers some interesting examples here. H.G. Wells managed to explore some remarkable ideas in relatively short novels like The Time Machine, while books like Dune need considerably more room for their world-building.

Dune started as a novella, Dune World.

It's kind of a matter of expectations, for me. If I was expecting a book and got a 16-page pamphlet, I would not be very happy. And if I got a 3000-page monster I would think it was pretty good value. That's orthogonal to the quality of the story and the words, and is what I'd expect before I read something.

200 pages - Kind of slim. OK for a classic.
350 pages - About average for a modern book.
500 pages - Generous for most genres. Still kind of average for fantasy.
1000 pages - Big.

If it's under, say, 150 pages, I'd expect the normal selling price to be lower.

If it's over 1000 pages, publishers will quite often split it into two and charge you twice.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Maxbet

I'm curious whether others feel the same way about longer novels on an e-reader.

I've mentioned this several times before. It's not that longer books are easier for me to read in electronic format (I was never intimidated by longer books), it's the fact that I rarely know how close I am to the end of an ebook (because I don't really want to know). Feeling how close I was to the end of a physical book caused me to make assumptions about how things were going to wrap up. Assumptions I don't make (would rather not make) by not knowing how close I am to the end of an ebook.

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Personally I like my books on the slower side, and therefore longer.

Christopher Priest can maintain a slow pace without crawling to a slog. His books are not huge fantasy-scale opuses, but his style is slow and detailed. Sometimes he has lost me.

A big, slow-paced book that I found I returned to until the end is The Terror by Simmons.

On the opposite side, I started to re-read Neuromancer. I stopped after the first page. The prose is too flashy, and now seems cliche. Perhaps it hasn't aged well.

[Pajamaman]

The Stand: Complete and Uncut by Stephen King is about 472,376 words and it is in no way too long.

King is a great writer, but I find his books too slow and too long. For example, Salem's Lot, which I did finish, spends about 3/5 of the book in the buildup of character before anything much happens. Then it's a mad dash to finish it, which is too rushed.

The Dark Tower is good, but grim, and so long. DNF.
The Stand. So slow. DNF. I prefer The Postman by Brin.

I prefer King's short works: The Long Walk and Shawshank classics.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

Dune started as a novella, Dune World.
.

It was a Serial in Analog Magazine. I read many of those Analog serials, that later became novels from SF authors. Some of those are hanging out here at MR.