What Is Urban Fantasy, Anyway?

[akirlu]

ilona_andrews has an (alas, friends-locked) discussion on Urban Fantasy, wondering why she's not seeing any exemplars of it in the John W. Campbell Award (no, not that John W. Campbell Award, the other one) short list of this or previous years.

This made me realize that I'm not entirely clear on what people mean when they say Urban Fantasy. I get the feeling there may be two distinct usages going on there. In what I'll call the broader sense, it's just fantasy set in an urban or contemporary setting, incorporating some fantastic elements with an otherwise familiar environment -- in this sense it seems to blur rather close to the borders of magic realism. Examples of that kind of urban fantasy would include Emma Bull's War for the Oaks, Terri Windling's Borderlands series, Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age books, and Neil Gaiman's more or less everything. In what I'll call the narrow sense, you find a closely circumscribed subset of Urban Fantasy in the broad sense. Urban Fantasy in the narrow sense seems to be more formula driven, and more closely allied with supernatural romance. There are a lot of hyphen detectives. Wizard-detectives, witch-detectives, vampire-hunter-detectives, and most of them are young, attractive, and a bad-ass. Taken collectively, I'd be tempted to call them Buffy-Sues. Examples of what I'm thinking of here include Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan books, and Hamilton's Merry Gently books.

In the broad sense of Urban Fantasy, I think Ilona is just mistaken -- Matt Ruff's Bad Monkeys is, I think, Urban Fantasy and up for a Campbell. In the narrow sense, well, if the narrow sense is what you mean by Urban Fantasy, then I'm wondering where the Campbell-award calibre books are, because I haven't seen any.

But am I making up this distinction between Urban Fantasy, broad and narrow? Is Urban Fantasy really only one of these categories, and if so, which one? What do you call Urban Fantasy?

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. I have to be careful that I know what definition someone is using for urban fantasy, because if they're talking about Wizard of the Pigeons, we're having a totally different conversation than if the book they're talking about has a headless chick in leather pants on the cover.

I am not opposed to all books with headless chicks in leather pants, although I hatehateHATE that cover design. But it's certainly a very different thing.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

See, chicks in leather pants are in urban drag. Their existence doesn't require a city. (Same goes for vampire police procedurals.)

Wizard of the Pigeons? City is key.

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

Interesting question. I think in the UK it's even more difficult to draw that line, because you get Mike Carey's Felix Castor novels straddling the divide. Felix is an exorcist-detective in a London which includes the undead in many forms, but it is a dick-noir world, and definitely not Buffy-Sue. Plus we've had a slew of TV programmes like that, from Strange to Ultraviolet.

I think of the Ankh-Morpork Pratchetts as Urban Fantasy in a way, certainly as opposed to Rural Fantasy - I'm not fussed about the setting being contemporary or even "real world" urban, but for me it's about Urban versus Rural.

So Mieville and Stross are Urban Fantasists too, as well as Charles Dickens ...

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

Stross looks to be sneaking SF disguised as urban fantasy hybrid stuff given the last book.

What is Strange? I really liked Ultraviolet.

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

Strange was about the relationship between an ex-priest who did a few too many exorcisms for the church establishment's liking, and a scientist working as a nurse while she brings up her child alone. She and her child have a demonic encounter, and it goes from there. Strange runs a sort of private demon hunting business, and there is a priest who's trying to stop him.

Strange was played by the guy who was Jeff in Coupling, the nurse was Samantha Janus (mostly TV work, now in East Enders), Strange's assistant was th guy who is the comic student sidekick in Primeval. The priest was the great late and much lamented Ian Richardson, who always made a wonderful evil smirking guy.

I think there was a one-off to introduce it, and then a season. We hoped it would come back, as it did quite well, but it seems to have vanished in the mists. About 5 years old, maybe?

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

Great, thanks very much. Sounds very interesting.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

With The Atrocity Archives in Charlie's oeuvre, I think he fits into the urban fantasy category whether you include contemporary "real world" urban, or not.

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, was thinking of The Merchant Princes.

Absolutely, this is.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

The only reason I can think why Tor markets those as fantasy is because fantasy is selling better now. It's clearly multiple-worlds, which is SF.

[k6rfm.livejournal.com]

I definitely remember a puzzling program item about Urban Fantasy at Eastercon; eventually I figured out that when I heard "Urban Fantasy" I thought War for the Oaks while the panelists thought "vampire police procedurals."

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I like "vampire police procedurals" -- that doesn't cover all of the ground in question but it does summarize a subset.

[davidlevine]

The "broad" definition is the older one, by 20-30 years, and is used by long-time readers (including myself); the "narrow" definition is the current marketing category, and is used by younger readers and some (mostly young or new-to-the-genre) publishing professionals. I hate the overload of an existing term, but now that the new meaning exists, when we hear the term used we just have to make sure we understand which meaning is intended.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. This seems right to me. Looking back, I'd say I thought I knew what "urban fantasy " meant, back in the day, and then later the term seemed to be pointing at something rather different, and smaller. But you're right, at this point the only defense is a good offense is clarifying what kind of urban fantasy is under discussion.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I'm in line with the consensus that War for the Oaks is urban fantasy in the older sense. I disagree with you about Bad Monkeys, but I don't know where I'd put it. Perdido Street Station also struck me as urban fantasy.

I haven't read any of the Buffy-Sue books, but I think you've nailed their category.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I realize it's not explicit, but I think you have to infer a fantasy element in Bad Monkeys. It's not done in a very overt way, but I think it's a book about Actual Good versus Actual Evil, gods and devils and such. Certainly claiming "science fiction" doesn't really account for some of the "technology" that's being fielded in the book.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

WftO was urban fantasy (called that) before the Buffy-Sue thing existed. And before Buffy existed. The canonical example, that hasn't been mentioned yet, is probably de Lint of that period. "Elves in cities" was the new insight.

The Anne Rice spin-off stuff is something else; urban horror, probably (which neatly encapsulates why I don't like it much).

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think there is an urban horror segment squirming around in there, too -- or possibly horror-romance. I've never been a huge fan of horror, myself. At least not most of it.

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

Most of the Buffy-Sue stuff in W H Smiths over here is now outside the SF/Fantasy/Horror shelves. There's a separate section called "paranormal romance".

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Oh, Wen Spencer's stuff is Urban Fantasy.

[grytpype-thynne.livejournal.com]

Cracking post. I've not read anything mentioned but I'm really engaged by the concept.

There's a bucolic myth of human existence: "at one with nature" that's fighting our actual drive to separate ourselves from the N word (and the classic SF standard of civilsation being defined as the distance we put between ousrelves and our excrement). I believe we've devised the concept of cognitive dissonance to get around this one. The urban existence is the eptiome of this and its contradictions offer marvellous creative opportunies. Must check out some more books (when we finally get the shelves built).

Back when I was trying to be an artist one of my (better) tutors asked if I thought my work was "urban" (Franz Kline meets the Boyle Family if you're in a Google frame of mind - albeit not done that well). I was really taken aback that I -and I suspect many of us - had never considered how utterly immersed we become in both the emotional and physical patina of the cityscape. It clouds the judgment without us knowing with the result that...

In the fictional rural setting there's vast tracts of nothing against which one can divine clearly which is "good" and which is "evil". However, the urban landscape is so cluttered that such perspective is denied. That's my working distinction, to get back to your question.

Yours, wittering on a panel this Novacon in Birmingham (probably...)