Dan Hartland

I’m hacking through the Booker list right now, so hear you. But I selfishly really want to know what you make of Airside!

Some great titles there, so I will restrain myself from telling you to queue-jump it!

Extremely pleased to see this, not least because Gautam is of course an SH comrade. But also, and as I wrote for @sffoundation.bsky.social, The Sentence is a real achievement that deserves a much wider audience - and heralds further goodies to come.

Hooray and congrats all round.

It’s Not a Cult by Joey Batey It’s Not a Cult is obsessed with mediation.

One for the weekend at SH today: @hanacarolina.bsky.social doing some proper thinking about Joey Batey’s It’s Not A Cult (@bloomsburyraven.bsky.social).

She argues that the novel’s particular “aesthetic approach … challenges the romanticisation of artists … and sensationalisation of relationships.”

Recent Reading: <i>Big Time</i> by Jordan Prosser There's something almost irresistibly appealing about the musical biopic. It combines melodrama and genuine accomplishment. It conveys profo...

New blog post: on Jordan Prosser's delightfully gonzo debut novel Big Time, which crosses Almost Famous with 1984 and a drug that can make you see the future, and asks: what power does art have during times of fascism? wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2025/10/rece...

Proposal: A Collected Criticism of Graham Greene's film criticism.

Critical Friends Episode 16: Length and Breadth Dan Hartland is joined by Redfern Jon Barrett and Nileena Sunil to discuss those novels that feel too short or not long enough: what's behind that feeling we have that a text is lacking something, …

Beyond Redfern and Nileena, writers cited in this episode: @chloroformtea.bsky.social, Doris Lessing, @jonathanstrahan.bsky.social, Margaret Atwood @garykwolfe.bsky.social, Sophia Ajram, @indrapramitdas.bsky.social, Ira Levin, @nghivo.bsky.social, @pdjeliclark.bsky.social. And G. Boccaccio, obvs.

I’ve only just seen this, but “eerie comfort” seems to me a very apposite phrase.

Critical Friends Episode 16: Length and Breadth Dan Hartland is joined by Redfern Jon Barrett and Nileena Sunil to discuss those novels that feel too short or not long enough: what's behind that feeling we have that a text is lacking something, …

In the light of this week’s Critical Friends episode, especially struck by how Electra focuses on both The Witch Roads’ scale *and* its concision/economy. Her description of this reminds me of why I still love Steph Swainston work - it’s a tough balance to strike, but so productive.

The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott The Witch Roads may be Elliott's most concise and economical book yet.

Always happy to carry an Electra Pritchett review - you can rely on her for incisive genre analysis worn enviably lightly.

Case in point, here she is on The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott (@tordotcom.bsky.social): "If epic fantasy is about scale, then Elliott has written the best I’ve read in years."

In which @casella.bsky.social and I both discuss novels of two halves, and in which Nileena Sunil and @yarntheory.bsky.social both sing the praises of @indrapramitdas.bsky.social.

This would be impressive co-working with @mealofthorns.bsky.social had we done any actual co-working.

I'm glad! It's such a rich one that I'm confident we'll return to it in some fashion.

Yep yep. I would be extremely keen to return to this topic - novellas specifically - if some useful texts come along. Will keep my eyes peeled.

Uh-oh, I'm in danger.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Is there a single paradigm of the novella, though? Like my brief nod to Boccaccio in the episode, I think there are a number of novella-types we might select from literary history. But the 19th-century German version seems to me, too, the most identifiably specific.

1. This is excellent.

2. As @redfernjon.bsky.social points out, marketing categories are blurry & often arbitrary

3. This is esp. true of SF&F where many of the works labeled as novellas are short novels but aren’t marketed as such

4. More SF&F writers should learn to write actual novellas

Are we talking about needing more SFFnal Sorrows of Young Werther? Because I think you might be talking about needing more SFFnal Sorrows of Young Werther.

Having now listened to the latest AMoT, I note that both @casella.bsky.social and I spend some time of our respective episodes talking about novels of two halves. Zeitgeists are so uncanny.

(I’d love to say we plan this stuff. We do not plan this stuff.)

Yes. I should probably have asked Redfern to talk more about the pressures of the market on authors, but it didn’t feel fair.

It was a fun discussion! Plenty more to say, of course - as always.

You have a point! (You absolutely have a point.)

(It is not a real thing. This won’t be the first time you are disappointed in us.)

Have you considered taking the Critical Friends Drabble-to-Trilogy Challenge?

(S̶o̶r̶r̶y̶ g̶l̶a̶d̶ s̶o̶r̶r̶y̶ glad to hear it!)

Oh crumbs.

(A section of our discussion that was cut from the episode focused on another scholar, Judith Leibowitz [in Narrative Purpose in the Novella], who argued for the novella as a genre (!) defined by the “kind of shaping material” it deploys, its “double effect of intensity and expansion.”)

Counterpoint: what if a novel is just a novella that is slightly long

.@redfernjon.bsky.social on reading long and short books critically: "You can have breadth and have that work really well. You can have depth and have that work really well. It's not like there's one direction

"I think it’s really when the novel feels dissatisfying based on what it’s trying to do."

It was a blast, thank you! Also, we’re all really looking forward to that new novel now, so no pressure.

It’s not that we knew you’d need us. But it’s that we knew you’d need us.

Critical Friends Episode 16: Length and Breadth Dan Hartland is joined by Redfern Jon Barrett and Nileena Sunil to discuss those novels that feel too sure or not long enough: what's behind that feeling we have that a text is lacking something, o…

📣 NEW CRITICAL FRIENDS!

In a new ep of the @strangehorizons.bsky.social SFF criticism podcast, I talk with @redfernjon.bsky.social and Nileena Sunil about books that might be longer, and others that could be shorter.

How to read a text that offers too little, or too much, stuff? Some ideas.