Last week , I shared my definition of urban fantasy. To reiterate: Urban Fantasy is any work of fiction that features supernatural and magical elements juxtaposed with real life in the modern day.
Now, I have a confession to make: This definition isn’t quite right, either.
But wait, you may ask. Your previous post discussed the issue at length. What else is missing?
Well, this definition is ignoring a very important question:
When exactly is modern day?
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol features a fantastical story of ghosts set in Victorian London. A historical piece, right? From our point of view, maybe, but not from Mr. Dickens’ perspective. He wrote in what HE would recognize as modern day. So, technically, by the definition we’ve arrived at, A Christmas Carol is urban fantasy.
“Modern” is a relative term, isn’t it? The current year as of this writing is 2023. But a hundred years ago, if you asked someone when modern day is, they would reply that it is 1923. And a thousand years from now, the time we currently experience will be ancient history.
It’s all quite relative, isn’t it? But, before you start dreading some sort of lecture on Einsteinian physics, let me reassure you that all I am saying is that phrasing more specific than “modern day” is needed to explain urban fantasy.
Any piece of urban fantasy I or any other author publishes this year won’t be “modern day” in fifty or a hundred years. But while it is not modern, it is contemporary.
Surprise! Urban fantasy isn’t just a genre, it’s a subgenre. It falls under a much larger and broader heading: contemporary fantasy, also known as modern fantasy. It’s exactly what is sounds like. Any fantasy story that takes place in the author’s modern day is contemporary fantasy.
Remember when I said Harry Potter isn’t urban fantasy, but it is fantasy that takes place in modern times? I still hold that urban fantasy as a genre is dependent on the juxtaposition between real life and fantasy, which carries in certain parts of that franchise, but not at all times. But Harry Potter undoubtedly always falls under contemporary fantasy because its story takes place within the time in which it was written (give or take a couple years). Sometimes urban fantasy, but always contemporary fantasy. It’s a mix. Stories do that, because nothing ever falls into simple, cleanly defined categories, do they?
Anyway, let’s revise that definition one last time.
Urban Fantasy: Any contemporary work of fiction that features supernatural and magical elements juxtaposed with real life.
In other words, urban fantasy is fantasy meets real life at the time the author wrote it. Therefore, A Christmas Carol is urban fantasy. So is It’s a Wonderful Life, for that matter.
Genres sure are surprising things, aren’t they?
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Jake W. Powell 