Here are two paragraphs I posted over at Torque Control that I figured were worth cross-posting here:
Joe Sherry writes: “I don’t care how good the story is or who wrote it, I’m shutting down the moment I see catmen. I freaking hate catmen.”
I reply: “Hi Joe. I often meet people who detest a particular fantasy notion, whether it’s elves or zombies or unicorns or time travel or talking cats or whatever. And of course all too often I meet people who hate any fantasy notion whatsoever. So it goes. Personally I love all fantasy notions with heedless abandon, even the cheesiest of them … perhaps even especially the cheesiest of them. ‘Catmen’ stories, whether it’s Larry Niven or Brian Jacques or yes, Thundercats, have meant a great deal to me, and I would hate to see them, or any other idea, banished forever from our stories.”
Jonathan McCalmont writes: “I must admit to not understanding why one would write stuff that didn’t consciously push the envelope.”
I reply: “Hi Jonathan. As to why would anyone ever want to write something that doesn’t consciously push the envelope … I dunno, maybe because often there’s some really great stuff that fits just fine in the envelope. When I think of my favorite books and stories, a fairly high percentage of them don’t ‘push the envelope’ in any way that I can identify — they’re just great stories about characters that I care about. And many of my favorite books and stories do ‘push the envelope.’ And I’m glad to have both. Requiring that everything push the envelope all the time would seem to me to lead to a pointlessly escalating cycle of grotesquery and obscurantism, in a way that would deprive us of the wonderful variety of potential stories.”
Leave a Reply