WHY are novels getting longer?
Nancy Lebovitz
Adam Benedict Canning <da...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
>On Wed, 23 Jun 1999 14:50:25 -0700, David Navarro
><dna...@anim.dreamworks.com> wrote:
>
>>GCU Cultural Attache wrote:
>>>
>>> Browsing through CJ Cherryh's web pages I saw a comment to the effect
>>> that 'the faded sun' trilogy was about to come out in one volume, and
>>> that this was (among other reasons) because publishers expected 150k
>>> word novels these days, rather than the ~80kw they used to want.
>>>
>>> What's driving this, in terms of literary, social, or economic factors?
>>> Everyone keeps saying folks attention spans are getting shorted, what
>>> with TV, computers, etc, so how come books are headed in the longer
>>> direction?
>>>
>>> A glance through the bookshelves confirms this as fact - you can almost
>>> date the books by looking at how thick they are ..
>
>Word Processors.
>
Is the timing right for that? Perhaps LOTR (definitely pre-WP) and _Dune_
(pre-WP, I think) proved that longer novels were commercially feasible,
but longer novels didn't become standard till word processors were
common. Anyone know when WPs became standard equipment for sf writers?
Who was the first sf writer known to use a WP?
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
Calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Loren MacGregor
I haven't seen any of the messages except this response from Nancy,
but based on the text she quotes, I'd venture to guess that word
processors don't explain Victorian triple-decker novels, Dickens,
or, indeed, a fair amount of world literature.
I'm reasonably certain, for example, that "War and Peace" was not
written on a word processor.
-- LJM
Evelyn C. Leeper
Loren MacGregor <churn...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
> > >
> > >Word Processors.
> > >
> > Is the timing right for that? Perhaps LOTR (definitely pre-WP) and _Dune_
> > (pre-WP, I think) proved that longer novels were commercially feasible,
> > but longer novels didn't become standard till word processors were
> > common. Anyone know when WPs became standard equipment for sf writers?
> > Who was the first sf writer known to use a WP?
>
> I haven't seen any of the messages except this response from Nancy,
> but based on the text she quotes, I'd venture to guess that word
> processors don't explain Victorian triple-decker novels, Dickens,
> or, indeed, a fair amount of world literature.
>
> I'm reasonably certain, for example, that "War and Peace" was not
> written on a word processor.
Of course, it (and many of the other works you cite) were written by
people who were full-time authors.
We're seeing a lot more doorstops from people who have day jobs and
write in their "spare time" and *still* turn out giant novels.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824
"Publishing a book of poetry in the United States is like dropping rose
petals off the rim of Grand Canyon and listening for the echo." --Don Marquis
jhe...@my-deja.com
na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> Who was the first sf writer known to use a WP?
Rough guess would be Jerry Pournelle. Note that I'm not going on any
references, just on his general early involvement with personal
computers.
--
Jim
"Build a better mousetrap and the world will build a better mouse."
Anon.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
Loren MacGregor
"Evelyn C. Leeper" wrote:
>
> In article <37725BB8...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Loren MacGregor <churn...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> > I haven't seen any of the messages except this response from Nancy,
> > but based on the text she quotes, I'd venture to guess that word
> > processors don't explain Victorian triple-decker novels, Dickens,
> > or, indeed, a fair amount of world literature.
> >
> > I'm reasonably certain, for example, that "War and Peace" was not
> > written on a word processor.
>
> Of course, it (and many of the other works you cite) were written by
> people who were full-time authors.
>
> We're seeing a lot more doorstops from people who have day jobs and
> write in their "spare time" and *still* turn out giant novels.
I don't think this is entirely the case. Wait. I think this
-isn't- the case. There is a complex feedback going on which
includes the writer believing the work is important and -therefore-
requires vast length, the publishers believing that for a certain
class of books, the readers will -demand- a long book, and the
readers tending to accept that, to a degree, a long book -is- an
important book.
The situation is certainly more complex than this. Factor in the
cost of producing a book, and it becomes in the publisher's best
interest to print a long book -- or even a short book designed to
look like a long book, through pagination and leading and other
typographical tricks -- because, the cost of producing the book
being what it is, having a pricey big book is more cost-effective
than having a pricey small book. "Six ninety-five for 180 pages!
That's outrageous! I won't pay it!"
Factor in, too, the number of people who feel they're somehow doing
something more worthwhile if they're reading a book than watching a
movie or a television program, and who feel even -more- virtuous
when they're reading a big book, as if the size of the book equated
to their virtue in reading it.
Having a word processor doesn't necessarily make a writer write
-more-. For some, it allows the ability to rewrite and polish; for
some, it makes them sloppier writers. (I worked for a lawyer who
used the word processor to hone his skills; once he had the ability
to rewrite easily, he ruthlessly went through each draft, cutting,
cutting, cutting, until he had excised everything unnecessary. In
the same office, I worked for a lawyer who had been incredibly terse
-until- he had gotten a secretary with a word processor, the
difference being that when every page had to be retyped, he was much
more careful about what he said which might require changes.)
In all eras, there have been good, mediocre, and bad long novels,
some by full-time professional writers, some by dedicated amateurs.
Dickens and Tolstoy -- the only two authors I actually cited --
were, in fact, full-time writers. However, "The Pickwick Papers,"
as just one example, is long not because the writer was a full-time
professional but because Dickens was hired to write the text
accompanying humorous illustrations by Robert Seymour, a popular
artist who committed suicide after the second number was issued.
The character of the series was changed, Dickens continued to write
the installments (which began in 1836 and continued through
November, 1837), and the resulting long, episodic and almost
structureless novel basically launched his career as a full-time
writer. If I am correct in my history (I may not be -- it's not my
period), the Victorian triple-deckers were not generally written by
established professional writers, but rather by dedicated amateurs.
-- LJM
Joel Rosenberg
<jhe...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:7ktv4e$eak$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article <7ktcvf$d...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>
> > Who was the first sf writer known to use a WP?
>
> Rough guess would be Jerry Pournelle. Note that I'm not going on any
> references, just on his general early involvement with personal
> computers.
I was writing short stories using Xedit on a VMS system in 1976 -- and I
doubt I'm the first. If I had to guess, it would be Vernor Vinge, as he's
been writing and had easy access to university computer systems for a
lonnnnggg time.
David G. Bell
na...@unix3.netaxs.com "Nancy Lebovitz" writes:
> In article <37720b2f...@news.cableinet.co.uk>,
> Adam Benedict Canning <da...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
> >On Wed, 23 Jun 1999 14:50:25 -0700, David Navarro
> ><dna...@anim.dreamworks.com> wrote:
> >
> >>GCU Cultural Attache wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Browsing through CJ Cherryh's web pages I saw a comment to the effect
> >>> that 'the faded sun' trilogy was about to come out in one volume, and
> >>> that this was (among other reasons) because publishers expected 150k
> >>> word novels these days, rather than the ~80kw they used to want.
> >>>
> >>> What's driving this, in terms of literary, social, or economic factors?
> >>> Everyone keeps saying folks attention spans are getting shorted, what
> >>> with TV, computers, etc, so how come books are headed in the longer
> >>> direction?
> >>>
> >>> A glance through the bookshelves confirms this as fact - you can almost
> >>> date the books by looking at how thick they are ..
> >
> >Word Processors.
> >
> Is the timing right for that? Perhaps LOTR (definitely pre-WP) and _Dune_
> (pre-WP, I think) proved that longer novels were commercially feasible,
> but longer novels didn't become standard till word processors were
> common. Anyone know when WPs became standard equipment for sf writers?
> Who was the first sf writer known to use a WP?
I'd guess at Jerry Pournelle as being an early adopter. And I recall
"The Mote in God's Eye" as being unusually long. But remember that
Victorian novelists wrote their fair share of tree-killers.
Apart, maybe, from more dedicated hardware from the likes of Wang, I
suspect that 1980 would be a good first approximation for the appearance
of word processing.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
David E Romm
> In article <7ktcvf$d...@netaxs.com>,
> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>
> > Who was the first sf writer known to use a WP?
>
> Rough guess would be Jerry Pournelle. Note that I'm not going on any
> references, just on his general early involvement with personal
> computers.
Data point: My mother got the very first IBM Displaywriter off the
assembly line. I don't recall the date, but it predates the IBM PC by
several years. She got it because she was the _only_ writer on their
list(*), and was the only one tech support knew about for years afterward.
The Displaywriter wasn't the only dedicated WP out there, but it was one
of the first.
Hmm... and one of her children's stories was sort of skiffy...
(*) and therefore only single order; they were late with the product, and
desperately wanted a to be able to say they were shipping.
--
Shockwave site: http://www.visi.com/~romm
family page: http://www.romm.org
"Stop quoting our dessert." -- Jamie to Paul, "Mad About You"
Courtenay Footman
>In article <37720b2f...@news.cableinet.co.uk>,
>Adam Benedict Canning <da...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
>>On Wed, 23 Jun 1999 14:50:25 -0700, David Navarro
>><dna...@anim.dreamworks.com> wrote:
>>
>>>GCU Cultural Attache wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Browsing through CJ Cherryh's web pages I saw a comment to the effect
>>>> that 'the faded sun' trilogy was about to come out in one volume, and
>>>> that this was (among other reasons) because publishers expected 150k
>>>> word novels these days, rather than the ~80kw they used to want.
>>>>
>>>> What's driving this, in terms of literary, social, or economic factors?
>>>> Everyone keeps saying folks attention spans are getting shorted, what
>>>> with TV, computers, etc, so how come books are headed in the longer
>>>> direction?
>>>>
>>>> A glance through the bookshelves confirms this as fact - you can almost
>>>> date the books by looking at how thick they are ..
>>
>>Word Processors.
>>
>Is the timing right for that? Perhaps LOTR (definitely pre-WP) and _Dune_
>(pre-WP, I think) proved that longer novels were commercially feasible,
>but longer novels didn't become standard till word processors were
>common. Anyone know when WPs became standard equipment for sf writers?
I wonder how much the decline of sf magazines has to do with it. Originally,
most sf was published as magazine serials, which provided a natural upper
limit. _Dune_, as a three part and then a five part serial, was certainly
pushing the limits. With the emergence of the paperback original as the
normal source for original sf, this constraint would disappear.
Also, of course, there is the obvious explanation: fat books sell.
--
Courtenay Footman I have again gotten back on the net, and
c...@lightlink.com again I will never get anything done.
(All mail from non-valid addresses is automatically deleted by my system.)
Dorothy J Heydt
Bryan R. Stahl <brs...@sprynet.com> wrote:
>> --
>Jerry Pournelle claims to be the first author to use one. He paid
>about $12,000 for a system with a Z-80 processor and 64k of
>memory with two 8-inch floppy drives. This was in the mid-70s.
>The computer is currently on display in the Smithsonian's
>Museum of American History.
He's probably right. Mind you, I was using an MT/ST in the late
1960s (at work), and wrote a novel on it too (in off-hours), but
it didn't sell.
The Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter, while it can be called a
word processor, can't be called a personal computer. It was
hardwired and used 16mm magnetic tape with sprocket holes.
The Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer, which I also used briefly,
did have a whole 8K (that's K, not meg) of real core memory
inside itself somewhere. We were terribly impressed at the time.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Loren MacGregor
"Bryan R. Stahl" wrote:
>
> Jerry Pournelle claims to be the first author to use one. He paid
> about $12,000 for a system with a Z-80 processor and 64k of
> memory with two 8-inch floppy drives. This was in the mid-70s.
> The computer is currently on display in the Smithsonian's
> Museum of American History.
A writer of my acquaintance claims to have heard Jerry bragging
about this computer at a convention one time. "You should come up
and see it! It's got two eight-inch drives!"
She was heard to reply, "I bet they're floppies."
-- LJM
Mary Kay Kare
> Six ninety-five for 180 pages!
> That's outrageous! I won't pay it!"
I had somebody on Compuserve tell me that if 2 books cost the same, he
always bought the longer because then he got 'more for his money'.
Quality didn't seem to factor in this equation, on quantity. Gag.
MK
--
Mary Kay Kare
Y2KY Jelly: when you need 4 digits to go where only 2 had been before
Elisabeth Carey
>
> Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
> >
> > In article <37720b2f...@news.cableinet.co.uk>,
> > Adam Benedict Canning <da...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
> > >On Wed, 23 Jun 1999 14:50:25 -0700, David Navarro
> > ><dna...@anim.dreamworks.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >>GCU Cultural Attache wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> Browsing through CJ Cherryh's web pages I saw a comment to the effect
> > >>> that 'the faded sun' trilogy was about to come out in one volume, and
> > >>> that this was (among other reasons) because publishers expected 150k
> > >>> word novels these days, rather than the ~80kw they used to want.
> > >>>
> > >>> What's driving this, in terms of literary, social, or economic factors?
> > >>> Everyone keeps saying folks attention spans are getting shorted, what
> > >>> with TV, computers, etc, so how come books are headed in the longer
> > >>> direction?
> > >>>
> > >>> A glance through the bookshelves confirms this as fact - you can almost
> > >>> date the books by looking at how thick they are ..
> > >
> > >Word Processors.
> > >
> > Is the timing right for that? Perhaps LOTR (definitely pre-WP) and _Dune_
> > (pre-WP, I think) proved that longer novels were commercially feasible,
> > but longer novels didn't become standard till word processors were
> > common. Anyone know when WPs became standard equipment for sf writers?
> > Who was the first sf writer known to use a WP?
>
> but based on the text she quotes, I'd venture to guess that word
> processors don't explain Victorian triple-decker novels, Dickens,
> or, indeed, a fair amount of world literature.
>
> I'm reasonably certain, for example, that "War and Peace" was not
> written on a word processor.
Dickens wrote in installments, for the newspapers, and the
installments were later collected into book form. This is true of
some, though not all, other Victorian novelists, too. Also, since
getting another book to read was _not_ a question of popping down to
the convenience store to pick up the latest paperback bestseller, a
nice thick book that would take awhile to read had a lot of appeal to
it. Writers responded to their market.
For much of the twentieth century, as books became more widely
available and readily affordable, books were _mostly_ much shorter,
until about the mid-eighties, when they started expanding in size
again.
Lis Carey
Elisabeth Carey
>
> In article <7kuaa1$1un$1...@usenet40.supernews.com>,
> Bryan R. Stahl <brs...@sprynet.com> wrote:
> >> --
> >about $12,000 for a system with a Z-80 processor and 64k of
> >memory with two 8-inch floppy drives. This was in the mid-70s.
> >The computer is currently on display in the Smithsonian's
> >Museum of American History.
>
> 1960s (at work), and wrote a novel on it too (in off-hours), but
> it didn't sell.
>
> The Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter, while it can be called a
> word processor, can't be called a personal computer. It was
> hardwired and used 16mm magnetic tape with sprocket holes.
>
> The Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer, which I also used briefly,
> did have a whole 8K (that's K, not meg) of real core memory
> inside itself somewhere. We were terribly impressed at the time.
In the mid-seventies, approximately, my mother was singing the praises
of the IBM MagCard typewriter she was using at work.It was truly
wondrous, what that machine could do. Or at least, at the time, it
_seemed_ wondrous.
Lis Carey
Elisabeth Carey
>
> In article <37720b2f...@news.cableinet.co.uk>,
> Adam Benedict Canning <da...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
> >On Wed, 23 Jun 1999 14:50:25 -0700, David Navarro
> ><dna...@anim.dreamworks.com> wrote:
> >
> >>GCU Cultural Attache wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Browsing through CJ Cherryh's web pages I saw a comment to the effect
> >>> that 'the faded sun' trilogy was about to come out in one volume, and
> >>> that this was (among other reasons) because publishers expected 150k
> >>> word novels these days, rather than the ~80kw they used to want.
> >>>
> >>> What's driving this, in terms of literary, social, or economic factors?
> >>> Everyone keeps saying folks attention spans are getting shorted, what
> >>> with TV, computers, etc, so how come books are headed in the longer
> >>> direction?
> >>>
> >>> A glance through the bookshelves confirms this as fact - you can almost
> >>> date the books by looking at how thick they are ..
> >
> >Word Processors.
> >
> Is the timing right for that? Perhaps LOTR (definitely pre-WP) and _Dune_
> (pre-WP, I think) proved that longer novels were commercially feasible,
> but longer novels didn't become standard till word processors were
> common. Anyone know when WPs became standard equipment for sf writers?
> Who was the first sf writer known to use a WP?
Tolkien was writing a 19th-century novel-in-multiple-volumes (even if
he didn't fully appreciate that it would almost have to be published
in multiple volumes). _Dune_ was published in 1965, almost ten years
before dedicated word processors, and nearly twenty before personal
computers became genuinely available to people who were not really
serious Early Adopters. But neither _Lord of the Rings_ nor _Dune_ is
_typical_ in length for its time. It was about the mid-eighties that
novels began really taking off in length. Word processing doesn't
force people to write long, or to become sloppy writers, but it does
make it physically easier to produce a long novel, and a writer who's
at all inclined to ramble on loses the visual reminder of seeing the
pages pile up, and pile up, and pile up.
Lis Carey
Bernard Peek
<db...@zhochaka.demon.co.uk> writes
>I'd guess at Jerry Pournelle as being an early adopter. And I recall
>"The Mote in God's Eye" as being unusually long. But remember that
>Victorian novelists wrote their fair share of tree-killers.
>
>Apart, maybe, from more dedicated hardware from the likes of Wang, I
>suspect that 1980 would be a good first approximation for the appearance
>of word processing.
That's late by a few years. I remember Harry Harrison talking about
using WP, I think it was 1978. I can't remember who he said had
suggested the idea to him.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Julian Warner
processor.
It was a pair of scissors and some glue. He never got around to
buying one of those new-fangled Bamix word-chopping wands.
julian.
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
<re obese books>
Bryan R. Stahl
Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> wrote in message
news:7ktcvf$d...@netaxs.com...
> >
> Is the timing right for that? Perhaps LOTR (definitely pre-WP) and _Dune_
> (pre-WP, I think) proved that longer novels were commercially feasible,
> but longer novels didn't become standard till word processors were
> common. Anyone know when WPs became standard equipment for sf writers?
> Who was the first sf writer known to use a WP?
Jerry Pournelle claims to be the first author to use one. He paid
about $12,000 for a system with a Z-80 processor and 64k of
memory with two 8-inch floppy drives. This was in the mid-70s.
The computer is currently on display in the Smithsonian's
Museum of American History.
--
Bryan
"Son, crying into your drink is bad enough;
crying into a hot fudge sundae is disgusting." - Heinlein
GCU Cultural Attache
MacGregor <churn...@worldnet.att.net> asserted
<snip>
>
>I haven't seen any of the messages except this response from Nancy,
>but based on the text she quotes, I'd venture to guess that word
>processors don't explain Victorian triple-decker novels, Dickens,
>or, indeed, a fair amount of world literature.
>
>I'm reasonably certain, for example, that "War and Peace" was not
>written on a word processor.
Yes, but leaving aside the 'far ends' of the distribution, and looking
at the mean, median, or mode ('average' say), the 'average' 195x-196x SF
book was ~200 pages, now it is 400-500.
Fantasy, and thrillers likewise (as someone enquired) .. stack any
Alistair Maclean against any Robert Ludlum and the difference is
immediately apparent. (Or use Desmond Bagley & Tom Clancy, same result).
GCU Cultural Attache:
Vicki Rosenzweig
I see. So _Islandia_ is a long modern novel written on a
word processor, and Bellwether a shorter, older novel written
without one?
As far as I can tell, _The Lord of the Rings_, written without
anything like a word processor, is longer than _War for the
Oaks_ (I don't know if Emma Bull used a word processor, but
if it's market forces, she wrote it late enough for them to
be relevant).
My hunch, for what it's worth, is that people have always
written long novels ("always" being defined as "since the
novel became a moderately common art form"--obviously,
nobody was writing long novels 2500 years ago), and they're
more popular, and more publishable, at some eras than others.
Dickens, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf come to mind. So
does the variation in length among Dorothy Sayers's mystery
novels. Would it be too weird to suggest that some books
_should_ be longer than others, and that good writers try
to write them to their appropriate length (though they don't
always succeed, and the result may run into problems with
the publisher)?
--
Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@interport.net
r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.users.interport.net/~vr/rassef-faq.html
"I get by with a little help from my friends." -- Lennon/McCartney
Dorothy J Heydt
Elisabeth Carey <lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>
>In the mid-seventies, approximately, my mother was singing the praises
>of the IBM MagCard typewriter she was using at work.It was truly
>wondrous, what that machine could do. Or at least, at the time, it
>_seemed_ wondrous.
Ah, yes, I used one of those too from time to time. (I was
working as a temp during part of the seventies.) It was
essentially the same as the MT/ST only less clunky.
David Langford
wrote:
>
><jhe...@my-deja.com> wrote in message news:7ktv4e$eak$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
>> In article <7ktcvf$d...@netaxs.com>,
>> na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
>>
>> > Who was the first sf writer known to use a WP?
>>
>> Rough guess would be Jerry Pournelle. Note that I'm not going on any
>> references, just on his general early involvement with personal
>> computers.
>
>
>I was writing short stories using Xedit on a VMS system in 1976 -- and I
>doubt I'm the first. If I had to guess, it would be Vernor Vinge, as he's
>been writing and had easy access to university computer systems for a
>lonnnnggg time.
Come to think of it, I had the Oxford U Nuclear Physics Dept system
(PDP-10) =writing= sf in 1973. Admittedly it wasn't very good. Ha, we spit
at the van Vogtian plot swerve every 800 words. That dread SFCOMP program
did it every sentence.
(www.ansible.demon.co.uk/writing/sfx/sfx047.html)
I used it for some writing too, but not for submission since lower case had
not at the time been invented. On that rig, anyway.
Dave
--
David Langford
ans...@cix.co.uk | http://www.ansible.demon.co.uk/
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> Would it be too weird to suggest that some books
> _should_ be longer than others, and that good writers try
> to write them to their appropriate length (though they don't
> always succeed, and the result may run into problems with
> the publisher)?
That would be my first guess, too. Well-written books are the length
they are because that's the length they need to be, the length that is
appropriate to the story they are telling.
-- M. Ruff
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> For much of the twentieth century, as books became more widely
> available and readily affordable, books were _mostly_ much shorter,
> until about the mid-eighties, when they started expanding in size
> again.
Do you have actual statistics on this? Because I can think of plenty of
fat books that were published before the mid-eighties.
-- M. Ruff
Nancy Lebovitz
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold <Storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>>
>> Would it be too weird to suggest that some books
>> _should_ be longer than others, and that good writers try
>> to write them to their appropriate length (though they don't
>> always succeed, and the result may run into problems with
>> the publisher)?
>
add--it seems as though at lot of authors are best at writing
particular lengths.
>That would be my first guess, too. Well-written books are the length
>they are because that's the length they need to be, the length that is
>appropriate to the story they are telling.
>
Still, it's odd when the typical length in a genre changes. I doubt
you guys are arguing that there just aren't very many good 250 page
novel ideas any more.
jon courtenay grimwood
Elisabeth Carey wrote in message <3772D48F...@mediaone.net>...
>Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>>
>> In article <37720b2f...@news.cableinet.co.uk>,
>> Adam Benedict Canning <da...@cableinet.co.uk> wrote:
>> >On Wed, 23 Jun 1999 14:50:25 -0700, David Navarro
>> ><dna...@anim.dreamworks.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >>GCU Cultural Attache wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> Browsing through CJ Cherryh's web pages I saw a comment to the effect
>> >>> that 'the faded sun' trilogy was about to come out in one volume, and
>> >>> that this was (among other reasons) because publishers expected 150k
>> >>> word novels these days, rather than the ~80kw they used to want.
>> >>>
>> >>> What's driving this, in terms of literary, social, or economic
factors?
>> >>> Everyone keeps saying folks attention spans are getting shorted, what
>> >>> with TV, computers, etc, so how come books are headed in the longer
>> >>> direction?
>> >>>
>> >>> A glance through the bookshelves confirms this as fact - you can
almost
>> >>> date the books by looking at how thick they are ..
>> >
>> >Word Processors.
>> >
>> (pre-WP, I think) proved that longer novels were commercially feasible,
>> but longer novels didn't become standard till word processors were
>> common. Anyone know when WPs became standard equipment for sf writers?
>
>he didn't fully appreciate that it would almost have to be published
>in multiple volumes). _Dune_ was published in 1965, almost ten years
>before dedicated word processors, and nearly twenty before personal
>computers became genuinely available to people who were not really
>serious Early Adopters. But neither _Lord of the Rings_ nor _Dune_ is
>_typical_ in length for its time. It was about the mid-eighties that
>novels began really taking off in length. Word processing doesn't
>force people to write long, or to become sloppy writers, but it does
>make it physically easier to produce a long novel, and a writer who's
>at all inclined to ramble on loses the visual reminder of seeing the
>pages pile up, and pile up, and pile up.
>Lis Carey
Word processing software is wonderful, at least it is to anyone who can
remember crawling round on the floor with scissors and tape cutting up long
galley proofs to rearrange chapters or paragraphs, but I'm not sure it's
really to blame. I think it is down to publishers, who are reacting to the
book buyers, who are reacting to what happens on the shop floor (or in the
ether if you buy through Amazon).
Yes, word processing might make it easier to overwrite but it also makes it
much easier to delete copy and I know at least as many sf writers who start
out with epics and end up with haikus - and then have to start again - as I
do writers who just pad to meet the ever increasing word lengths.
If a major buyer at B&N, Amazon or (over here in the UK, WHS, Waterstones or
Books Etc) says, 'The new length is 160,000...' then that length is what
the editors are going to ask for. Most writers will then simply slid in
another subplot and while the overall story doesn't need another sub plot it
makes up the length, which pleases the buyer, which produces the shelf
space...
If the market turned round tomorrow and said 65,000 is the new length we
would all be writing slight elegant novels and, if we weren't, we'd have our
editors on the other side of the table saying, 'Have you considered making
it shorter...'
jon
--
jon courtenay grimwood
'fiction so trendy you can wear it...' (Locus)
http://www.hardcopy.demon.co.uk
Elisabeth Carey
Look at your shelves. There were fat books before the mid-eighties,
and there are very short books published now, but the _average_ length
has increased considerably.
Lis Carey
Charlie Stross
as <djh...@kithrup.com> declared:
>In article <7kuaa1$1un$1...@usenet40.supernews.com>,
>Bryan R. Stahl <brs...@sprynet.com> wrote:
>>> --
>>Jerry Pournelle claims to be the first author to use one. He paid
>>about $12,000 for a system with a Z-80 processor and 64k of
>>memory with two 8-inch floppy drives. This was in the mid-70s.
>>The computer is currently on display in the Smithsonian's
>>Museum of American History.
>
>He's probably right. Mind you, I was using an MT/ST in the late
>1960s (at work), and wrote a novel on it too (in off-hours), but
>it didn't sell.
Um, maybe not.
I seem to recall Len Deighton -- not an SF author, admittedly -- did
an afterword to one of his non-fiction books from the mid-seventies
describing the dedicated WP it was written using (around 1972). (I
think the book was either FIGHTER or BOMBER -- when not writing hugely
successful spy thrillers he did some halfway decent popular-ish history
stuff focussing on the air war in Europe, 1939-45.)
-- Charlie
Loren MacGregor
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold wrote:
>
> Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> >
> > Would it be too weird to suggest that some books
> > _should_ be longer than others, and that good writers try
> > to write them to their appropriate length (though they don't
> > always succeed, and the result may run into problems with
> > the publisher)?
>
> That would be my first guess, too. Well-written books are the length
> they are because that's the length they need to be, the length that is
> appropriate to the story they are telling.
I felt that went without saying. Possibly, considering the
direction of some responses (not yours, and not Vicki's, to which
you're responding), I was incorrect.
-- LJM
Local User
>
> Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold wrote:
> >
Just a thought as to why the lengths are increasing. With the advent of
computer Word Processors it is easier to write a book technically. Less
problems with writing a page over because of a change in the story line.
Possibly people are expecting more story for their money and authors are
realizing this. Characters are being more developed and plot lines more
intricate. Similar things are happening in movies. We no longer see a
comedy that is just pure fun, we see a comedy that has a message or
meaning in it. Abbot and Costello meet the Werewolf was fun and had a
good story. Most comedies now have a cynical side to them. This is an
example of what the public seems to want. The public wants more the
their stories for their money they get bigger boooks.
Bill
Janice Gelb
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>> The Magnetic Tape Selectric Composer, which I also used briefly,
>> did have a whole 8K (that's K, not meg) of real core memory
>> inside itself somewhere. We were terribly impressed at the time.
>
>of the IBM MagCard typewriter she was using at work.It was truly
>wondrous, what that machine could do. Or at least, at the time, it
>_seemed_ wondrous.
>
I used the Selectric Composer when working as a typesetter
in Israel in 1979. The first book I ever did on one was
written by an Indian for whom English was a second language,
and the book was about Eastern religions, meaning every
fourth word or so was in italic *with* accent marks. I
spent most of my time switching the type "golf balls"
back and forth, and watching the machine spew out four
lines or so of Greek/Math because I'd forgotten to put a
stop code in after one of the accent marks...
*******************************************************************
Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with
janic...@eng.sun.com | this message is the return address.
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8018/index.html
"Editor: Someone whose job requires the knowledge that `carpe diem'
is not the fish of the day."
Janice Gelb
>Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>>
>> Would it be too weird to suggest that some books
>> _should_ be longer than others, and that good writers try
>> to write them to their appropriate length (though they don't
>> always succeed, and the result may run into problems with
>> the publisher)?
>
>That would be my first guess, too. Well-written books are the length
>they are because that's the length they need to be, the length that is
>appropriate to the story they are telling.
>
I understand from a friend in the publishing industry that
because book editors have so many job responsibilities now
other than just editing, that they spend their precious
editing time with new authors. If they know an author
will sell well becuase of name recognition, they don't
spend much (if any) time editing their books, so this
may be another factor in why books have gotten longer.
---
Lori Coulson
: >
: >>> What's driving this, in terms of literary, social, or economic factors?
: >>> Everyone keeps saying folks attention spans are getting shorted, what
: >>> with TV, computers, etc, so how come books are headed in the longer
: >>> direction?
Mea culpa?
I'm a speed reader, and have usually greeted nice FAT novels from my
favorite genres with cries of joy, "Oh, goody, it will take me a while to
get thru this one...." (with the exception of Dhalgren or any
stream-of-consciousness tome)
Lori Coulson
--
*****************************************************
...Or do you still wait for me, Dream Giver...
Just around the riverbend? Pocahontas
*****************************************************
Thomas Lynch
Mary Kay Kare <ka...@sirius.com> wrote in message
news:kare-24069...@ppp-asok01--036.sirius.net...
> In article <37728B93...@cadix.com>, lmacg...@cadix.com wrote:
>
> > Six ninety-five for 180 pages!
> > That's outrageous! I won't pay it!"
This doesn't bode well for me... I have the writing method of 'keep going
until the story ends'. The stories I dream up are just that leetle bit over
novella length.
Mary Kay Kare
<Storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> Elisabeth Carey wrote:
> >
> > For much of the twentieth century, as books became more widely
> > available and readily affordable, books were _mostly_ much shorter,
> > until about the mid-eighties, when they started expanding in size
> > again.
>
> Do you have actual statistics on this? Because I can think of plenty of
> fat books that were published before the mid-eighties.
>
Well, it's merely anecdotal, but I've been buying books since the
sixties. There are more fat books now than there used to be. Naturally
with paperbacks since someone pointed out earlier the technological
changes, but hardcovers too.
Dave Weingart
>I'm a speed reader, and have usually greeted nice FAT novels from my
>favorite genres with cries of joy, "Oh, goody, it will take me a while to
>get thru this one...." (with the exception of Dhalgren or any
>stream-of-consciousness tome)
I read fairly quickly, but I usually cringe at novels that have been
padded out to make them bigger.
As with other things, it's not the size; it's what you do with it.
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK Powerpuff Nerds. Saving the
mailto:phyd...@liii.com Net before bedtime
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux
Keran
>Still, it's odd when the typical length in a genre changes. I doubt
>you guys are arguing that there just aren't very many good 250 page
>novel ideas any more.
I think I'd argue that there are too many 250 page novel ideas
being written in 700 page per volume tetralogies. :P
Keran
kera...@exciseme.mail1.nai.net (remove 'exciseme' to reply)
http://nw3.nai.net/~keranset/
William Davis
>I haven't seen any of the messages except this response from Nancy,
>but based on the text she quotes, I'd venture to guess that word
>processors don't explain Victorian triple-decker novels, Dickens,
>or, indeed, a fair amount of world literature.
>
>I'm reasonably certain, for example, that "War and Peace" was not
>written on a word processor.
At least in Dicken's case the answer is that he was paid by the word
and published in serial form. I imagine that the knowledge that every
word means a little more in your pocket can make brevity seem a little
less appealing.
If anything, it makes me feel sorry for the poor clerk who had to
count the number of words Charles wrote in order to draft the cheque.
Paul Fraser
"Simon had been my editor at Pan for my last two books, Engineman
("This novel is fine, Eric - but do you think you could lengthen it by
fifty thousand words?") "
I _knew_ that novel was too long....
Paul Fraser
Stross) wrote:
> when not writing hugely
>successful spy thrillers he did some halfway decent popular-ish history
>stuff focussing on the air war in Europe, 1939-45.)
And SS-GB, a novel set in one of my favourite sub-genres: What if
Germany had won WWII?
GCU Cultural Attache
/ Lisa Gold <Storyt...@worldnet.att.net> asserted
>Elisabeth Carey wrote:
>>
>> For much of the twentieth century, as books became more widely
>> available and readily affordable, books were _mostly_ much shorter,
>> until about the mid-eighties, when they started expanding in size
>> again.
>
>Do you have actual statistics on this? Because I can think of plenty of
>fat books that were published before the mid-eighties.
>
So can everyone .. but look at the AVERAGE 1960's SF novel/paperback ..
go grab a dozen at random. 102-256 pages. Then grab a dozen today. Yes,
there are exceptions (pratchett still writes reasonably short books, for
instance), but on AVERAGE they are creeping up. iirc DUNE was about the
longest, fatest, SF book I had seen until then
I'm not saying it's undesirable (Ok, in SOME CASES the stories
definitely look bloated), just that it happens. Maybe the deal was that
prior to 1980 the publishers just threw the long ones out, or split them
into three (like the Faded Sun trilogy, or Cyteen, both of which were
obviously one book, but came out as 3). Or maybe, as someone suggested,
600 page monsters were never going to make it via the Analog route.
GCU Cultural Attache:
GCU Cultural Attache
Lori Coulson <lcou...@gcfn.org> asserted
>: ><dna...@anim.dreamworks.com> wrote:
>: >
>: >>> What's driving this, in terms of literary, social, or economic factors?
>: >>> Everyone keeps saying folks attention spans are getting shorted, what
>: >>> with TV, computers, etc, so how come books are headed in the longer
>: >>> direction?
>: >>>
>
>Mea culpa?
>
>favorite genres with cries of joy, "Oh, goody, it will take me a while to
>get thru this one...." (with the exception of Dhalgren or any
>stream-of-consciousness tome)
I'm intrigued .. do you get through those faster, or slower?? Maybe as
fast as a parabolic arc to the waste bin 8>.??
>
>Lori Coulson
GCU Cultural Attache:
Ross Smith
>
> I seem to recall Len Deighton -- not an SF author, admittedly
He wrote _SS-GB_, an alternate history novel, so I think he qualifies.
--
Ross Smith ....................................... Auckland, New Zealand
<mailto:r-s...@ihug.co.nz> ........ <http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~r-smith/>
"For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron hand, then with a wooden
foot, and finally with a piece of string." -- The Goon Show
Tom Galloway
Mary Kay Kare <ka...@sirius.com> wrote:
>sixties. There are more fat books now than there used to be. Naturally
I think it's a combination of the trees getting better nutrients and
the fat acceptance movement making progress.
tyg t...@netcom.com
William December Starr
wis...@weblnk.net said:
> At least in Dicken's case the answer is that he was paid by the word
> and published in serial form. I imagine that the knowledge that
> every word means a little more in your pocket can make brevity seem
> a little less appealing.
>
> If anything, it makes me feel sorry for the poor clerk who had to
> count the number of words Charles wrote in order to draft the
> cheque.
It makes me feel sorry for _me_, having to read _A Tale of Two Cities_
in the fifth freaking grade...
-- William December Starr <wds...@crl.com>
Martin Wisse
<G...@quik.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Bitstring <37735C...@worldnet.att.net> from the wonderful Matt Ruff
>/ Lisa Gold <Storyt...@worldnet.att.net> asserted
>>Elisabeth Carey wrote:
>>>
>>> For much of the twentieth century, as books became more widely
>>> available and readily affordable, books were _mostly_ much shorter,
>>> until about the mid-eighties, when they started expanding in size
>>> again.
>>
>>Do you have actual statistics on this? Because I can think of plenty of
>>fat books that were published before the mid-eighties.
>>
>>-- M. Ruff
>
>So can everyone .. but look at the AVERAGE 1960's SF novel/paperback ..
>go grab a dozen at random. 102-256 pages. Then grab a dozen today. Yes,
>there are exceptions (pratchett still writes reasonably short books, for
>instance), but on AVERAGE they are creeping up. iirc DUNE was about the
>longest, fatest, SF book I had seen until then
Some figures:
Of the 412 books currently in my database, 201 are >= 300 pages, of
which only 35 were written before 1980, (out of a total of 191 books
from before 1980)
So sf books have definitely gotten longer, a nice illustration of which
is sorting your heinlein books on year of copyright. Notice something?
>I'm not saying it's undesirable (Ok, in SOME CASES the stories
>definitely look bloated), just that it happens. Maybe the deal was that
>prior to 1980 the publishers just threw the long ones out, or split them
>into three (like the Faded Sun trilogy, or Cyteen, both of which were
>obviously one book, but came out as 3). Or maybe, as someone suggested,
>600 page monsters were never going to make it via the Analog route.
Indeed, i'd suspect that sf writers started to write bigger stories when
these were directly published in bookform, with the limitations of
serialising a story first selecting for shorter stories.
I'd also suspect many readers and writers alike like bigger books; more
room to play in.
Martin Wisse
--
http://www.ad-astra.demon.nl/ Me
http://www.ad-astra.demon.nl/comix/ Comix
http://www.ad-astra.demon.nl/astro/astro.html Astro City
Paul Fraser
<G...@quik.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Yes,
>there are exceptions (pratchett still writes reasonably short books, for
>instance), but on AVERAGE they are creeping up. iirc DUNE was about the
>longest, fatest, SF book I had seen until then
Actually, if you look at the size of the early Discworld books and
compare them to the later ones, the latter are a lot longer. And
sometimes to there detriment.
Michelle
> I'm a speed reader, and have usually greeted nice FAT novels from my
> favorite genres with cries of joy, "Oh, goody, it will take me a while to
> get thru this one...." (with the exception of Dhalgren or any
> stream-of-consciousness tome)
I'm a speed reader, but I tend to prefer shorter books. <shrug>
Somebody on another group was mentioning one of the joys of books being
the oppurtunity of getting to know characters over weeks, maybe months,
and I said, "Unh?"
I remember the first time I read an "adult" paperback in one day. It
was one of Burroughs, and must of been oh, nine or ten. Nowadays I can
read the entire Lord of the Rings in one day, if say, I was bed-ridden
or something.
I think I like shorter books more, because I really like first person
and really tight third, ("filtered third") and a single POV, and the
doorstops tend to do multiple viewpoints a lot, and cast ensembles and
so forth, which I am less fond of.
Michelle Bottorff
Avedon Carol
<lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>In the mid-seventies, approximately, my mother was singing the praises
>of the IBM MagCard typewriter she was using at work.It was truly
>wondrous, what that machine could do. Or at least, at the time, it
>_seemed_ wondrous.
It still is. What that machine could do that your computer can't is
provide the best typing surface ever created. IBM Selectrics were
exactly the right tilt and height to prevent all that numbness and
pain and tingling that are now common to people who use computer
keyboards. I still miss that.
tomlinson
: It still is. What that machine could do that your computer can't is
: provide the best typing surface ever created. IBM Selectrics were
: exactly the right tilt and height to prevent all that numbness and
: pain and tingling that are now common to people who use computer
: keyboards. I still miss that.
I can type about 20 wpm faster on a Selectric than on any other
typewriter. They keep one around where I work for filling out
forms. The trouble with the Selectric is that, in many other
ways, it's a crappy typewriter; the ball mechanism, I've noticed,
tends to unreliability.
I keep a Smith-Corona Galaxie portable typewriter. It's saved
my life a few times, and I write letters on it (I _will not_
word-process personal correspondence. Either I'll write out
by hand with a fountain pen, or type it.)
-tomlinson
--
Ernest Tomlinson
----------------
"Now then, Dmitri. You know how we've always talked about the possibility
of something going wrong with the bomb....The BOMB, Dmitri. The _hydrogen_
bomb."
Loren MacGregor
Um. I loved Dickens in the fifth grade. And "A Tale of Two Cities"
is a relatively -short- book.
Then, I'm the one who, for fifth grade speech class in a Catholic
school, memorized and delivered "The Cremation of Sam McGee." (A
friend, for the same class, memorized "So You Think That I Am Mad."
The nuns weren't sure what to do with either one of us.)
-- LJM
Julian Flood
<>
To: Miss B****** T***** B*******
Dear Miss B*******
I read in a recent literary review that your first novel, Lancashire
Katy, was well received. However, I see that other reviews have not been
universally approving, commenting on your spartan and stripped-down prose.
One even said that you write too tightly ever to be a real women's writer. I
can help.
My new computer program, PUMP-IT-UP, will take an ASCII file from all
major word processors and will increase its length over 200 per cent! Your
novel (a little masterpiece if I may say so) would inflate from 60,000 words
to over 180,000. I have found that greater amplification has a deleterious
effect on the English.
I enclose a beta-test version of the software for you to try.
To: Mr J. Flood
Dear Sir,
I hereby return your program, of which I have taken a copy. My agent
looked at the original draft of my new novel and also the result of a single
pass run through your program. She was very pleased, so we put the new draft
through again. It ended up at 350,000 words, and we sold it sight unseen. I
am currently working on What Lancashire Katy Did Next, so I will try it on
that too. Thank you so much, this is just what I've been looking for. I
enclose a signed photograph of myself.
<>
Internal evidence from the rest of the story indicates that the program has
been out there for ten to twelve years, first in the market of women's
novels, later into SF and fantasy.
QED
Hmmm -- surely I've told people about this before. Does no-one ever pay
attention on usenet?
--
Julian Flood
Life, the Universe and Climbing Plants at www.argonet.co.uk/users/julesf. Mind the diddley skiffle folk.
Mary Kay Kare
Galloway) wrote:
You are a sick and twisted man. Jordin and I both laughed out loud.
Elisabeth Carey
>
> On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 21:04:21 -0400, Elisabeth Carey
> <lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>
> >In the mid-seventies, approximately, my mother was singing the praises
> >of the IBM MagCard typewriter she was using at work.It was truly
> >wondrous, what that machine could do. Or at least, at the time, it
> >_seemed_ wondrous.
>
> provide the best typing surface ever created. IBM Selectrics were
> exactly the right tilt and height to prevent all that numbness and
> pain and tingling that are now common to people who use computer
> keyboards. I still miss that.
Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
Lis Carey
John F. Eldredge
<churn...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>I haven't seen any of the messages except this response from Nancy,
>but based on the text she quotes, I'd venture to guess that word
>processors don't explain Victorian triple-decker novels, Dickens,
>or, indeed, a fair amount of world literature.
>
>I'm reasonably certain, for example, that "War and Peace" was not
>written on a word processor.
I have read that the censors in Czarist Russia wouldn't allow novels
to be published unless they were over a certain length. The logic
probably went, "If the novelists have to take several years to write
each book, they won't have time to write political pamphlets."
--
John F. Eldredge -- eldr...@poboxes.com
PGP key available from http://www.netforward.com/poboxes/?eldredge/
--
"There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power;
not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace." - Woodrow Wilson
Jonathan Hendry
Elisabeth Carey wrote in message <3774FEBB...@mediaone.net>...
Perhaps people use their computers on desks too high for high,
tilted keyboards?
John Dallman
(Elisabeth Carey) wrote:
> Avedon Carol wrote:
> > It still is. What that machine could do that your computer can't is
> > provide the best typing surface ever created. IBM Selectrics were
> > exactly the right tilt and height to prevent all that numbness and
> > pain and tingling that are now common to people who use computer
> > keyboards. I still miss that.
>
> Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
Cheapness. Computers contain a fair bit of hardware that can't be made too
cheaply without becoming unreliable; keyboards can be cheap - they cost
$10 or less wholesale now - but they have lots of moving parts, so corners
have to be cut somewhere.
You can still get good computer keyboards, second-hand. There are a few
people, at least in the UK, who salvage and clean up used IBM keyboards
and sell them in near-new condition. I have about four, in various
conditions, which I hope will last me until I don't need a keyboard any
more. I learned to type on electric typewriters, used computer keyboards
for a few years, and developed a taste for real IBM PC keyboards as soon
as they came out. I've gone to considerable lengths to use them at work
ever since.
---
John Dallman j...@cix.co.uk
Brenda
Avedon Carol wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 21:04:21 -0400, Elisabeth Carey
> <lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>
> >In the mid-seventies, approximately, my mother was singing the praises
> >of the IBM MagCard typewriter she was using at work.It was truly
> >wondrous, what that machine could do. Or at least, at the time, it
> >_seemed_ wondrous.
>
> It still is. What that machine could do that your computer can't is
> provide the best typing surface ever created. IBM Selectrics were
> exactly the right tilt and height to prevent all that numbness and
> pain and tingling that are now common to people who use computer
> keyboards. I still miss that.
Yep. I still have a selectric, and typed several novels on it. Never yet
found a computer keyboard as good. Unfortunately a word-processor is so
much more convenient, that I only use my Selectric now for doing envelopes.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD, from Tor Books
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
tomlinson
: Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
I assume it's because a flat computer keyboard is easily made out of
one flat PC board stamped with contacts for switches.
Charlie Stross
<ave...@thirdworld.uk> wrote:
>It still is. What that machine could do that your computer can't is
>provide the best typing surface ever created. IBM Selectrics were
>exactly the right tilt and height to prevent all that numbness and
>pain and tingling that are now common to people who use computer
>keyboards. I still miss that.
Ahem.
This is why I haunt car boot sales, looking for a *very special* keyboard
that usually sells for about a fiver: the _original_ IBM PC-AT keyboard.
This miracle of design was the grandaddy of all modern PC keyboards.
Manufactured by the Selectric typewriter division, you can still use
it with any PC that has a PS2 keyboard port (a PS2-to-DIN adapter jack
costs about a fiver). The keys have genuine microswitches in them --
none of this membrane junk -- and there's a steel plate in its base to
give it a bit of heft. After all, this was back when a PC-AT cost about
4000 pounds; quality kit. It sold from around 1984 to 1987; thereafter IBM
caught cheap component disease and the keyboards went downhill rapidly.
IBM realised there was demand for this keyboard a while ago; you can
still buy them new for about eighty quid. But your average large car
boot sale has one or two sitting around. Give 'em a good couple of hours
with some cotton buds and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and you can
usually get them back into as-new condition. They built them to last in
those days.
-- Charlie
John Dallman
cha...@pc.antipope.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
> This is why I haunt car boot sales, looking for a *very special*
> keyboard that usually sells for about a fiver: the _original_ IBM PC-AT
> keyboard.
They lasted a year or two longer than that: the original PS/2 machines had
101-key keyboards with the same build quality. I found the e-mail address
for the guy who sold me mine: re...@cix.co.uk. They were £13 each plus P&P.
---
John Dallman j...@cix.co.uk
Richard Harter
>
>Elisabeth Carey wrote in message <3774FEBB...@mediaone.net>...
>>Avedon Carol wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 21:04:21 -0400, Elisabeth Carey
>>> <lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> >In the mid-seventies, approximately, my mother was singing the praises
>>> >of the IBM MagCard typewriter she was using at work.It was truly
>>> >wondrous, what that machine could do. Or at least, at the time, it
>>> >_seemed_ wondrous.
>>>
>>> It still is. What that machine could do that your computer can't is
>>> provide the best typing surface ever created. IBM Selectrics were
>>> exactly the right tilt and height to prevent all that numbness and
>>> pain and tingling that are now common to people who use computer
>>> keyboards. I still miss that.
>>
>>Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
>
>Perhaps people use their computers on desks too high for high,
>tilted keyboards?
I presume keyboards are flat because (a) they're cheaper and (b) vendors
of computer equipment are not too bright.
Another way to look at the matter is that the typing surface is too high
for a flat keyboard to be ergonomic. The difficulty is that your arms
reach up to the keyboard and then the wrists bend down. A flat keyboard
is fine if the keyboard is at lap level.
Some years past when I was using a SUN work station I used to put the
keyboard in my lap. Annoyingly, this doesn't work with the PC keyboard.
The difficulty is that your hands aren't centered on the PC keyboard. I
would willingly pay extra for a PC keyboard with the main keys centered
but nobody seems to make such a thing.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net, The Concord Research Institute
URL = http://www.tiac.net/users/cri, phone = 1-978-369-3911
"A tool, such as human sacrifice, is ethically neutral.
Some tools are better left unused." - MRD
Joel Rosenberg
I'm using at the moment has a built-in arch, and I've got the front edge
raised fairly high to keep my hands in a neutral position as I type.
Richard Harter <c...@tiac.net> wrote in message
news:37750be4....@199.0.65.59...
Rachael Lininger
Joel Rosenberg <jo...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>Keyboards aren't, of course, necessarily flat. The Logitech NewTouch that
>I'm using at the moment has a built-in arch, and I've got the front edge
>raised fairly high to keep my hands in a neutral position as I type.
I have an Adesso Truform, which has a moderate arch and split keys. If I
were using a real desk instead of a too-high drafting table, it would work
very well for keeping my hands neutral. It's also very good for using in
my lap--I couldn't use straight ones, because they made my wrists turn
sideways to reach the keys. And I'm very fond of the little pointer
thingie (which is between the split keys, and so does not interfere with
typing, as I've heard people with straight pointer keyboards complain).
I have two problems with a split keyboard, and they're both minor--one is
that I seem to have trouble with the split spacebar, I don't know why, and
the other is that it doesn't let me cheat as much with proper typing. The
latter is probably better for me anyway.
(It also only cost US$45 new, which is about as cheap as I've ever seen a
"natural" keyboard. It seemed a leetle bit flakey when I first started
using it--leave the computer on too long and it would stop working; let
it rest a bit, and it'd be fine again--but now I have absolutely no
problems at all. I'm not connected with Adesso, I just like my keyboard.)
Rachael
--
Rachael Lininger |
lininger@ | Yes, that is a new address.
chem.wisc.edu |
Beth Friedman
>Avedon Carol wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 21:04:21 -0400, Elisabeth Carey
>> <lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>>
>> >In the mid-seventies, approximately, my mother was singing the praises
>> >of the IBM MagCard typewriter she was using at work.It was truly
>> >wondrous, what that machine could do. Or at least, at the time, it
>> >_seemed_ wondrous.
For anyone who feels nostalgic about IBM MagCards, I recommend "This Fair
Gift," by Pamela Dean, in _Sisters in Fantasy 2_. It has MagCards and magic
and patent lawyers.
>> It still is. What that machine could do that your computer can't is
>> provide the best typing surface ever created. IBM Selectrics were
>> exactly the right tilt and height to prevent all that numbness and
>> pain and tingling that are now common to people who use computer
>> keyboards. I still miss that.
For me, it was the Selectric II that was the perfect keyboard. The
Selectric III didn't have the contoured keys, and it wasn't as nice to use.
>Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
There are lots of alternatives to flat keyboards these days, and they don't
cost all that much. A few years ago I started having scary RSI-type
symptoms -- numbness and pain in my thumb and wrist. I talked my workplace
into buying me a Microsoft Natural keyboard (it was about $100, cheap if it
fixed the problem), and within a few weeks, the problem went away. It was
remarkably easy to learn to use, too. The only difficulty was in learning
to type the number 6 with my left hand.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Jim
wrote:
>Possibly people are expecting more story for their money and authors are
>realizing this. Characters are being more developed and plot lines more
>intricate. Similar things are happening in movies. We no longer see a
>comedy that is just pure fun, we see a comedy that has a message or
>meaning in it. Abbot and Costello meet the Werewolf was fun and had a
>good story. Most comedies now have a cynical side to them. This is an
>example of what the public seems to want. The public wants more the
>their stories for their money they get bigger boooks.
>
I don't know if it's authors who are realizing this or the editors and
packagers who know their markets.
Another side of this might be that less people are buying novels; the
passive readers are dropping out so the market is shifting to a core
of diehard readers who prefer longer works.
With escalating prices, it might also be a factor of cost: two $6.95
slim paperbacks have a lower profit margin than one $12.95 tome.
If someone sat down and concentrated on it, I'm sure they could
conceive of at least two dozen plausible reasons for longer novels now
being more popular.
J.Michael
___________________________________________
I went to a reincarnationist -- I learned
that in a previous life I was immortal.
Steve Brinich
> We're seeing a lot more doorstops from people who have day jobs and
> write in their "spare time" and *still* turn out giant novels.
I have made this letter longer than usual,
because I lack the time to make it short.
-- Blaise Pascal
--
Steve Brinich <ste...@Radix.Net> If the government wants us
http://www.Radix.Net/~steveb to respect the law
89B992BBE67F7B2F64FDF2EA14374C3E it should set a better example
Elisabeth Carey
>
> On Fri, 25 Jun 1999 11:15:49 +0000, Local User <r...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Possibly people are expecting more story for their money and authors are
> >realizing this. Characters are being more developed and plot lines more
> >intricate. Similar things are happening in movies. We no longer see a
> >comedy that is just pure fun, we see a comedy that has a message or
> >meaning in it. Abbot and Costello meet the Werewolf was fun and had a
> >good story. Most comedies now have a cynical side to them. This is an
> >example of what the public seems to want. The public wants more the
> >their stories for their money they get bigger boooks.
> >
> I don't know if it's authors who are realizing this or the editors and
> packagers who know their markets.
>
> Another side of this might be that less people are buying novels; the
> passive readers are dropping out so the market is shifting to a core
> of diehard readers who prefer longer works.
Well, no, _more_ people are buying novels. More people are buying
books of all kinds. More people are reading, more books are being
sold. Fewer copies of _each title_ are being sold, because more books
than ever in the history of the world are being published.
We're living in the golden age of literacy, an age when people are
reading for pleasure and/or self-improvement who in any other age
would have been doing something else, and to a high degree of
probability would have been illiterate.
> With escalating prices, it might also be a factor of cost: two $6.95
> slim paperbacks have a lower profit margin than one $12.95 tome.
That's more plausible.
>
> If someone sat down and concentrated on it, I'm sure they could
> conceive of at least two dozen plausible reasons for longer novels now
> being more popular.
Including the fact that fewer people today are intimidated by the
sight of a really thick book.
But I continue to think that it's not a coincidence that novels
started significantly expanding in length shortly after personal
computers and word processing software became economically reasonable
purchases for a person doing a lot of writing.
Lis Carey
Elisabeth Carey
>
> On Sat, 26 Jun 1999 12:24:27 -0400, speaking in dulcet tones,
> "Elisabeth Carey" said ...
>
> -> Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
> ->
> Er, have you set it up on it's rear feet?
Yes. It's still a lot flatter than, say, an IBM Selectric, which is
what the comparison was to.
Lis Carey
Bernard Peek
<j...@cix.co.uk> writes
They still crop up at computer fairs. I bought one a year ago buty could
only get the Portugese version. Then a few months back I saw a dealer
with around fifty of the UK ones, he was selling them at two pounds each
so I bought a few.
Dell have a similar keyboard on their high-end machines. The one I'm
using now is a cheap keyboard by Nech which has a very similar action
but is much lighter.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Marcus L. Rowland
>101-key keyboards with the same build quality. I found the e-mail address
>for the guy who sold me mine: re...@cix.co.uk. They were £13 each plus P&P.
In London try the Computer Exchange at Notting Hill Gate; they usually
have dead keyboards of this type at a pound (good for cannibalising
etc.) and working second-hand ones at around a fiver. I'm using one of
the latter now. The PS/2 version is better in having LEDs for Num Lock
etc., but the cable plugs into it at the back, and this has been known
to give problems occasionally.
--
Marcus L. Rowland
http://www.ffutures.demon.co.uk/ http://www.forgottenfutures.com/
"We are all victims of this slime. They... ...fill our mailboxes with gibberish
that would get them indicted if people had time to press charges"
[Hunter S. Thompson predicts junk e-mail, 1985 (from Generation of Swine)]
Marilee J. Layman
Mine curves up a bit, and there's also little legs underneath that can
increase the angle.
--
Marilee J. Layman Co-Leader, The Other*Worlds*Cafe
relm...@aol.com A Science Fiction Discussion Group
Web site: http://www.webmoose.com/owc/
AOL keyword: BOOKs > Chats & Message > SF Forum > The Other*Worlds*Cafe
Peter Knutsen
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>
> In article <37735C...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold <Storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> >>
> >> Would it be too weird to suggest that some books
> >> _should_ be longer than others, and that good writers try
> >> to write them to their appropriate length (though they don't
> >> always succeed, and the result may run into problems with
> >> the publisher)?
> >
> It's not too weird, though there's at least one small tweak I'd
> add--it seems as though at lot of authors are best at writing
> particular lengths.
>
> >That would be my first guess, too. Well-written books are the length
> >they are because that's the length they need to be, the length that is
> >appropriate to the story they are telling.
> >
> Still, it's odd when the typical length in a genre changes. I doubt
> you guys are arguing that there just aren't very many good 250 page
> novel ideas any more.
Maybe there aren't? Maybe the world ideas that were acceptable
some decades ago would be unacceptable today, becaue readers
would complain about a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot
of areas that didn't get the deserved in-depth treatment?
The modern reader will only accept books that performs
a thorough analysis (=not quite the right word) of a subject.
OR the modern author feels that he has to do a thorough
analysis of the subject of choice or his madeup world, and
it has to be in the first book.
I'm not the least sure I'm right, just being the devil's advocate.
Maybe the correct length for science fiction works are 500 pages?
The average Alistair MacLean or Desmond Bagley novel was 180-300
pages (probably 180-250), and after reading one, I'd say "cool"
and feel good about having been on a great ride. But those
stories took place in a world very much like our own. Maybe
a bit more crime, organized crime, espionage. But nothing
really alien, except a bit of science/engineering.
Dune could not have been handled by a 200 or even 300 page
book.
Another possibility is the story focus of modern books versus
older books (the books that my father owns, 20-40 years old).
Older books focused on one character, modern books will almost
alwayus focus on several. While Dune did focus on only one
character, there were a lot of other major characters.
Multiple point-of-view characters are common in modern books.
Maybe each POWC needs something like 50 pages, that's what it
takes to present the character to the reader?
So the formula is
BASE length + (50 x each additional POWC) + (8 x each major nonPOWC)
where BASE is the normal length of old books, let's just say 200
pages.
> --
> Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
--
Peter Knutsen
http://www.knutsen.dk
David G. Bell
kata...@earthlink.net "Jeri Jo Thomas" writes:
> On Sat, 26 Jun 1999 12:24:27 -0400, speaking in dulcet tones,
> "Elisabeth Carey" said ...
>
> -> Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
> ->
> Er, have you set it up on it's rear feet?
There's too different sorts of flatness, and maybe some people are
confusing them.
The legs adjust the plane of the keyboard, but the key-tops are always
pretty much parallel with that plane. Typewriters, as I recall, are
more like a staircase, with the key-tops aligned like the treads.
Computer keyboards are like one of those trick staircases which leave
the hero sliding helplessly towards a bottomless chasm.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> Matt Ruff wrote:
>
>> That would be my first guess, too. Well-written books are the length
>> they are because that's the length they need to be, the length that
>> is appropriate to the story they are telling.
>>
> Still, it's odd when the typical length in a genre changes.
Not that odd; writers *do* read other writers, after all, and what they
read inevitably influences the projects they choose to work on. You see
somebody do an amazing trilogy, for instance, and it's perfectly natural
to start thinking about what you could do with that form. A particular
length of novel catching on is probably no weirder than a particular
theme or subgenre (i.e., cyberpunk) catching on.
-- M. Ruff
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold wrote:
>>
>> That would be my first guess, too. Well-written books are the length
>> they are because that's the length they need to be, the length that
>> is appropriate to the story they are telling.
>
It should go without saying, but if half the SF editing horror stories I
hear are true, I'm afraid it doesn't.
-- M. Ruff
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold
>
> Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> For much of the twentieth century, as books became more widely
>>> available and readily affordable, books were _mostly_ much shorter,
>>> until about the mid-eighties, when they started expanding in size
>>> again.
>>
>> Do you have actual statistics on this? Because I can think of
>> plenty of fat books that were published before the mid-eighties.
>
> Look at your shelves.
Doesn't help; my library's not organized by date, or even by genre, and
my tastes are fairly eclectic. And scanning at random, I see a lot of
memorable pre-'85 titles that were fat: "Gravity's Rainbow," "Dune,"
"The Stand," "Macroscope," "Time Enough for Love," "Stand on
Zanzibar"...
But this is all anecdotal evidence anyway. That's why I was asking for
statistics; I'm curious whether books have really gotten longer, on
average, or if just seems that they have.
-- M. Ruff
Charlie Stross
<c...@tiac.net> wrote:
>
>Some years past when I was using a SUN work station I used to put the
>keyboard in my lap. Annoyingly, this doesn't work with the PC keyboard.
>The difficulty is that your hands aren't centered on the PC keyboard. I
>would willingly pay extra for a PC keyboard with the main keys centered
>but nobody seems to make such a thing.
Er, that's what laptops are for!
Stick the thing in your lap. It's centred. If it's got a palmrest in front
and a trackpad for a mouse, you don't even need to move your hands away from
it to move the pointer around.
-- Charlie
Lori Coulson
: I'm intrigued .. do you get through those faster, or slower?? Maybe as
: fast as a parabolic arc to the waste bin 8>.??
I struggle with them...and usually give up. I *did* read Dhalgren. But
when I finally finished couldn't figure out what I'd read. My perception
of it said that _nothing_ happened, and my mind said, "How much did you
pay for this?" I guess my taste is simplistic....at any rate, I'm getting
more books out of the library these days--if I want to re-read after that
I'll buy the book.
Lori Coulson
--
*****************************************************
...Or do you still wait for me, Dream Giver...
Just around the riverbend? Pocahontas
*****************************************************
Nancy Lebovitz
tended to have more words/page than later sf, I think.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
Calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Loren MacGregor
Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold wrote:
>
> Loren MacGregor wrote:
> >
> > Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold wrote:
> >>
> >> That would be my first guess, too. Well-written books are the length
> >> they are because that's the length they need to be, the length that
> >> is appropriate to the story they are telling.
> >
> > I felt that went without saying.
>
> It should go without saying, but if half the SF editing horror stories I
> hear are true, I'm afraid it doesn't.
I'm not sure we want to get into an editing thread here, but from my
own viewpoint, the editors I am aware of are -very- interested in
doing a thorough, intelligent job of editing books. And this goes
down to the copyediting level. I have proofread and copyedited
material for more than 35 years, starting with my first job as a
printer's demon when I was about 13 years old. I've been a
typesetter, a writer, a publisher and an editor. Once, out of
curiousity, I asked for and received Tor's copyeditor's challenge.
(This was several years ago, and I'm not sure it still exists, in
the same form.) This was a short piece with typographical,
grammatical and stylistic errata which the aspiring copyeditor was
supposed to correct.
It was probably the most difficult test I have ever taken, because
the point was not to correct it to what -I- would have written, but
to be true to the -author's- style (such as it was) while adhering
to the "house standard" for grammar and usage.
I think it likely that any publishing house that has a similar test
for its potential copyeditors is concerned about the quality of the
book as well.
Certainly, some long books could be cut and perhaps should be cut,
but no publisher publishes a long book simply -because- it is a long
book.
I think it was David Gerrold who once interrupted a complaint
session by saying that everyone there knew horror stories about
editors and writers, but that he was reasonably certain that
everyone -also- knew stories about -good- writers and -good- editors
(meaning in this case people who could take legitimate criticism,
and people who could give it); he suggested they talk about -that-
for a bit. And, not surprisingly, there was no end of stories were
people did just a bit more than was expected of them, and sometimes
-quite- a bit more.
Sometimes, admittedly, the long book that has been commissioned is
better than the long book that reaches the editor's hands, and
sometimes the realities of publishing are such that a book isn't
polished as much as it could be before the deadline for publishing
arrives. But mostly I don't think that's the case.
-- LJM
Christopher J. Henrich
>
> Um. I loved Dickens in the fifth grade. And "A Tale of Two Cities"
> is a relatively -short- book.
>
> Then, I'm the one who, for fifth grade speech class in a Catholic
> school, memorized and delivered "The Cremation of Sam McGee." (A
> friend, for the same class, memorized "So You Think That I Am Mad."
> The nuns weren't sure what to do with either one of us.)
LOL!
Actually, the nuns were a lot more human than most of their pupils
realized. Apparently, they didn't try to squelch either you or your
friend.
BTW, I read _A Tale of Two Cities_ in high school and recently reread
it... I realized that the high school version had been severely cut. Whole
subplots were removed (or else my memory is even worse that I thought).
Novelistically, it's a mess. This seems to be true of most of Dickens's
work. But it's a very readable mess.
Chris Henrich
Dorothy J Heydt
Charlie Stross <charlie @ nospam . antipope . org> wrote:
>
>Er, that's what laptops are for!
>
>Stick the thing in your lap. It's centred. If it's got a palmrest in front
>and a trackpad for a mouse, you don't even need to move your hands away from
>it to move the pointer around.
However, the paperwork that came with my laptop warned me that
it's not safe to take the laptop directly on your lap. Messes
with the cooling system. I have mine on a little tray.
As for the trackpad, or the little red eraser-thingie in the middle
of the Thinkpad, YM will almost certainly V. I can't stand 'em,
so I got a laser trackball from Logitech which plugs into the
back of the laptop.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Loren MacGregor
"Christopher J. Henrich" wrote:
>
> Loren MacGregor wrote:
>
> > Um. I loved Dickens in the fifth grade. And "A Tale of Two Cities"
> > is a relatively -short- book.
> >
> > Then, I'm the one who, for fifth grade speech class in a Catholic
> > school, memorized and delivered "The Cremation of Sam McGee." (A
> > friend, for the same class, memorized "So You Think That I Am Mad."
> > The nuns weren't sure what to do with either one of us.)
>
> LOL!
>
> Actually, the nuns were a lot more human than most of their pupils
> realized. Apparently, they didn't try to squelch either you or your
> friend.
I realized this in retrospect. A lot of things the nuns and other
teachers did, which seemed incomprehensible at the time, in
retrospect seemed aimed at turning us into decent, thinking adults.
I still do not know if I was simply lucky in the Catholic schools I
attended, or whether the horror stories I've heard have been the
exception.
> BTW, I read _A Tale of Two Cities_ in high school and recently reread
> it... I realized that the high school version had been severely cut.
> Whole subplots were removed (or else my memory is even worse that I
> thought). Novelistically, it's a mess. This seems to be true of
> most of Dickens's work. But it's a very readable mess.
Agreed. Dickens just sails on, by seeming instinct picking the
telling detail that is convincing at the time and sails one right
past the succession of plot holes. But he's -readable-. I must
say, though, that I prefer him in a whimsical mood; I still haven't
finished Little Dorrit.
-- LJM
Nancy Lebovitz
Loren MacGregor <churn...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
>I realized this in retrospect. A lot of things the nuns and other
>teachers did, which seemed incomprehensible at the time, in
>retrospect seemed aimed at turning us into decent, thinking adults.
>I still do not know if I was simply lucky in the Catholic schools I
>attended, or whether the horror stories I've heard have been the
>exception.
>
Phil Fraering
>Jeri Jo Thomas wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, 26 Jun 1999 12:24:27 -0400, speaking in dulcet tones,
>> "Elisabeth Carey" said ...
>>
>> -> Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
>> ->
>> Er, have you set it up on it's rear feet?
>Yes. It's still a lot flatter than, say, an IBM Selectric, which is
>what the comparison was to.
Do you want a keyboard like this:
--
---
----
-----
Or like this:
-----
----
---
--
(You'll need a fixed-width font to see what I mean; but basically,
do you mean curved like a U, or like the top on an O?)
--
Phil Fraering "What are we going to to tonight, Miles?"
p...@globalreach.net "Same thing we do every night, Ivan,
/Will work for tape/ try to take over the Imperium!"
MADAM IM ADAM
Elisabeth Carey
>
> Elisabeth Carey <lis....@mediaone.net> writes:
>
> >Jeri Jo Thomas wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sat, 26 Jun 1999 12:24:27 -0400, speaking in dulcet tones,
> >> "Elisabeth Carey" said ...
> >>
> >> -> Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
> >> ->
> >> Er, have you set it up on it's rear feet?
>
> >Yes. It's still a lot flatter than, say, an IBM Selectric, which is
> >what the comparison was to.
>
> Do you want a keyboard like this:
>
> --
> ---
> ----
> -----
>
> Or like this:
>
> -----
> ----
> ---
> --
>
> (You'll need a fixed-width font to see what I mean; but basically,
> do you mean curved like a U, or like the top on an O?)
I'm sorry. I'm using a fixed-width font, and your two examples look
much the same to me. I want an IBM Selectric keyboard, at that height
and angle.
Lis Carey
Elisabeth Carey
>
> In article <377607...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold <Storyt...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >Elisabeth Carey wrote:
> >>
> >> Matt Ruff / Lisa Gold wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> For much of the twentieth century, as books became more widely
> >>>> available and readily affordable, books were _mostly_ much shorter,
> >>>> until about the mid-eighties, when they started expanding in size
> >>>> again.
> >>>
> >>> Do you have actual statistics on this? Because I can think of
> >>> plenty of fat books that were published before the mid-eighties.
> >>
> >> Look at your shelves.
> >
> >Doesn't help; my library's not organized by date, or even by genre, and
> >my tastes are fairly eclectic. And scanning at random, I see a lot of
> >memorable pre-'85 titles that were fat: "Gravity's Rainbow," "Dune,"
> >"The Stand," "Macroscope," "Time Enough for Love," "Stand on
> >Zanzibar"...
> >
> >But this is all anecdotal evidence anyway. That's why I was asking for
> >statistics; I'm curious whether books have really gotten longer, on
> >average, or if just seems that they have.
> >
> Also, a little of the change is illusionary--sf from the 40's and 50's
> tended to have more words/page than later sf, I think.
And was often printed on cheaper, _thicker_ paper. Which creates an
illusory effect in the other direction.
Lis Carey
Erik V. Olson
Stross) wrote:
>
>This is why I haunt car boot sales, looking for a *very special* keyboard
>that usually sells for about a fiver: the _original_ IBM PC-AT keyboard.
>give it a bit of heft. After all, this was back when a PC-AT cost about
>4000 pounds; quality kit. It sold from around 1984 to 1987; thereafter IBM
>caught cheap component disease and the keyboards went downhill rapidly.
>
Ahh yes, the Magnificant Model M.-I've got them set up at home and
work-they were built to emulate, as close as they could without
linkages, the feel of the IBM Selectric typewriter. There are three
revisons-the last was labeled "Lexmark" and had an Aluminum plate
inside, rather than a steel plate outside, so it's a tad lighter, and
softer on wood desks.
Now, the key throw on a Model M is much longer than most other PC
keyboards, and the key force is higher, which *will* annoy the light
fingered typists. As with any keyboard, mouse or monitor, try before
you buy.
They do last forever, it seems. My home Lexmark has a 14-Feb-1994
Bday, my work keyboard has a 19-May-1984 marking. Both have gone
through hell, consumed more that their fair share of coffee, and still
work like a champ. I did break the Scroll Lock keycap at home, so I
stole a U off a dead IBM terminal keyboard, Sharpied it black, and it
works fine-then again, I don't recall ever using it, so...
--
Erik Olson, SFOF. er...@NOSPAMmo.net : Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs
Ceci N'est pas une sig : There *was* no cabal
Loren MacGregor
Elisabeth Carey wrote:
>
> Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
> >
> > Also, a little of the change is illusionary--sf from the 40's and 50's
> > tended to have more words/page than later sf, I think.
>
> And was often printed on cheaper, _thicker_ paper. Which creates an
> illusory effect in the other direction.
Um. Many of the books in the 30s and 40s, though, were printed on
-thinner- paper.
-- LJM
Loren MacGregor
Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>
> In article <377651F8...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Loren MacGregor <churn...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >
> >I realized this in retrospect. A lot of things the nuns and other
> >teachers did, which seemed incomprehensible at the time, in
> >retrospect seemed aimed at turning us into decent, thinking adults.
> >I still do not know if I was simply lucky in the Catholic schools I
> >attended, or whether the horror stories I've heard have been the
> >exception.
> >
> Or that the horror stories are true but no longer current practice.
This might be the case, but I heard some of them contemporaneously
with my attendance (1956 - 1963, roughly) in Catholic schools;
thereafter, I mostly attended public schools, which was my ruination
as a student. (I began 8th grade with a knowledge base roughly five
years ahead of most of the other students, and from that point on, I
coasted through school. I thought it was wonderful at the time, but
I regret it sincerely at this stage.)
By the way, in another message I mentioned cancelling roughly 40
posts that had gotten logjammed on our work server. One of those
was an apology to you -- I realized I had been grossly
misinterpreting some of your messages, reading into them what I
-thought- you were saying rather than what you actually -said-. The
specific messages don't matter, I suspect, but it does server to let
me know I should read posts with as few preconceptions as possible.
FWIW.
-- LJM
Vicki Rosenzweig
<churn...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
<snip>
>Sometimes, admittedly, the long book that has been commissioned is
>better than the long book that reaches the editor's hands, and
>sometimes the realities of publishing are such that a book isn't
>polished as much as it could be before the deadline for publishing
>arrives. But mostly I don't think that's the case.
>
I think one of the things that's happening is that it only takes
one or two examples of "writer whose work seems to have stopped
being edited after s/he became successful" to (a) stick in memory,
and (b) cause people to generalize from them.
For example, a lot of us feel that late Heinlein novels (say,
everything after Glory Road) could have benefited from cutting
and other editorial help.
Over in the mystery genre, my standing example is Charlotte
MacLeod. Somewhere along the line, either her style changed,
her editor changed, or the publisher let her mark "stet" a
lot more often. I don't know which is the case. I do know that
her more recent novels are full of comma splices, and I find
them distracting. Over and over, where there should be semicolons
or, more often, periods and new sentences, the text is run
together with commas. I find this very distracting, and it's
tempting to assume that either she was able to insist on them
after her name became known to readers, or that the publisher
decided that they didn't need to put in as much editorial effort.
(Note: I'm describing third-person omniscient narrative here,
not conversation, letters, or diary entries.)
--
Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@interport.net
r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.users.interport.net/~vr/rassef-faq.html
"I get by with a little help from my friends." -- Lennon/McCartney
Bernard Peek
>On Sat, 26 Jun 1999 17:35:43 GMT, Richard Harter
><c...@tiac.net> wrote:
>>
>>Some years past when I was using a SUN work station I used to put the
>>keyboard in my lap. Annoyingly, this doesn't work with the PC keyboard.
>>The difficulty is that your hands aren't centered on the PC keyboard. I
>>would willingly pay extra for a PC keyboard with the main keys centered
>>but nobody seems to make such a thing.
>
>
>Stick the thing in your lap. It's centred. If it's got a palmrest in front
>and a trackpad for a mouse, you don't even need to move your hands away from
>it to move the pointer around.
If you like a keyboard but can't afford a laptop PC, there are some
88-key infra-red keyboards around. The one I have is fine for typing but
its mouse-control is poor.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Richard Horton
wrote:
>
>
>Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>> Still, it's odd when the typical length in a genre changes. I doubt
>> you guys are arguing that there just aren't very many good 250 page
>> novel ideas any more.
>
>Maybe there aren't? Maybe the world ideas that were acceptable
>some decades ago would be unacceptable today, becaue readers
>would complain about a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot
>of areas that didn't get the deserved in-depth treatment?
I'm generally one of those pleading for thinner books (though thinner
physically would work as well - less white space, smaller print), but
...
I read a lot of '50s SF, and one thing I've noticed is that endings
often seem abrupt. I get the impression that writers would work on
the story until it hit 50K words or so, and then they would think,
oops, I've only got 10K words to go, better wrap things up!
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: richard...@sff.net
Home Page: www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (www.sfsite.com/tangent)
Richard Horton
wrote:
>Over in the mystery genre, my standing example is Charlotte
>MacLeod. Somewhere along the line, either her style changed,
>her editor changed, or the publisher let her mark "stet" a
>lot more often. I don't know which is the case. I do know that
>her more recent novels are full of comma splices, and I find
>them distracting. Over and over, where there should be semicolons
>or, more often, periods and new sentences, the text is run
>together with commas
Another striking example that I've encountered recently is L. M.
Montgomery. I'm reading the Anne of Green Gables books to my
daughter, and we're at the sixth chronologically, which is the last to
have been published (it was interposed into the series shortly before
LMM's death). In this book she has become prone to endless sentences
spliced with ellipses ... it's very noticeable ... and after a short
while ... as I hope you can see ... very irritating.
Avedon Carol
wrote:
>I can type about 20 wpm faster on a Selectric than on any other
>typewriter. They keep one around where I work for filling out
>forms. The trouble with the Selectric is that, in many other
>ways, it's a crappy typewriter; the ball mechanism, I've noticed,
>tends to unreliability.
I have never a problem with that mechanism or any other with any
Selectric I've ever used. I believe you must have what is technically
known as "a lemon".
>I keep a Smith-Corona Galaxie portable typewriter. It's saved
>my life a few times, and I write letters on it (I _will not_
>word-process personal correspondence. Either I'll write out
>by hand with a fountain pen, or type it.)
Wow, you won't word-pross personal letters? Why?
Avedon Carol
Thomas) wrote:
>On Sat, 26 Jun 1999 12:24:27 -0400, speaking in dulcet tones,
>"Elisabeth Carey" said ...
>
>-> Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
>->
>Er, have you set it up on it's rear feet?
Er, have you actually ever /seen/ an IBM Selectric?
Avedon Carol
Stross) wrote:
>>It still is. What that machine could do that your computer can't is
>>provide the best typing surface ever created. IBM Selectrics were
>>exactly the right tilt and height to prevent all that numbness and
>>pain and tingling that are now common to people who use computer
>>keyboards. I still miss that.
>
>Ahem.
>
>This is why I haunt car boot sales, looking for a *very special* keyboard
>that usually sells for about a fiver: the _original_ IBM PC-AT keyboard.
>
>This miracle of design was the grandaddy of all modern PC keyboards.
>Manufactured by the Selectric typewriter division, you can still use
>it with any PC that has a PS2 keyboard port (a PS2-to-DIN adapter jack
>costs about a fiver). The keys have genuine microswitches in them --
>none of this membrane junk -- and there's a steel plate in its base to
>give it a bit of heft.
I still think wistfully from time to time about that jack in the back
of my Selectric II.... They once promised us we'd be able to connect
them to our computers! This would still be my fantasy if the computer
itself left any room on my desk for the typewriter.
>After all, this was back when a PC-AT cost about
>4000 pounds; quality kit. It sold from around 1984 to 1987; thereafter IBM
>caught cheap component disease and the keyboards went downhill rapidly.
More like "leapt off of a cliff".
>IBM realised there was demand for this keyboard a while ago; you can
>still buy them new for about eighty quid. But your average large car
>boot sale has one or two sitting around. Give 'em a good couple of hours
>with some cotton buds and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and you can
>usually get them back into as-new condition. They built them to last in
>those days.
And the $64,000 question is.... Is there still room for it on my desk?
I mean, how big is the thing?
Avedon Carol
<lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Avedon Carol wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 24 Jun 1999 21:04:21 -0400, Elisabeth Carey
>> <lis....@mediaone.net> wrote:
>>
>> >In the mid-seventies, approximately, my mother was singing the praises
>> >of the IBM MagCard typewriter she was using at work.It was truly
>> >wondrous, what that machine could do. Or at least, at the time, it
>> >_seemed_ wondrous.
>>
>> It still is. What that machine could do that your computer can't is
>> provide the best typing surface ever created. IBM Selectrics were
>> exactly the right tilt and height to prevent all that numbness and
>> pain and tingling that are now common to people who use computer
>> keyboards. I still miss that.
>
>Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
Presumably for the same reason that there are still idiots making
ovens with side-swing doors - a vast remove between the people who
design them and the people who actually have to use them and know what
they're for.
I remember when typists started complaining about the numbness and
pain they were getting from the computer keyboards and people who
didn't type tried to "explain" it by saying that, well, it's because
you're not moving your arms enough, as you no longer have to break at
the end of each line and raise your arm to push over the carriage
return. Apparently they didn't notice that the old levered carriage
return had been replaced long ago by a single keystroke on the last
generation of typewriters, without anyone having these complaints.
I'm absolutely certain that computer keyboards would have been
completely different if they had been designed by people who were
touch-typing several pages a day on them.
Avedon Carol
Bell") wrote:
>In article <MPG.11df2fc33...@news.earthlink.net>
> kata...@earthlink.net "Jeri Jo Thomas" writes:
>
>> On Sat, 26 Jun 1999 12:24:27 -0400, speaking in dulcet tones,
>> "Elisabeth Carey" said ...
>>
>> -> Which raises the question, why are keyboards so flat?
>> ->
>> Er, have you set it up on it's rear feet?
>
>There's too different sorts of flatness, and maybe some people are
>confusing them.
>
>The legs adjust the plane of the keyboard, but the key-tops are always
>pretty much parallel with that plane. Typewriters, as I recall, are
>more like a staircase, with the key-tops aligned like the treads.
/And/ the bottom of the keyboard is higher. No way I could forget and
rest my hands on the edge of the desk when using a Selectric II.