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.
no subject
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.