As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a sporadic entrant into the Writers Of The Future contest. So, I occasionally check out the contest’s forum. Just recently, the contest announced the newest winners, so one of the current topics of discussion is what kind of stories win the contest.
One thing that struck me is a winning author’s blatant admission he picked a standard theme (in his case, slavery) and wasn’t at all subtle in his treatment of it. Now, I haven’t read the guy’s story, and it may be a brilliant piece, or it may be the standard pile of junk. But his statement hit on another of my frustrations with what’s published nowadays, at least in short fiction.
I like (some) short fiction. I know it’s a hard beast to do right, but a well-done short story can have as much impact as a novel — and sometimes, even more, considering how concentrated this impact can be. The shorter a story is, however, the more it lends itself to preachiness. And a lot of the short stories that I’ve read lately (especially the science fiction ones) have preached with a heavy hammer.
Now, I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like stories that are all about the message. But all stories have a message (or several, which are of the type I prefer, but see very rarely), so today I’m bitching about the variation of stories where, regardless of the storytelling/message balance, the moral of the story is so obvious that it becomes pointless to spend the time to actually read the story.
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What scares me is the thought that authors may be purposefully dumbing down their stories in order to get published. Is this what the science fiction reader wants? I understand that in the modern fast-paced society, most people prefer instant gratification (for certain things, I fall in this category too). But I’ve always thought that fiction is supposed to have two possible deliverables to its customer (the reader) — one is the instant enjoyment of going through the events of the story, and the other, one or more different perspectives to consider through the lenses of your own thinking.
So, how can the latter happen if the story has a blatant message? My reaction (and I don’t consider myself that unique) to a Statement is either “yeah, way to go, stating the obvious” or “boy, are you full of shit.” My reaction to an argument in favor or against a certain topic (which is what I believe a subtle message to be in a work of fiction) is to consider the argument against my own position on the topic. I may still get to the “full of shit” conclusion, but at least there will be thinking involved.
Thus — why, oh, why are preachy short stories so widely supported by the publishing industry? Are writers really encouraged to dust off their 1-ton hammers just to have a chance at recognition? Especially in science fiction, where the stories are supposed to challenge our imagination and intellect — I’d have thought subtlety would be a trait highly sought after, and not a recipe for rejection.