Urban Fantasy (?)

I finally finished the judging for the novel contest for the Houston Writer’s Guild spring competition. All told I probably read the first fifteen pages of about sixty or seventy novels. This is a particularly unfair mode for comparison. I’ve never thought that just the first fifteen pages and a quick synopsis (which are inevitably poorly written) is a very valid way of judging whether or not a novel is any good. But, I’ve yet to figure out a better, more timely way of judging. The most fair course of action would be to read the entire novel, but that would take an extremely long time, and considering some of the entries I read, I would probably kill myself sometime after reading the fiftieth urban fantasy novel.

I’m not quite sure what urban fantasy genre is, but for the most part, every single novel that featured hobgoblins, vampires, demi-vampires (?), seers, wizards, and witches were labled as “urban fantasy.” It is impossible to inpart in this blog just how incredibly banal most of these entries were. Now, although “urban fantasy” is not necessarily my cup of tea, I don’t shy away from them either. I read with relish the Harry Potter series and would most likely enjoy the Percy Jackson novels. I look forward to with a great degree of anticipation the next book in George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series which has the rebirth of Dragons as a central theme in the book. I thoroughly enjoyed re-reading Tolkien’s Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring series. The entries I read couldn’t hold a candle to any of these works.

I read an article from National Review this morning about the engrandizement of these monsters in popular children’s literature and fantasy series a la Harry Potter. The premise of the article being that we as a culture are losing the ability to properly deal with and confront monsters when our culture continues to find rationale for and explanations to humanize monsters. Some prescient examples being the Whovillian’s treatment of the Grinch in the Jim Carrey movie. The movie tends to try and explain why the Grinch was mean. In the book, he was just mean. A reader sent in the following blog entry.

The evolution of vampires, Grinches, and witches is a variation on the theme of defining deviancy down. There was a time when we knew a monster when we saw one — and understood that some nasties need to have their heads chopped off and their mouths stuffed with garlic. Nowadays, however, vampirism and its related maladies are just alternative lifestyles. Condemning them is an unforgivable rendering of judgment and a crime against the imperatives of moral relativism. A society that has trouble recognizing monsters in its art probably will have difficulty identifying terrorists at its airports

Based on the entries I read for the novel contest, we have little to fear from many of these potential authors making it into print and re-defining the deviancy of their monsters. I will say that the percentage of urban fantasy entries to all others was easily 60% (fantasy) 40% (other). Made for some pretty aggravating reading for yours truly.