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Urban Fantasy As NoirNovember 7, 2008 I didn’t set out to write Urban Fantasy. Originally I was a writer of thriller/mysteries – a series about a cop who became an ex-cop after some unfortunate incidents. I only got two books in the series done before I abandoned writing for a while, but that’s another story.But to me, the transition was a natural one. UF is usually seen as an offshoot and subgenre of fantasy in general – but I don’t see it that way. I think it’s squarely in the tradition of P.I. noir books, and of mysteries in general. Now of course, defining UF is an exercise in futility. Everyone has their own particular take. Mine is simple – it’s like the old quote about pornography from Justice Potter Stewart, where he admitted he’d be hard pressed to define pornography, but nonetheless, “I know it when I see it.” Jim Butcher is classic UF. Neal Gaiman, who also sets his fantasies in contemporary society, is not. Rob Thurman is. Sean Stewart is not. And that’s because writers like Gaiman come out of the fantasy tradition, while Jim Butcher is part of a lineage stretching back to Sam Spade. Now there’s another line of UF that owes much to Romance. Rachel Caine, Charlaine Harris, and early Laurel Hamilton come out of that tradition – smart mouthed, kick ass heroines who owe a lot to Buffy, and are not to be trifled with. But the romance tradition is clear – no matter how complex the world building is, no matter how convoluted and surprising the plot, an essential element always remains about whether or not it’s a good idea to do the vampire, werewolf, or both. But I’m talking PI books here. First, I’d guess a majority of UF books are written these days in first person, as were Hammet’s, Chandlers’s, Ross MacDonald, John D MacDonald, and even Micky Spillane. That world weary tone, that cynical take on life, that outsider status are crucial to those books, and first person is a perfect vehicle to pull that off. And that is also the typical UF hero. Look at Jim Butcher, whose Harry Dresden books had a huge influence on establishing the current UF genre. Harry is a PI of sorts, though of the magical variety. He’s a troubled loner, certainly a moral figure, but not conventually so. He lives in a run down apartment in Chicago. He has a ambivalent relation with law enforcement – most hate him, but he does have allies. He has romantic hopes, but they’re never the focus of the books. He can take care of himself, but gets his ass kicked from time to time. He trusts no one, and in every book, there’s a mystery to be solved, and half the time he hasn’t a clue as to what’s really going on. He just stirs things up and sees what will come of it. Harry calls himself a wizard, but he bears no resemblance to Gandalf the Grey, or Harry Potter for that matter. But take away his wizard’s staff and replace it with a .38, and voila -- you’ve got Philip Marlow and Sam Spade. UK UF writer Mike Carey’s Felix Castor would have been right at home in Chandler’s LA. Recent books by other authors have expanded on the PI character – Mark Del Franco’s Conner Grey is a Druid, for example. But he does have a cop friend, and he does have to solve murders and unravel complicated events to find the bad guy. Simon Green’s John Tayor is another cynical magical loner, again faced with solving mysteries and running up against the establishment. So UF books, no matter how bizarre the world their set in, are often really mystery novels with supernatural elements more than anything else. My own strongest influence was not a fantasy writer, but mystery writer John D MacDonald, especially his Travis McGee series. Again, the PI trope is played – McGee operates outside the law, but is an intensely moral fellow at core, and intensely loyal to his friends. He routinely gets himself in over his head, then gets out of trouble with a combination of skill and luck. MacDonald wrote some 21 of these Travis McGee books, (an astonishing feat -- most series run out of ideas at about book six at the latest.) and most of them are brilliant. And like Chandler and Hammet, they are true standalones, with recurring characters, but little if any reference to the other books. Which is exactly what I wanted to do – write a UF series where the plots of books 2, 3, and 4 have no particular relation to book one. But there’s the rub. It turns out, at least for me, that writing a UF series is more difficult than a PI series. The basic difference between the PI novel and UF books is obvious -- the world building. And that presents a problem for a standalone series that I wasn’t aware of until I started trying to write one. In a detective series, whether it’s LA in the forties or present day Seattle, we know the world. A new book in the series may have to reintroduce the characters and fill in a little back story, but that’s not too difficult. You can refer to that time your MC had that hassle with a biker gang, and let it go at that. But you don’t have to explain what a biker gang is, or even worse, what a biker is. In UF, you can’t refer to anything that happened in a previous volume without including a lot of explanation. And as we all know, that does not usually make for an exciting read. And worse, you’ve spent a great deal of time introducing the rules and inhabitants of your particular world in your first book -- which is a great part of what makes the book fun. But you can’t do it again in book two, and you can’t drop the reader in the middle of an invented fantasy world with no explanation either. So you have to tread a fine line between too much explanation and too little. Don’t bore the reader who enjoyed book one. Don’t leave the first time reader of book three totally at sea. I end up wrestling with this balance on almost every page. And I’m never quite sure if I’ve got the balance right. One thing for sure -- the readers will certainly let me know if I haven’t. Posted by John Levitt on November 7, 2008 | Comments (20)
November 7, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir Marie Brennan commented: I think it all depends on the lineage you're looking at. To me, "classic" urban fantasy starts with things like Emma Bull's <i>War for the Oaks</i> and goes on to Charles de Lint et al; those are pretty firmly fantasy-derived. But there's at least two other distinct flavors of UF out there, one being the mystery-derived PI style you're talking about, the other being the romance-derived lineage descending from folks like Hamilton. But I don't have a good enough sense of what was published when, though, or which titles you think started the PI/UF trend, to make a real genealogy out of it. Butcher's fairly recent, to my eyes; who came before him?
November 7, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir John Levitt commented: I think it started up pretty quickly, and not too long ago. I see Charles de Lint as contemporary fantasy in urban settings, not urban fantasy. Emma Bull is absolutely urban fantasy. I don't see Wuthering Heights as a romance novel either, though technically it could be.
November 8, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir BearMountainBooks commented: Mercedes Lackey had some Urban Fantasy out...probably quite a bit before Dresden and some of those others (Diane Tregarde series.) I think she was before Hamilton too. Ellon Guon also had a very good UF series out. Both these authors were just published as fantasy because I don't think UF was recognized as its own genre at the time. A bit later, Holly Lisle put out a couple of stand alones that I would file in the UF category, although while the first two authors concentrate on the mystery, Lisle fall more towards the UF/romance.
November 8, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir BearMountainBooks commented: Mercedes Lackey had some Urban Fantasy out...probably quite a bit before Dresden and some of those others (Diane Tregarde series.) I think she was before Hamilton too. Ellon Guon also had a very good UF series out. Both these authors were just published as fantasy because I don't think UF was recognized as its own genre at the time. A bit later, Holly Lisle put out a couple of stand alones that I would file in the UF category, although while the first two authors concentrate on the mystery, Lisle fall more towards the UF/romance.
November 8, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir BearMountainBooks commented: Sorry about the double post--
November 8, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir Marie Brennan commented: Ah -- yes, if you're focusing on "urban" in its literal sense, being city-oriented, and considering contemporary fantasy to be a separate though sometimes intersecting thing, then yes. I personally like that usage, but it doesn't have wide enough currency for me to default to it. (Though I describe my third novel as "historical urban fantasy" -- it's city-oriented, where the city in question happens to be sixteenth-century London.)
November 10, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir Joel commented: The real "classic" of urban fantasy is probably Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar series. If you think about it, the two main characters did spend at least some of their time doing P.I. style work though I doubt they'd have found much in common with Sam Spade.
November 10, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir mvg commented: In terms of UF forerunners or inspirations, how about the short pieces in "Tales from Gavagan's Bar" (1953)?
November 10, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir faw commented: Marie, thanks for your comments. I really enjoyed Midnight Never Come & did consider it UF, like Gods of Manhattan or Neverwhere. Personally, I have wider scope on UF- as any fantasy that does not totally focus on another world (high fantasy) and is partially placed in an urban setting. Of course, there will still be books that don't quite fit anywhere, but are still powerful (A Veil of Gold).
November 10, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir Jess Nevins commented: I think you've got it wrong way 'round. Hardboiled detective fiction, and urban noir, arose from 19th century urban fantasies. 19th century popular literature usually made the eastern cities into hellish locales and compared them with the clean new villages and towns on the frontier. Works like George Lippard's The Quaker City (1844), which portrayed Philadelphia as an urban inferno, were hugely influential on the portrayal of cities in popular fiction, and these books were urban fantasies (on the dark horror side). This concept of the city-as-dangerous-frontier influenced the dime novels, esp. the dime novel detectives, and they in turn were heavily influential on the hardboiled detectives of the pulps.
November 10, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir John Levitt commented: (Jess) “I think you've got it wrong way 'round. Hardboiled detective fiction, and urban noir, arose from 19th century urban fantasies.”
November 12, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir faw commented: John,
November 12, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir John Levitt commented: In general (and this is a broad generality, so no point on jumping on me) I find YA fantasy to be often better written and more interesting than its adult counterpart.
November 15, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir RfP commented: That's a fascinating connection to noir. The cynical viewpoint certainly matches up, and it's an interesting light on the contrasts between different forms of fantasy.
November 15, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir RfP commented: (oops... continued.)
November 16, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir K Maze commented: I tend to consider the Jim Butcher-type books to be paranormal mysteries, the Kim Harrisons and Laurell K Hamiltons to be paranormal romances, and Charles De Lint and Neil Gaiman to be "
November 16, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir K Maze commented: Weird...truncated my comment...
November 17, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir ROSE FOX commented: Thanks for this post, John. You've certainly got a lot of people talking! My husband and I were discussing your thesis, and I also noted some commonalities with Westerns: the lone hero who's inexplicably skilled with weaponry, the mysterious stranger whose purposes and origins are unknown, the skirmishes leading up to a massive showdown, the difficult relationship between the hero and the representative of the law (who admires the hero's results but not their methods). While the Dresden Files, e.g., are undeniably (almost excruciatingly) noir, it wouldn't take too much serial number-filing to have Harry Dresden striding through a frontier town, six-wands a-blazin', with Sheriff Murphy turning a blind eye as Dresden faces off against the Vamp Gang who arrived on the noon train.
November 17, 2008
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir John Levitt commented: Yes, people certainly have some strong opinions on the subject. I like your connection to Westerns -- quote apropos.
July 19, 2009
In response to: Urban Fantasy As Noir Lisa commented: I'm torn. I somewhat agree w/ your classifications & call that some of these books sprang from the romance genre, I think that by delineating it all so strictly, you might miss some things that can resonate with readers. A good book will engage as many emotions as possible, and those can include thoughts of a romantic nature. That doesn't mean there needs to be a sex scene in every book - just that the protagonist should be well-rounded. Yes, I know that some may be prevented from having a relationship by the nature of their abilities or challenges in UF, but most people still <i>think</i> about them from time to time. A character that doesn't leaves me feeling cold at times.
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