I feel like the natural length for sci-fi is the short story, and the economic incentives pushing everyone to write novels instead has really done sci-fi a disservice.
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greg egan is at his best at that length for sure
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Oh I came here to say Greg Egan as a counterpoint lol. In his novels the ideas just keep coming, I love it
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do you enjoy reading them though? i tried getting into orthogonal or w/e it's called and i found the characters impossible to relate to compared to his short stories
The characters, hmm, yeah they're not as full or something as they could be. But yeah I still enjoy his novels overall. I reread the one with quantum suicide recently and it was great
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I loved Orthogonal, because the premise was so amazing. Maybe the characters aren't the most compelling, but the premise was so grand that I couldn't imagine it being done justice in a short story.
Yeah this is my experience of Egan too, and is how this problem plays out in general - if you're going to spend a whole novel with a character, they need an actual personality, and that tends to be absent when the story is primarily about an idea.
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