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.
Budrys’s view of urban fantasy appears to be consistent with what I call proto-urban fantasy, supernatural stories that draw on the Gothic and are set in a city, but the “counterculturish residents” and “bookish protagonist” recall the artists, musicians, and scholars that have become common among the genre’s cast members. The old house and the old wilderness in the midst of a city suggest the resurfacing of suppressed history that Helen Young connects with the strain of urban fantasy she calls the “sub-urban.” The book Budrys reviewed was Fritz Leiber’s Our Lady of Darkness (1977), and the fact that it fit so neatly with Budrys’s urban fantasy description suggests that he may have adapted his description to Leiber’s novel. It is clear that “urban fantasy” was a label that Budrys expected his readers to be familiar with, however. “When we speak so glibly now of ‘urban fantasy’, we pay passing homage to the man who invented it… in a 1941 story called ‘Smoke Ghost’ by Fritz Leiber,” Budrys asserts, and “Smoke Ghost” certainly could be read as an urban fantasy even by today’s understanding.
Personally, the earliest text that fits my cognitive model of urban fantasy is Leiber’s Conjure Wife (1943), in which a university professor discovers that his wife has defended him from magical attacks. That does not make it the first urban fantasy story or even an urban fantasy story (although it can certainly be read as such). Judging from Budrys’s remark, the label formed and spread during the 1970s, and I have found no earlier indication that it was widely used. The strands that make up the genre today had begun to come together, and by 1978, the label was established, even though it signified something somewhat different from its later incarnations.
Posted 3 days ago.
