The Exciting World of Urban Fantasy: Books

Guest Post by Matt Boone, East Campus Libraries

Matt Boone

Have you ever wondered about how the urban fantasy subgenre functions in its own unique way? Urban fantasy can take a typical fantasy story and give it a twist by setting it in a more modern setting. It can also have the fantasy elements interact with each other in different ways. This subgenre allows for interesting takes on fantasy archetypes and creatures. Examples would include a wizard detective, a vampire accountant, and ancient gods or other legendary figures interacting with and adapting to the modern world. Stories can have characters who operate within the more ‘realistic’ side of the setting react to the ‘fantastical’ side of the setting in different ways.

What goes into Urban Fantasy?

If the supernatural elements are supposed to be a secret, how and why do they stay hidden? Alternatively, if they are known, how has the supernatural elements affected society and its development? This can include how the creatures have been integrated into society. It can also be shown in how magic has been integrated into the day-to-day life of the characters. Examples would include characters utilizing cleaning spells to clean their homes, law enforcement utilizing actual oracles or seers to help solve crimes, doctors and nurses utilizing healing magic, or the entertainment industry hiring actual magic users to save on special effects.

Urban fantasy may be a good way to open new avenues of entertainment and encourage people to read more by finding books that they could enjoy and consume. The urban settings may also be more appealing for people who might not like the world-building in the regular fantasy genre. In an urban fantasy story, like The Dresden Files, supernatural elements are adapted to our modern society and technology. A classic fantasy story, like The Lord of the Rings, has kings, queens, knights, and wizards in a medieval setting.

The popularity of urban fantasy grew in the 1980s. This was encouraged by the success of Stephen King and Anne Rice. Their success likely helped to encourage both writers and publishers to see the potential of the subgenre.

Fairy Tales of London: British Urban Fantasy, 1840 to the present

This book is a survey of urban fantasy/fantasy writings/literature set in London between the Victorian era to the 21st Century. It discusses different works of multiple notable historical authors, such as Dickens, Wells, Orwell, and Peake. It also discusses how the authors’ different methods influenced what they wrote. For example, Wells had an imagination that was based more on science and preferred to state things in a more matter of fact way. Read more about Elber-Aviram’s book

Science Fiction (2nd Edition)

This book gives readers an introduction into the genre of science fiction. It goes into detail explaining what science fiction is, its history, the representation of race and gender in the genre, and how the technology appearing in science fiction works correlates with our real-world technology. For example, cyberspace is typically portrayed as being more ‘exciting and dynamic’ in fiction than reality’s more limited digital environment. Read more about Roberts’ book

Fantasy: How it Works

This book was written to explain how the fantasy genre can be relevant and meaningful to our world and lives if it is not a realistic representation of said world. Another question the book sets out to answer is what sort of changes the genre can have in the world. The book goes on to how fantasy can represent truth in a metaphorical manner. Read more about Attebury’s book

The Golem and the Jinni

This novel takes place in late 19th Century America where a newly awakened golem whose master died en route and a newly released jinni must try to fit into different subcultures of New York City and not to draw attention to themselves. The novel delves into how each of them have trouble fitting in due to their different, supernatural natures. They do eventually encounter each other and learn how to interact with the other and eventually form a small group of people who they trust. Read more about Wecker’s book

Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination

This book was written with the intention to help its readers to better appreciate the possibilities that that the fantasy literary genre can unleash for creativity. It goes over how the genre has evolved over time and includes the names of authors and their works that have impacted the genre in major ways. This includes J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, and Ursula K. Le Guin and the Earthsea Cycle. The book goes on to describe how the different works and authors that it describes have had an impact on the fantasy genre in their own ways. Read more about Mathews’ book

The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature

This book discusses various aspects of the fantasy genre, including its history, the different ways of reading the literature of the genre (thematic, political, psychoanalysis, etc.), and the various clusters of the genre (urban fantasy, historical fantasy, magical realism, etc.). It covers urban fantasy in chapter 17 with four main sections of the chapter. Read more about Chapter 17

Genres of Doubt: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and the Victorian Crisis of Faith

This book describes how the fantasy and science fiction genres got a start in 19th Century Britain. Also discussed in this book is how speculative fiction that was published at the time, such as Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Dracula by Bram Stoker, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, had started to challenge what society at the time was used to reading and the norms of the time. This was likely influenced by the relatively recent geological findings and the writings of Charles Darwin. Another factor would be that Britain was also being exposed to more and different cultures from around the world. Read more about Sanders’ book

Look for another blog post on The Exciting World of Urban Fantasy: Films. It’s coming soon!

The cityscape in the feature image is a section of “Clouds- Hong Kong” by carloyuen. See the full image on Pixabay.