While promoting The Observer I often get asked what genre of story it is. Then, when I say it’s a Supernatural Urban Fantasy, I sometimes get odd looks wondering what an Urban Fantasy is. So, while this kind of breaks the Word Geek Wednesday mold, I am going to discuss the various, broad sub-types of the Fantasy genre that exist, and how Urban Fantasy kind of ties them all together.
High or Epic Fantasy – The Grand Stage
This is probably the type of Fantasy that you think about when you hear a story is in the Fantasy genre. High Fantasy is a setting in which magic, or things that are magic-like, occurs as part of normal life in the story’s world. Perhaps dragons exist and can be seen flying in the sky. Maybe there are official wizarding schools. Even if magic is intended for the select few, as long as people don’t keep it mostly a secret, the story falls into High Fantasy. This bleeds into Epic Fantasy when this type of High Fantasy also takes place across a sprawling world and the story focuses on huge stakes such as the fate of entire continents, planets, or the universe itself!
Image by Barbara from Pixabay
Low Fantasy – Magic at the Edges of Reality
Low Fantasy is rooted in the mundane. Most people don’t believe that magic is real because it doesn’t intrude on everyday life. Magic is extremely rare, or it is purposefully hidden from the general populace. Magic is still important; this is still a Fantasy story, but you won’t see a unicorn in the streets. Instead, you’ll have secret cabals or cults that use magic in secret to influence events to their ends., or perhaps magic is hidden away for use only by the chosen religious few. However the story handles it, magic exists, but it is strange and unusual.
Dark Fantasy – Shadows in the Spellwork
Dark Fantasy is either High or Low Fantasy, but the magic takes on a sinister aspect. Dark Fantasy is when there’s a magical world, but it’s out to get you. Magic is violent for violence’s sake. Trust is sparse. Instead of a heroes journey, like your standard High or Low Fantasy world usually focuses on, Dark Fantasy loves a survival story. Being outmatched by sinister forces. Constantly just one wrong move away from a horrific end. Dark Fantasy also likes to bring moral ambiguity into the mix. Anti-hero protagonists are almost a must. What are you willing to do to survive? Anything.
Image by Friedemann Koehler from Pixabay
Historical Fantasy — Magic with a Memory
Historical Fantasy tends to be an offshoot of Low Fantasy by design. Historical Fantasy will take a period of time and events in our actual history, but infuse fictional magical elements. So you might get something like the founding fathers of America really trying to become independent of Britain because they were shipping their excess werewolves (of London) to us in crates of tea. Being dogs, we knew they would absolutely hate getting wet and by throwing them into Boston Harbor we would scare them back across the ocean for… reasons (I’m not actually writing this story so I’m not going to think about it too hard). You could have aliens building the Pyramids, or aliens building Stonehenge, or aliens digging out the grand canyon using only spoons. You could have aliens doing almost anything. The possibilities are endless.
“No, we made it look like engorged human male genitalia, so they will only talk about that.”
I know, I know, I know, trust me, I know.
Here’s the part of this article where I bring this back to Urban Fantasy. “But, Brian,” I’m making you say because I’m typing this up and can do such things if I wish. “What about X kind of Fantasy. It’s my favorite and you must hate me because you didn’t mention it!” And you’re absolutely right. I didn’t mention Portal Fantasy specifically to spite you. If you filled in X with a word other than “Portal,” I apologize, but I don’t want this article to be so exhaustively long that I lose the 2% of you that read this far. Hey, if you made it here, let me know in the comments what historical event aliens really are responsible for.
Urban Fantasy – The Modern Magical Crossroads
Urban Fantasy, at its very basic, is a magical world overlaying a realistic modern world. Urban Fantasy tends to borrow from each of these four other subgenres of Fantasy. It’s Low Fantasy in the sense that magic is usually hidden from the average person. It’s High or Epic Fantasy as it relates to the stakes involved. It’s Dark Fantasy in the way that sinister forces threaten to destabilize whatever peace there is in the world. It’s also Historical Fantasy in the way it world-builds a way how this hidden fantastical world intermingled with history to get to where it is today. But with all of these elements combined, it becomes something unique. It’s relatable because it grounds itself in reality. It’s wondrous with its vision of how the supernatural waves its way into the mundane. It’s suspenseful to think that there is something there, perhaps something dangerous, hidden just out of sight. It can tell a imaginative story while still addressing very real and very raw human emotions. It can expound on the meaning of life and death, of good and evil, and whatever it is that lies between both in an engaging and interesting way. Since the setting is both real and fantastical, it can give you a story beyond belief, while also making you question your own real life beliefs.
Interested in reading some Urban Fantasy?
Well, like I mentioned, I write Urban Fantasy and as of the writing of this article I have the first 7 chapters of the first book in my Urban Fantasy series, The Observer available to download if you sign up for my email list.
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