Stolen from the LiveJournal of Ben Peek this time:

Short Fiction Conversation

Since Stephen King wrote about the state of short fiction a couple of weeks ago, it seems that there has been a constant conversation turning around about if he's right, or wrong, if short fiction is doing well, or it isn't, if it's dead yet, if it's not.

The latest in this debate has involved Jeff VanderMeer talking about how mediocre the majority of short fiction is now, and how the writing in the 70s pushed more boundaries, and was more adult, and something he could get behind more; and there's Elizabeth Bear (matociquala), talking about how such a view compares the work that survived that period, which is not the whole field from then, with an entire field now, and that doesn't really make for such a fair comparison. Also, writers these days are "Working their butts off, sweating blood, taking things apart and putting them together repeatedly, doing multiple drafts and a good deal of hard thinking, fussing over every sentence, putting their blood and sweat and painful hard-earned experience into every character detail--broken hearts, and broken bones. talking about how writers are trying hard," so it's unfair to say that the work as a whole is mediocre cause that implies that they're not trying hard enough.

[...] But it struck me, as I was reading both the Bear and VanderMeer opinions, that within their remarks, sat what I consider one of the reasons short fiction doesn't reach further audiences, and that is in how we talk about it. I've watched people in this scene scramble over children's television like Dr Who, scream fucking murder at bad episodes of Lost, rub themselves over superhero comics, burn the ones with stains, and actively praise and condemn directors and stars of movies, all without one concern that the people involved in that might read their opinion... but when it comes to short fiction, and indeed, long fiction, the conversation is with the positive, and as soon as it hits the negative, statements like VanderMeer saying, "I'm not naming names," and Bear's, "But they're trying really hard," are the usual, and reveal the closed in, club like scene of the writing world, in which authors worry about hurting the feelings of the fragile flowers around them. How, for example, with such statements being said, fiction can get a little more punk, a little rougher, and a little wild, I have no idea. Indeed, with authors themselves saying, "Well, I'm not going to point fingers, even though some people try real hard," is it any wonder that the majority of the work is often considered mediocre, tasteless, and plain?

There is a culture to these things, I find, and one only has to look at the culture to see the cause of an end product.

It's interesting to me that, for all the complaining that goes on within comic book fandom about ... well, other people complaining, basically, and how that audience negativity supposedly poisons the well or whatever, Peek points out that such vitriol is vastly preferable to indifference, because it means that people, beyond the critics and the would-be writers, actually care about what the medium is producing. And to my mind, he's not far wrong.