What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?

[Kristine]

Sort of the Buffy-syndrome, you always have to have something bigger and more evil in the next story arch.  On the other hand, it's what we want, right?  I mean if you review Jim Butcher's writing journal he says that every "scene" has to build and push forward the confrontation, expose a new weakness, a new possibility for failure--but at the end of the day the hero wins by over coming that weakness.

Building and pushing forward doesn't necessarily mean it has to be larger and more explosive.  I think the world - and by extension - the magic in urban fantasy - Could be an incredibly complex place with various cultures, architecture/sacred places, deities, reality paradigms and mythoses. 

Take a Mayan artifact to a Chinese Shinto temple where it falls into the hands of European tourist who is a believer in the Norse mythos to fight a group of Egyptian evil spirits touring with a museum exhibit. Give him/her and Aussie side kick and an American web designer researcher for info and you have an adventure that could really go any which way. (whew!)    - How would the Chinese authorities take to this tourist slaying monsters in their streets?  Would the local magic groups try to help?  Is there politics within the country that could help or hinder the hero?  Does Interpol do this kind of thing? – Is anyone looking for the Mayan artifact and are they good or bad guys?  How do various cultural magic paradigms work with each other?

Okay too many questions now I’m dizzy.  So many possibilities.

Throw Tom Clancy into high fantasy in a modern urban setting.  You wouldn’t even need to always have the same characters; just a pre-determined set of rules that you would have to establish (see info dump) on your reader in an interesting way.

I think it would take a lot of research to do well but that sounds like a blast to read. 

I would like to see more novels that take place in one world with a set group of rules that have shared characters with various authors – or even the same author who concentrates on different people for stand alone, related books.  I would like to see the rules of magic – the logic behind it –more explained and not just the usual ‘he did the fog ritual’.  I would like to see more average people (and Yes, Jami, I too would like those average people to be less than physically perfect) participate in the fun even if it is only as side characters.  I would like to see the flaws and imperfections of the main characters not easily overcome and not always in a spectacular epiphany.  Some psychosis take years to develop and will take years of work to go away.

That’s my 2 cents anyway.

[meg_evonne]

Quote from Kristine: "I would like to see more novels that take place in one world with a set group of rules that have shared characters with various authors – or even the same author who concentrates on different people for stand alone, related books."

This holiday season I saw a trailer for Narnia sequel.  I wasn't a huge fan of the Narnia books, (I was a big fan of CS Lewis' other books and especially his adult trilogy) when I was a child, but I did have a strange fondness for one of the stand alone books in the series called "The Horse and his Boy"  It will be interesting to see if they continue beyond the Prince Caspian (2nd book in series) to the novels that didn't overlap as the first two did. 

It was an interesting comment kristine to think about.

[MatthewD44]

I have to say that a common universe for a set of authors would be a very interesting set to read IMO.

[david-de-beer]

Shared universe  -I don't know, maybe. RPG retaled books have often done this. Shadowrun was pretty cool, while it lived and it certainly was easier to pick up a book at random and know that the rules of the world stay the same. Again, though, so much depends on the treatment the individual writer gives it. What I find with shared worlds  -whether Shadowrun, Battletech or Dragonlance - there's inevitable only 1-2 writers I read and the rest I don't.

Somethign that I would also like to see is more of a clash between mythologies. Ok, we have the Mayan artifact, but is the object itself powered regardless of who uses it? does it depend on belief and therefore strenght in its gods to function? if no one believes in the Mayan gods anymore does the artifact lose its powers? or maybe a ring from Norse myth that can banish demons looks exactly similar to a ring from Sumerian mythos that's used to summon demons.

[Kristine]

Shared universe  -I don't know, maybe. RPG retaled books have often done this. Shadowrun was pretty cool, while it lived and it certainly was easier to pick up a book at random and know that the rules of the world stay the same. Again, though, so much depends on the treatment the individual writer gives it. What I find with shared worlds  -whether Shadowrun, Battletech or Dragonlance - there's inevitable only 1-2 writers I read and the rest I don't.

Before RPG (or maybe at the same time but I thought it was before...) there was the Sanctuary series - a rough fantasy based town that had short stories that spun off into novels for the popular characters (see the novel Lythande by Marion Zimmer Bradley) and, for us super hero fans the collection of characters in the Wild Card series.

Something that I would also like to see is more of a clash between mythologies

.

I think it would be more fun to make them NOT clash but simply interfere - like conflicting electronics.  I'm reminded of the 2nd or 3rd Weekend At Bernies movie where a dead body was reanimated but because a pigeon was used instead of chicken (I don't remember the issue completely) the corpse danced instead of walked and followed orders.  If the ring that banishes Demons was worn at the same time as the one that calls them would the magic user accidently stick a mess of demons in a state of flux between being in this world and that one?  Would they get here and be unable to affect anything, and so be REALLY pissed off?  If the Chinese temple was one of peace and the Mayan artifact was to strike off the heads of your enimies would the resulting mix give the affected a headache and a painful personal epiphany?

I think half the fun of Urban fantasy is watching how the characters use common objects to make them uncommon.  If a certain artifact requires  a ritual be done everyday to make it work (in the past that ritual had been lighting candles and praying) if I pick up a box of Hostess HoHos on the way home and eat 2 of them while watching the news every day - does that ritual count?

That's the kind of stuff I think is fun to read and would like to see more of.

[MatthewD44]

Before RPG (or maybe at the same time but I thought it was before...) there was the Sanctuary series - a rough fantasy based town that had short stories that spun off into novels for the popular characters

I remember those.. I had just about all of them when I got out of the Army but after our house fire 11 years ago I don't have a single one.. funny I was thinking about them the other day

[Cooper]

I have been thinking of a story in the urban fantasy genre, but twisted, sort of.  It's still in development because I can't think of a good place to start it.  Basically its a story of a normal mundane world, like ours today, with all the wars, politics, and such, and flipping it, over night, into a fantasy world, in a urban setting, where magic is a reality and every human on earth is mutated into a freak of nature to practice magic.  I do have sample writhing of the world, but nothing that will get it going.

[MatthewD44]

Coop, sounds a bit like Shadow Run type book..

[Cooper]

Coop, sounds a bit like Shadow Run type book..

Its nothing like Shadowrun.  I hate Shadowrun.

[MatthewD44]

Sorry didn't mean to offend.. didn't say I didn't like the idea..

[Cooper]

No worries.

[Kristine]

Basically its a story of a normal mundane world, like ours today, with all the wars, politics, and such, and flipping it, over night, into a fantasy world

Cooper, for inspiration you might want to read "Empire of the East" -(3 books in one) by Saberhagen.  I don't want to ruin it for you but if you want a quick synopsis:

(click to show/hide)

...Earth has experienced a dramatic Change not too distant from our own time. During a potentially apocalyptic nuclear war, an intelligent computer named Ardneh—Automatic Restoration Director/National Executive Headquarters—triggered a vast paradigm shift in the very fabric of reality. Physics died—saved for scattered technological remnants—and magic came to rule the planet. 50,000 years passed, during which a lamed Ardneh survived, guiding mankind, until a final showdown with the computer's evil nemesis, Orcus, during which both were destroyed and the role of magic considerably reduced.

Matthewd44 - Shadow Run is darker and postulates that the normal people of the world can only be the drones of society - there are no 'normal' people player characters.  You are an outsider fighting corporate society (aka a Shadow Runner) or ...well, you wont survive long in the game.  Although I can see the appeal - having lived in and around corporate society - I can see where it might be an acquired taste.  You can still pick up used copies of the Sanctuary series fairly cheaply if you wanted to re-read them BTW.

JB has said one of his inspirations for the Dresden series is a film called "Cast a Deadly Spell" (Amazon description: A noir thriller set in 1948 L.A., pits Detective Harry Lovecraft against a cast of horrors in his search for a stolen book of ultimate mystical power. ' 'Imagine ?Who Framed Roger Rabbit?? with witches and zombies instead of toons.' ' (USA Today.) ' 'A great way to spend an evening.' ' (Entertainment Weekly)) seems to have the interesting premise in an alternate reality where magic never went underground and is a part of everyday life.

(A detective named Harry hmmm.)

[MatthewD44]

I will admit I haven't read any of the novels for shadowrun but I did glance over the game box when it first came out... thinking it would be a cool game.
I did a quick search on Amazon and found some used THIEVES' WORLD books.. so I might pick them up again..

[Kali]

The first three or so were excessively awesome.  After that... eh.  Not so much.  There were still a couple of good stories here or there, but those first books were from some kind of alternate world where wonderful things grow on trees and fall from the skies like mana.

[Sorryman105]

hmm I don't know what I would suggest, other then wanting less P.I.. How about say a baker who stumbles on a book from her Gramgram thats all about wardings which she then uses, which promptly manages to unseal a powerful spirit thats going to destroy the world. She fights and  kills it, all while getting her soon to be best seller cookbook published ^^.

Theres two interesting and unique series that I like, Illona Andrews Kate Daniels series, and the Retrievers series by Laura Anne Gilman. They both ahve a unqie view on how magic works and give us charcters that are less predicatable.