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.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2005-09-26 04:27 pm (UTC)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.