Novellas used to be a big thing in science fiction. Either published separately in small paperbacks or as “doubles”. But then they went out of fashion — in the 80s and particularly in the 90s, you couldn’t publish any science fiction book unless it was 300 pages, minimum.
That’s changed again over the past decade and a half — with ebooks, people somehow don’t seem to care that much about getting “value for money” like in the 90s… and perhaps shortening attention spans is also a factor? I tend not to think so, but it’s possible.
Perhaps the influence from science fiction fan fic is a thing, though.
Anyway, whenever I try to read an ebook novella, I’m disappointed: It seems like the ebookness of it all lessens the ambition and probably the work put into the novella — just write it, and publish it, and get some money in.
The Murderbot series doesn’t feel like that at all, which is probably why the book I have here is the 19th printing. Since 2018! It’s a runaway hit series of sf novellas (in print!), and that has to be pretty unique?
This is the third one, and I enjoyed this a lot. It feels like almost like very short novel (as opposed to a padded short story) — it’s satisfying in that way. And it’s just quite amusing, so it’s the perfect way to spend an evening.
It is a difficult trick to pull off, and since this is the third one, I guess I’ll keep reading. Oh, there’s eight of these books? Nice.
Rogue Protocol (2018) by Martha Wells (buy new, buy used, 4.24 on Goodreads)