I don't think of most fangbanger novels as necessarily being Urban Fantasy any more than I think of bodice-rippers as "historical novels." Romance uses the toolbox of any genre that hasn't clearly labeled and locked up all its toys. In the end, a lot of defines a genre is the tropes, and there's no reason you can't borrow a trope to freshen up a new work in any genre you like - it's just a question of whether you respect the people you're borrowing from enough to return it in good working order. ;)
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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chiming
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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.)