# Short stories turned into novels? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [November 20, 2023, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447 "2023-11-20T23:21:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![slicedalone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slicedalone/32/12515_2.png) [@slicedalone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slicedalone)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2023, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/1 "2023-11-20T23:21:11Z")
I might suppose that many novels began as published short stories when their authors thought “Hey, I can see how this could be added to or expanded,” but for the life of me, I can’t think of many examples, only “Flowers for Algernon.” Can you? ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2023, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/2 "2023-11-20T23:29:27Z")
Ray Bradbury’s [Fahrenheit 451](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451) started out as 2 different short stories that became a novella and finally the novel. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2023, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/3 "2023-11-20T23:43:39Z")
Greg Bear expanded his 1983 short story “Blood Music” into a novel. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2023, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/4 "2023-11-20T23:51:30Z")
Joanna Russ’s “When It Changed” was expanded to become _The Female Man_ ---
**Author:** ![Julius\_Henry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8797f3/32.png) [@Julius\_Henry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Julius_Henry)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2023, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/5 "2023-11-20T23:53:35Z")
Arthur C. Clarke wrote a novella called _Against the Fall of Night_ (1948) which he revised and expanded into a novel with the same title (1953), then revising and expanding it again with the title _The City and the Stars_ (1956). ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2023, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/6 "2023-11-20T23:55:06Z")
Arthur C. Clark’s _The Sentinel_ was reworked into _2001: A Space Odyssey_. ---
**Author:** ![Briny\_Deep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/briny_deep/32/17188_2.png) [@Briny\_Deep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Briny_Deep)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/7 "2023-11-21T00:14:06Z")
John Varley’s _Millennium_ (see also the K. Kristofferson/C. Ladd movie) was based on his own short story “Air Raid.” ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/8 "2023-11-21T00:17:46Z")
The OP didn’t rule this out, so how about we go back aways? E. E. Smith’s “Lensman” series was retrofitted with all of the stories in _Triplanetary_ by the time they saw print as novels. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/9 "2023-11-21T01:00:25Z")
Orson Scott Card’s _Ender’s Game_ was first a short story. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/10 "2023-11-21T01:01:18Z")
_The Voyage of the Space Beagle_, _The Martian Chronicles_, _The Dying Earth_, and a number of Asimov’s novels were independent stories that were combined together into a “fix-up” (a term coined by A. E. van Vogt) of separate short stories or novella, which was actually pretty common with early sci-fi and fantasy writers when book publishers were reluctant to publish anthologies. Note that this different from the serialized publication of novels that was common with science fiction and fantasy in the “Golden Age”, although that was also related to the reluctance of book publishers to promote sci-fi and fantasy work. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Plutonium\_Chef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/plutonium_chef/32/11211_2.png) [@Plutonium\_Chef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plutonium_Chef)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/11 "2023-11-21T01:04:49Z")
Larry Niven fixed up his short story “Rammer” into the first chapter of his novel _A World Out of Time_. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/12 "2023-11-21T01:06:24Z")
Interesting that all the examples given in this thread so far have been science fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/13 "2023-11-21T01:09:19Z")
Asimov’s Nightfall and The Bicentennial Man were also later expanded into novels, though I think in both cases most of the work was done by another writer. Several of Philip K. Dick’s stories started off as short stories, then got turned into movies, and then had novelizations written of the movies (usually by different authors). ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/14 "2023-11-21T01:49:51Z")
Here are 3 stories that are definitely not science fiction. Thomas Mann’s _Felix Krull_: [Confessions of Felix Krull - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_Felix_Krull) And F. Scott Fitzgerald described his short story “Winter Dreams” as “a sort of first draft of the Gatsby idea.” It was written in 1922, 3 years before Gatsby. [Winter Dreams - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Dreams) I can’t find a source for it, but Mary O’Hara’s _My Friend Flicka_, a 1941 children’s novel which inspired several film and TV versions, was adapted and enlarged from a short story. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/15 "2023-11-21T02:15:33Z")
**Carrie** by Stephen King was a short story which he threw away – feeling he knew nothing about high school girls and having periods. His wife, Tabitha, saved the day (and quite possibly his career) by fishing it out of the trash and telling him to have another try. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/16 "2023-11-21T02:15:39Z")
Most examples are from science fiction because they used to do it all the damn time. Get money from the magazine for selling a short story and then get more money by expanding it or appending to it for the novel. There must be thousands of examples. Roger Zelazny did it regularly as a younger writer. “…And Call Me Conrad” was expanded into novel form as _This Immortal_. “He Who Shapes” was expanded into _The Dream Master_. Two novelettes, “Dawn” and “Death and the Executioner”, turned up as chapters of _Lord of Light_. The short version of _Damnation Alley_ was expanded into a novel of the same name. Mystery writers have a tougher time doing this: the murderer is the murderer. Some exceptions came back in pulp days, when the action is pure adventure rather than whodunit, and so could be expanded. This happened on occasion in the early days of paperbacks, which overlapped with and then caused the death of the pulps. Mainstream writers often do take a short story and expand it into a novel. Usually the short story is published in a literary magazine. E.g., in 1923 Virginia Wolff published “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” in a small literary magazine called _The Dial_. Two years later she expanded it into _Mrs. Dalloway_. Larger magazines got into play as well. J. D. Salinger published “I’m Crazy” in _Colliers_ in 1945 and incorporated the story into _Catcher in the Rye_. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/17 "2023-11-21T02:26:31Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > novelettes Tell the truth: if I’d used that word, you’d have rapped my knuckles with a ruler. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/18 "2023-11-21T02:44:00Z")
Science fiction also has a history of “fix-ups” where an author turned several short stories into a novel. The first two books of Asimov’s Foundation novels were that. So was James Blish’s _Cities in Flight_. Clarke’s _Childhood’s End_ was expanded from a short story. From literary works, Vance Bourjaily wrote _The Man Who Knew Kennedy_ with one section a short story published before JFK was assassinated. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/19 "2023-11-21T02:57:29Z")
The Dan Simmons short story _Remembering Siri_ (published 1983) grew into _Hyperion_ (published 1989) and was integrated as part of a chapter in the novel. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/20 "2023-11-21T03:27:09Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > Tell the truth: if I’d used that word, you’d have rapped my knuckles with a ruler. 😉 No, no, no, never! Both the Hugo and Nebula Awards have a “Best Novelette” category, spelled that way. I’ve lived all my reading life with Novelette as the spelling of the word. I know some people spell it novelet, but that’s not the sf way. Or my spellchecker’s, it seems. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447.md?page=2)