City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon: a wicked concoction of urban pastoral and incantatory fantastic, where a grocers’ warehouse might become a palace, and an antique bank is hidden beneath a department store.
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.
Jo crumpled to white tile dusted over all about with gold, hand pressed to her breast clenching, relaxing, lifting, as she opens her eyes, “Ow,” she says. Reaching for the rim of the tub, and the skin between her breasts left clean, pale, dust falling as she pulls herself up, dust crunching under her fingers, squeaking under her thigh, her knee as she shifts, crusts of it clinging, wetly, dropping in darker clumps. The tub filled with dust, wet, a shoreline rippled, trembling, crumbling up as fingers wriggle free, “Ysabel,” says Jo, a croak, grabbing the hand, pulling, a chin appearing, lips spitting, working, eyes blinking, arm pulled free, shoulder, chest and throat a spilling hiss of dust that slithers under around behind her as she sits up shaking, sobbing, laughing soundlessly. Jo’s brushing dust from those eyes, those cheeks, the glinting stubble of that hair, that mouth, and Ysabel presses a kiss, triumphant, to the tips of her fingers.
Unsteadily Jo makes her way through buttery summer light to the robe that’s hung from a hook on the wall, the wall of white tile splattered, spangled in a great jagged bloom of gold all about the tub. Gold, shaken from plaid folds as she digs into a pocket of the robe, pulling out a crumpled orange pack of cigarettes, a book of matches.
Pop and spark Jo lights a cigarette, sits on the rim of the tub. Shakes out the match. Offers another to Ysabel straining against that softly golden weight to take it in her lips. Jo holds out her own, touching the bright coal of it to Ysabel’s, and Ysabel puffs until with a crackle hers is lit. Tips back her head, both hands resting limply on all that gold.
“Who else could cause an LLM to hallucinate Emma Goldman, John Berryman, and an Irish sea god?”
“—over the top, long winded, unnecessary, grossly elaborate and just bloated beyond all proportion.”
“Our reviewers loved the world-building and well-drawn characters.”
