Is Urban Fantasy Dead? Or Undead? The Orbit Team September 22, 2015

cre: Is Urban Fantasy Dead? Or Undead?

The Orbit Team

September 22, 2015

We remember when urban fantasy first hit our shelves, but the genre has changed significantly since then. Are these stories still popular? If yes, why? We asked some of the Orbit writers for their views on the genre’s past, present, and future.

Where does urban or contemporary fantasy come from?

JIM BUTCHER, author of the best-selling Dresden Files, as well as the fantasy adventure novel THE AERONAUT’S WINDLASS

“Urban fantasy is nothing more or less than the resurgence of fairy tales. We’ve changed the look and behavior of our big bad wolves, and our forests look somewhat different than they used to, and Little Red Riding Hood is generally much more heavily armed than it traditionally was, but we tell the same stories, in the same way, with the same emphasis on fantasy and the terror and joy of its clash with our everyday world.

It’s the everyday reality that so many of us find terrifying – so much so that we flee to tales of vampires, werewolves and dark wizards just to lighten the mood.

CHARLIE FLETCHER, author of THE OVERSIGHT and THE PARADOX

“People have always created stories to try to make sense of things they couldn’t see or understand. The ‘urban’ fantasy is only a logical step as society has become less rural and more metropolitan , the dark old woods of old fairy tales have been replaced by a sodium-lit concrete jungle.And sure, we may have moved to cities, but we brought our darkness with us.

There are a lot of products stuck under the urban fantasy label that don’t sit well with me, but the books that mean something to me are those that creatively engage with the inevitable transition from the old to the new world and deal with its consequences as a central part of the story (Neil Gaiman’s AMERICAN GODS is a particularly fine and definitive example).’

What does the future of urban fantasy look like?

LILITH SAINTCROW, author of Bannon and Clare Affairs and BLOOD CALL, as well as many other urban fantasy series

“I think the last five years, like any shiny new trend, has caused some reader fatigue. The urban fantasy isn’t going away, but it’s not so much of a Wild West” let’s throw a vampire in there and hope it sticks!” more. Which is great, even if it’s sometimes frustrating when you want to write paranormal or urban fantasy.

Having worked in publishing for so long, I consider “urban fantasy” to be a genre title, nothing less, nothing more. There is always a market for well-told tales, and urban fantasy, like any genre, offers a set of tools and toys for a writer to play with.

BENEDICT JACKA, author of the novels by Alex Verus

“I would struggle to understand exactly how urban fantasy has changed over the past five years, but I’m pretty sure it will remain popular for the foreseeable future.” The mash-up nature of urban fantasy allows it to scale easily, and the sources it draws from (comic books, games, epic fantasy) still resonate strongly with city dwellers. So even though I expected that type of urban fantasy stories to evolve over time, I think the genre will be around for quite a while yet.

PATRICIA BRIGGS, author of the Mercy Thompson series and the Alpha and Omega series

‘There is no longer a reader’s appetite for urban fantasy as there was in the past. Five years ago, any urban fantasy book was guaranteed to have a certain number of readers. I think, and that’s not a bad thing, that readers are pickier now. For me as a reader right now, what I love about urban fantasy is that there are so many good storytellers working in this field. Good stories still work and can still find an audience, although it may take longer to find a readership than before.

One of the things that I really like about it is that we’re seeing more diversity in the books that are being republished. I love, love, urban fantasy. But I also love space opera, traditional fantasy and contemporary fantasy – and those genres were drowning.

ELLIOTT JAMES, author of CHARMING

“I like to read stories where the extraordinary and the ordinary mingle. Some people scoff at escapist literature, but “escape” implies relief, release, and freedom, none of which are bad things. Escaping also inevitably holds a mirror up to the thing from which one is escaping.

Urban fantasy often gives ordinary characters a chance to demonstrate extraordinary qualities. He encourages readers to examine what it means to be human by contrasting or eliminating a lot of obvious assumptions.

There have always been stories that introduced otherworldly fantasy elements into the everyday world that we humans optimistically call reality, and I think there always will be.

source: gameplaytrick.com -

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