T Campbell's Blog

One of the things I've been noticing as I'm adding comics to Full Story is that people who write realistic fiction are much more inclined to write self-contained shorts than people who write speculative fiction. I dont' know why this is, but I find it interesting.
 

One of the things I've been noticing as I'm adding comics to Full Story is that people who write realistic fiction are much more inclined to write self-contained shorts than people who write speculative fiction.

Maybe because realistic fiction is set in a world you can expect your readers to be fairly familiar with already, so you tend to need fewer pages for scene-setting and can get into the action quicker.
 

That's certainly a possibility, but not all science fiction is dependant on complex world-building. In prose, there's no shortage of short stories in science fiction.

I'm more inclined to think that it's because sci-fi writers in comics are largely more influenced by superhero comics than by prose sci-fi, even when they're not exactly writing super-hero stories. (I would point to Fans as showing signs of this, but of course, Fans *should* show signs of this, so that's not exactly fair.)

But even that's not really a complete explanation. I don't think Jenn Manley Lee is influenced by superheros, for instance, but she doesn't have any short stories that I know of either.