Urban Fantasy, too

[ellenkushner]

Wanted to let everyone know how much I'm enjoying the discussion following yesterday's post. Terri Windling turns out to have a strong thread about this going on her Facebook Wall, as well. She also told me that Mercedes Lackey wrote her series as a direct response to Bordertown, which I hadn't known.

As I keep saying to anyone who will listen: "This is not hard to research! It only happened 20 years ago! We're not dead! Just ASK!"

I'm now particularly interested, in an OED geeky way, in the first recorded use of the term "urban fantasy", which jongibbs asked about yesterday. From TW's Facebook thread comes this note from
Russell Blackford at 5:37am June 23
I co-edited an anthology called Urban Fantasies back in 1985. The expression "urban fantasy" was in use well before then. I picked it up from Lee Harding, and it was applied during the early 80s to books such as Harding's _Displaced Person_ (known as _Misplaced Persons_ in the US), which was published in 1979. I'd be confident that it goes back even further. Mind you, what is now known as "urban fantasy" may be rather different, but still ...

Comments

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in knowing, as well. I've heard it said that it was first applied to Charles de Lint's work, but I'd never verified that nor seen what else was published around the same time (or slightly before). I'm usually more interested in reading the books than taking note of when they're written, sorry to say. :)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Ah the OED. God bless my library that gives me access. I'm addicted, and as a historical author, it's my crack. as it were. *cough *

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Check back issues of Locus for 1984 and perhaps 1983, possibly a little further back? Or RASFW archives? It was associated first with Charles de Lint, I recall, and Megan Lindholm. It might have shown up in a Lindholm blurb or review.

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I was expecting it to have been around for a lot longer. Thanks for posting the info :)

[paulakate.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that heads-up; it gives me an excuse to go find Terri and friend her (been meaning to do that anyway).

I'm having fun with this thread too; reminds me of the old days on GEnie's SFRT....

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Me, too! Glad you're happy, too.

[paulakate.livejournal.com]

This article from Publishers Weekly is probably a sufficiently reputable source to allow me to expand the Wiki article to include the contemporary definition as used by publishers.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Excellent! And Gwenda Bond is a longtime SF/F person & friend of Terri's. See how the Whirligig of Time, etc. etc.

I must confess I'm not sure I'm happy with the initial Wiki descr of it as "consisting of novels and stories ..., set in contemporary, real-world, urban settings—as opposed to 'traditional' fantasy set in wholly imaginary landscapes, even ones containing imaginary cities [italics mine]" - I'm not sure it's *wrong,* but it does privilege the "modern" over the "urban" and thus knock a lot of stuff out of the running.

[paulakate.livejournal.com]

I'm not happy with that first line, either (it was there when I arrived). Let me think on that.

[bondgwendabond.livejournal.com]

Well, and UF has gotten very squishy in meaning in many ways, so much so that it has almost come to be an acceptable term to describe any contemporary fantasy. Most of the YA urban fantasy that I read seems to come more out of the older definition of urban fantasy that's being discussed here and at Terri's (partly because many of the best YA writers of UF are strongly influenced by all the wonderful books/authors being mentioned). I do wonder if that feeling will change now that many of the biggest paranormal/UF authors for adults are being contracted to do YA series. (And of course this is all generalities--there are plenty of exceptions. Patricia Briggs, Marjorie Liu, Ilona Andrews--seem just as influenced by more traditional stuff.) Interestingly enough, I see the word "paranormal" being used a LOT more in YA-world lately, and that speaks to the relationship a lot of the newer things have with the adult paranormal romance side of things.

Anyway, most of what the marketing label--and it is, I think, a marketing label for most of the particular books being published now, more than anything else--is meant to denote contemporary fantasy with certain shared tonal and "world" characteristics. I think for many of those books there is a different line of origin than much of the YA urban fantasy. I'm a point of view nerd, and I think you can even see this in the typical POVs. Unlike the rest of YA, it's much more likely to find a YA urban fantasy using third person instead of first; in most of the UF being published as such for adults these days, first person is still the most common. We are seeing different trends sprouting out from combinations of varying branches in the field--I think for the original urban fantasy writers (like you, Terri, De Lint), the term itself was broader and thus more meaningful to use in a more critical or definitional context. It was _not_ primarily a marketing label (I don't think--please to correct, if I'm wrong).

I do worry that a lot of this more recent urban fantasy--the trendy stuff, for lack of a better word--is dismissed because of its covers, and because of its perceived (and sometimes real) connection to the romance genre. It feels like we don't often deal with it in a critical context or talk about it, and I wonder if that's because it's written by women and perceived as being for women. Because some of it is really excellent, and I just run into a lot of disdain that troubles me. (I'm not talking about this conversation, btw--just to be clear!) And, of course, many of the readers are cross-over romance readers, too, and so possibly don't speak up in the SFF field so much. And we all know that romance readers are the most dismissed readers in the world. I felt _I_ was guilty of dismissing these books for reasons like this, and so I made it a point to seek out and read a wide selection of them.

All this said, I really liked Laura's piece and felt that in general it was spot on and hit on some of the really interesting stuff about the tremendous popularity of this newer thread of UF. Things like how it also comes out of the noir or hard-boiled tradition*, and so often has procedural plots and the hard-boiled voice (for usually a female heroine) and how this is one of the few places in popular fiction with lots of blue-collar characters (including the protagonists). And Buffy does seem to have had a tremendous impact on both the people writing it and in creating the audience for it.

*I take the meaning of the line about Laurel K. Hamilton to single her out as the first majorly successful writer to couple the PI voice and milieu with a certain brand of contemporary fantasy**, which is probably the biggest common denominator many of these books have. If that's so, it would have been better to make that clearer.

**It is odd to me how much in common many of the portrayals of vampires and ESPECIALLY werewolves have with each other. But I also see that starting to change.

(Sorry to leave such a long, circuitous comment. I hope you can make heads or tails of it. I probably should just do a post. But, right now, I should stop procrastinating by leaving a long, circuitous comment on your site. :)

[jonathanstrahan.livejournal.com]

I think you make a great point. It would be good if someone could do some primary research - interviews and such - and write up an early history of urban fantasy. Some of the participants are getting older, so now's the time. I'm sorry no-one got Lester and Judy Lynn Del Rey down on tape talking about the evolution of modern fantasy, or David Eddings. There's a heck of a piece for someone to do covering the evolution of 'urban fantasy' and 'epic fantasy' while everyone, or most everyone, is still here to tell the tale.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

From your mouth to someone with a need for a really interesting paper, article or thesis's ears!

[paulakate.livejournal.com]

If one Googles "urban fantasy" one finds an entry for these conversations at the bottom of page 1. Nothing like living in real-time.

I've updated the urban fantasy article at Wikipedia to distinguish between the two types of urban fantasy, the one that is like mythic fantasy and the one that is like paranormal romance. Hopefully it makes some sort of sense.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

* Awesome!

* This 2008 Library Journal article (http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6561372.html) by Nanette Wargo Donohue - footnoted in the Wiki "Urban Fantasy" listing - is pretty much what everyone's been saying. Poor L. Miller's got no excuse!

Urban fantasy's roots date back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Charles de Lint published his first short story collection about the fictional city of Newford, Dreams Underfoot, and the first volumes of the groundbreaking Borderlands shared-world anthologies, based on a world created by well-known fantasy author Terri Windling, were released. These works introduced readers to the possibility of supernatural, fantastic beings in modern settings, and other authors who contributed to the development of what is now identified as “traditional urban fantasy” included Emma Bull, Neil Gaiman, and Mercedes Lackey.

[bondgwendabond.livejournal.com]

That SLJ article is EXCELLENT.

Origins...

[paulakate.livejournal.com]

I've found a 1971 citation for "urban fantasy" referring to the childen's book One Monday Morning, and Peter Nicholls used it in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1979), referring to Michael Perkins' Evil Companions (1968) as "a bizarre urban fantasy of impossible sexual odysseys". Those are as near to "our" genre as I have found so far; there is a long history of its use in architecture and literary criticism (of Dickens, for one).

I am still trying to track down an early citation in the sense "elfpunk"... Alas, 1981-91 was my great period of gafiation, so I don't have much. (I caught up later, with a vengeance.)