Does fantasy have to innovate the genre?

[Peregrin Toker]

II recently finished reading two W.P. Kinsella novels, The Iowa Baseball Conederacy and Shoeless Joe (which was turned into the 1989 movie Field Of Dreams). Kinsella essentially created situations where his protagonists experience subtle but powerful magick which goes unnoticed by the lumpen masses of the everyday world but which only happens when the time and place are right for the magick to work. In essence, both books were the same sort of subtle speculative fantasy which was the staple of writers like Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison; taking an otherwise ordinary situation and injecting one totally off-kilter element which affects everyone and everything from that point forward.

Hmmm... I'll think I'll go for such a situation in my fantasy story by having the High Ones (who I have decided to be rulers of the multiverse) to place the narrating sword in the hands of a man from modern-day Earth.

Or would that be too Weaveworld-esque?

[Patrick Degan]

Hmmm... I'll think I'll go for such a situation in my fantasy story by having the High Ones (who I have decided to be rulers of the multiverse) to place the narrating sword in the hands of a man from modern-day Earth.

But why bother with "High Ones", or narrating swords or a multiverse to be contended for?

[Peregrin Toker]

Hmmm... I'll think I'll go for such a situation in my fantasy story by having the High Ones (who I have decided to be rulers of the multiverse) to place the narrating sword in the hands of a man from modern-day Earth.

But why bother with "High Ones", or narrating swords or a multiverse to be contended for?

And yet another of my crazy ideas hits the thrash bin...

[Sindai]

And yet another of my crazy ideas hits the thrash bin...

You give up after one post? And one which wasn't even negative? Why not answer his questions instead?

[Peregrin Toker]

And yet another of my crazy ideas hits the thrash bin...

You give up after one post? And one which wasn't even negative? Why not answer his questions instead?

Okay - I'll do my best and give the premise another try:

In the story I'll think of writing, the multiverses are closely connected and when things go too wrong and the multiverse's existence is threatened by a problem which very few humans even notice.

However, there are a group of shadowy, near-omnipotent beings called the "High Ones" who are some sort of "guardians of the multiverse". They try to keep the space-time continuum stable and regulate those obscure portals which connects the universes with each other. (I will explain in the story why this is necessary)

But since so few of the inhabitants of the multiverse - human or not - know of these portals, the reality of the multiverse, the need to keep the different universes together by these near-unknown portals, the problems threatening them, the High Ones are very busy keeping the multiverse from collapsing. And therefore, when the various problems confronting them become too much to handle, they choose one person from one of the universes to be the Champion of the High Ones and wield a certain sword which is an entity in itself.

This sword, which is the narrator, also uses its vast telepathic abilities to guide the Champion of the High Ones and maintain a contact between him/her and the High Ones.

Original enough for you?

[Drooling Iguana]

Okay - I'll do my best and give the premise another try:

In the story I'll think of writing, the multiverses are closely connected and when things go too wrong and the multiverse's existence is threatened by a problem which very few humans even notice.

However, there are a group of shadowy, near-omnipotent beings called the "High Ones" who are some sort of "guardians of the multiverse". They try to keep the space-time continuum stable and regulate those obscure portals which connects the universes with each other. (I will explain in the story why this is necessary)

But since so few of the inhabitants of the multiverse - human or not - know of these portals, the reality of the multiverse, the need to keep the different universes together by these near-unknown portals, the problems threatening them, the High Ones are very busy keeping the multiverse from collapsing. And therefore, when the various problems confronting them become too much to handle, they choose one person from one of the universes to be the Champion of the High Ones and wield a certain sword which is an entity in itself.

This sword, which is the narrator, also uses its vast telepathic abilities to guide the Champion of the High Ones and maintain a contact between him/her and the High Ones.

Original enough for you?

Maybe if the High Ones had laid off the whacky tobaccy, they would've been able to keep things from getting out of hand.

[dworkin]

A sientient object involved in making sure the universe doesn't shake itself apart?

What would make it interesting is if swords are entirely anachronistic in the cultures the hero must deal with. And the various dimensions are starting to make contact with each other with all the excitement that entails (war, trade, diseases, new technologies). Of course all these extra portals endanger the whole but you try telling a king/government/corp that their hugely profitable venture must stop because this magic sword says so...

[Peregrin Toker]

A sientient object involved in making sure the universe doesn't shake itself apart?

What would make it interesting is if swords are entirely anachronistic in the cultures the hero must deal with. And the various dimensions are starting to make contact with each other with all the excitement that entails (war, trade, diseases, new technologies). Of course all these extra portals endanger the whole but you try telling a king/government/corp that their hugely profitable venture must stop because this magic sword says so...

Sounds interesting. I'll not throw this project out of the window as I announced before...

[Peregrin Toker]

Progress report: Don't count on seeing any installments in the saga of the Sword of The High Ones for the next weeks - I'm currently spending most of my ability as an author continuing "The Wormhole War" and as such I've shelved the yet-as-unname tale narrated by a sword... until I will find it appropiate writing that.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I dson't know how much innovation really HAS gone on since the Greeks or the Norse chroniclers...

I still see the same plots being rehashed.

[Peregrin Toker]

BTW - I have a new idea for my fantasy story in the making:

The High Ones will choose as their Champion an impoverished punk who drives a rocket-powered lawn tractor...