Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: The Starmaker Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.physics.relativity,rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Re: Fat books Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:47:40 -0700 Organization: The Starmaker Organization Lines: 118 Message-ID: <6AD3C2CC.475F@ix.netcom.com> References: <11amvqh$15f3n$1@dont-email.me> Reply-To: starmaker@ix.netcom.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2026 18:47:38 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; logging-data="515659"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19FBra3toJFvLVMLtdAJGRYdl22gjJCkaE="; posting-host="125db4c2b7f1c31e207d2123a78ec9d1" Cancel-Lock: sha1:9z+ErDbfyLRujnSDC1yIe+WoLG0= sha256:Max/baS2E60nmWsE765j5gAmrZYI03uU6z61S5qN7VY= sha1:1qAmH1Fs5D7OKLk6v2qFgQLydjM= sha256:V8AoQG0+y/z5Rluw3RRZklzTACde/IHNsdzhNnkaRys= X-Antivirus: Avast (VPS 261017-6, 10/17/2026), Outbound message X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.04Gold (WinNT; U) X-Antivirus-Status: Clean Xref: csiph.com alt.usage.english:1152448 sci.physics.relativity:674555 rec.arts.sf.written:660976 Peter Moylan wrote: > > I've griped about this issue before, but once again I find myself annoyed. > > I was reading "Robots and Empire", by Isaac Asimov. This is possibly the > worst novel Asimov ever wrote. As a story it's mostly well-told, but the > padding and waffle are enough to irritate the most patient reader. > > Let me quote from Chapter 45. "I think you must either get to the point, > Dr Mandamus, or leave." This is not the only such case. Many of the > characters in the book are incapable of getting to the point. They take > half a dozen pages to say something that could be put in one chort > paragraph. Get to the point, Dr Asimov. It's so bad that even the > characters in the story are complaining about the padding. > > A competent editor could have made this a much better book by cutting it > to about one third of its length. > > I wonder whether this hurt Asimov's reputation. I've certainly seen > comments that his later (thick) books are not as good as his earlier > writing. > > It's not all his fault. Many other authors are as bad. They're used to > being paid by the page, and publishers are letting them get away with > it. Maybe publishers don't employ editors any more, and have given up > any attempt at quality control. There are some authors that I refuse to > read because their books are too thick. > > But surely, I tell myself, the publishers must have noticed that books > don't sell as well as they used to. Or do they? Am I the only person to > complain about this? > > -- > Peter Moylan peter@pmoylan.org http://www.pmoylan.org > Newcastle, NSW This is not literary criticism. It is a self-indulgent tantrum from a reader who confuses personal irritation with objective analysis and then tries to inflate it into an industry-wide conspiracy. You mistake dialogue for padding and call it proof. Quoting one character telling another to get to the point does not demonstrate authorial failure. It demonstrates a character who is frustrated. Treating in-story dialogue as a meta-confession by Asimov is the critical equivalent of believing a novel’s villain is the author’s autobiography. "Could have been cut to one-third" is pure assertion without a single concrete cut. You offer zero page counts, zero scene breakdowns, zero demonstration that removing two-thirds would leave a coherent plot, character arc, or thematic payoff. That is not editing advice. That is fantasy surgery performed with a chainsaw and no anatomy knowledge. You leap from one book you dislike to a sweeping claim about Asimov’s later career and reputation. "I’ve seen comments" is anecdotal garbage. No sales data, no critical consensus metrics, no comparison of contemporaneous reviews versus later ones. You are treating your own annoyance as a proxy for market and critical judgment. The "paid by the page" explanation is historically illiterate. Modern trade publishing does not pay authors by the page or by the word in the way pulp magazines once did. Advances and royalties are based on projected sales and contract terms, not length. Blaming "payment by the page" for 1980s–90s hardcovers is simply wrong. You treat thickness as an automatic quality defect. Many of the most commercially and critically successful novels of the last fifty years are long. Length is not the variable; density and necessity are. You never distinguish between the two. You assume that every reader shares your patience threshold and that anything exceeding it is objectively padded. You assume publishers have abandoned editing because books are long, ignoring the existence of developmental editors, copy editors, and the commercial reality that certain audiences buy thick books precisely because they want immersion. You assume declining sales (if real) are caused by length rather than competing media, changing leisure habits, price, or content. You never admit the possibility that Robots and Empire was written at that length because Asimov chose to expand the political and historical scope of his universe rather than because he was padding for money. Readers who buy series finales and late-career works by established authors often want more of the same world, not less. Publishers know this; they are not stupid. Editors who routinely gut bestselling authors’ manuscripts risk losing the author and the revenue. Your preferred "one-third length" version would have to sell to the same audience that already accepted the longer book. Competitors and imitators in science fiction have thrived with both lean and expansive styles. Your refusal to read thick books is a personal filter, not a market signal that forces publishers to change. Asimov’s later novels sold in large numbers despite (or because of) their length. The physical and economic constraints of publishing do not make long books inherently unprofitable; paper, printing, and distribution costs scale, but so can price and perceived value. Your claim that "books don’t sell as well as they used to" is too vague to test and ignores category differences, format shifts (ebooks, audiobooks), and the fact that some long books still move hundreds of thousands of copies. A single reader’s irritation does not scale into industry failure. The entire causal chain—character dialogue equals authorial padding equals payment incentives equals editorial collapse equals sales decline—must be discarded. Replace it with actual textual analysis of specific scenes that fail to advance plot, character, or theme, supported by evidence rather than feelings. The industry diagnosis must be rebuilt from contracts, sales data, and editorial practice rather than nostalgia and anecdote. Nothing of structural value survives. The observation that some late Asimov is less tight than early Asimov is a commonplace, not an insight you originated or substantiated. You are not diagnosing a publishing disease. You are complaining that a book refused to finish at the exact moment your personal tolerance expired, then dressing the complaint up as systemic critique. The Swarmmaker Fleet -- The Starmaker -- To question the unquestionable, ask the unaskable, to think the unthinkable, mention the unmentionable, say the unsayable, and challenge the unchallengeable.