City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon, only with more sword fights: an urban fantasy mixing magical realism with gonzo noirish prose, where duels are fought in Pioneer Square, and river gods retire to comfortably shabby apartments.
Certainly there is no future for the genre except as a metaphor within some other work. By now the whole complex of ideas has passed so into the general culture that it is conceivable in art only as lyric imagery or as affectionate reminiscence. In fact, the vampire tradition has hardly been used in lyric verse—I can only remember one poem in Fantasy and Science Fiction. I always thought Italian directors would do very well with vampires as cultural symbols for the rotten rich—many of the traditions about the vampire are close to the atmosphere of films like La Notte or La Dolce Vita.
Well, sort of: even as the season out there wanes, and pumpkin spices ever so slightly begin to waft, we’re on the verge of launching the third season of the epic: Summer. —The first draft of no. 46 should be done this month, which means revisions and finalizations of no. 45 might begin this month, as well; I am confident if not certain that it will be released in October: the first novelette in vol. 5, The Greene Chapel; the beginning of, well, Summer.
In the September 1978 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, there is a review column written by the science fiction author, editor, and critic Algirdas Jonas “Algis” Budrys. Budrys offers a brief summary of the “tried and true elements” of urban fantasy:
the desuetudinous old rooming house and its counterculturish residents, the bit of old wilderness rising atop its mysterious hill in the midst of the city, and the strangely haunted, bookish protagonist who gradually realizes the horrible history of the place where he lives.
A suit of worsted wool, grey sheened through with threads of black, and a crisp white shirt, there by the front door. He’s looking at the watch on his wrist, a heavy silver nest of gears and dials, the numbers and hashes picked out in something that gleams like mother-of-pearl. His sun-browned head’s quite bald, his cheeks dusted with white stubble. Out in the middle of the big front room a sword upright, the hilt of it wrapped in leather yellowed with long handling, and the floor where it’s been thrust is singed in a neat black circle. The window’s empty, the fireplace dark and cold, swept clean. From somewhere further, deeper in the house, a tumble of plucks and picks, flurried strums, mandolin, banjo, a guitar or two. He’s looking at his watch again.
A door swings open over across the room, a glimpse of kitchen beyond as Lymond steps through, wide eyes and maybe a grin, plain white T-shirt and bone-colored chinos and his shock of pinkish orange hair, wiping his hands on a floury towel. “Good afternoon, my lord,” says the man in the suit, but Lymond says sharply, “Welund,” and his maybe grin is gone. “We must find a way to live together, or we won’t.”
The man in the suit purses his lips. “If it regards your mother’s house,” he says, “once the question of succession’s settled, we might discuss what must–”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” says Lymond.
“Very enjoyable bit of urban fantasy kit—”
“It is fast, funny, sexy, and sometimes violent—”
“—over the top, long winded, unnecessary, grossly elaborate and just bloated beyond all proportion.”
