A Dribble of Ink

In recent years, there has a been a rise in interest in the urban fantasy genre, even prompting some publishers to republish older urban fantasy works, such as Pyr’s recent publication of Stalking the Unicorn by Mike Resnick. What is your explanation for the recent rise in the popularity of this subgenre?

Secondly, since the rise and fall in popularity of fantasy and SF subgenres tends to be cyclical, what subgenre of fantasy do you predict will see an upsurge in its popularity once urban fantasy is on the wane?

Being about 50k words into writing an Urban/Contemporary Fantasy myself, this subject is near and dear to my heart, and so I’ve been watching as this shift in focus has spread through the industry. To that end I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, rolling it over in my head and contemplating just why Epic Fantasy’s been pushed to the wayside in favour of urban sprawl, werewolves, modern dialect and a ton of sex.

Over the course of this low level philosophizing I’ve come to the conclusion that there’re three reasons that have led to the ‘fall’ of Epic Fantasy and the rise of Urban Fantasy.

The first is simple. Epic Fantasy ruled the roost for decades, from the time Tolkien first published The Lord of the Rings (and one could easily argue that its reign stretches well before that, to the works of Homer), and it’s simply hard to keep atop the hill for that long. Even the mighty Roman Empire finally fell to pieces, right? The same stories can only be told to the same people for so long before they start looking for something new. The market was becoming oversaturated and publishers started to look elsewhere, to see what was selling.

So what was selling? Thrillers and Chick-lit. Wait a second… doesn’t that sound a little familiar? Like, perhaps, two of the major elements that drive those Urban Fantasies which are selling like hotcakes these days? Which brings me to my second point: Women.

Women like to read, no one will be shocked to hear that. But consider who (anecdotally) make up the largest contingent of fantasy fans: overweight, sweaty mouth-breathers with neck beards. Now, of course this is a major generalization (I don’t have a neck beard, nor do I breathe heavily through my mouth; I’m not overweight, either), unfortunately this is how the fan base is perceived by the general public; not fair, but hard to deny. Women (for good reason) generally don’t like to be associated nerds like us (unless they’re nerdy, too).

Working at a bookstore (and generally haunting the Fantasy/Science Fiction section while on shift) taught me one thing: for every female to wander into the section, there were four to five males. Of course it doesn’t help that the publishers have been marketing fantasy to males for decades (swords, dragons, scantily-clad princesses, and all that other cool junk one might see airbrushed on the side of a bitchin’ van), and 50 years of that is hard to overcome.

The publishers, realizing they’re missing out on 50% of their potential audience, wise up and release the likes of Laurell K. Hamilton, Stephanie Meyer, and Kelly Armstrong -and suddenly there were novels on the shelf of the ‘Fantasy’ section that doesn’t make women feel like they belong in the basement of their parents’ house with a scattering of dice before them, sixteen empty cans of Mountain Dew littering the floor and a ‘Dragonforce’ album blaring in the background.

This phenomenon spreads further (away from women in general, and to a wider market) when one considers authors such as Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, Charles De Lint and Sergei Lukyanenko, who take fantasy out of the needlessly complex secondary worlds and drop it into a world we can all understand: our own. We know the rules, we know the language, we know the places. People, however, are endlessly fascinated by watching those things we are so comfortable with being twisted and played with by a skilled writer, by having another perspective of the world thrust upon them.

The third reason, then, is that Urban Fantasy is just easier to read and thus has the potential to reach a wider audience. No confusing maps, no archaic dialogue (hopefully), no endlessly nuanced magic system to digest, no otherworldly politics and wars being waged by make-believe countries. I think a lot of people who read fantasy (and especially those who are just getting in via the Urban Fantasy trend) are the type who read for escapism – to get whisked away from their daily life into something exciting, something new, something dangerous. Urban Fantasy is grounded in real life, but also reveals to readers that there can be so much more; that there is magic lurking out there, just waiting to be discovered.

Publishing trends, like almost everything, are cyclical. Urban Fantasy is the hot thing at the moment, but that won’t always be the case. I expect we’ll see the rise of Epic Fantasy again, but whether that is sooner rather than later is hard to tell. It’s a tried and true genre and (despite all the drawbacks mentioned earlier) I feel that with the likes of Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, Richard Morgan, Brandon Sanderson and George R.R. Martin still thriving in this new market, it’s hard to imagine that anyone could consider Epic Fantasy to be unhealthy… maybe just not as healthy as Urban Fantasy at the moment.

Can’t help but to think that “urban fantasy” is a bit more complex than that and Neth is the one who seems to address that. There is, obviously, much more to a subgenre’s popularity than “just a bunch of female readers gobbling up that shit,” to paraphrase the attitude of some towards anything that might hint of “urban fantasy” (or to be more precise, paranormal romances). Cultural attitudes and recent historical events are obviously going to shape buyer/reader attitudes and I think he addresses that quite well.

Its a shame because I absolutely detest Urban Fantasy

urban fantasy with female lead detectives are making me physically ill

So I’m not the only one who can’t get into the whole Urban Fantasy / Paranormal Romance hype.