I’ve never been a fan of the short story. I’m still not–I’ve read only three Flannery O’Connor stories, preferring her novels. I’ve always felt that fiction should stretch out over a few hundred pages; short stories have always seemed like a waste. I’ve read hundreds of novels, and often in record time–Bel Canto by Ann Patchett in one night, Prey by Michael Crichton in one night, The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho in three hours. But I absolutely drudge through any collection of short stories–I haven’t even finished Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things, though I’ve had it for months.

But Escape Pod has completely changed my perception of the short story. I’m not going to try to tackle O’Connor anytime soon, but I’ve gained a profound respect for the SF* story over the past few months of listening. For example, I can finally say that I’ve actually finished an entire Asimov story.**

One particular aspect of the SF short story that audio seems to emphasize is an internal universe. My first real education in SF was Orson Scott Card’s old standard, How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I think that’s where I first learned that writing an SF** story of any length is an act of world creation. And like the real world, created worlds must have rules. Readers can believe the impossible, but that suspension of disbelief is broken if the story is internally inconsistent. Setting and following rules is an essential component of drafting and revising.

But a wholly original SF short story presents an interesting problem. In a novel, the rules can be weaved in over tens or hundreds of pages. In an established universe like D&D, Star Wars, and Star Trek, the rules are preset by precedent, and the writer can rely on readers to know those rules. But an original short story must impart the rules quickly, clearly, and subtly. The rules cannot be listed in a straightforward, clinical manner unless there is some stylistic reason for doing so (think Asimov’s robot laws).

Writers have responded to this challenge, it seems to me, by weighing how much disorientation is necessary before everything is made clear. Consider the following passage from Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Start the Clock”

The real estate agent for Pirateland was old. Nasty old. It’s harder to tell with Geezers, but she looked to be somewhere in her Thirties. They don’t have our suppleness of skin, but with the right oils and powders they can avoid most of the wrinkles. This one hadn’t taken much care. There were furrows around her eyes and eyebrows.

Rosenbaum plays with disorientation by capitalizing “Geezers” and “Thirties.” These are proper nouns, but we don’t know why. We get a bit more a few paragraphs on:

I put my hands in my pants pockets and picked at the lint. “So this is pretty much all Nines?”

The Thirtysomething Lady frowned. “Ma’am, I’m afraid the Anti-Redlining Act of 2035 –”

“Uh-huh, race, gender, aetial age, chronological age, stimulative preference or national origin — I know the law. But who else wants to live in Pirateland, right?”

By now we’re pretty clear that something has stopped the age of these characters. Finally, he makes it all clear:

Frankly, we were excited. This move was what our Pack needed — the four of us, at least, were sure of it. We were all tired of living in the ghetto — we were in three twentieth-century townhouses in Billings, in an “age-mixed” area full of marauding Thirteens and Fourteens and Fifteens. Talk about a people damned by CDAS — when the virus hit them, it had stuck their pituitaries and thyroids like throttles jammed open. It wasn’t just the giantism and health problems caused by a thirty-year overdose on growth hormones, testosterone, estrogen, and androgen. They suffered more from their social problems — criminality, violence, orgies, jealousy — and their endless self-pity.

What impresses me about this story (featured in Escape Pod 99 and posted on Rosenbaum’s website) is the gradual amount of information we get. But even though it’s gradual, it’s made reasonably specific before we’ve read a third of the story.

I’ve been trying to use this gradual technique in my own writing. And that, really, has been the major fruit of all my hours listening to Escape Pod–it’s made me aware of subtle techniques for writing good SF. I’m glad it’s out there. Go and take a listen.

*By SF, I don’t just mean science fiction as we normally conceive of it; here I use it to mean stories of the fantastic, including fantasy, horror, and magical realism.

**Yes, listening to an audio version of a story is the same as reading it, no matter what Harold Bloom says.

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