# 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:** 3
**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 21, 2023, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/41 "2023-11-21T18:15:38Z")
I wonder why sci-fi is so dominant in these answers. Because the SD is so full of sci-fi fans, or because sci-fi itself is unusually given to short-story-to-novel conversions for some reasons. ---
**Author:** ![raspberry\_hunter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@raspberry\_hunter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raspberry_hunter)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/42 "2023-11-21T18:40:13Z")
I just finished rereading Nancy Kress’ _Beggars in Spain_, which was first a novella and then got two more sections added to it to make it a novel. (And then she made it a trilogy.) I think I read a lot more SF short stories than stories of other genres. ---
**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, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/43 "2023-11-21T19:03:20Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > > > Wasn’t the Shawshank Redemption originally a short story? > > Yes, but it wasn’t ever turned into a novel, which is what this thread is about. IIUC it was only ever a **novella** : “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” one of the four novellas published together as _Different Seasons_. Speaking of King, he has an early short story called “Jerusalem’s Lot” which IIUC is _not_ the basis for his novel _Salem’s Lot_. ---
**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, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/44 "2023-11-21T19:32:50Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > They presumably looked at the lengths of fictions that were being published and decided that this divided them closely enough into equal amounts in each category. Exactly. The Hugos started in 1953 as an award at the annual Worldcon (World Convention). Each committee, run by fans, decided what awards they would hand out. Novelette faded in and out. They didn’t standardize on Novel, Novella, Novelette, and Short Story until 1968 (for 1967 stories but called the 1968 award). The Nebulas, handed out at the annual banquet of the Science Fiction Writers of America, codified the listing as Wendell gave it from the start in 1966 (for 1965 stories and called the 1965 award. You may go aaaarrrggghhhhh now.) In 1965 most novels were still skinny and cheap. Although serialized novels were a thing since the early days, many magazines with less money ran what they billed as “complete novels” which were only around 30,000-50,000 words. These would fit nicely into half of an Ace Double or a Galaxy Science Fiction Novel paperback. No paperback house in the early 60s was ready to take a chance at 100,000 word sf novels, both because they thought the audience wouldn’t read them and because they have to charge more money for more paper. Samuel R. Delany published nine novels before he published a single short story and each was barely 40,000-50,000 words until _Nova_ in 1968, which wasn’t a whole lot longer. SF was widely deemed dead or close to it in 1960. Three-quarters of the magazines had disappeared; no paperback line was devoted to it; Asimov had left the field, and Bradbury and Clarke were finding new fields to plow; and almost no hardback publisher would touch anyone with a name lesser than Heinlein. Then a tsunami of young writers entered the field and took it over in a split second, many of them like Zelazny, Le Guin, and Disch found by Cele Goldsmith for the otherwise dying _Amazing_ and _Fantastic_ magazines. The only parallel was rock ‘n’ roll, supposedly moribund in 1963 and world-conquering by the end of the decade. I found both rock and magazine sf in 1963, when I turned 13, the absolutely perfect age to grow up to college-level as both mediums did the same. Delany’s tenth sf novel was the 1000-page _Dhalgren_ that eventually sold a million copies. The audience in 1975 was thoroughly prepped for it. Long has been in ever since, and novellas and novelettes are mostly art fiction, not the heart of the genre. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2023, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/45 "2023-11-21T23:32:27Z")
Neville Shute’s _On the Beach_ was originally originally a four-part newspaper series. From Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > Shute’s initial story was published as a four-part series, _The Last Days on Earth_ , in the London weekly periodical _[Sunday Graphic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Graphic)_ , in April 1957. For the novel, Shute expanded the storyline. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/46 "2023-11-22T01:30:19Z")
Mercedes Lackey wrote a short story - Fiddler Fair - for one of the **Magic in Ithkar** shared world anthologies. She later turned it into the boom **The Lark and the Wren** , though set in its own world. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/47 "2023-11-22T01:41:24Z")
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction uses “novelet” in its table of contents ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/48 "2023-11-22T01:46:54Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Long has been in ever since, and novellas and novelettes are mostly art fiction, not the heart of the genre. Novellas are coming back a bit - or at least I see them on bookshelves much more than I did a few decades ago; back then you’d only see novellas in magazines, but recently novellas like “The Dispatcher,” “All Systems Red,” “Slow Bullets,” “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” etc. are getting hardcover editions. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/49 "2023-11-22T01:51:20Z")
A long time ago, I read and liked _In Hiding_ by [Wilmar H. Shiras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmar_H._Shiras), which she later expanded into _[Children of the Atom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Atom)_. (I bought that recently in e-book form but was disappointed in the novel.) ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/50 "2023-11-22T01:53:48Z")
I think that one is a fixup of several short stories, too. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/51 "2023-11-22T01:56:21Z")
Yes it was. I was hoping the novel would work better than it did. ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/52 "2023-11-22T02:03:46Z")
H. Beam Piper’s novel _Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen_, published in 1965, was stapled together from a pair of magazine-published novelettes. The first of the novelettes (“Gunpowder God”) started out life as a rewrite of “When In The Course”, set on the remote planet of Freya rather than a different time-line of Earth, and with a group of exploring and colonizing Terrans serving as the protagonists rather than a singular policeman. Apparently, John W. Campbell didn’t like the setting, which implied parallel evolution, and suggested moving the story into Piper’s Paratime millieu. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/53 "2023-11-22T02:27:57Z")
Niven’s Protector was two novellas I think, too. They fit together pretty well though ---
**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 22, 2023, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/54 "2023-11-22T02:49:10Z")
I don’t think print novellas ever disappeared entirely because writers compete for the always too few outlets that publish them. The Hugo nominations from this decade are overwhelmingly from [Tor.com](http://Tor.com)\*; a majority of Nebula nominations are as well. _Clarkesworld_ (an online magazine) has a few. The others are mostly from authors’ collections. \* Tor publishes both print and online and I didn’t check the origins of the stories. But when every nomination is from one place, the assumption must be that the rest of the world has few competing choices. Your examples are from big-name authors, always exceptions. And to nitpick, “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” was originally a trade paperback/ebook. I’ve always heard that the lore among mainstream publishers was that novellas sell badly so we don’t buy them. That may have changed with the hundreds of boutique publishers today. But after the big slick magazines stopped publishing fiction (Rex Stout published almost three dozen Nero Wolfe novellas in _American_ magazine from the mid-30s until it folded in the mid-50s), sf mags were known as a haven for longer fiction that the rest of the writing world didn’t have. > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > A long time ago, I read and liked _In Hiding_ by [Wilmar H. Shiras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmar_H._Shiras), which she later expanded into _[Children of the Atom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Atom)_. She did three linked stories for _Astounding_. [Marty Greenberg at Gnome Press](https://gnomepress.com/32-children-of-the-atom/) asked her to write two more stories to bulk the series up to book length. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/55 "2023-11-22T03:15:40Z")
Piper was one of my favorite authors. His short story, “He Walked Around the Horses” is one of my three favorite short stories. The other two are Heinlein’s “The Man Who Traveled in Elepnants” and Robinson’s “True Minds” ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/56 "2023-11-22T03:23:38Z")
No doubt you know better than I do - I just don’t recall seeing even big-name authors in late 20th century having standalone hardback novellas (the only one I recall seeing is Greg Bear’s _Heads_ which stood out in my mind because it was so rare to see - though of course, at 150 pages, it was almost the length of a 1960s novel). > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Your examples are from big-name authors, always exceptions. And to nitpick, “The Freeze-Frame Revolution” was originally a trade paperback/ebook. Was Martha Wells a big name before the Murderbot books? (and thanks for the correction on Freeze-Frame Revolution - my mistake). ---
**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 22, 2023, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/57 "2023-11-22T04:06:52Z")
That’s a hard question to answer. _All Systems Red_ appeared in 2017. She had both a Hugo and a Nebula nomination by then, for different stories. She had been writing novels since 1995. Her Raksura series - five novels and two short story collections - got a Hugo nomination for Best Series in 2018, same year as _All Systems Red_ got all the awards. I think the clincher is that _All Systems Red_ was published as a trade paperback/ebook and didn’t have the hardback edition until 2019. Of course, [Tor.com](http://Tor.com) was the publisher for all of those. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/58 "2023-11-22T09:47:29Z")
Are we counting stuff that was serialized in magazines before the novel was completed, like UNCLE TOM’S CABIN or THE PICKWICK PAPERS? ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/59 "2023-11-22T11:52:48Z")
Another non-science-fiction example: Franz Kafka’s three novels all were published posthumously by his close friend Max Brod, and all were unfinished. But the first chapter of “Amerika” (or “Der Verschollene”, “The Man Who Disappeared”) was one of the few works by Kafka that got published during his lifetime, in 1913 as the short story “Der Heizer” (“The Stoker”). > **[The Stoker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stoker)** > > "The Stoker" (original German: "Der Heizer") is a short story by Franz Kafka. Kafka wrote it as the first chapter of a novel that Max Brod titled Amerika and that has subsequently been translated as The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika) and as Amerika: The Missing Person, but Kafka abandoned the novel in 1913 and published the one completed chapter alone as a pamphlet later that year. Since his death, it has usually been published along with the uncompleted fragments of Amerika. > Sixteen-year-old Kar... > **[Amerika (novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika_(novel))** > > Amerika, (German working title Der Verschollene, "The Missing") also known as The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika), Amerika: The Missing Person and Lost in America, is the incomplete first novel by author Franz Kafka (1883–1924), written between 1911 and 1914 and published posthumously in 1927. The novel originally began as a short story titled "The Stoker". The novel incorporates many details of the experiences of his relatives who had emigrated to the United States. The commonly used t The story d... ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447/60 "2023-11-22T15:56:24Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > E. E. Smith’s “Lensman” series was retrofitted with all of the stories in _Triplanetary_ by the time they saw print as novels. So _that’s_ why I have quantum discontinuities in my memories and my xmex-like snout! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/short-stories-turned-into-novels/993447.md?page=4)