a little fervor for your Monday morning

[truepenny]

I'm signing on to ursulav's new crusade. (Not, you know, that it's the bad sort of crusade where you sack Constantinople and die horribly and that sort of thing. It's more an interior crusade of trying to remember what fantasy can do instead of what we're accustomed to it doing. Like when they tell you to sack Constantinople, saying, "Well, actually, I think I'd rather go hang out on Crete and learn to talk to the minotaurs.") Because, dammit, she's right.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

In a way, I think she's right, but in another way, doesn't it depend on what one wants to accomplish with one's work? Are exploring boundaries obligatory, or should they be left to those with the knack for it?

Granted, I'm coming at this from the SF side, but I do have a fantasy in mind that I'm sure some folks would call same old same old. OTOH, I'm happy with the storyline since I want to explore character and play with some history, and that's what I'm doing. For that matter, that's what I'm doing in the SF as well. If I'm happy doing what I'm doing, should I really try to do something else? More importantly, am I *obligated* to try to do something else because I'm in the position where I can?

No answers here. Just questions, and a little concern.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that I would prefer to write things that have something new to say, and most but not all of the time I would prefer to read things that have something new to say, and there's a place for comfortably familiar and reassuring and a place for new things to say and I'm damned if I'm going to generalise any of that into a prescription for anyone else, beyond a wistful hope that at some point the marketing of SF and fantasy would get better at indicating how much of a given book is which.

I'm not at all minded to work with the kind of fantasy that has elves and dwarves and unicorns and a Dark Lord, because doing it in the manner of the most common take on it has no interest for me. Taking some of those elements and doing something entirely different and worthwhile with them - as frex the Secret Country books do with unicorns - is not without appeal, though. Particularly this stuff about very complicated magic systems. I think there are worthwhile things to be done with trying to capture the feeling of the edge of understanding that one gets being on a particular scientific cutting edge, frex, with a character working on the cutting edge of a complex magic system. I'm not aware of anyone doing anything like that - Lyndon Hardy's Master of the Five Magics is sort of in a similar direction but it feels more like engineering to me.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

No, of course not. I'm not talking about obligation, and there's nothing wrong with writing solidly within the genre tradition if that's what you want to do. I figure, as sf/f/h writers, we're obligated to tell the best stories we can to the best of our ability, and defining "stories" and "ability" has to be done on a case by case basis.

What Ursula said just happens to resonate extremely strongly for me, because:

1. when wearing my literary scholar hat, I'm a genre theorist more than anything else

2. The books I've been working on are secondary-world fantasy generically in the same camp as Tolkien and all his fanboyz.

3. I personally want to push the boundaries of the fantasy genre, to find out what it can do if I just lean on it a little harder.

There are lots of different ways to lean on it, mind you. One of them is character development. Another is treating a secondary world's history seriously, instead of just throwing in a Cataclysm to be sure nobody asks any awkward questions. And a third is trying to think outside the D&D box and trying to redefine "fantastical." None of these ways is necessarily more valuable than any other.

And, you know, nobody's keeping score.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

And, you know, nobody's keeping score.

Imho, there is some scorekeeping involved, mostly on the critical side of things. The work of Mieville and others like him definitely are considered more acclaim-worthy than the more MOR work that's out there. It can be irritating, speaking as someone who learned that when it came to one particular publication, her books were lumped with the "junk fantasy" and relegated to a certain reviewer forevermore. But it may be just the way it is if I decide to continue to write within certain boundaries, and explore areas that those on the critical side don't consider important. I need to hope that my readers don't feel the same way, and appreciate what I do try to do when I try to do it.

So, depending on the reaction you wish to elicit or the audience you wish to reach, there may be some obligation to push boundaries.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

And after rereading this, I realize that I really shouldn't try to post on the fly at the day job. Subject-verb agreement tends to suffer, among other things.

[iagor.livejournal.com]

Anime and Manga creators have been doing this for years. You want a talking duck in a pilot hat? Here, have one. Couple of martial artists swimming to China and coming back as a girl and a panda? Help yourself.

We, on other hand, are obsessed with pseudo-realism. "Oh look at this historical fantasy! It has un-period attitudes toward women and they said the candles were wax, when everyone knows the candles at that time period were made of fat."

Where is the light fantastic? Where are the stories of distant planets and improbable feats? They are out there, I know it :)

This craving for pseudo-realism sometimes makes me feel like I am entering an ass-kicking contest with my feet tied together.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

This craving for pseudo-realism sometimes makes me feel like I am entering an ass-kicking contest with my feet tied together.

Well, to an extent, but where's the fun in doing things the easy way ?

[iagor.livejournal.com]

Who said coming up with something weird was easy? :)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Just weird is easier than weird and coherent, IME.