The Dragon Nextdoor
Evening all,
At Eastercon there was a chat about what makes Urban Fantasy tick, and I thought I'd add my two cents:
What exactly is Urban Fantasy? It's a question that causes controversy. There's always going to be a scrap when you get a group of people together who are as voraciously intelligent as geeks, and have the hard-on for taxonomy that many geeks undoubtedly have, and ask them to agree on a definition.
Does Urban Fantasy need to take place in a city? If so, does the city have to be modern? Does it have to be real? Is the moderness more important than the reality, or the urbanness or vice-versa?
They're valid questions, but for kind of Urban Fantasy that I'm talking about the answers are yes, yes and yes.
These stories are set, not just in a city, but your city, or a city that could be yours. The spells are woven under bridges that you'd recognize. The creatures walk the streets that you know.
So what is it that makes cities so suitable for this? One facet stands out.
Cities are inherently mysterious. Cities, by their very nature are places where there are things close enough to you, that they could feel your breath, that are hidden from your sight.
Think about it. In an open spot in the countryside, you could see for miles. But in Streatham or Camden or Clerkenwell, how far is it before a brick wall shuts off your view? And what do you know about what goes on behind that wall?
Nothing, right?
If you live in a city then the odds are you spend most of your life in a routine. That after all, is what 'routine' means. Your steps will link the same points over and over again. You walk out your front door, go to the tube station. You go to work, to the supermarket, to visit your grandparents.
You never go left instead of right, why would you? You never look any deeper into those shadows than you have to when you come home at night. Day after day, week after week, the same paths worn by the same feet.
It's like the wise old woman tells you in a fairy story. Don't stray from the path, don't touch what you can't see, don't walk beyond the light, it's not safe.
Of course, we don't think it that way, but the effect is the same. All that is known, is what's familiar, everything else is a secret. And secrets are fantasy's fair game.
How many windows do you pass by each day, with the curtains shut? What do you know about what goes on behind them? But it could be a den of vampires resting up in there, or a werewolf sweating it out, awaiting the full moon's inexorable advance. Probably not though. It's probably just a couple bunking off to shag, or an insurance salesman who's overslept.
That night when you heard something, years ago, maybe kind of vague-y screamlike, you dismissed it right? Yeah. me too, I'm sure it was nothing.
Imagine a species of man we shall call the 'Reality Puritan'. The Reality Puritan works a sensible job, and comes home at a sensible time. He dresses sensibly, mostly in grey suits, brogues and rollneck sweaters. He thinks and talks sensibly, he even dreams sensibly and he has no time whatever for stories of fantastical jiggery-pokery.
If the reality puritan were to discover that, contrary to what he believed, a family of minotaurs were occupying the semi-detatched next door, he would not think this was cool. He would not be excited or even terrified, he would be offended. Outraged, even, at the violence done to his sensibility.
To protect his world view, the reality puritan, in between sips of weak lemon drink and nibbles of ryvita, can make the following argument -
“I know” he could say, “that there is no Hocus-pocus going on in my neighbourhood. I know it for a fact. Because, while I might have no personal experience of what goes on behind the doors of the houses on my street, other people do. The spaces that are hidden from me are their homes, they see them everyday. These people are kind, and decent and sensible, and in the highly unlikely event that they were to discover fairies living in the garden shed, they would make a fuss, and I would have heard about it. And we would not stand for it. And we would stamp it out, because such things would not merely be untoward, they would be, and I don't like to use this word... indecorous.
“Frankly,” our reality puritan might say, “Telling tall tales about such absurd things is Just Not British'”
It is though, it is very British.
And there's another problem for our Reality Puritan. A problem intimately bound up with the city. Cities you see, have gaps.
There are holes, places where the densely interwoven, interleaved, intertangled fabric of lives that is the essence of a metropolis wears thin and frays. Sewers, derelict factories, tangles of gorse in the local park, the roofs of skyscrapers. Holes in the subjective experience of the city. Places where nobody goes, and not only you, but nobody really knows what is going on.
And that's where Urban Fantasy comes into it's own. It asks “what if?” Of course, all speculative fictions asks that, but Urban Fantasy asks it in a different way. Not in the grand world-embracing manner of science fiction, ie:
“What if Hitler won the war,” or “What if we discovered Time-Travel”
But the local, personal way of:
“What if you turned left rather than right?”
What if you lifted the cover off that manhole, or climbed that fire-escape that you pass every day?
What might you see?
A couple of kids bunking off school, torturing bugs or making out? A stash of class-A drugs? A dead body? A dragons egg, or maybe something so strange that all mankind's centuries of dreaming, we haven't put a name to it yet.
That for me, is what gives Urban Fantasy it's unique kick. That Proximity of the Weird. (And if, it does it's job right, the weird should feel so close it makes you shiver)
These are stories that beg you to transgress. That pull you beyond safety of the mundane. Unlike the wise old woman in the fairy tales, they encourage you to stray from the path, They offer you something you can't see and ask you to touch it.
These are stories that say 'Take my hand, and together, we'll walk beyond the light.'
At Eastercon there was a chat about what makes Urban Fantasy tick, and I thought I'd add my two cents:
What exactly is Urban Fantasy? It's a question that causes controversy. There's always going to be a scrap when you get a group of people together who are as voraciously intelligent as geeks, and have the hard-on for taxonomy that many geeks undoubtedly have, and ask them to agree on a definition.
Does Urban Fantasy need to take place in a city? If so, does the city have to be modern? Does it have to be real? Is the moderness more important than the reality, or the urbanness or vice-versa?
They're valid questions, but for kind of Urban Fantasy that I'm talking about the answers are yes, yes and yes.
These stories are set, not just in a city, but your city, or a city that could be yours. The spells are woven under bridges that you'd recognize. The creatures walk the streets that you know.
So what is it that makes cities so suitable for this? One facet stands out.
Cities are inherently mysterious. Cities, by their very nature are places where there are things close enough to you, that they could feel your breath, that are hidden from your sight.
Think about it. In an open spot in the countryside, you could see for miles. But in Streatham or Camden or Clerkenwell, how far is it before a brick wall shuts off your view? And what do you know about what goes on behind that wall?
Nothing, right?
If you live in a city then the odds are you spend most of your life in a routine. That after all, is what 'routine' means. Your steps will link the same points over and over again. You walk out your front door, go to the tube station. You go to work, to the supermarket, to visit your grandparents.
You never go left instead of right, why would you? You never look any deeper into those shadows than you have to when you come home at night. Day after day, week after week, the same paths worn by the same feet.
It's like the wise old woman tells you in a fairy story. Don't stray from the path, don't touch what you can't see, don't walk beyond the light, it's not safe.
Of course, we don't think it that way, but the effect is the same. All that is known, is what's familiar, everything else is a secret. And secrets are fantasy's fair game.
How many windows do you pass by each day, with the curtains shut? What do you know about what goes on behind them? But it could be a den of vampires resting up in there, or a werewolf sweating it out, awaiting the full moon's inexorable advance. Probably not though. It's probably just a couple bunking off to shag, or an insurance salesman who's overslept.
That night when you heard something, years ago, maybe kind of vague-y screamlike, you dismissed it right? Yeah. me too, I'm sure it was nothing.
Imagine a species of man we shall call the 'Reality Puritan'. The Reality Puritan works a sensible job, and comes home at a sensible time. He dresses sensibly, mostly in grey suits, brogues and rollneck sweaters. He thinks and talks sensibly, he even dreams sensibly and he has no time whatever for stories of fantastical jiggery-pokery.
If the reality puritan were to discover that, contrary to what he believed, a family of minotaurs were occupying the semi-detatched next door, he would not think this was cool. He would not be excited or even terrified, he would be offended. Outraged, even, at the violence done to his sensibility.
To protect his world view, the reality puritan, in between sips of weak lemon drink and nibbles of ryvita, can make the following argument -
“I know” he could say, “that there is no Hocus-pocus going on in my neighbourhood. I know it for a fact. Because, while I might have no personal experience of what goes on behind the doors of the houses on my street, other people do. The spaces that are hidden from me are their homes, they see them everyday. These people are kind, and decent and sensible, and in the highly unlikely event that they were to discover fairies living in the garden shed, they would make a fuss, and I would have heard about it. And we would not stand for it. And we would stamp it out, because such things would not merely be untoward, they would be, and I don't like to use this word... indecorous.
“Frankly,” our reality puritan might say, “Telling tall tales about such absurd things is Just Not British'”
It is though, it is very British.
And there's another problem for our Reality Puritan. A problem intimately bound up with the city. Cities you see, have gaps.
There are holes, places where the densely interwoven, interleaved, intertangled fabric of lives that is the essence of a metropolis wears thin and frays. Sewers, derelict factories, tangles of gorse in the local park, the roofs of skyscrapers. Holes in the subjective experience of the city. Places where nobody goes, and not only you, but nobody really knows what is going on.
And that's where Urban Fantasy comes into it's own. It asks “what if?” Of course, all speculative fictions asks that, but Urban Fantasy asks it in a different way. Not in the grand world-embracing manner of science fiction, ie:
“What if Hitler won the war,” or “What if we discovered Time-Travel”
But the local, personal way of:
“What if you turned left rather than right?”
What if you lifted the cover off that manhole, or climbed that fire-escape that you pass every day?
What might you see?
A couple of kids bunking off school, torturing bugs or making out? A stash of class-A drugs? A dead body? A dragons egg, or maybe something so strange that all mankind's centuries of dreaming, we haven't put a name to it yet.
That for me, is what gives Urban Fantasy it's unique kick. That Proximity of the Weird. (And if, it does it's job right, the weird should feel so close it makes you shiver)
These are stories that beg you to transgress. That pull you beyond safety of the mundane. Unlike the wise old woman in the fairy tales, they encourage you to stray from the path, They offer you something you can't see and ask you to touch it.
These are stories that say 'Take my hand, and together, we'll walk beyond the light.'