: Kurt Busiek <k...@busiek.com>
: Peter Beagle's URBAN FANTASY ANTHOLOGY divides the genre into three
: loose categories -- mythic fiction, paranormal romance and noir
: fantasy.  Or, as I tend to think of it, "classic" urban fantasy,
: fangbangers and asskickers of the fantastic.
:
: Dresden falls very solidly in the noir fantasy/asskickers area, which
: is not an outlier.  I think he's mistaking the fangbanger contingent
: for the whole genre, and seeing Dresden as an outsider to that
: subsection as it's an outlier to the whole shebang.

That makes sense.  However, I do wonder what the proportional size of
the three is in books-published-per-(week/month/year/whatnot), currently.

Also note that lots of books are reasonably both fangbangers
*and* asskickers, so you almost have to combine those two.
(Well... as I say, "almost".)

On Wed, 14 Nov 2012 12:38:44 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:3fe4f761-d54d-4526-9c21-86e1518f1b09@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

You don't 'get to be' contemptuous of them as a group.
Nothing and no one licenses such contempt; you simply *are*
contemptuous of them as a group.  This sort of pernicious
stereotyping is of course your privilege, but it hardly
inclines me to take your opinions very seriously.

So what?  Urban fantasy and chick lit (by any reasonable
definition thereof) are independent categories.

I know nothing about your old book logs, I'm afraid, though
I'm coming to suspect that I'd find them intensely annoying.
The only McCullough who comes to mind is Kelly McCullough,
author of _WebMage_ and its sequels, which I quite liked,
and, more recently, of the Fallen Blade novels.  If your
notion of 'chick lit mode' is so elastic as to encompass
_WebMage_, there's little more to say: in all honesty I find
the idea both incomprehensible and ludicrous.

Eh?  Laurell Hamilton is certainly *not* the common source
of all urban fantasy; she's just a popular example of one
particular type of urban fantasy.  Her first Anita Blake
novel didn't come out until 1993, after four of Anne Rice's
Vampire Chronicles novels (and 17 years after the first of
them).  At least one of Rice's Mayfair Witches novels also
preceded Hamilton's first.  At least three of Tanya Huff's
Blood novels precede the first Anita Blake novel.

Saberhagen's early Dracula novels (1970s) and Chelsea Quinn
Yarbro's early Saint-Germain novels (late 1970s, early
1980s) are clearly precursors.  Ballantine published Sanders
Anne Laubenthal's _Excalibur_ in 1973.  Megan Lindholm's
_Wizard of the Pigeons_, from 1985, is certainly urban
fantasy; so is Charles de Lint's _Moonheart_, from 1984.
The Bordertown (or Borderland) series started in 1986.  Emma
Bull's _War for the Oaks_, from 1987, is an urban fantasy
classic.

As one should expect, urban fantasy has multiple roots,
including fairy tales, romance, gothics, horror, and
whatever category encompasses quite a bit of Thorne Smith,
John D. MacDonald's _The Girl, the Gold Watch, and
Everything_, and Marc Brandel's _The Man Who Liked Women_.
Then there's J.B. Priestley's novella 'The Thirty-First of
June', which is urban fantasy by current standards.  Paul
Gallico's _The Man Who Was Magic_ isn't quite, but it's
moving in that direction.

And of course a lot of older (at least nominally) juvenile
fiction fits under the current urban fantasy blanket: _Five
Children and It_, _At the Back of the North Wind_, Mary
Poppins, and _David and the Phoenix_ come to mind
immediately.  More recently, the Borrible trilogy, nominally
YA, predates the identification of urban fantasy as a genre.
School fiction is clearly an antecedent of some urban
fantasy, and the Ruritanian/Graustarkian strain of alternate
history is clearly visible in Sherwood Smith's _Coronets and
Steel_ and _Blood Spirits_.

There isn't much.

Either your acquaintance with urban fantasy is quite
limited, or you're conflating 'has romance elements' with
'has romance ancestry'.  (Or both, of course.)

Note too that you are clearly implying both that romance is
trash and that trashiness is inherited.  The latter is
certainly false, and the former is at best more pernicious
stereotyping.

I can give you several more off the top of my head: Benedict
Jacka (Alex Verus) and Kevin Hearne (Atticus O'Sullivan),
which are quite reminiscent of Butcher and Dresden; Mark Del
Franco (Connor Grey); Mike Carey (Felix Castor); Ben
Aaronovich (Peter Grant); Kate Griffin (Matthew Swift); Mike
Shevdon (Niall Peterson); Trent Jamieson (Steven de Shelby);
Rob Thurman (both Cal Leandros and Trixa).

Tanya Huff's Blood novels and Enchantment Emporium novels
also owe little or nothing to the romance genre.  (Obviously
I'm not limiting myself to Americans in discussing the genre
in general.)  Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age novels.
Ekaterina Sedia, _The Secret History of Moscow_.  (I wonder
how much influence translations of _The Master and
Margarita_ had; I remember greatly enjoying one back in the
1960s.)  Jane Lindskold's Land of Smoke and Sacrifice
novels.  Liz Williams's delightful Detective Inspector Chan
novels are urban fantasy, though they do contain some
futuristic elements as well.  Mike Ford's _The Last Hot
Time_, which, by the way, is about as American as you can
get.  Jacqueline Carey's _Dark Currents_ and Sharon Lee's
_Carousel Tides_.

'Some of my best friends are ... .'

I prefer what she wrote as Dawn Cook, though she's not high
on my list in either guise.

As you point out yourself, Shearin's books aren't urban
fantasy as the term is normally used.  And while I'd
certainly not put them on any pedestal, the WebMage books
(if those are what you have in mind) are good solid
entertainment.

There's nothing in particular wrong with Armstrong, but I
lost interest long ago.  Patricia Briggs and Ilona Andrews
are far better.  So are Seanan McGuire's Toby Daye novels
and Eileen Wilks's Lupi novels, at least the more recent
ones.  On less evidence so far I also give Katharine Kerr's
Nola O'Grady novels a distinct edge on Armstrong.  (I did,
however, like Armstrong's _Exit Strategy_ and _Made to Be
Broken_, about the cop turned assassin; I wish that she'd
write another one of those instead.)

That's easy: just start later in the series.

It's by Devon Monk, and _Magic for a Price_, which just came
out, looks as if it could be the final volume.  At any rate
it wraps up the long story arc, and she's now two volumes
into another series that might loosely be categorized as
steampunk.

The kindest characterization of this view that I can come up
with is 'rubbish'.

[...]

Brian

On Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:21:56 -0500, David DeLaney
<d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote in
<news:slrnka8evu.o5q.dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

Well, we don't seem to be at wrong angles to each other very
often.  On the other hand, I'm hard-pressed to see us as
normal, let alone orthonormal.

Brian

Since I live in Nashville, Tennessee, the first thing that came to my
mind was the Country Music Association, which holds a four-day festival
in Nashville each year.  It was originally known as "Fan Fair", but is
now titled the "CMA Music Festival".

--
John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly
is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

The second is out maybe a month ago and I await the third.

Really, I haven't had too much bad luck with Angry Robot authors. (But the
ones I did were pretty bad, to my taste.)

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that     grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour  The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE        HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

Brian M. Scott <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

ObPython: And if he is calling Georgette Heyer's Regency romances trashy I
am afraid I shall have to ask him to step _outside_!

Dave, who is picking up the last one of those this weekend, it didn't come in
 with the rest of the order

Um, er, Enchantment Emporium/The Wild Ways do have some debt to trashy
xxx-rated romance novels... though they do us the courtesy of quietly flipping
past the actual sex scenes.

They're just an urb that many Americans (and possibly UKians as well) aren't
that familiar with.

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that     grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour  The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE        HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

On 2012-11-15 01:45:30 +0000, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) said:

Or simply recognize overlap, yeah -- there's doubtless overlap among
all three; genres have fuzzy edges, subgenres do as well.

kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!

In article <k812o8$gj...@dont-email.me>,
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:

Surely Buffy needs to be mentioned somewhere in there.

--
   David Goldfarb          |"I think hyperbole is the second greatest thing to
goldfar...@gmail.com       |come along since the invention of the mixing bowl."
goldf...@ocf.berkeley.edu  |   -- Todd VerBeek, on rec.arts.comics.dc.lsh

On 11/15/12 2:48 AM, David Goldfarb wrote:

        I debated with myself on that. One could certainly make that argument
but at some point you have to say "we're past the foundational era" and
I felt I was already pushing that with the X-files, so I'd set a cutoff
in the early 90s. Buffy didn't start until '97, IIRC (the movie was
considerably earlier, but as itself didn't have much effect)

--
                      Sea Wasp
                        /^\
                        ;;;    
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com  Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

On Wed, 14 Nov 2012 22:21:56 -0500, "Brian M. Scott"

Speaking of Saberhagen, his _Empire of the East_ is, IMHO, a contender
for this title.

--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison

On Nov 8, 6:17 pm, thro...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote:

Well, I was going to bring up Bujold's fantasy for both TSK and the
series that starts with the curse. And "Three Hearts and Three Lions"
by Poul Anderson. And Paul Edwin Zimmer's "Dark Border" duology. But I
didn't _like_ "Little Big" and, to me, that means it isn't good.

--
Will in New Haven

On Nov 9, 1:44 pm, Elaine T <ela...@kethompson.org> wrote:

I agree.

I loved it but it _desparately needs a sequel.

and the Card I stopped partway

Me too.

I forgot to mention that in an earlier post. It is right up there with
anything.

--
Will in New Haven

 (pubbed as YA, IIRC), and CJC's RIDER AT THE

On Nov 10, 2:59 am, goldf...@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb) wrote:

I have liked everything I have read by that author but the _first_
thing I read by him was the first stupid poker game at the beginning
of _Galveston_ I am very glad I did not throw that book out a window
because I enjoyed the rest of it, including the poker references.

--
Will in New Haven

On Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:12:40 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:6052d811-aebc-41da-ba3a-369c9a0df96a@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

Not much, as I classify them.

You certainly appear to do so.

False.  What I object to is opinion masquerading as expert
knowledge, a category that covers a great deal of criticism.

No.  It's a statement of opinion, pure and simple.  One need
not even be famliar with _Neuromancer_ to understand its
import.

Brian

On Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:25:07 -0500, David DeLaney
<d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote in
<news:slrnka8t7r.qp1.dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

They've published a number of books that weren't really to
my taste, but the only real stinker that I can recall at the
moment is the Clockwork Vampire Chronicles.

Brian

We seem to have encountered yet another conflict here.  You say
here that reviewers don’t do contextualization.  Seems to me every
time a reviewer mentions that a work is a “cyberpunk novel” and not,
say, a floral display, that’s contextualization.

Reviewers also tend to do evaluation, and those evaluations often
rely on particular categories’ standards.  Such as “best cyberpunk
novel”.

Are you simply defining as not-reviewer anyone who does either of
these things?

I begin to suspect that I need to trot out again a set of categories
I’ve used for a long time now.  This set consists of modes,
traditions, and market categories.  Modes and market categories are
objective classifications of (in this case) aesthetic works.  For example, “fiction about forks” is a mode.  “Music recorded on quipus
for sale in Zambia” is a market category.  Traditions are more
disputable, but my aim in talking about them is to capture 1) what
authors say they’re trying to do; 2) what original audiences say the
authors are trying to do; and 3) (yes, that does represent order of
priority) what I think the authors are trying to do.  Where “trying
to do” embraces, in particular, “trying to respond to” – the whole
question of influence.

I wonder whether *all* your thinking in this thread is modal.  The only
writing that counts as “review” is what lacks all evaluation, analysis,
or contextualization.  Something similar over in the “urban fantasy”
subthread; I’m talking primarily about a market category, secondarily
about a strong tradition in that market category, and you’re replying
with a mode of fantasies set in cities.

One of the examples I used in the post that got et was my entry in
the <Encyclopedia of Fantasy> on Publius Papinius Statius, in which I
praised his <Thebaid> and emphasized its importance as “modern
fantasy’s first true analogue”.

Most Classicists are contemptuous of the <Thebaid>.  To the extent
that they have any time for Statius at all, it’s for his lyrics, the
<Sylvae>, which they value because they have a lot to say about Roman
society in the late 1st century, not for their poetry.

My reference to Proba's <Centos> got snipped or I could give you a
stronger example.

So in other words, when someone states an opinion – “This is a
cyberpunk novel” – that’s critical contextualization, and
objectionable, but when someone states a fact – “This is a sonnet”
– that’s just a reviewer doing something that to the ignorant
*looks* very like contextualization, but is not objectionable?

The problem with talking in modes is that people will often take you
as talking in realities.  Remember the restaurant critics.  You’re
setting up an ideal type of “critic” into which to push everything
non-provable about aesthetics, but you’re not saying so.  So the rest
of us are left thinking you mean some real category of people who
engage in criticism.

(Of course, the phrasing “I don’t care what they say” strongly
encourages such a reading.)

Ah, so now contextualization *isn’t* opinion.  Then why is it
objectionable when critics contextualize?

Increasingly confused,

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer                                   j...@sfbooks.com

On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 9:39:37 PM UTC-8, Brian M.
Scott wrote a post which I'm now posting a sort of clean-up
reply to, covering things I didn't want to let drop from
the lost hour-written answer:

Snipping everything about Ellen Steiber and memory now,
since both of our memories are improving under this
discussion’s influence.  I doubt it’s worth picking
a different example in order to carry on what argument
there is – as I recall, I’m saying “a book has to be
memorable to be great” and you’re objecting, but since
you also object to calling books “great” at all (or
perhaps to not calling *all* books “great” ?), this sub-
issue seems relatively skippable.

My apologies to Messrs Bruce Sterling and Stephen Stirling,
the latter of whom I meant.

It’s based on three levels.  The “restaurants” bit was the easy
part.  At the other extreme:  You were, when I initially tried to
post this post, the single most prolific poster to a thread about
“The Supreme Fantasy”.  Seems to me intrinsically incoherent, but
I didn’t want to stress that, because it sounds like I’m trying to
tell you to leave the thread, and I have no desire for you to do so.  
In between, there are various logical problems with this reviewer/
critic distinction.

OK, this time the problem with misunderstanding is my fault.  
“Korean TV drama” is a category unlike, in particular, “American
TV drama” in that it’s pre-scripted and normally relatively short.  
I’ve seen a 54-hour Korean TV drama, but most seem to hover around
15-20 hours; <Gumiho> is around 17.  It’s a “single work”.  In
context of reviewing it I might very well say something like the
quoted sentence, whether you think I should or not.  After all,
it’s pretty easy to find out, if you look <Gumiho> up at all, that
much of the enthusiasm for it discusses the beauty of the woman who
*plays* the gumiho, Shin Min-Ah.  So making it clear that you don’t
see as much of that beauty as you might in other TV genres is
relevant.  And…

What on earth is “empirical” about “conservative” and “melodrama” ?

But I’m contextualising.  I’m comparing <Gumiho> on the one hand to
the other two romances I’ve seen so far in this market category, and
on the other hand to the Hong sisters’ earlier dramas, and speculating
“The reason this is the most conventional one I’ve seen may be that
it’s made by the top creators in the business at the peak of their
popularity”.

Seems to me those three sentences manage to do evaluation (and according
to a specific market category’s standards at that), analysis, *and*
contextualization.

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer                                   j...@sfbooks.com

John F. Eldredge <j...@jfeldredge.com> wrote:

Hmm...now trying to picture awards for country music in
the Harry Dresden books. And/or Dresden, Germany.

And......it's tough.

On Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:06:59 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein

But it's two, two, two, genres in one!

--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison

On Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:30:21 -0500, David DeLaney
<d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote in
<news:slrnka8thl.qp1.dbd@gatekeeper.vic.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

I don't agree in the slightest.

Brian

On Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:42:59 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:a4e12aa6-5bf0-47d8-b885-de1cd36a9f32@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

I wondered whether you meant Steve Stirling; it did sound
like him.

Perhaps no one else found the premise quite so off-putting
as I.  You may also recall that my initial post was an
objection to that premise and an attempt to bend the thread
in a more reasonable direction.  It seems to me that
everything that I've done since then has either been in the
same vein or direct responses to your arguments.

Why?  I'm not engaging in any of the practices that I've
said bother or annoy me.

No, there aren't, unless you make the mistake of thinking
that there's a sharp boundary between the two.  Like most
human-constructed categories, these are radial categories,
and there's a lot of blurring as you move away from the
centres.  In particular, the boundary between critic and
reviewer is quite fuzzy.

I understood that 'Gumiho' is a single work.  I was talking
about this sentence:

  "Korean TV dramas tend to have very conservative morals
  and aesthetics, so you shouldn't expect scantily clad
  women and should expect melodrama"

(Note, though, that I wasn't objecting to its content: it's
a perfectly reasonable thing for a reviewer to say.)

What *isn't* empirical about examining an object to
determine into which of one's mental categories it fits?

At least I certainly hope that the classification is based
on empirical evidence obtained from having watched Korean TV
drama, or at least on accepting someone else's judgement
based on such evidence!

On the review/critique spectrum it's *way* over towards the
review end.

Brian

On Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:06:59 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein
<j...@sfbooks.com> wrote in
<news:6c724382-f829-4cc7-b329-df7bf3b08d9a@googlegroups.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

I certainly am not; the statement is absurd.  In your terms
I've talked primarily in terms of tradition, secondarily in
terms of market category, and not at all in terms of mode.
I don't think that you really understand the tradition --
your view seems to be seriously distorted by the current
marketing category -- but if you don't know it even well
enough to recognize that I've certainly not been dealing
with 'a mode of fantasies set in cities', you've no business
discussing urban fantasy.

[...]

No.  

My immediate reaction was 'Are you being deliberately
obtuse?', but I've seen enough of your posts over the years
to be pretty sure that the answer is 'no'.  

I don't consider 'This is a cyberpunk novel' either an
opinion or critical contextualization in any sense relevant
to this discussion. Yes, there's obviously an element of
opinion, since there is no objective definition of
cyberpunk, but there's enough of a common understanding of
the term to make this a simple statement (whether correct or
not) of fact.  And I don't consider the mere application of
a familiar descriptive label to be critical
contextualization.

I also quite fail to see how anyone could draw the
conclusion that I would object to the act of applying such a
label.  (I might object strenuously to the choice of label,
but that's a completely different issue.)  Apparently it's
possible, but my gut still wants to insist that it's really
just a rhetorical device.  It may be that our conceptual
frameworks and are simply too far apart to allow more than
fairly superficial discussion of this topic.

[...]

Brian

Would a title of_Too Many Musicians_ help at all?

"Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make."

(At last - they did - back ii the Old Country...)

On 11/16/2012 6:47 AM, Anthony Nance wrote:

I look forward to the tribute to Karl May.

Yeah, I missed the news that urban fantasy has to be chick-lit.
I mean, I'm fairly sure that THE WOMBLES isn't.