FORMER CHILD STAR SHINES FOR EARTH

 

Shirley Temple Black, U.S. delegate to the U.N., 1969.

Fifty years ago this month, a former child star known the world over, her once-golden curls grown dark and tamed into a business-like bun, stepped onto an international stage to address the problem of human pressure on the environment.

Speaking as the U.S. delegate to the first-ever United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Shirley Temple Black urged her listeners in the final plenary session to unite with empathy and humility to restore the world for future generations. “We are trustees of the earth they will inherit.”

“[Humanity],” she continued, “with the wonderful and terrible powers that science has put in [our] hands, stands in greater need than ever before of an ethic to guide [our] steps,” she said. “The environmental warnings we see around us are warnings not only to our engineering skills, but to our spirits.”

The road to Black’s triumphant performance on that diplomatic stage in 1972 was a bumpy one, despite, or perhaps in part because of, her worldwide fame as a child actor beginning at age three in the 1930s. As she herself put it in an excerpt from an unpublished memoir given to the Smithsonian by her heirs, “The name, Shirley Temple, still opens doors for me. But Shirley Temple Black still has to perform, or the doors will close.”

President Richard Nixon had named her the U.S. delegate to the U.N. in the fall of 1969, just as the organization was gearing up for the big international conference on the environment in Stockholm to take place in 1972. Black threw herself into the planning wholeheartedly, recognizing the importance of the issues. But she quickly found herself sidelined by chauvinist attitudes at all levels—by higher ups at the U.N. who “neglected” to send her crucial data on time and, worse, by members of her own team.

At one planning meeting, Christian Herter, director of the State Department’s Office of Environmental Affairs, whose role was vice chair of the U.S. delegation in Stockholm, made his feelings clear. According to Black’s memoir, “He had ignored me after the introductions, but finally turned and said with a patronizing smile, ‘And now, Madam Deputy, will you kindly take our requests for coffee? You can bring it from the machine down the hall.’”

You younger folks may be shocked, but this was typical for the time, no matter how far a woman had risen in the ranks. Yet Black handled the insult—like all the others—with grace. As she wrote, “Macho attitudes usually fall victim to hard work, timely humor, and an absence of resentment.” Remember, this was 50 years ago. We ladies weren’t allowed to punch our aggressors in the nose.

Black’s approach—and her overwhelming charm—worked. At the conference, she worked the crowd of 1200 attendees from 113 of the U.N’s 132 countries deftly, making particular allies among developing countries. She was skilled at managing press conferences, using her acting skills to maintain calm, even when confronted with difficult questions about the U.S. and Vietnam, and she argued for compromise “midway between passion and timidity,” as she put it, despite the heated rhetoric of the Chinese delegation, which blamed U.S. industry for much of the world’s pollution.

In the end, the Stockholm conference was a success, establishing the first parameters for global environmental cooperation which steered all international diplomacy around the issue leading up to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janerio. That in turn ultimately led to the Paris Agreement, the global treaty on climate change adopted by most countries in 2015. The Stockholm conference also had more concrete results, in establishing the United Nations Environmental Program and proposing an immediate ten-year moratorium on commercial whaling (a moratorium that has since been extended).

Shirley Temple Black was one of few women delegates to that first environmental conference. Now notable women like Patricia Espinosa of Mexico and Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica have made their mark on the international environmental scene. At the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow last year, one third of all party representatives were women. Not yet representative of the world’s population, but better than it was in 1972, when Shirley Temple Black overcame all odds to perform on a new and much bigger stage.

Cheers, Donna

Information for this post provided by: “Shirley Temple Black's Remarkable Second Act as a Diplomat,” by Claudia Kalb, Smithsonian Magazine, June, 2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/shirley-temple-black-second-act-diplomat-180980038/

The vagaries of genre or where does my book fit?

Laurie's recent post about science fiction romance as a genre resonated with me. I sometimes wonder how big the market is for stories like mine. I can't in all conscience adorn my covers with beautiful male chests, although I'll admit I did try it, a long time ago. (See left) I suspect it worked, too, because readers at least read the blurb. But over time, my stories have become less explicit when it comes to sex, and I believe lots of man-titty signals explicit sex. On the flame scale, I wouldn't put my books at more than 2-3. They're not fade to black when the bedroom door closes, but you wouldn't want to use them as a 'how to'.

Science fiction is such a hard genre to define and the merge with fantasy is unavoidable. We write about 'science' that does not exist. It may in the future, but it's impossible now. Artificial gravity, forms of faster-than-light travel, advanced artificial intelligence, lifelike avatars, alien beings - the list goes on. It's not magic. We don't have magic in our SF worlds. But we can have shifters, vampires, strange alien psi powers and the like. Anything, really - as long as we claim a scientific explanation.

Anne McCaffrey's much-loved Pern series is one that has often been poo-pooed by the SF purists. It has dragons and mental telepathy, so it's fantasy. But the dragons are genetically engineered local species, with powers that evolved so the little fire lizards could escape the ravages of thread. Somebody once described the dragons as an ecologically sustainable air force. I like that. As far as I'm concerned, that's SF, not fantasy. As we say in the copyright notice on our books, "any resemblance to any person (or animal) is purely coincidental".

I actually find it harder to fit the romance half of the title. I'd be much more comfortable being in Science Fiction - romance. Genre, you see. It’s all about marketing. Into which pigeonhole does this book fit? I had some fun drawing a diagram to illustrate some of the complexities of genre.

 Some genres are pretty easy. In romance, the romance must be the focus of the plot, and it must have a happy ever after (HEA) ending or a happy for now (HFN) ending. I talked about the rules of romance here. But every genre has ‘shades of grey’ (yeah, yeah). Science fiction ranges between hard SF and soft SF. I discussed that here. On the hard SF – soft SF line, I’d put most space opera sort of in the middle. Star Wars and Star Trek would definitely be down the soft SF end, McDevitt’s books would be down the hard SF end. Romance has its continuum, too, often expressed in degrees of ‘heat’ (ie explicit sex scenes). In ‘sweet’ romance, the scene stops at the bedroom door. In erotic romance, the sex is explicit.

Now we get to science fiction romance, which is a combination of two genres. The SCIENCE romance – ROMANCE science line indicates what is the most important focus of the work. Would we have a story without the romance? Would we have a story without the science? I would suggest that real SFR should be down the science ROMANCE end – I think Avatar is a good example. Without the romance, there is no story. And in Avatar the explicitness of the sex component is most definitely ‘sweet’. Interestingly enough, one of McCaffrey’s early works, Restoree, is listed in science fiction. Yet Restoree is without a doubt science fiction romance, with a ‘sweet’ tag on the sex register. So SFR has been around for a while, mixed in with SF. But there isn't a lot. When I went looking, Linnea Sinclair's books were in romance, not SF.

It’s a pretty complex combination of components.

When I started writing, I knew I’d write SF because that’s what I like. But I wanted to add a bit of emotion to my writing. Most SF either seemed to leave out love and sex (Asimov), or it was so understated that it almost disappeared. An example of the latter is Moon’s Serrano series. SF was pulp fiction, with an expectation that it was fast-paced action-adventure. A response to a query I sent to a publisher around 2008 reinforced that belief. “Well written, but needs more action.” So I added more action. Still no cigar.

Okay, what about science fiction romance? Ah, but most SFR books are in the romance section. This has an advantage in one way, because romance sales are way, way more than SF. But it seems only a small subset of romance readers will read SF. Moreover, the expectation for the romance genre is that the romance is the core of the book. No romance, no story. I can honestly say that not one of my books fits that definition. Of them all, the Iron Admiral duo come closest and even with those two I had to do some serious tweaking for my editor to agree it had earned a romance tag.

We are told that sticking to one genre when writing is a good idea. And it makes sense. With that in mind, I resolved to write SFR, albeit with less emphasis on the romance.

What’s the outcome? Well, if you’re looking for a fast-paced, action-packed read with a complex plot – come on in, sit right down. Would you like to call that pulp fiction? Sure. Will there be some emotional elements, some sex? Sure. Love is a powerful emotion, sex is a fundamental driving force. You’ll find those things in everything I write. Do I do my research? You bet I do. I try to make my science sound, my history correct, my settings convincing. I suppose, when it comes right down to it, I’d prefer to see my books in the science fiction section. Both they, and I, feel more comfortable there - but SF is still not comfortable with soppy emotion. Just as well I don't have to pay a mortgage with my earnings.

Technology Catches up with Outer Planets...Again

Writing a novel set in the 2040s--just a little over a couple of decades from now--has presented some ongoing challenges for me as a writer. Our current technology is changing and evolving so quickly, it's hard to envision what we'll really be capable of in twenty years.

Think back in time. What was technology like in 1996? Back then, 16MB of ram was cutting edge, Apple was a failing company, MP3 didn't exist, CD-RW was just announced and DVDs wouldn't be invented for a year or so. Monochrome computer monitors were pretty much the standard. Cell phones were called "bricks" though some had a nifty flip-phone design. A very early version of digital cameras existed, but they weren't affordable (and they definitely weren't integrated into cell phones). GPS had just become fully operational in 1995 and Google Maps wouldn't be on the scene for another nine years (launched February 8, 2005). Things that we take for granted today as part of our everyday lives were just beginning to evolve.

In order to create the world of the 2040s, I had to consider the leaps in technology we've had in that time span and launch my imagination an equal number of years into the future. But technology has frequently caught up with (and sometimes validated or invalidated) my world-building.

For instance...this.

NASA is planning suspended animation cryosleep.

In The Outer Planets, the astronauts spend the first part of their voyage to Jupiter in stasis--what they also refer to not as cryosleep, but as hypersleep, suspended animation or S/A. It's hardly a new idea in science fiction (Aliens, 2010, Prometheus, Red Dwarf, etc.), and the reasons for taking this measure are pretty clearly explained in Chapter 2 of my novel:

Stasis. Suspended animation. S/A. Hypersleep. No matter what you called it, it was a necessary evil. Lissa took several deep breaths in an attempt to calm her jitters.

Humans did inefficient things like breathe, eat and drink. Hypersleep conserved massive amounts of air, food and water—precious commodities where they were going. Robot supply ships would arrive at intervals with fresh provisions once they were revived, but putting the crew into stasis for the year of travel both outbound and inbound made the five-year voyage possible.

Lissa fixed her attention on a middle-aged male being wheeled away in a sleeper, his body in a state of near-perfect suspension. His pale, lax expression reminded her of her father resting in his coffin. She clenched her jaw against a sudden surge of grief.

Not the time to be thinking those thoughts.

The current NASA planning only calls for a duration of two weeks, where my crew is put into S/A for about a year...in both directions.

It works for both the reasons stated above, and also plot-wise, because what reader needs to slog through a year of their journey before they actually get anywhere interesting?

NASA though is looking at utilizing cryosleep to get astronauts to Mars, not Jupiter, so the duration is estimated to be only six months each way, rather than the year from Earth to Jupiter and Saturn to Earth (yes, Saturn is hugely further away than Jupiter, but a gravity assist from Jupiter will give them a lot of added velocity, plus they have this nifty tech called Gravity Gain that amplifies the Sun's gravity and only works for inboard flights within our solar system).

But this is where things start to get really exciting. And troubling.

On another front, science is exploring the EmDrive--a "propellant-less propulsion system" that shouldn't work...but does--which could get us to Mars in about 70 days (give or take on the orbital positions of the two planets). Now combined with cryosleep, we might really have some range. If we can reach Mars in 70 days, pairing the cutting edge propulsion technology with hypersleep--er, cryosleep--could easily make exploration of the entire solar system a reality by getting a human crew there in a matter of months--much, much faster than is currently feasible.

And that opens up all sorts of possibilities for space exploration of our solar system ala The Expanse.

But it does raise some potential problems for this author. The Outer Planets has a particularly tricky timeline where certain events must happen at certain points, and if EmDrive capabilities do prove to be feasible, the faster transit time to Jupiter and Saturn would definitely render my next novel obsolete (along with many, many other science fiction stories by much more famous authors). Though I've frequently had to "spiff" the near future novel as new technological advances are unveiled, the EmDrive would change everything.

I'll be keeping a close eye on these two evolving technologies in the months (and years) to come.

Have a great week!

Laurie

Let's hide the task force in a nebula!

I was killing some time the other day, having just managed to get into the Netflix service. I was hoping to see some of Star Wars: Rebels - but not in Australia, it seems. However, I did find Star Wars: the Clone Wars. So I watched a few episodes. They're fun, showing Count Dooku and General Grievous going head-to-head with the Jedi.

But one episode made me smile. The Jedi ships came out of hyperspace on the edge of a nebula, the plan being to sneak up on Grievous's flagship (on the other side of the nebula) without being noticed. There are two things a little bit dodgy about that.

The images in the cartoon showed the ships moving through a thick mist that looked a bit like the colour-enhanced image of Orion above. The reality is a bit different. If you look at the Orion nebula through a telescope it looks like a white mist. But surely the nebula would look very different up closer? Er, no. The nebula will look larger, meaning the light is dispersed over a larger area. This explains it rather well. So rather than sneaking up through a pea soup fog, the ships wouldn't even be going through a thin mist. #Fail.

But that's not all. So we come out of light speed at the edge of the nebula, right? Planning to take a shortcut through the billowing clouds. Well... nebulae are not localised patches of mist. Or at least, they are, for a given meaning of localised. As a ferinstance, the Orion nebula is 24 light years across. And it isn't even a big one. Assuming Grievous's flagship is on one side of the nebula and the Jedi force is on the other, the "shortcut" is going to take an awfully long time in normal space.

Hey - it's fiction. We all know Star Wars ships behave in vacuum the same way they would in atmosphere, don't we? But the reason I smiled when I watched the episode is because I knew those facts, having researched nebulae for a book I was writing at the time.

Gosh. Is there an elephant in this room?

However... the Universe is a remarkable place. You have only to look at the mind-boggling diversity we have already found in exo-planets. So perhaps, somewhere out there, we'll find tiny, dense nebulae as thick as a London fog that will hide strike forces. Who knows?

Will humans populate the exo-planets?

The more I read about the strangeness of our universe, the more I wonder if humanity will ever colonize other planets. There's not much chance we'll settle on a diamond planet and I have to wonder how we'd go on many of the 'earthlike' planets already pinpointed. We are such fragile entities, we humans.

Like all other animals we are closely attuned to our environment, more so than many of us realize anymore. In these days of electricity we can heat or cool our homes, spend half the night watching TV or reading books, source food from all over the world so nothing is ever out of season, cross distances that took years in days. Yet we cannot escape the environment which shaped us.

I think there are five vital factors we will not easily overcome.

Time

Time is relative. When it's 8am on a Thursday where I live, it's 6pm the previous day in New York. Yet it's the same 'time'. However, the elements that we use to measure time have a profound impact on our bodies. By that I mean the rotation of our planet, and its orbit around the sun. Whether we think the sun is rising where we are, or setting, our bodies are built to expect a 'day' of twenty-four hours or so, because that's how long it takes the Earth to revolve on its axis. What's more, if we are suddenly wrenched from one time of day to another, as happens with long distance air travel, it takes time for our bodies to adjust. (It's called jet lag.)

Gravity

We have evolved to suit the amount of force the planet exerts upon is. The advent of space travel and weightlessness has proved how important gravity is to our ability to function. Without gravity our bones lose density and muscles atrophy. Returning astronauts struggle to rebuild their bodies. In science fiction space ships have ways of providing gravity, either by centrifugal force, like the rotating space station in 2001: a Space Odyssey, or via an unspecified means of creating artificial gravity, found in Star Wars, Star Trek and the like. Long periods on a planet with low gravity is sure to have similar effects. Mars and the Moon are obvious examples. Sure, you can bounce around. But what happens if you come back to Earth? Or move on to another planet with much stronger gravity than Earth?

Atmosphere

Most of our atmosphere is nitrogen, with twenty-three percent oxygen and a bunch of other gases in smaller quantities, including carbon dioxide. It also has a level of density. There's more of it at lower altitude (see gravity). See what happens to mountain climbers if they climb before becoming acclimatised. Their bodies can't cope. And if that mixture of gases changes past a certain level of tolerance, then what? Sure, we can wear space suits. But that's not ideal if you're colonizing a new planet.

Temperature

Humans exist in an apparently wide range of climates, providing they can find protection from the elements. But the range is actually not that wide in the scheme of things. This article in New Scientist speculates that global warming of only about 11° would render many places on our own planet 'unlivable'.

Light

Earth orbits a G class star which emits light towards the red end of the spectrum. We're used to seeing colors in that light. If we lived on a world orbiting a cooler star with redder light, or a brighter star with more bluish light, we'd see colors differently. For example, with light from a red star, blues and greens would be brighter, and reds and oranges more subdued.

Humans are adaptable. That's why the species has been so successful. But even so, we've only ever had to adapt to the extremes of one planet. If humans are to venture to other planets I believe we will have two choices; terraform the planet into another Earth or modify the settlers to cope with the conditions. That would mean physically very different races of humanity occupying different planets.

And here again, SF can offer plenty of examples. Elizabeth Moon's Serrano series has terraformed planets, as does Jack McDevitt's universe in Slow Lightning. A different approach is taken in Moon and McCaffrey's joint effort, Sassinak, where members of the Star Fleet have different body characteristics, depending on which planet they come from.

I admit I don't take that route in my own writing. Like the Star Treks and Star Wars of this world, I simply assume all planets are earthlike, with only small variations in light, heat, time and gravity. I reckon I'm in pretty good company. Come on SF fans and writers, what do you do, what do you prefer? Can you think of other limiting factors? Or do you think I'm pessimistic?

The Fun of Research - Not So Warm Bodies in Space

After watching Warm Bodies, muse smacked me in the head with a story that would not let go. For some reason it set itself in an asteroid field and on a mining facility. I don't know why. The story required the female MC knew something about androids to make it work, and with space station Venus Ascendant (Terms & Conditions Apply) involved, something set in space rather than planetside made a good fit. Don't ask me. Muse already knew where she was going with this. I just write.

Anyway, 7K in I realised this was going to need research. I'd skim read an article on ion drives being more efficient than chemical thrusters, so I pulled that in. An article on self healing skin from waaaay back got dredged up and added to the notes. I'd already used stuff on nanotechnology repair systems so that wasn't hard to include. But then I needed to know about what would happen to a body in vacuum.

We've seen the films, right? Total Recall (the Schwarzenegger version) and what happened to people exposed to the lack of Martian atmosphere? I remember an episode of Blake's Seven - no, make that two - where people shot out into space simply exploded.

 

But I doubted these were true. I researched explosions in space a while back after a fellow author complained over the special effects in Star Wars during the space battles. That led me to question anything I'd ever seen in films. And I do want to make my stories scientifically realistic as far as I can.

The wonders of the internet are you can find the information pretty much everything (and so no excuse for lack of research). Type in 'what happens to a body in vacuum' and one of my first results was an article by NASA. Which led me to believe the source was reputable and accurate, unlike a lot of things you can find on the 'net.

And it was fascinating! Did you know you can survive half a minute or more in vacuum without long term damage? I didn't until then. Of course, you pass out in a few seconds from lack of oxygen, which will probably be a blessing if you aren't rescued soon. You shouldn't try to hold your breath as it will damage your lungs, much as it would with scuba divers (something else I didn't know). You will die, most likely from lack of air than anything else. The moisture in your mouth and eyes would vaporize. Your blood would only boil after about 90 seconds of exposure when your blood pressure drops and your heart stops beating. You won't explode although some bloating would occur. You can suffer bad sunburn from exposure to ultraviolet light, but you won't freeze straight away - in fact, freezing would be your least concern. Your skin will go blue due to hypoxia. If you're rescued within 90 seconds and oxygen administered, you should fully recover. After that time, resuscitation isn't possible.

All these facts I devoured. This was proper science I could put in my story, and debunk some of the cinematic myths too. And the best thing? I'd actually already got most of it right by myself. True, my victim wasn't really human so I thought I could cheat on the biology side, but having actual scientific confirmation made my geeky little heart flutter. There's at least one thing I won't get picked at by the real science nerds. Well, I hope not...

BTW, since I also looked this up, a dead body in vacuum would not rot but become mummified due to the vaporizing of its moisture content. :P

If you're looking for reliable research sources, why not check out the new Research Lounge on this blog by clicking on the page tab below the blog banner. It's a great place to start!

Articles used in my research -
1. Human Body In A Vacuum (NASA)
2. What happens to the human body in a vacuum?
3. Outer Space Exposure
4. What happens to a dead body in space

Pippa's Journal

My monsters are back to school! Today is my first full day without them after seven weeks. Which means back to work for me. I need to tidy up my blog and website and page, get review hunting for Gethyon, check out dozens of tweets and emails about promotion...where do I start?! Plus the three short stories and one novella I've set myself to finish by the end of this year. Oh, boy...

Ping Pong
Donna, I hope you're feeling better now!

Why Kissing is Good - For You And Your Characters

But you knew that already, right? There's nothing like a smooch with the love of your life, whether new or old, to make you feel wonderful. To make you feel loved and wanted, and maybe even more. And the same is true with your characters. If they've been building up to that kiss for pages and pages, keeping you waiting, it creates great tension. Or maybe more conflict when it does happen. After all, one of them might not be so keen on the kiss!

And of course, there's some good old science as to why kissing is beneficial, aside from stirring up your libido. So let's look at some of the reasons why it not only makes you feel great, but is very, very good for you indeed. And for your characters too.

1. Kissing is excellent for the health of your heart. Not just emotionally, but physically too. Kissing can help stabilize your cardiovascular activity, decrease blood pressure AND decrease that nasty cholesterol doctors are always warning us about. And all without eating all those fancy special butter-substitue spreads and yoghurts. Which would you prefer?

2. Instead of dieting and slogging your guts out at the gym, three passionate kisses a day can double your metabolic rate, helping you lose up to a pound in weight. I think I know which workout I'd prefer. And writing those kisses will make your readers happy too.

3. This may be a little more off-putting (the thought, not the act) but during a kiss, your body secretes natural antibiotics in your saliva. There's also a natural anaesthetic in saliva that helps relieve pain. So, if you're writing an action scene, all the more reason for your heroine/hero to give their injured love interest a big smooch. And good reason for them being more willing and able to carry on the fight - or whatever else the kiss may lead to.

4. Going a bit further now. Often kissing leads to something more intense, and I don't need to tell you how good that is for you, your characters and your readers. But as an added bonus oxytocin is released during sex - a natural painkiller that can help fight headaches and PMS symptoms. So even if your hero/heroine has been hurt, this could be a great remedy for them.

5. Being in love can literally make you high and cause a state of euphoria, due to the chemicals released by the brain. This could get your characters into a lot of trouble if it leads them to doing something rash or out of character, but then conflict makes for a good story. And of course, they get to kiss and make up.

So there you go. Five excellent health benefits to a good snog, as if you needed the excuse. And five good story reasons for your characters to do the same.

Action!

Tethered is back! It got the thumbs up from my freelance editor and some suggested edits, which I've been working on for the last week along with the synopsis and query. I'm hoping it'll be out on submission soon, and Gethyon's edits will then keep me nicely distracted while I wait on a response. I'm also working on another short story, this time for an in-house submission call for my publisher Champagne Books. It's a straight scifi, currently under the title of Flaming Angel. Along with my SFR Brigade anthology short and finally completing Samaritan - a short tale from my Traveller Universe - I could have a total of four titles out over the next year! Fingers and toes crossed.

There's also good news on the health front. Turns out my scary symptoms were just down to chronic anaemia, and while that's no fun it's a simple fix - hopefully. 

With Gethyon now due out this year, I've already started thinking about the blog tour, promotional venues and swag. This weekend I worked on some new bookmark designs. What do you think?

Happenings

Keir's cover is up in the You Gotta Read Cover Contest here at number 14. Voting hasn't started yet, but if you like a man with tattoos, please stop by and give him your vote! I know he'd appreciate it. ;)

The Happy Ending Blog Hop starts on Saturday and runs for a whole week. Join in here for your chance to win some fabulous prizes.

The SFR Brigade anthology deadline is fast approaching! It ends the 31st January, so get your submission in quick.

The SFR Galaxy Awards are coming! On the 31st January, the awards will be posted here.

Next week I'll be posting final(ish) details of the proposed Brigade version of Six Sentence Sunday. Just to clarify, this is open to ANY Brigade members whether published or not. For those still aspiring, this is a great way to start building that all important readership. You will not be excluded because you don't have a published work. 'Kay? :)

Ping Pong

Donna - I read the post on story length with interest - and some trepidation. While my Keir series of books are all standing at 65K and above for the three that are written (Keir itself was 105K and cut to 100K during edits at the publisher's request), most of my titles lately have been more in the novella length category. Maybe it's writing all these short stories that's done it. Maybe I've just learned to be more succint. But Tethered stands at 43K and I still feel the world building has depth to it. So I have to say I'm torn. I'd like to get back to writing some longer stuff for my own personal satisfaction! As for publishers - is it them or the readers driving for shorter stories? I see plenty of complaints by authors that a review has marked them down for  being too short. I think clearer labelling might help, but both my publishers and those I hope to submit to are open to word counts up around the 100K mark. Maybe part of the preference for writing novellas is also down to authors wanting to create a bigger backlist faster. They do say that writing the next book is the best marketing plan. I just hope I haven't made my novella too sketchy...

Laurie - great endings. I honestly could not think of a single book that had a spectacular ending. I think that's more down to my poor memory than never having come across one. Usually if I've enjoyed a book, the ending is always bad - because I don't want the story to finish, so no ending gives me the finale I crave for!