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Friday, March 25, 2016

Follow Friday - The City of Rome Celebrated It's One-Thousandth Anniversary in 248 A.D.


It's Friday again, and this means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:
  1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
  2. Follow the Featured Blogger of the week - Kati Bookaholic Rambling Reviews.
  3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
  4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
  5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
  6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
  7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
  8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!
And now for the Follow Friday Question: Short Stories (as companions to a series): What do you love about them and hate about them?

Science fiction and fantasy both have long traditions of publishing short fiction. Although the market for short fiction in these genres has declined somewhat since the days in which there were literally dozens of monthly magazines on the market publishing science fiction and fantasy stories, these genres are among the very few that still seem to have a reasonably active commercial trade in short fiction.

Short fiction works that tie in to a larger series are not entirely unknown in the genre fiction world, but stand alone short fiction is much more common. Science fiction has also established a history of serializing stories: Many classic science fiction novels were first published over the course of three or four months worth of magazine issues. The Larry Niven novel Smoke Ring was published this way as was the Lois McMaster Bujold novel Falling Free, and a whole host of others. Many works that appeared first as short fiction have been expanded to novel length later such as the Frank Herbert classic Dune (which was originally called Dune World) and the Nancy Kress novel Beggars in Spain.

But none of this actually answers the question at hand. As far as I can tell, most short fiction that is attached to a longer series is kind of a side show. Most authors appear to know that the bulk of their readers won't actually read the short fiction that is ancillary to the novels in the series, so they don't usually put anything of great importance in them, focusing more on character development and world building. So while most of these pieces of related short fiction are interesting, they are often not much more than a light diversion. Light diversions are enjoyable.


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2 comments:

  1. I think that a lot of times they use them to try to suck people that are not already fans or familiar with their series into the series or into their little "world" which can be a good thing, as long as it doesn't give anything away or require prior knowledge of the series. It's when it gives away plot points or doesn't make sense if you haven't already read the rest that it can be offputting.

    I am new here, found you through Feature and Follow, and following now on Bloglovin.

    Lisa @ Just Another Rabid Reader

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    Replies
    1. @Lisa Pottgen: Acting as an introduction to a series is a good role for ancillary short fiction works.

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