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Some of the Greatest Science Fiction Novels Are Fix-Ups
HughPickens.com writes: What do science fiction classics like Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle, Simak's City, and Sturgeon's More Than Human have in common? Each of them is a "fix-up" — a novel constructed out of short stories that were previously published on their own. "This used to be one standard way to write a science fiction novel — publish a series of stories that all take place in the same world, and then knit them together into a book," says Charlie Jane Anders. "Sometimes a great deal of revision happened, to turn the separate stories into a single narrative and make sure all the threads joined up. Sometimes, the stories remain pretty separate but there are links between them."
The Golden Age science fiction publishing market was heavily geared toward magazines and short stories. And then suddenly, there was this huge demand for tons of novels. According to Andrew Liptak, this left many science fiction authors caught in a hard place: Many had come to depend on the large number of magazines on the market that would pay them for their work, and as readership declined, so too did the places in which to publish original fiction. The result was an innovative solution: repackage a number of preexisting short stories by adding to or rewriting portions of them to work together as a single story. This has its advantages; you get more narrative "payoff" with a collection of stories that also forms a single continuous meta-story than you do with a single over-arching novel — because each story has its own conclusion, and yet the story builds towards a bigger resolution. Fix-ups are a good, representative example of the transition that the publishing industry faced at the time, and how its authors adapted. Liptak says, "It's a lesson that's well-worth looking closely at, as the entire publishing industry faces new technological challenges and disruptions from the likes of self-publishing and micro-press platforms."
The Golden Age science fiction publishing market was heavily geared toward magazines and short stories. And then suddenly, there was this huge demand for tons of novels. According to Andrew Liptak, this left many science fiction authors caught in a hard place: Many had come to depend on the large number of magazines on the market that would pay them for their work, and as readership declined, so too did the places in which to publish original fiction. The result was an innovative solution: repackage a number of preexisting short stories by adding to or rewriting portions of them to work together as a single story. This has its advantages; you get more narrative "payoff" with a collection of stories that also forms a single continuous meta-story than you do with a single over-arching novel — because each story has its own conclusion, and yet the story builds towards a bigger resolution. Fix-ups are a good, representative example of the transition that the publishing industry faced at the time, and how its authors adapted. Liptak says, "It's a lesson that's well-worth looking closely at, as the entire publishing industry faces new technological challenges and disruptions from the likes of self-publishing and micro-press platforms."
Some days the sky is blue! Other days, it's cloudy.
The first, ummm, say two-third's of David Brin's Existence is a mix of short stories (altered a bit since their publication) and a new framework that ties it all together. It works pretty well.
The last third takes place many years after the intrigues of the first part, using a subset of the initial large cast. It is threaded around an updated version of a very old story, "Lungfish," which is arguably the keystone.
No. The first book, specifically, was a collection of short stories. Reread it, paying attention to the structure: a series of events years/decades apart dealing with the problems of the Foundation as it grew to replace the Empire....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
The first Foundation novel was eight short stories published together. Foundation and Empire was a complete novel, as was the Second Foundation.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Good point... but selling 13 chapters would be akin to selling a television season (not counting commercials), as opposed to a cinematic thing. Some stories (e.g. Foundation, Heinlein's Future History, etc) would be best treated in a TV series-style format, so you can get the 13 hours (not counting commercials) needed to stuff that much damned content into it.
Movies are limited by necessity - 3 hours is a long-ass stretch in one go at a theater. The classic Dr. Zhivago movie was IIRC 2-3 hours, and it had an intentional intermission inserted smack in the middle of it, even on the DVD. ( Originally it was so that folks could get up and stretch their legs, have a smoke, etc.) It was one of the few movies I've seen that didn't completely butcher the novel in order to make it fit into a small (-ish) timeframe. Consider that even a fast reader will take hours on end to consume a typical novel... a straight movie is way too short a format.
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Fix ups are short stories that are later weaved together - often after significant alteration from their original form - to construct a larger overarching narrative. They are not simply collections of short stories. Burning Chrome is simply a collection of short stories, some of which happen to take place in the same Sprawl 'universe'. However there is no overall narrative threading through all of the stories in Burning Chrome.
If you are unfamiliar with the work of Clifford Simak I strongly suggest that you give him a try. What I have always loved is that there is so much that is just unknown going on in his stories. No great hero's, no great battles, just a lot of "what the hell is going on here?"
His last book "Highway of Eternity" is great and "Ring around the Sun" has always been a favorite as well. Most of his stuff is a short quick read abd us easily found in your favorite used book store (you do have one I hope).
At a minimum read the novel synopsis over at Wikipedia to get a glimpse of a very interesting author.
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
Including famous authors like Dickens and Hawthorne. You'd get a new chpater in every monthly magazine.
There were eight original Foundation stories, but _Foundation_ only contains 5 stories: "The Psychohistorians", "The Encylopedists", "The Mayor"s, "The Traders", and "The Merchant Princes". "The Psychohistorians" was written specifically for the book.