panel, take two

[swan_tower]

This past weekend I was on the following panel at WFC:

Urban Fantasy—Beyond the Usual Suspects
It seems as if most urban fantasy uses the familiar European myths. What other possibilities are there? Which authors have successfully exploited them?

A number of us had grievances with the direction the panel ended up going in, so I'm officially hosting Take Two right here. We hammered the "cultural appropriation" angle to death -- again -- so I'm not looking to hash that one out. Instead, here are some of the things I wanted to talk about and didn't really get to. I'll put my questions up front, then my personal views behind a cut (for length); feel free to respond to the questions and/or pose your own in the comments.

1) What are the benefits of going outside "the familiar European myths"? What do we gain, as writers or readers, by looking to other parts of the world?

2) What are the downsides? Aside from the issue of appropriation, what drawbacks or challenges result from going further afield?

3) I posited briefly in the panel that you can imagine a spectrum, ranging from American Gods-style globalized, multicultural cross-over, to setting-specific approaches that firmly ground the supernatural and mundane elements in a locality. Benefits and drawbacks? Preferences, and if so, why?

4) Who has done this well? What other cultures do they draw on, and why do you say they're done well?

5) Who's done it badly? Even if you don't want to name names, what kinds of mistakes bug you?

6) If we're moving away from European sources, where are we moving to? (We touched on this briefly at the end of the panel, but I'd like to discuss it in more detail.)



1) It's hard to find a way to phrase this that doesn't sound like I'm fetishizing the exotic, but I want something different, dammit. There are other modes of belief, other ways of viewing the world, other ways of creating symbolic meaning, than just those originating in Western Europe. I think it's good for me to seek out that kind of mental flexibility, rather than resting comfortably in my defaults.

2) You may not get your readers to follow you. The names and terms will be unfamiliar; the concepts may be hard to grasp, or even repugnant. I'm working on some Mesoamerican-styled fantasy in short stories right now because it's alien enough that I'm not sure I could get a reader to stick with me the length of a novel. (I don't think Marella Sands' books sold terribly well.) But if I push the envelope a bit on a shorter scale, hopefully I'll make some headway toward it.

Also, the more unfamiliar something is, the harder it will probably be to research it. I can get my hands on a book about British faerie lore by sticking my hand blindly on a shelf at a bookstore; if I want to talk about sub-Saharan Africa, my task will be harder.

3) As much as I like the globalizing approach, I would dearly love to see more localized urban fantasies set in other parts of the world. Of course, the difficulty there is that you probably need to live in a city, or at least give it an intensive visit, to represent it fairly and plausibly. But I'd gladly shell out money for an Indian urban fantasy set in Mumbai, or a Japanese one in Kyoto, or a Kenyan one in Nairobi. Don't just rip the interesting concept out and stick it in America; leave it there and show me what role it could play in modern life at home.

4) and 5) Honestly, I'll leave these for other people to answer. I haven't read a broad enough range of urban fantasy to have a list at hand. The most I can really say is that I was disappointed Lukyanenko's Night Watch et al used such generic supernatural creatures, and that I really need to find the time to read fellow panelist Ekaterina Sedia's A Secret History of Moscow, which I have suspected for months now is exactly the antidote I'm looking for.

6) China and Japan. I don't think these trends operate independently of what's going on more broadly in our lives; as those countries continue to grow in importance to American pop culture (as I think they will), I expect we'll see more Asian-based urban fantasy, specifically those countries. After that? I don't know, but my money and hope would be India. Especially since it's got such a high percentage of English speakers. A good urban fantasy based on Indian materials could, I imagine, sell like hotcakes, and I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

I'd love to see more African/Caribbean material, but I fear the political tensions surrounding such books here in America mean I won't really see it happen any time soon.

Pitch in. We don't have a time limit here; we can go as long as we like.

Comments

[cathschaffstump.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I'm also thinking along these lines. One of my next projects will be a faerie story set in the Cedar Rapids, Ia area. Of course, western faeries abound, but we have a very large Sudanese population, and our populations from Congo and Burundi are increasing.

What will it be like when you get all the mythical creatures from those traditions together, based on what you know about them.

I'm all for immigrant faerie books. :)

Catherine

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, how will you be doing your research on the Sudan/Congo/Burundi material? Books, or speaking to locals from those groups?

[cathschaffstump.livejournal.com]

Both.

I am very blessed to be the head of an English Language Acquisition Program at the community college where I teach, and I get to work with interesting people from all sorts of cultures every day. Many good friends are Sudanese.

I've also been doing some reading, mostly volumes of The Arabian Nights to cover the Arabic part of the culture of Northern Sudan. I have yet to research/locate/read good sources on the African fantastic, save the animal tales.

I also think it's essential to hang with the locals, to get the feel of how those folks are going to sound, act, and think. If they'd be willing, I'm going to ask for some readers as well, although English becomes an issue.

So, lots more to learn!

Catherine

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Awesome.

The difficulty of researching is the major hurdle between me and a variety of cultures. I have a few things about sub-Saharan African lore, but not many, and they're all from different areas.

[shveta-thakrar.livejournal.com]

That's right; you and I were going to chat about this, and then we didn't. Are you still up for that?

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

When I think of Iowa fantasy stories, I get stuck in the stereotypical corn, corn, corn. Even though I know there's a lot more (and if there are fairies on the streets of Iowa City, they're probably pissed at me for never giving them change). There's not a great deal of *rural* fantasy either.
Which is only tangential to the point that urban is not universally white artist-class.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I like your choice of "artist" rather than "middle" for the class. Hello, Charles de Lint. <g>

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I spent a bit of time obsessing over that word. Urban fantasy is not typically about people with responsibilities tying them to the non-fantastic world-- you can't go haring off on a quest if you have to pick up the kids at four and tomorrow you have a meeting to discuss your future in the company. You have to be able to take vacations on little notice-- you have to be able to leave the mundane world without necessarily entering a fantasy one. That means self-employed people, summer teachers, and anyone with a great deal of vacation time saved up. People who are already out of the mundane world.
I haven't read very much urban fantasy or real world/fantasy world crossover where the main character has a family. Some Holly Lisle, some YA, though YA tends to kill the parents to get them out of the way.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

One of the things I love muchly about the first season of the new Doctor Who is that Rose's family and friends continue to matter. It's great in a horrible way -- she's just awful to them, if you think about it, popping in and out unexpectedly, disrupting their lives every time, so they can't have her and can't let go of her -- but it leavens the "let's go have an adventure!" attitude with some interesting context and consequences.

But I think your wording betrays some of the assumptions our genre could use to question more: you can't go haring off on a quest. So the answer is to write more non-questy fantasy. Write legends, not fairy tales -- in Luthi's analysis, fairy tales take place far away, while legends take place nearby.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Could you elaborate more on that second paragraph? It may be just that it's late and I'm tired, but I'm not entirely following-- and what I can follow sounds really interesting and I would like to know more.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Eh, it's late and I'm lazy and I shouldn't have thrown Luthi in there without explaining him. I blame the fact that I'm teaching a fairy-tales class.

One of the distinctions he makes between folktales and legends is that in folktales, you go far away for your supernatural experience, and when you encounter it, you don't think it's weird. ("Oh, hey, a talking dog just gave me one of its paws. Neat.") In legends, your supernatural experience happens in your own backyard, and you do think it's weird. ("Jesus Christ that tree tried to eat me!")

So my brain coughed that comparison up when I thought about having more fantasy take place close to home and involve the people around you, rather than drawing you away from home and your context and responsibilities there.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I tend to define 'fae realm' as 'far away' so even if the action happens in the lobby of the apartment building, if it's not specifically anchored to the mundane world, it counts as distant. I think this is why I like things like "Mom and Dad on the Home Front" or, oh, there was one in Strange Horizons that was years after a Narnia event, and the people dealing with it-- it deals with the fantastic, but is in the mundane world.

But that is a wonderful distinction, and I shall poke at it throughout the day.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

That's actually kind of what Luthi's saying: fairy tales substitute spatial distance for spiritual distance (hence the journey, but lack of surprise), whereas legends have spiritual distance instead of spatial (it's in your backyard and freaks you out). Either way it's "far away," but differently so.

The legend approach just gives you more opportunity to keep the protagonist's daily life relevant to the plot.

[cathschaffstump.livejournal.com]

One of the things I love muchly about the first season of the new Doctor Who is that Rose's family and friends continue to matter. It's great in a horrible way -- she's just awful to them, if you think about it, popping in and out unexpectedly, disrupting their lives every time, so they can't have her and can't let go of her -- but it leavens the "let's go have an adventure!" attitude with some interesting context and consequences.

Word! The companions matter and are real. That's one of the *best* things about new Who!

[mirrorred-star.livejournal.com]

One of the things I love muchly about the first season of the new Doctor Who is that Rose's family and friends continue to matter. It's great in a horrible way -- she's just awful to them, if you think about it, popping in and out unexpectedly, disrupting their lives every time, so they can't have her and can't let go of her -- but it leavens the "let's go have an adventure!" attitude with some interesting context and consequences.

It grounds Rose's experiences in the everyday more. Its more 'real' than the old series ever was, and it consequently means more to the audience because it has that realness.

[cathschaffstump.livejournal.com]

I want to write some rural fantasy, and I hope to use this Iowa book to do that too. A core cast of characters are trolls of Scandinavian descent who have settled in farming communities around Cedar Falls that watch the thin part between faerie and our world.

And you know, I like being from rural roots, because I can write authentically about dust storms on gravel roads, summer swimming lessons, and rhubarb pie. Which are things that trolls growing up in small town Iowa need to know. :)

I'm convinced that Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, and Cedar Falls are full of fae, both from around and not from around here. :D

Catherine