The Big Idea: Nicole Peter and Tempest Rising

[foxfirefey]

So, John Scalzi has a feature on his blog called "The Big Idea". It's a great way to get really tantalizing previews of books you might want to read--and is heavily skewed toward SF/F genre books, too, although it isn't exclusive. A whole site dedicated to the concept is in the works, too.

The latest Big Idea by Nicole Peter has a lot of interesting things to say about urban fantasy, to wit:

In a time of chaos and uncertainty, is it any wonder that urban fantasy, the genre of the contemporary fairy tale, is on the rise? After all, urban fantasy offers a vision of the world in which traditional evils...are often times merely misunderstood. Meanwhile, traditional heroes...are often revealed to be sanctimonious, narrow-minded, and murderous zealots. The binaries neatly dividing good and evil are blurred in this genre, and the underlying message in many urban fantasies seems to be that the individual must make his or her own choices: that we must rely on our own experiences and intellect in a world that wants to brand outsiders as evil, to force ideological dichotomies on reality, and to make soldiers of us all.

Are you an urban fantasy fan (disregarding urban fantasy that you don't like and mainly considering that which you do, if any)? If so, what draws you to the genre? If not, what repels you?

Comments

[aphenine]

I'm not entirely sure I know what Urban Fantasy is, but if it's what I think it is (China Mieville, Scar Night, gas lamp/steam-punk), then I like the fact that it's very different to traditional fantasy, in a way what corinthian said about being a step to the side. It's really refreshing to read stuff where the background world has technology and big cities and it's a nice rest from all the traditional stuff.

What I don't like is the way that Urban fantasy tends to try to be "edgy". I like what draigwen said about how good fantasy tends to stay away from dichotomes anyway. I just started rereading The Wheel of Time (just finished book one again) and I remember how one of the reasons I love that series is precisely because there is no dichotomy where the factions are concerned, and you have the Children of Light who are evil fanatics going around killing people "in the name of the Light", while the heroes are led by a mage-type, who most people regard as evil.

If anything, I've found that urban fantasy tends to have its own simplifying dichotomy, between the individual and the collective and often ends up being utterly morally nihilistic to the point of *headdesk*ing. Thinking back, while I haven't read much, so my opinion could be utterly wrong, the ones I did read never really had positive collectivist groups. If there was a religion, it would be composed solely of zealots, if there was a government, it would be corrupt and staffed with people who were interested solely in lining their own pockets. If I lived in that kind of world, I'd be morally ambiguous too and paranoid like hell.

[ex_pippin880]

While some people do see urban fantasy as Mieville-type confined-to-a-city secondary world stories, most people see it as fiction set on a contempory Earth with fantastical elements (e.g. Dresden Files, Animorphs).

Definitions in fiction can be really annoying sometimes.

[aphenine]

Thanks for the clarification.