Urban Fantasy

One of the things that often infuriates me about academic books on SF is the insistence that so many academics (usually men) have on rigidly defining genres, and then tying themselves in increasingly convoluted knots trying to make actual books fit the tiny pigeonholes that they have constructed for them. It is therefore a delight to read an academic book that calmly accepts the fact that authors will continually seek to create new approaches to their fiction.

Having said that, Stefan Ekman does have a definition for urban fantasy as a genre, and it is one that is much wider than most people would expect. It certainly took me by surprise, but I ended up liking it a lot.

The subtitle of the book (it is an academic book, of course it has a subtitle) is Exploring Modernity Through Magic. That requires some explanation. ‘Modernity’ is a specific term in the study of history, and as such has a more limited temporal scope than Ekman gives it (we are now, apparently, deep into the Post-Modern era). However, over the course of a short chapter discussing various definitions of Modernity, Ekman makes a convincing case for dividing fantasy into two camps: one in which it happens in the deep past and is primarily a function of the supernatural; and one in which it takes place in the modern world and is firmly in the realm of the rational.

By this definition, urban fantasy becomes that subset of fantasy in which magic can be understood by logical, rational means. This doesn’t necessarily result in a neat time-based split. I can see a justification for writing urban fantasy in the Roman Empire, and indeed much supposedly mediaeval fantasy has a very rationalist approach to magic systems (usually the result of the author having played too much Dungeons & Dragons). But urban fantasy works best in the modern world where it exists in concert with things like police forces, computers, television and social media.

I usually describe Juliet McKenna’s Green Man books as Contemporary Rural Fantasy, but by Ekman’s definition they are very clearly Urban. Dan Mackmain and his friends have a very rationalist approach to the supernatural, and are regular users of computer technology. They are constantly concerned about being exposed in the media.

Ekman seems unfamiliar with Juliet’s work (something I would be keen to remedy, save that I know academics, having published a book on a particular subject, can’t wait to read something different for a change), but some of the examples he gives are very similar. While he does spend some time on legendary forebears of the genre such as the work of Charles de Lint, and Megan Lindholm’s Wizard of the Pigeons, he also focuses on things like Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series and Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. Less obvious is the inclusion of Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence, which proves that you can write urban fantasy as science fiction.

One of the more interesting sections of the book focuses on Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles, books with which I am unfamiliar. Ekman is interested in the books because the hero, Atticus, is thousands of years old and therefore has a very different worldview to those of the contemporary Americans amongst whom he lives. While he styles himself as a champion of nature, Atticus has little interest in doing anything about human environmental destruction because Gaia will sort that out in her own way (presumably to the extreme detriment of the humans). He is more interested in the danger of the god-like powers who have the capacity to destroy the environment entirely. It is an interesting perspective.

Obviously academic books are not for everyone. However, for anyone writing contemporary fantasy, I think that Ekman’s Urban Fantasy provides an excellent overview of the field and plenty of food for thought as to how to approach it. For young academics it provides a welcome and necessary example of how to do your work without getting trapped in the weeds of definitions. And for me it is a reminder that I need to sit down and read my way through the Craft Sequence, because it is very clever writing.

Title: Urban Fantasy
By: Stefan Ekman
Publisher: Lever Press
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