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I'm not an avid reader of urban fantasy; it seems to be essentially fairies/werewolves/vampires/angels&demons/whatever are real and Our Hero/ine has to foil their evil plots. There's a thin boundary between UF and paranormal romance, at least in today's market. I enjoy the Dresden Files, however, despite Harry being a jerk. I'm fond of plots with politics and double- or triple-crossing and shadowy conspiracies, which the Dresden Files have in spades.
(When book 10 came out, Phil said it went in a direction that wasn't like the previous books, and I asked if it went into the whole Black Council stuff, and he looked a little surprised & said yes. I pick up on things like that. Well, and it seemed pretty obvious that that's where it was going, and it would have been a huge let-down if Butcher had dropped the thread of that. Huh, maybe I have a better grasp of structure than I thought.)
But at its core, urban fantasy is just fantasy set in a city. Does that make Swordspoint UF? And I guess also Shades of Milk and Honey? Hell, by that definition, much of the Nightrunners series is UF.
I guess, technically, "U8: Alexanderplatz" is also UF: it's fantasy set in a city (a very small part of a city). This kind of weirds me out. But at ReaderCon, people *really* liked it. (I don't know about the other readings, since I missed them because of Stupid Illness, but I've been told it got a good reception at NASFiC.) One person told me she thought it would make a good basis for a novel.
But I don't *write* UF... I write space opera and politics and splosions and selflessness and duty and strength in adversity.
But Berlin keeps calling me. I want to write something set in Berlin, with the city as a character. During the Mauerzeit. Or in the days of the Kaisers. Or ... I don't know. It's just so vague, you know? This feeling like there's a story I want to tell, but I haven't found it yet. Or it hasn't found me.
It'll most likely involve trains. Trains are awesome. And train stations that aren't in service anymore because they were bombed.
(When book 10 came out, Phil said it went in a direction that wasn't like the previous books, and I asked if it went into the whole Black Council stuff, and he looked a little surprised & said yes. I pick up on things like that. Well, and it seemed pretty obvious that that's where it was going, and it would have been a huge let-down if Butcher had dropped the thread of that. Huh, maybe I have a better grasp of structure than I thought.)
But at its core, urban fantasy is just fantasy set in a city. Does that make Swordspoint UF? And I guess also Shades of Milk and Honey? Hell, by that definition, much of the Nightrunners series is UF.
I guess, technically, "U8: Alexanderplatz" is also UF: it's fantasy set in a city (a very small part of a city). This kind of weirds me out. But at ReaderCon, people *really* liked it. (I don't know about the other readings, since I missed them because of Stupid Illness, but I've been told it got a good reception at NASFiC.) One person told me she thought it would make a good basis for a novel.
But I don't *write* UF... I write space opera and politics and splosions and selflessness and duty and strength in adversity.
But Berlin keeps calling me. I want to write something set in Berlin, with the city as a character. During the Mauerzeit. Or in the days of the Kaisers. Or ... I don't know. It's just so vague, you know? This feeling like there's a story I want to tell, but I haven't found it yet. Or it hasn't found me.
It'll most likely involve trains. Trains are awesome. And train stations that aren't in service anymore because they were bombed.
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Date: 2010-10-07 04:54 pm (UTC)From:Though that said, there are plenty of fantasy novels these days that follow the tropes of the urban fantasy genre while having more traditional fantasy settings.
And you're right, many things calling themselves "urban fantasy" are really thinly disguised paranormal romance. Which is nice if that's what you like to read, but it drives me a little spare, too. ;)
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Date: 2010-10-07 05:08 pm (UTC)From:Yeah, I'm not anti-romance -- by any means -- but the paranormal romance isn't really my cuppa. And if I want to read a story about a wizard detective solving crimes, I don't want to find vampire orgies instead. (I've never read LKH, and from what I've heard, I shouldn't.)
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Date: 2010-10-07 05:17 pm (UTC)From:And you should stay very far away from LKH, yes. I read the first several and they were not good, but they were entertaining. I bailed as soon as she took a hard right turn into pr0nland and haven't missed her since.
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Date: 2010-10-07 08:30 pm (UTC)From:One thing that makes an "urban fantasy" book different from, say, a fantasy story that happens to involve a city, though, is that the story is heavily influenced by noir style, to the point where many of them - like the real early Dresden books, f'rex - are almost tipping into straight-up noir pastiche or neo-noir with fantasy trappings. I don't think it necessarily has to involve a "real" city to evoke that noir aesthetic, but most people find it easier to achieve that style if they're basing it in a familiar backdrop (either to themselves or to he genre; Dresden's Chicago counts either way). (PERDIDO STREET STATION is more "urban fantasy" in my mind than "New Weird" or whatever that means because it's pretty much neo-noir to the bone.) I think this is where the conflation with the "paranormal romance" genre comes from, because of the strong romantic/sexual streak that runs through noir storytelling that "urban fantasy" inevitably inherited, but that conflation really seems to miss the forest for the trees.
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Date: 2010-10-08 01:41 am (UTC)From:As to what UF is... I think that has evolved, and is evolving. You had your Mercedes Lackey books about elves and racecars and runaways and such, and Charles De Lint and L. Sprague deCamp and Raymond E. Feist sometimes, I think... it started with just the radical notion that you could write fantasy novels with modern characters. I debate whether you could include "translation" novels like Three Hearts and Three Lions or The Dragon and the George, etc, but certainly it's possible.
I think there's been a big enough shift now that you could say that UF isn't just "fantasy in a modern setting", or even "fantasy with modern sensibility" (I think of Brust's Vlad Taltos books, to a degree - while the setting was obviously a D&D campaign, the feel of it was remarkably modern, thanks to what amounted to psychic cellphones, sorcerous equivalents to modern medicine, teleportation-for-hire, and "cheap, over the counter enchanted [daggers]"). We might need a new name for the concept of just fantasy-set-in-the-modern-world, to allow UF to really become "fantasy in which the urban setting plays a central role."
Still, when I think UF, I think of things like, yes, the Dresden Files, Hellblazer (see icon!), Neverwhere, and Night Watch(Nochnoy Dozor) more than Swordspoint, because while Kushner uses a city, and gives it a certain central role, it's neither a city in the modern sense, nor a modern city, and the urban/noir sensibility isn't there.
All the same, I'd say it's important to remember that genre isn't something you write for, nor something that controls your work. It's a sales category, more than anything else, and while it's good to think about how to market your work, that's not where writing comes from. Write a cool story that speaks to you, let critics and editors worry about the ghetto it should be shuffled off into after.
(Also, yes, I'd be VERY disappointed if Jim didn't start going more heavily into Black Council territory, for several reasons. I mean, it's been an undercurrent for quite a while, it was pretty central to the climax of Turncoat, he said he plotted the series to last 20 books, and we've got a tenth book, called Changes, basically in the midst of the "third act" and it's time to get into gear toward the rising series climax. Yeah, I'd say it's time, structurally.)
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Date: 2010-10-08 06:24 am (UTC)From:What I call urban fantasy is fantasy set in the current era, in our world or a world very like ours. It often has a mystery or thriller subgenre, and when it shades toward paranormal romance it has a lot of, well, romance. The main character is often a woman (an attraction of the genre for me!) and may be either human or nonhuman.
Definitions aside . . . please write that! Find the story Berlin wants to tell you, set it when it wants to be set, and forget calling it this or that genre or subgenre. That's why I love the term speculative fiction and use it almost exclusively when people ask what I write. It covers everything.
Also, trains are indeed awesome and so are abandoned stations.
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Date: 2010-10-07 06:48 pm (UTC)From:Also, you've now got me seeing this sprawling Gaiman-esque magical realism epic novel following the living city of Berlin from medieval times up through the present day. It sounds awesome. Go for it! :D
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Date: 2010-10-07 08:16 pm (UTC)From:I think I hate you forever. But now I know what I want to use when I apply for this grant.
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Date: 2010-10-08 06:24 pm (UTC)From:SURPRISE!
=D
Looks like you do if that his how people are categorizing it.