Tim Holman of Orbit Books posted an entry on their blog about the surge in popularity of Urban Fantasy:
Most people are aware of the growth of urban fantasy over recent years, but I wonder how many are aware of the degree to which it now dominates the fantasy bestseller lists? This week’s chart shouldn’t be a surprise, either. Looking back over the fantasy bestseller charts of recent years, there’s a clear trend:
2004: 1 urban fantasy title in the Top 20.
2005: 4 urban fantasy titles.
2006: 5 urban fantasy titles.
2007: 7 urban fantasy titles.
That’s rather a lot, considering how relatively recent the Urban Fantasy trend is, particularly in romance.
So I got nosy and emailed Alex Lencicki, Who is Certifiably Awesome, over at Orbit, and asked, “Why do you think it’s so popular and has reached such a diverse audience from fantasy and romance readers as well?”
He fielded my requst to Devi Pillai, who wrote:
There are a lot of theories. One of the most popular is that romance has the most active readership in the market and those readers are turning towards fantasy since the elements are so close to paranormal romance. Romance readers started devouring fantasy when they found more female centric stories/heroines versus the usual boy-on-a-quest epic fantasy (which was the bread and butter of most fantasy lines). Another theory is that that Buffy and the interest in women who can take care of themselves while being vulnerable brought on an interest for girls-who-kick-ass novels.
Personally I think its a combination of those, but more important, while SF/F has been very masculine in its history, it has slowly been accepting more female authors. Twenty years ago it was harder to find a lot of females that did SF/F. In the past 10 years or so, we’ve definitely seen the growth of urban fantasy, but we’ve also seen the rise of authors that write fantasy for women. Examples would be Anne Bishop, Sharon Shinn, Jacqueline Carey. I do think the readership of those books are more of a female demographic. While traditionally fantasy and science fiction have gone for the male readership and the majority of authors has been male, a lot more writers in the genre are now women—and women write things that appeal to them—and to other women. So I think the urban fantasy market is more of a reaction in recent years to the fact that a) the readership and the authorship is changing b) the editors in the majority of houses are female and c) the largest readers demographically are female and for the genre as a whole to grow, it has to change.
Also, romance readers rarely stick to one genre. They are more open about reading everything—from historical to thrillers to women’s fiction. So they same way they’ve opened up other markets and genres, they’ve expanded from romance to read more fantasy, which I think was a harder genre for them to get into as for many years it was very boy-centric. But now, with more interest in the girls-who-kick-ass and with more female authors, it that has opened up to the female readership.
So in a nutshell, PIllai thinks diverse reading habits of romance readers + evolution of the genre itself to include women authors, heroines, and readers = Urban Fantasy surge. I know a lot of folks have been complaining about the ever-present flood of vampire heroes – but is anyone tired of the kickass heroine? Generally speaking, if she’s done right, I love love love her and don’t know if I’d ever get tired of heroines who could not only squeeze the hero’s ass but could also hand it to him in a fight.
What about you – is urban fantasy your cup of asskicking, or do you tire of it? And moreover, what do you think is causing the popularity build?
*blinks* *adds addendum* I was asked to rewrite from 3rd person to 1st…*headdesks and points to signature on emails: Read my mind not what my keyboard types. ;P
*adds one last thought* I just finished listening to a discussion among some male friends who are all gamers and something occurred to me. In the past few years, there has been a proliferation of kickass female avatars in video games and these guys actually play the female role. This very likely has opened up the market for UF with strong female protagonist to a mixed audience. Just a thought…
In the past few years, there has been a proliferation of kickass female avatars in video games and these guys actually play the female role.
A male friend and avid gamer told me something similar a few months ago. He says gender roles, and gender interactions, are changing in all forms of role-playing games. One example he gave was a new rule book on including sex (and relationships in general) in Dungeons & Dragons.
… and of course someone’s studied it.
Yet another who “found” UF due to CDL. It really took years for writers other than, say, Huff, Bull, Bradley and Crowley, to come up with anything as well written and that fit the same category (imho). I reread CDL so many times, waiting and waiting for publishers to put out other writers who were like him.
Since that was in the late ‘80’s, and I am still happily reading UF, I can’t see my long term affair ending with it, anytime soon.
What I can see, is my author list being culled, due to authors jumping the shark, or not knowing when to end a damn series.
Hello. Long time lurker. First time poster. *waves*
I only discovered urban fantasy a few years ago and Holly Black’s urban faerie tales for young adults really opened that up for me. Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, et all. (War of the Oaks is as good as everyone says. Go read it now.) Never would have found them but for picking up a Holly Black. It really did change my reading habits and what I love to write. (can you tell I’m working on writing a YA UF?)
I don’t really have too much useful to contribute to the discussion because it’s all been said. I have noticed that in Young Adult especially it seems like all the covers have faeries or vampires on them and you turn it over and sure enough it’s UF. The genre seems to be invading the bookstore all over!
Anyway, really I admit I just wanted to pimp Holly Black because she deserves to be pimped. *is shameless* She would be a great one to review for this site. Her novel “Tithe” has a really great romance and a cool story. I didn’t see anyone talking about her in the comments thread, which is shame because even though she writes YA her story are really gritty and sexy and good.
Just to clarify my “Bridget Jones paranormal” comment for Reileen …this rant http://community.livejournal.com/canonrants/92550.html covers it pretty well. No, not my rant, but I was trolling google for paranormal rants after bending my husband’s ear over it and getting a blank look, and finding out that trying to search google on Weresluts (because I couldn’t get why they seemed to be inextricably linked in some authors minds) turned out to be a Very Bad Idea.
Examples of this kind of genre (chick lit mixed with paranormal) would be Undead and Unwed, Bloodsucking Fiends (both entertaining but couldn’t survive a re-read) and some truly appalling tripe : case in point Last of the Red Hot Vampires … yes the name should have warned me but I didn’t realise it was a category romance. Thus I had not adjusted my expecations sufficiently.
Those kind of kickass heroines (or heroes) don’t appeal to me, but if you don’t read within a genre it’s hard to say anything sensible.
I’ve always read fantasy, so that’s not it – I like Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaiman etc. Have to say, given all the Charles de Lint love, that I couldn’t get through the book of his I bought. And I hated the one LKH I read.
Marianne McA-I would gather, that most of us who found UF via CDL, did so, from his Newford books. The first 2 (not the Kay books), were short story collections, set in the city, with the same set of characters threaded in all the stories. That slower build up, imho, is the best way to read his works. Once you have read the collections (at least the first 2), then, any book set there, makes SOO much more sense and you are vested in what is going on.
Others stated off with Moonheart (I want to live in Tamson House), which, is a damn fine tale. Which one did you try to read?
Moth-I agree on the Holly Black rec’d. I think I have seen her post here before!
Actually, I “met” CDL through Jack the Giant-Killer, his contribution to Terri Windling’s Fairy Tales series. It was later republished, together with its sequel, Drink Down the Moon, as Jack of Kinrowan.
Jack the Giant-Killer was the first book I began reading again as soon as I finished it. I mean, I got to the last page, and flipped back to the beginning and read it again. It literally opened a whole new world of books for me.
And Jackie IS a kick-ass heroine…but a flawed one with problems, who makes mistakes, etc. Loved it.
PS The name “urban fantasy” is not new. It was around in the 80s. No idea why the label appears to be new to people.
RfP said:
In the past few years, there has been a proliferation of kickass female
avatars in video games and these guys actually play the female role.
I came across this phenomenon when I profiled Lara Croft on my blog. The movies took that character in a different direction than solely teenage boy fantasy. She’s taken seriously and even ogles both Daniel Craig and Gerard Butler without being considered slutty.
While writing the article I found this one from Wired by Clive Thompson that talks about male gamers playing female roles and the Final Girl motif in horror movies.
Hm. I seem to have botched the quotes. Oh well.
Not UF, but I still cherish my first Kick ass heroine. It was Jirel of Joiry by C. L. Moore. The other day I found my old 1969 copy, nearly falling to pieces in my hands, and laid it aside for a reread.
An author I have not seen mentioned whose latest work fits into UF (with a touch of romance) is Lynn Abbey. Her Behind Times books are very appealing—a university librarian discovers a book left for her by the mother who abandoned her as an infant. She finds out that she is a curse hunter, a special type of creature who can walk through time and a mysterious otherworld type place, seeking curses which have corporal existence.
I described it as UF for the baby boom generation because you see the heroine and her friends dealing with parents in nursing homes, stepchildren, annoying exes, etc.
There are four and I’m not sure how many Ace still has in print: Out of Time, Behind Time, Taking Time and Down Time.
Maggie – it was called ‘Widdershins’, and I think it was a Newford book. I seem to remember reading reviews to try and see which book that could be read as a stand-alone, because it is always a bit of a gamble to jump into things mid-series. Perhaps it was a bad choice.
I think you may be right about needing to be vested in the characters – from what I remember, I read about half of it, and still hadn’t really connected with any of them. And you needed to be concerned about the characters to want to read on and see how the various situations resolved themselves.
(Also – and this is probably a stupid observation: nothing new – I’ve an odd idea I’d enjoy him more if I’d ever been to the US. I always feel that way about Garrison Keillor as well – that I lack the proper frame of reference to enjoy him fully.)
Marianne—even though Newford uses the US legal system, it’s technically neither a US city nor a Canadian one. He wrote about that once, b/c, especially in the early books, it has a lot more Canadian attributes than American ones. (One of the first full Newford novels felt very “alien” to me…of course, I felt doubly confused, b/c not only was it a much more Canadian setting, but Newford is clearly in eastern North America, a place I had rarely been until I was 17.)
But…uh…yeah. If you tried to read Widdershins without any of the background, I think it’s totally reasonable that you’d be completely, utterly lost. And I don’t think it’s his best work, either. I recommend Forests of the Heart or Someplace to be Flying if you want a novel-length intro to Newford. The first short story collection is Dreams Underfoot, and that’s really the best intro there is, though the first story is not set in Newford. (The first story is…odd. I like it.) Plus, it’s fabulous.
And if you’re really into more traditional urban fantasy (no elves, but fairy tale creatures brought to life on the city streets), let me recommend Jack of Kinrowan.
Oh, and the best Newford novel, IMHO? Memory and Dream. Beautiful and heart-breaking and not a little scary.
Marianne- Yeah, what snarkhunter said, totally. Widdershins, no way would you know about Jilly and Geordie, and what the blurb said, about how everyone knew they were meant to be together. It builds, in the short stories, how they met and their in’s and out’s as close friends. A lot would have been lacking in the story for you, for sure. No matter what people say, the Newford books, if Jilly is in it, should be read in order, as CDL builds her character, via interaction with others and the reader will miss things, that to me, are the lovely bits that make Jilly so damn COOL.
If you can find it, WIld Wood (with the Brian Froud art), is amazing!
I find that I’ve been reading a lot of what is considered Urban Fantasy recently – having started both Jim Butcher, Kim Harrison, Patricia Briggs and Vicki Pettersson in the last year. I see that no one has mentioned Vicki yet, but I think people should check her out, she dragged me into her books and I couldn’t let go until I was finished.
I love books and I find that I tend to prefer books with strong romantic elements be it fantasy or mystery or science fiction. My preferred genre is SF/F though.
However, I just like good books. I like books that are well written with an interesting plot. It doesn’t have to have romance in them, but if the romance works and is believable I love that too.
I don’t think I care if the protagonist is male or female, though I agree with many people in that the “superman” complex in characters, where they are all powerful and have no flaws, drive me absolutely nuts. I can suspend my belief only so much.
I absolutely LOVE Someplace to be Flying and it’s one of my all-time favorite deLint books, though I’m also really fond of Moonheart and Greenmantle, too. (Moonheart was my favorite until I read Someplace to be Flying).
I’ve liked urban fantasy for a while, and wanted to give a shout out for Terri Windling’s book “The Wood Wife” as a fine, early example. (I noticed that she got mentioned as an editor a few times, but if you like the genre and haven’t checked out her novel, you should.)
A fair bit of magical realist work that has been around for a long time and tends to get classified in general fiction seems to me to have a lot of overlap with urban fantasy.
Favorite Elsie Lee moment: Heroine identifies the man who killed her husband. Heroine breaks both his arms and has to be pulled off him before doing more damage.
This was written in the early 1960s, definitely before the resurgence of feminism. And nice little heroines didn’t get revenge back then, Heck, they don’t now, either. Which is why urban fantasy appeals.
Oh, Sally!! I’m so glad you mentioned The Wood Wife (though it’s not a particularly early book—it was published in 1996).
That is, hands down, my all-time favorite book. I usually take it with me when I travel, b/c if I run out of books for some reason, I can always fall back on The Wood Wife. It’s gorgeous.
Headnote 1: Jirel of Joiry was published in 1934 through 1939 and was written by C. (Catherine) L. Moore.
Headnote 2: Good comments all so far.
Now. I wanted to talk about the Superman/Mary Sue issue. Basically ever superhero has to have hi/r krypton.
I’m writing a series that I call the Shapechanger Chronicles. One book is finished, its sequel is half done, and I’ve begun and done some research on a parallel novel with another main character with plans for several more.
I deliberately chose to write about a character who is invulnerable. Can’t be hurt, can’t be killed, even if the body is vaporized she can take a new body. Has powerful weapons, can kick an entire army’s butt if need be.
I solved the Superman problem in three ways.
Mary McCarthy is a 53-year-old Irish farmer’s wife who returns from the dead in 1854 an immortal shapechanger. Her body, in recovering from death, has also repaired the “sickness” of aging, returning her physically to 13. She also has some esoteric powers which I won’t go into, except to say they can be powerful weapons.
Solution 1 – Mary makes friends and cares for people. Tough and canny, she got her family through the 5-year Great Famine because of industry, creativity, and courage. A caring mother but unable to continue her old life, she travels, exploring her new self, finally finds a home in an orphanage. There she gets the nickname of Granny McCarthy for her manner. She makes two close female friends, mothers the youngest children, and impresses the adults with her industry and maturity. Her krypton is not physical, it’s emotional. She cares. She can’t be hurt, but others can. And as the years go by it becomes ever clearer than she will still be young and strong when all those she cares for are dust.
Solution 2 – All her seemingly magical powers are not. There are realistic bases for them, though she won’t understand just what they are for a century or two. Nor will the reader. But her capabilities have rules that limit them. For instance, she can change her skin color in less than a second. Her bones take weeks or months to change shape and become strong. Other parts of her take intermediate times. She can ensure her brain is perfectly healthy (blood flow unimpeded in any way, cancers or embolisms or whatever healed, etc.) but understands she must be very very careful in making any changes, including making them slowly so she can catch a problem before it gets too bad.
Solution 3 – Her physical, cultural, and social background is minutely researched and (I hope) vividly expressed. She and readers LIVE in that time and place.
Note that I give readers just enough detail, carefully picked to be evocative, so that readers will build the reality that Mary lives through from their own experiences and imagination. They know that Mary can do the impossible because they see it with their very own (imaginary!) eyes.
Anyone curious to know more Google “Laer Carroll” AND “Mary McCarthy” and you’ll find the first three chapters of the first, completed, book online, which are also a self-contained story in itself. Not a cliff-hanger.
Laer
So far about anyone has said about urban fantasy is that it has kick-ass heroines, with (at least potentially) free hot sex lives, and often a noir or even horror element.
There’s another element. UF is densely detailed WITHOUT THE DETAIL. UF stories take place in a shared daily reality of modern cities. If one goes to Montreal or New York or LA or New Orleans or Paris or Berlin all the writer has to do is describe the differences between the cities. And likely describe in a very elliptic, allusive way.
Further, you can have an urban fantasy that takes place in other times. My Shapechangers Birth and Shapechangers Progress take place in several years around 1860. Most of the action is in Cork City, Galloway, Dublin, and Belfast, with later in the 2nd book in Liverpool and London. I have to mention jarveys rather than taxis, horse droppings on the roads, and gaslights rather than street lights. Mary McCarthy has to purchase entreé into a lending library because publically funded libraries had not been invented yet. Department stores were newly invented. Ditto sit-down restaurants; sit-downs were mostly only in private clubs or pubs.
For that matter, it seems that you could have urban fantasy in the future. Piers Anthony has done that but no one else I can think of at this moment. But as of now it’s only recently that if magic happened it had to be before modern times.
Laer
I’ve been reading urban fantasy since the 80s, before it had initial capitals. I’m happy it’s having a surge in popularity, in its good and even its less good forms, but I’m surprised to hear it equated to ass-kicking heroines. To me, urban fantasy and ass-kicking heroines are intersecting but not equivalent sets, or alternatively you could plot them on orthogonal axes. 😉
I’m also a bit surprised by how broad the term seems to have become, at least if you go by that Wikipedia article. To me, urban fantasy should be more than “fantasy that takes place in our world, where there are cities”—it should have some interest in the city itself. The “urban” part is at least as strong in “classic” urban fantasy—War for the Oaks and de Lint and the Borderlands series, for example—as the “fantasy” part. I don’t really consider Carrie Vaughn and Kelley Armstrong urban fantasy, much as I enjoy both, because the city just isn’t as important in their work. (And did someone mention Neal Stephenson? Since when does he write fantasy?) For another modern example, I would class Kim Harrison as urban fantasy—the city really is an important part of the work. Holly Black and Melissa Marr, likewise. I’d even propose any Terry Pratchett novel set in Ankh-Morpork as urban fantasy.
(Incidentally, for Fiamme, above, I’m much fonder of Kelley Armstrong’s non-werewolf novels—Dime Store Magic and Industrial Magic and Haunted, for some. The werewolves kind of irk me.)
(Also, for some reason I can’t type “fantasy” today.)
So…
Does Keith Urban get a percentage?
Gross or net?
Something I find interesting is the supposition that Urban Fantasy is drawing in female readers now because SF/F is really only “just” promoting women writers who write what women want to read.
I was a die hard SF/F reader for most of my younger life. I lived and breathed SF/F. I think women writers have had a respected place in SF/F for decades. That may be because, from my readings of the genre, male writers as well as female writers were willing to create strong powerful female characters in their books … women were routinely depicted in leadership roles, captains of space ships, intelligent, problem solving heroes in their own right. So I think SF/F was more accepting of women as writers & characters then some other genres.
I got away from SF/F about 15 years ago … it just seemed to take a direction I didn’t want to follow. I migrated to Romance when I discovered that the things I loved best about my favorite SF/F books were good character interaction & love stories. Once I found writers in Romance who were as good as the SF/F writers, I discovered a world that highlighted character & love with support from well written plots.
I’m slowly getting into urban fantasy because the feel of the stories is similar to what I enjoyed in my youth.
I’m pretty omnivorous in my reading, enjoying nonfiction, romance, mystery, thrillers, some SF/F & urban fantasy, etc. Which is a good thing. Romance is my prefered genre, but I’m still picky enough that when there are dry spells, I can feed my reading bug from other genres.
OMGoodness, Electric Landlady, I just had the same thought about Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork being the setting of urban fantasy—very heavy on the fantasy, but if Ankh-Morpork ain’t urban, I don’t know what is. Uber-urban, even.