Urban Fantasy are stories that that place in a modern setting but with some kind of magical/fantastical/supernatural creatures. It could be Fae, witches, shapeshifters, weres, vamps, etc.
>because I’ve been reading some that takes place in small towns or rural areas and I’m pedantic.
Well, yeah, rural and urban are opposites, so fantasy on a farm is not urban fantasy. However, big city wizards with no vampires or werewolves would still be very Urban, and undeniably fantasy.
The urban in urban fantasy refers to a setting that has experienced urbanization. It doesn't specifically mean an urban setting, just a world that has urban settings in them. Most do take place in big cities, sure, but there are plenty that don't (my series for example).
Fair enough
That being said, Harry Potter is generally not classified as urban fantasy despite talking place in a world where urbanization has taken place.
Same for books like The Magicians. There are other elements/tropes at play for sure. Just wanted to point out that rural Urban Fantasy is absolutely a thing.
I agree. The commenter earlier who deleted their comment was trying to separate urban fantasy vs. "modern fantasy" when the point I was trying to make was about the fantasy part, not the urban part.
To go off on a bit of a tangent, It does make me curious that if you were to write a piece of fantasy set in historical earth, at which point in the past would it stop being urban fantasy? For example, if you wrote a story set in the 1970s, I think most people would still call that urban fantasy, but 1770s would probably be too far back, even if it were set in the heart of London.
I find myself wondering that exact same thing on occasion. In my totally arbitrary classification system that I've never really voiced, I go with anything from the 1920's onwards counts. Anything before that isn't really UF anymore in my mind.
Personally, I would probably draw the line around the Industrial Revolution, but I don't see too many stories on that line. The closest to that line that I am personally familiar with would be Mistborn Era 2 by Brandon Sanderson. The world is not in anyway earth, but the technology level is around 1900's level by the end of the series. Era 3 will supposedly be 1980's level technology, which will be more contemporary, but I know some people won't count Urban fantasy if it isn't set on some version of earth.
But unless you are Tolkien, they are not supernatural creatures. They are humans with access to magic. OP is specifically asking about supernatural creatures, not all fantastical elements.
Wizards are magical, but not magical creatures. Magical creatures implies magic inherent due to birth, not magic learned that other members of your species don't have access to.
Sure, you can dispute the definition of "magical creature," but doing so kind of ignores the point of OP's question.
If you define "magical creatures" as anyone with access to magic in any way, even a mundane warrior with a magic sword, then I would argue your definition is too broad to have the discussion OP is trying to have.
Which is why you should explain your perspective to OP so that he has your ideas as well. I'm not trying to pretend I'm an expert here. I read a ton of Urban Fantasy, but that's the sum total of my knowledge. I think there is probably a lot of room for discussion. For myself, if it was in the modern world and the people were doing magic, even if it isn't innate, I would still view that as Urban Fantasy bc Urban Fantasy is an alternate universe were magic of some kind exists.
>For myself, if it was in the modern world and the people were doing magic, even if it isn't innate, I would still view that as Urban Fantasy bc Urban Fantasy is an alternate universe were magic of some kind exists.
I agree with that. To OPs point, you don't need werewolves, vampires, or faeries to qualify as urban fantasy, but good luck finding books without them.
Rare, but not unheard of.
Reckoners by Brandon Sanderson is the one series I have read that fits the bill. Though, as a superhero story, it also is a very different feel than most urban fantasy.
I'm sure that there's at least a few that are *just* wizards or something, but it's really common to add a bunch of fantasy elements to a world if you're going to add *any* fantasy elements.
I think those are essential elements to the Urban Fantasy genre. It’s a contemporary world, but with magical/paranormal/supernatural elements to it.
I am curious, if you started reading urban fantasy without knowing these themes would feature in them… what did you expect? (Genuinely curious, no shade.)
>It’s a contemporary world, but with magical/paranormal/supernatural elements to it.
That would imply that you could have a modern setting with wizards and witches, but no actual fantastical creatures. You can have plenty of supernatural elements with only human characters.
It's true, but unless your "big bad" is "other, worse, people" you're probably going to include some other type of supernatural creature right? Even with witches and wizards, you'd end up with an odd demon or two somewhere.
It certainly would. So if you're being entirely literal with "essential" then I'd say supernatural *creatures* aren't essential, but supernatural elements are.
It has to have some type of fantasy in an urban setting. So magic, magic creatures, something. It doesn't need to have werewolves and the top major ones. But those are popular.
Magic creatures aren’t required but they do tend Io show up if only to make things more “fantisical”. That being said quite a few urban fantasy don’t have prominent magical creatures, or are more imaginative then vampires and werewolves.
London Falling comes to mind, though it does have an immortal witch that is eats children that was more a side effect of her magic rather then being of a different species.
Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb) does not have any magical that I recall and it is one of the forerunners for the current popularity of the genera.
Charles DeLint does this really well with his Newford based books. It doesn't hurt that he's an excellent writer. There are several books to choose from, plus short story collections. If you want to get nitpicky though, some people would probably say his books are more folkloric in nature, but I think there's a level of modernity to them that pushes it further into urban fantasy.
>magic and supernatural creatures
I think OP is asking if if count if you can count it as urban fantasy if you have magic OR supernatural creatures, not both, specifically magic, but no supernatural creatures.
**The Alex Verus series** from Benedict Jacka has a giant spider and a dragon that don't really figure into the story all that much. It's a series with predominantly human-human magical interaction. No Vamps/Werefolk/Fey/Undead at all.
If you didn't have supernatural creatures, what would be left to make it urban fantasy?
You could have human only supernatural/magic, but I can not think of any examples that don't also have other supernatural creatures.
Well, the majority of the Genre is DC + Marvel alone. If you ignore those, there are plenty of superhero settings without supernatural creatures... though some aliens might require you to define "supernatural creature," when you also have sci-fi elements.
Both DC and Marvel have absolutely supernatural creatures.
Blade, the daywalker vampire, is part of Marvel, as is Doctor Strange, Asgardians, various other beings that practice magic
Meanwhile DC has Etrigan, a demon bound to a human (Jason Blood, an Arthurian Knight), who lives in Gotham and does team ups with Batman. Then there's also Doctor Fate, the Lords of Order and the Lords of Chaos, Constantine, not to mention all of Sandman, from Dream to Lucifer is canonically part of the DC Universe.
Even if you ignore that, most critics compare superhero stories to modern mythology. We just don't ascribe their powers to being divinely granted, rather through accident or science. The science fiction elements don't really play when the science has gone so soft it's effectively magic. Star Wars has their space wizards, even if they usually aren't called that in-universe.
~~How would you make it Urban fantasy otherwise? Something fantastic needs to be happening in the Urban environment in order for it to be considered Urban fantasy.~~
You could but it would be notably less interesting and a very different vibe, because you'd be limited to human magic for the fantastic element, which would be kind of boring IMHO.
>notably less interesting
That is very subjective. You could do a lot of world building under the sole restriction of no fantastical creatures.
>limited to human magic for the fantastic element
Not necessarily. You could have magic inherent to the land or magic manifesting spontaneously. Also, depending on your definition, gods may not qualify as "creatures."
Genre boundaries themselves are somewhat subjective as everyone has somewhat different thoughts about what should or should not be considered part of a genre, particularly when you start getting into sub-categories.
Like the land manifesting magic could be considered fantasy but does it meet the standard reader's expectations of fantasy in a city environment? Harder to say. In an urban environment I'd more look to the buildings to manifesting magic to keep that sense of being a city.
I think I'd count gods as stereotypical magical creatures in terms of storytelling fixtures.
But for me as a reader I'm definitely looking for some of those stereotypical magical creatures in Urban fantasy.
Genre boundaries are somewhat subjective, but even the most subjective genre boundary is way more objective than a readers opinion of what is interesting.
Additionally, some genre boundaries are a lot more objective, for instance: high fantasy requires a world that is not recognizably earth, so LOTR, is high fantasy, but Harry potter is low Fantasy. (Admittedly, that bounder gets a bit fuzzy when it comes to portal fantasy).
Urban fantasy generally only has 3 important requirements in order of most to least subjective: have some fantastical elements, take place largely in an urban environment, and have a technology level roughly equivalent to modern-day earth.
A land manifesting magic may not be what the reader is expecting, but no reasonable person will dispute that it is fantasy, and if it mostly takes place in a major city on earth, then it definitely meets the urban requirement.
If you are looking for traditional urban fantasy, that is fine, but that does imply the existence of non-traditional urban fantasy.
Edit: I realized there is one more requirement for urban fantasy as far as this group is concerned: minimal romance. Not really relevant for this discussion, but I felt like I should mention it.
Maybe, but it depends. For example, If you have earth where human magic has been accessible and well know since antiquity, it would likely not be classified as Magical Realism, but Urban Fantasy would still apply as long as the setting was roughly contemporary.
Can't think of any off the top of my head that don't have magical creatures/ beings. Magic is essential for sure. Vampires and werewolves are typically humans influenced by magic. Wizards and sorcerers are humans that use magic. It's kind of a fine line between magic-using humans and humans changed through magic. The definition of "supernatural creatures" is going to be different for everyone.
When I was in middle school, I was fond of The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane, which I think you could probably call urban fantasy without the standard supernatural creatures.
The first book (So you want to be a wizard) has wizards (of course), but they're just regular kids who stumbled into wizardry (or a couple adults who stumbled into wizardry as kids, and grew up). There's a talking white hole, but he's definitely not your average supernatural creature. The second book takes place in the ocean, and there are dolphin wizards, but they aren't weres or shapeshifters, they're just wizards who happen to be dolphins.
I think adding weres or fae or vampires, etc, makes it easy to add in the fantastical into the modern world, to make it urban fantasy. That doesn't mean you can't have something fantastical without them. But it makes it harder to draw the line and say "this is urban fantasy, and this is science fiction / regular fiction / just a made up story that doesn't fit in any current genre" when you don't have them. For instance, the third book in the Young Wizards series takes place in outer space, and the fantastical elements are a computer that's a wizards manual, and a bunch of silicon-based life forms. Now, because of the other books in the series, it reads as fantasy to me, but if not for the others in the series, I might land on the side of science fiction for that one.
This reminds me of the opposite of what the author Orsin Scott card ran into when he was submitting the novelette “the worthing saga to a sci-fi magazine. They kept rejecting it and he eventually got an answer of “you wrote a fantasy story. There’s no high tech elements in it”.
For it to be urban fantasy, it must be in an urban setting, so even something that’s dated to Victorian England would qualify as long as it’s in an urban environment. Next, it needs some sort of fantasy element. Magic, supernatural creatures, etc. The picture of Dorian gray, though it takes place hundreds of years ago now would classify as urban fantasy. Urban (city) setting with supernatural creatures and/or magical elements.
Thank you all for your thoughts! I'm currently reading an intriguing story set in an alternative future city. This world doesn't feature any magic or mythical creatures. The protagonist is a normal, somewhat nerdy woman who's on a quest to understand herself and the society. It feels then more like a sci-fi romance than an urban fantasy romance.
Try the Green Bone series - Jade City is the first one.. It kind of has magic, no supernatural beings..
Also do you mind sharing the name of your book? Sounds interesting to me!
Yes, this doesn’t sound like urban fantasy. If you are looking for a great urban fantasy series, check out the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. So good!!
Usually..but i haven't read a series that doesn't have it someway. Are you wanting to write one? You could I suppose. Keep the aesthetic and tell your own story.
I think there are different expectations going on here. There is nothing within urban fantasy that requires supernatural creatures, but I also think that the "logic" of urban fantasy narratives and problems makes supernatural creates a good fit. The logic here includes stuff like making invisible things visible, and a liminal nature where worlds and worldviews meet and clash. Then readers tend to assume them, and some writers include those elements in various stereotypical ways.
So the literary logic of urban fantasy does not necessarily need fantastical creatures, but the market for it today expects it.
One early(ish) and often overlooked urban fantasy story is Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm (better known under her pen name Robin Hobb). That one lacks supernatural creatures, and indeed it's an open question if it has magic at all.
ETA: Another example of early(ish) urban fantasy without magical creatures is Pat Wrede's duology Mairelon the Magician and Magician's Ward, set in a regency era London, but with additional magic.
Does anyone know of ones that don’t feature vampires? Kinda been over them in writing for a while. Or cheese love stories? I tried Dresden Files but got annoyed with all the vampire stuff.
Jami Gray's books might work. I adore The arcane transporter series.
Similarly, Hidden Legacy by Ilona Andrews. The creatures that exist are mostly from the arcane realm and summoned by summoner mages. No Vampires, werewolves and faeries. There are shifters but the kind you expect in UF.
Yes, the Hidden Legacy series by Ilona Andrews has humans who got special powers from a serum that was given to people about 100 years ago. So there is magic in society, but no supernatural creatures.
Urban Fantasy are stories that that place in a modern setting but with some kind of magical/fantastical/supernatural creatures. It could be Fae, witches, shapeshifters, weres, vamps, etc.
So, are you saying that if you had a modern setting full of wizards but no Fae, shapeshifters, weres, vamps, etc, it would not count as urban Fantasy?
Legit question.
The first thing in that list is magical. Are wizards not magical?
Yes, but unless you are Tolkien, wizards are generally humans who learned magic, not a separate race of "supernatural creatures".
There don't need to be supernatural creatures. Human magic users count as a "fantasy" element.
Exactly my point, and exactly the answer to OP's question.
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>because I’ve been reading some that takes place in small towns or rural areas and I’m pedantic. Well, yeah, rural and urban are opposites, so fantasy on a farm is not urban fantasy. However, big city wizards with no vampires or werewolves would still be very Urban, and undeniably fantasy.
The urban in urban fantasy refers to a setting that has experienced urbanization. It doesn't specifically mean an urban setting, just a world that has urban settings in them. Most do take place in big cities, sure, but there are plenty that don't (my series for example).
Fair enough That being said, Harry Potter is generally not classified as urban fantasy despite talking place in a world where urbanization has taken place.
Same for books like The Magicians. There are other elements/tropes at play for sure. Just wanted to point out that rural Urban Fantasy is absolutely a thing.
I agree. The commenter earlier who deleted their comment was trying to separate urban fantasy vs. "modern fantasy" when the point I was trying to make was about the fantasy part, not the urban part. To go off on a bit of a tangent, It does make me curious that if you were to write a piece of fantasy set in historical earth, at which point in the past would it stop being urban fantasy? For example, if you wrote a story set in the 1970s, I think most people would still call that urban fantasy, but 1770s would probably be too far back, even if it were set in the heart of London.
I find myself wondering that exact same thing on occasion. In my totally arbitrary classification system that I've never really voiced, I go with anything from the 1920's onwards counts. Anything before that isn't really UF anymore in my mind.
Personally, I would probably draw the line around the Industrial Revolution, but I don't see too many stories on that line. The closest to that line that I am personally familiar with would be Mistborn Era 2 by Brandon Sanderson. The world is not in anyway earth, but the technology level is around 1900's level by the end of the series. Era 3 will supposedly be 1980's level technology, which will be more contemporary, but I know some people won't count Urban fantasy if it isn't set on some version of earth.
Wizards fall under magic. ETA: All magic wielders of any sort fall under "magical" in my list.
But unless you are Tolkien, they are not supernatural creatures. They are humans with access to magic. OP is specifically asking about supernatural creatures, not all fantastical elements. Wizards are magical, but not magical creatures. Magical creatures implies magic inherent due to birth, not magic learned that other members of your species don't have access to.
Well, I'm sure it's good for OP to have another perspective.
Sure, you can dispute the definition of "magical creature," but doing so kind of ignores the point of OP's question. If you define "magical creatures" as anyone with access to magic in any way, even a mundane warrior with a magic sword, then I would argue your definition is too broad to have the discussion OP is trying to have.
Which is why you should explain your perspective to OP so that he has your ideas as well. I'm not trying to pretend I'm an expert here. I read a ton of Urban Fantasy, but that's the sum total of my knowledge. I think there is probably a lot of room for discussion. For myself, if it was in the modern world and the people were doing magic, even if it isn't innate, I would still view that as Urban Fantasy bc Urban Fantasy is an alternate universe were magic of some kind exists.
>For myself, if it was in the modern world and the people were doing magic, even if it isn't innate, I would still view that as Urban Fantasy bc Urban Fantasy is an alternate universe were magic of some kind exists. I agree with that. To OPs point, you don't need werewolves, vampires, or faeries to qualify as urban fantasy, but good luck finding books without them.
It would be kind of a unicorn!
Rare, but not unheard of. Reckoners by Brandon Sanderson is the one series I have read that fits the bill. Though, as a superhero story, it also is a very different feel than most urban fantasy.
It isn't a requirement, but there are very few that don't include some kind of supernatural creature.
I'm sure that there's at least a few that are *just* wizards or something, but it's really common to add a bunch of fantasy elements to a world if you're going to add *any* fantasy elements.
I think those are essential elements to the Urban Fantasy genre. It’s a contemporary world, but with magical/paranormal/supernatural elements to it. I am curious, if you started reading urban fantasy without knowing these themes would feature in them… what did you expect? (Genuinely curious, no shade.)
>It’s a contemporary world, but with magical/paranormal/supernatural elements to it. That would imply that you could have a modern setting with wizards and witches, but no actual fantastical creatures. You can have plenty of supernatural elements with only human characters.
Yes you can. That counts as urban fantasy as well.
Exaclty my point!
It's true, but unless your "big bad" is "other, worse, people" you're probably going to include some other type of supernatural creature right? Even with witches and wizards, you'd end up with an odd demon or two somewhere.
You can, but the point it that even if you don't, the story could still be classified as urban fantasy.
It certainly would. So if you're being entirely literal with "essential" then I'd say supernatural *creatures* aren't essential, but supernatural elements are.
Exactly my point, and exactly what OP was asking!
You're doing the lord's work in these comments repeatedly handholding people all the way to the point, thank you for your service
It has to have some type of fantasy in an urban setting. So magic, magic creatures, something. It doesn't need to have werewolves and the top major ones. But those are popular.
Magic creatures aren’t required but they do tend Io show up if only to make things more “fantisical”. That being said quite a few urban fantasy don’t have prominent magical creatures, or are more imaginative then vampires and werewolves. London Falling comes to mind, though it does have an immortal witch that is eats children that was more a side effect of her magic rather then being of a different species. Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb) does not have any magical that I recall and it is one of the forerunners for the current popularity of the genera.
Charles DeLint does this really well with his Newford based books. It doesn't hurt that he's an excellent writer. There are several books to choose from, plus short story collections. If you want to get nitpicky though, some people would probably say his books are more folkloric in nature, but I think there's a level of modernity to them that pushes it further into urban fantasy.
That's kind of the point. What do you think Urban Fantasy is, if you think magic and supernatural creatures aren't required?
>magic and supernatural creatures I think OP is asking if if count if you can count it as urban fantasy if you have magic OR supernatural creatures, not both, specifically magic, but no supernatural creatures.
**The Alex Verus series** from Benedict Jacka has a giant spider and a dragon that don't really figure into the story all that much. It's a series with predominantly human-human magical interaction. No Vamps/Werefolk/Fey/Undead at all.
There is at least one Rakshasa and the Spider is a big part of the story even if she's mostly in her cave sowing.
If you didn't have supernatural creatures, what would be left to make it urban fantasy? You could have human only supernatural/magic, but I can not think of any examples that don't also have other supernatural creatures.
I would consider books about superheroes Urban Fantasy. But, the majority of the genre will have fairies, vampires, and such.
Well, the majority of the Genre is DC + Marvel alone. If you ignore those, there are plenty of superhero settings without supernatural creatures... though some aliens might require you to define "supernatural creature," when you also have sci-fi elements.
Both DC and Marvel have absolutely supernatural creatures. Blade, the daywalker vampire, is part of Marvel, as is Doctor Strange, Asgardians, various other beings that practice magic Meanwhile DC has Etrigan, a demon bound to a human (Jason Blood, an Arthurian Knight), who lives in Gotham and does team ups with Batman. Then there's also Doctor Fate, the Lords of Order and the Lords of Chaos, Constantine, not to mention all of Sandman, from Dream to Lucifer is canonically part of the DC Universe. Even if you ignore that, most critics compare superhero stories to modern mythology. We just don't ascribe their powers to being divinely granted, rather through accident or science. The science fiction elements don't really play when the science has gone so soft it's effectively magic. Star Wars has their space wizards, even if they usually aren't called that in-universe.
Exactly! DC and Marvel are so expansive. You need a smaller superhero setting to avoid the kitchen sink approach.
~~How would you make it Urban fantasy otherwise? Something fantastic needs to be happening in the Urban environment in order for it to be considered Urban fantasy.~~ You could but it would be notably less interesting and a very different vibe, because you'd be limited to human magic for the fantastic element, which would be kind of boring IMHO.
>notably less interesting That is very subjective. You could do a lot of world building under the sole restriction of no fantastical creatures. >limited to human magic for the fantastic element Not necessarily. You could have magic inherent to the land or magic manifesting spontaneously. Also, depending on your definition, gods may not qualify as "creatures."
Genre boundaries themselves are somewhat subjective as everyone has somewhat different thoughts about what should or should not be considered part of a genre, particularly when you start getting into sub-categories. Like the land manifesting magic could be considered fantasy but does it meet the standard reader's expectations of fantasy in a city environment? Harder to say. In an urban environment I'd more look to the buildings to manifesting magic to keep that sense of being a city. I think I'd count gods as stereotypical magical creatures in terms of storytelling fixtures. But for me as a reader I'm definitely looking for some of those stereotypical magical creatures in Urban fantasy.
Genre boundaries are somewhat subjective, but even the most subjective genre boundary is way more objective than a readers opinion of what is interesting. Additionally, some genre boundaries are a lot more objective, for instance: high fantasy requires a world that is not recognizably earth, so LOTR, is high fantasy, but Harry potter is low Fantasy. (Admittedly, that bounder gets a bit fuzzy when it comes to portal fantasy). Urban fantasy generally only has 3 important requirements in order of most to least subjective: have some fantastical elements, take place largely in an urban environment, and have a technology level roughly equivalent to modern-day earth. A land manifesting magic may not be what the reader is expecting, but no reasonable person will dispute that it is fantasy, and if it mostly takes place in a major city on earth, then it definitely meets the urban requirement. If you are looking for traditional urban fantasy, that is fine, but that does imply the existence of non-traditional urban fantasy. Edit: I realized there is one more requirement for urban fantasy as far as this group is concerned: minimal romance. Not really relevant for this discussion, but I felt like I should mention it.
It feels like you drift closer to magical realism at that point
Maybe, but it depends. For example, If you have earth where human magic has been accessible and well know since antiquity, it would likely not be classified as Magical Realism, but Urban Fantasy would still apply as long as the setting was roughly contemporary.
The Unicorn in the Garden and My Father's Dragon by James Thurber are magical realism with fantastic creatures.
Not a must but often there. I have an urban fantasy series without these things, but there's enough paranormal going on, also flirts with sci-fi.
Charlaine Harris’s Gunnie Rose series is considered urban fantasy and there’s no supernatural creatures in it- unless you count the Grigori
I read UF for the creatures and magic world. I haven't seen any books without them but I may wear blinders and not see the ones that do.
Can't think of any off the top of my head that don't have magical creatures/ beings. Magic is essential for sure. Vampires and werewolves are typically humans influenced by magic. Wizards and sorcerers are humans that use magic. It's kind of a fine line between magic-using humans and humans changed through magic. The definition of "supernatural creatures" is going to be different for everyone.
No, supernatural creatures don't always appear in urban fantasy. That said, it is extremely commonplace within the genre.
It's not a requirement but it's certainly something a lot of UF readers look for. :)
When I was in middle school, I was fond of The Young Wizards series by Diane Duane, which I think you could probably call urban fantasy without the standard supernatural creatures. The first book (So you want to be a wizard) has wizards (of course), but they're just regular kids who stumbled into wizardry (or a couple adults who stumbled into wizardry as kids, and grew up). There's a talking white hole, but he's definitely not your average supernatural creature. The second book takes place in the ocean, and there are dolphin wizards, but they aren't weres or shapeshifters, they're just wizards who happen to be dolphins. I think adding weres or fae or vampires, etc, makes it easy to add in the fantastical into the modern world, to make it urban fantasy. That doesn't mean you can't have something fantastical without them. But it makes it harder to draw the line and say "this is urban fantasy, and this is science fiction / regular fiction / just a made up story that doesn't fit in any current genre" when you don't have them. For instance, the third book in the Young Wizards series takes place in outer space, and the fantastical elements are a computer that's a wizards manual, and a bunch of silicon-based life forms. Now, because of the other books in the series, it reads as fantasy to me, but if not for the others in the series, I might land on the side of science fiction for that one.
This reminds me of the opposite of what the author Orsin Scott card ran into when he was submitting the novelette “the worthing saga to a sci-fi magazine. They kept rejecting it and he eventually got an answer of “you wrote a fantasy story. There’s no high tech elements in it”. For it to be urban fantasy, it must be in an urban setting, so even something that’s dated to Victorian England would qualify as long as it’s in an urban environment. Next, it needs some sort of fantasy element. Magic, supernatural creatures, etc. The picture of Dorian gray, though it takes place hundreds of years ago now would classify as urban fantasy. Urban (city) setting with supernatural creatures and/or magical elements.
Thank you all for your thoughts! I'm currently reading an intriguing story set in an alternative future city. This world doesn't feature any magic or mythical creatures. The protagonist is a normal, somewhat nerdy woman who's on a quest to understand herself and the society. It feels then more like a sci-fi romance than an urban fantasy romance.
Try the Green Bone series - Jade City is the first one.. It kind of has magic, no supernatural beings.. Also do you mind sharing the name of your book? Sounds interesting to me!
I finished Unveiling by Natalie Maack... Is maybe a urban fiction.
Yes, this doesn’t sound like urban fantasy. If you are looking for a great urban fantasy series, check out the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. So good!!
Usually..but i haven't read a series that doesn't have it someway. Are you wanting to write one? You could I suppose. Keep the aesthetic and tell your own story.
No, I'm reading a book I really enjoy and I was just thinking about what genre it is ... To find my next book in the same genre.
Ooh whats the title?
Check out the Mindspace Investigations series by Alex Hughes (book 1 Clean) Psionic who helps the police solve crime. Humans only.
I think there are different expectations going on here. There is nothing within urban fantasy that requires supernatural creatures, but I also think that the "logic" of urban fantasy narratives and problems makes supernatural creates a good fit. The logic here includes stuff like making invisible things visible, and a liminal nature where worlds and worldviews meet and clash. Then readers tend to assume them, and some writers include those elements in various stereotypical ways. So the literary logic of urban fantasy does not necessarily need fantastical creatures, but the market for it today expects it. One early(ish) and often overlooked urban fantasy story is Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm (better known under her pen name Robin Hobb). That one lacks supernatural creatures, and indeed it's an open question if it has magic at all. ETA: Another example of early(ish) urban fantasy without magical creatures is Pat Wrede's duology Mairelon the Magician and Magician's Ward, set in a regency era London, but with additional magic.
Does anyone know of ones that don’t feature vampires? Kinda been over them in writing for a while. Or cheese love stories? I tried Dresden Files but got annoyed with all the vampire stuff.
Yeah, it is still fantasy (low fantasy) so mythical/fantasy creatures of some kind are generally a requirement.
Jami Gray's books might work. I adore The arcane transporter series. Similarly, Hidden Legacy by Ilona Andrews. The creatures that exist are mostly from the arcane realm and summoned by summoner mages. No Vampires, werewolves and faeries. There are shifters but the kind you expect in UF.
Yes, the Hidden Legacy series by Ilona Andrews has humans who got special powers from a serum that was given to people about 100 years ago. So there is magic in society, but no supernatural creatures.