Thursday, November 03, 2011

National Game Design Month: What Is Urban Fantasy?

For National Game Design Month I am working on a role-playing game, an urban fantasy game to be named later. One of the questions I get a lot, as a fan of urban fantasy, is "What is urban fantasy?" Well, while I'm not sure that I want to really tie down that definition completely, I know that I can tell what it looks like to me. I confuse this further by using urban fantasy to also describe what is also sometimes called Paranormal Romance fiction. Why? I think it's silly to have two labels describing the same thing and I really don't need "romance" as a descriptor in my genre titles. I'm not against romance, as a matter of fact I think that romantic subplots are an important part of any story's overall plot...I just don't have to have it right there on the tin. This essay will be cleaned up to be a part of the game, obviously. There is enough disagreement

I will admit up front that I do prefer urban fantasy written by women, although I don't have to have female protagonists in them. I think this is the only genre where I have a gender-bias for writers, but I have it. I think the Night Watch books by Sergei Lukyanenko are the only exception to this preference, although Simon R. Green's Nightside books aren't too bad either. I will say that I'm not a fan of the Dresden books as much, something about the genre mashup just hasn't sat as well with me.

Basically the reason for this essay/post is to outline what urban fantasy is to me and show the influences that will work their way into my NaGaDeMon work.

Let's start by breaking down the words.

Urban. This part is pretty easy. Urban = city, to be more specific the modern day city. Any modern day city works, although currently a lot of urban fantasy is being set in the American Northwest, particularly Washington state. Kelley Armstrong does hop around the country a lot in her Women of the Otherworld stories. Basically, the importance of this word is that the action/setting of the stories take place in the modern world, to differentiate itself from other forms of fantasy fiction.

Fantasy. This is another easy word. Fantasy means magic, it means creatures that we will not see in the real world, it means a weird and strange world beyond what we would normally see in our own "normal" world. In this fiction this usually means vampires and werewolves, but it also means sorcerers and witches and many other fantastic creatures.

What happens when you combine these two words, then? You get a surreal (not in the way that you are probably thinking however) juxtaposition of a near magical-realist world that lays over the top of the world outside of our windows, like a hazy screen that sometimes shows our world and sometimes shows the fantasy. One important thing to remember is that urban fantasy is not horror. That seems to be a common misconception of urban fantasy fiction. Some of the trapping of horror fiction (such as the above mentioned vampires and werewolves) do cross over into urban fantasy, but the difference lies in how the two genres treat these creatures. In horror fiction, these creatures are used purely for their horrific nature...they are there to scare the reader with their savagery. While these creatures may be horrifying at times in urban fantasy, the importance of these types of creatures sit more in their representation of the supernatural and magic, their other-worldliness as a differentiation from the mundane instead of a horror factor. Now, urban fantasy and horror fiction do have the commonality of treating many of these creatures with a sensual tone to them, where their power and magic translate into a sexual power as well.

Have I completely explained urban fantasy in this post? No, of course not. This is a starting point, both for myself and for those reading this who might not know much about the genre. I will recommend a few books that I have enjoyed that I consider to be urban fantasy. A couple of these are "proto" books or series, having been written or published before the current interest in this genre. It's good to know the influences as well as the current state of things. I'm sure some of these will be argued.

  • Jorge Luis Borges Ficciones. I think this collection of stories should be the starting place for any fan of fantasy fiction that isn't set in some far off mythic world. His story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius should be required reading for anyone interested in how fantasy and real worlds can intersect. His story Aleph (which isn't in Ficciones should also be checked out).
  • Nancy Collins Sunglasses At Night. This is the book that made me want to read about vampires again (and without which I probably would have never read Poppy Brite a few years later). The Sonja Blue stories started with this book are a virtual blueprint of what would become urban fantasy. If you like the current batch of urban fantasy writers, and haven't read any of Collins' work you really should track them down. She has also written licensed fiction in the old World of Darkness setting (including a classic crossover where Sonja Blue enters the World of Darkness in a story that might be familiar to fans of samurai or cowboy movies), and has written Swamp Thing and a couple of other comics published by DC Comics. 
  • Sergei Lukyanenko Night Watch. I mentioned this above, but I wanted to include it in this list and write about it at a bit great of a length. This Russian novel is set mostly in Moscow and give a much grittier view of the urban fantasy genre. Two organizations: The Dark Watch and The Light Watch are tasked with watching over the beings of the supernatural world, and enforcing their laws and rules. This is the first book of a trilogy set in the Night Watch world (there's also a couple of movies but I have only seen the first but I can reccomend checking it out), and they are almost a different genre. I would almost say that these books are the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo of urban fantasy.
  • Kelley Armstrong Women of the Otherworld novels Bitten, Stolen and Dime Store Magic. Yes, I listed three novels. These three books started Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series and this is what introduced me to what we know now as urban fantasy. I found copies of Bitten and Stolen in a Half Price Books in Cleveland and never looked back. Each of Armstrong's Otherworld books are written from the viewpoint of a different protagonist, a different woman, and each fill in the pieces of her supernatural world from different angles. I would say that Armstrong's writing is also the furthest from horror fiction that you are going to find in these recommendations.
  • Patricia Briggs Moon Called. Briggs' books take place mostly in a world of werewolves and other shape shifters. Vampires and other supernatural creatures exist, but most of the focus of her writing is on werewolves and their world and culture. Mercedes Thompson, the main character for most of Briggs' novels, is a kitsune, someone who can change into fox, who is trying to fit into the world of werewolves despite being in love with the local pack Alpha. Mercy Thompson has also appeared in a couple of comic books stories, one a prequel to Moon Called and the other an adaptation of the novel. I had the pleasure of meeting Briggs and speaking with her a few times, when we were both guests at a convention together. Of all the directly urban fantasy books in this list, Briggs' are different because they feature a semi-open supernatural society. Werewolves and the Fae have "come out of the supernatural closet" and have entered into the world, with vampires still being semi-secret creatures. For me, this makes for a nice difference from other writers in the genre.
  • Devon Monk Magic to the Bone. I am an unabashed fanboy of Monk's Allie Beckstrom novels. I can't wait for each one to come out (as a matter of fact I am hoping to get the latest one of them in a day or two after I write this blog post) and I quickly read through them. The Beckstrom books don't feature the supernatural creatures of vampires and werewolves, like a lot of other urban fantasy does, and instead it focuses on a secret society of magic users whose job it is to keep certain types of magic hidden from the world. Magic is commonplace in these books, and low level magic are a common part of the world (used even in hospitals and some business dealings).
There's a lot of other writers that I could recommend, like Lilith Saintcrow's Dante Valentine books or Stacia Kane's Chess Putnam books, but this is just a starting point and not intended to be definitive by any stretch of the imagination. Give me your recommendations in the comments section (just please please please no advertising links, I will delete what looks to be blatant advertising by anyone) and let's see where the discussion of this post takes us.