Call Me a Dreamer

In response to my last post, asakiyume commented, "You can usually get people to agree that a core of works are something (like, say, urban fantasy), but it's fascinating to think about the works that people disagree about, and why. I wish I had read more so that I could talk about this less theoretically!"

Since my reply was long (and, possibly, of interest to my reading public ;>), I decided to make it a full post, rather than bury it in the comments.

What's interesting to me are the works I've read that I didn't identify as urban fantasy, until I learned (on LJ) that the definition had shifted. So, Charles de Lint and Terri Windling's Bordertown series were the defining works for me, with Emma Bull's War of the Oaks, nearby, but not necessarily dead center.

For me, the scope of the stories had a lot to do with how I categorized stories. Contemporary fantasies were fantasies set in today's world and urban fantasies were a subset in which the primary concerns of the story were small, personal issues, and in which magic either infuses or intrudes into the mundane world. So, if the biggest issues facing the characters were primarily internal, as is most often the case with de Lint's work, I saw the stories as urban fantasy, but if the issue was saving the world, or some fairly large segment of it, then I would probably see it as contemporary fantasy, but not urban, even if the setting was urban. The term mythic fiction is now being applied to de Lint's work, and while I agree that he often uses mythic elements, it still feels too expansive a term, perhaps because mythic feels too close to epic. Whether my definition was ever correct is something I now question.

But, I've been learning over the past several months that a lot of what I would have considered either simply contemporary fantasy, or paranormal romance, is now considered to be urban fantasy. So, some of Patricia Brigg's work, such as her Mercy Thompson series, which I would have either categorized as contemporary fantasy or paranormal romance, is seen as urban fantasy. One of the definitions of urban fantasy that was proposed (I think by Jill Knowles, and I hope I'm not mangling this too badly), was that urban fantasy is comprised of stories with contemporary urban settings which involve non-human characters, especially when the cast of non-human characters includes elves. Although, the presence of the elves was mentioned in the context of stories which focused more directly on vampires, werewolves, etc., so I'm not sure if the elves are entirely definitive.

Where Tim Powers fits into all this is an interesting conundrum, because his work is so unique. If you haven't read anything by him, I highly recommend you try it. His stories often make me squirm in response to various graphic or grotesque elements, but they are gripping and make me look at the world around me from a new perspective. I think he's better than just about anyone at making magic contemporary, in large part because he uses so many known facts to convincingly integrate the magical elements, many of which are very firmly grounded in the kinds of superstitions and magical thinking we run into in our day to day lives. In his stories, the black cat that crosses your path has real significance, as does the lucky streak a gambler may encounter in a casino. Dismissing apparently related occurrences, such as the gambler's losing streak when his favorite luck charm is lost, is not rational thinking, but just the opposite.