Comment by jerf

If, for the sake of argument, a traditional story involves plot, setting, and characters, short stories are considered to be doing pretty well if they can come out swinging on all three. When you add "ideas" to the mix, it is inevitable that something else is going to suffer. Optimizing on that many dimensions is just not a reasonable request.

It's part of why science fiction has so frequently had such flat characters... there just isn't room with the complicated plots, the uniquely-demanding settings (you can't just say "Bob banged open the saloon doors" if the equivalent of "Bob", "saloon", and "doors" have to be explained to the reader), and the introduction of "ideas" into the mix. Insisting that they all also be character studies would be asking for the moon.