Wash ,'Serenity'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Interesting bit on urban fantasy dominating the science fiction/fantasy market.
Some of the comments suggest this trend (and Twilight) can be traced back to Buffy. (And I don't disagree.)
Publishing is so weird right now. I really thinking publishers don't understand their market anymore.
"Urban" fantasy? I'm not sure I get the term. Buffy was suburban if anything, and isn't Twilight semi-rural?
Are they using urban for modern-day?
Frank, basically. Urban fantasy is when you have a modern-day setting with a fantasy world bleeding into it, as opposed to LOTR or Narnia where the fantasy world is the primary setting.
Publishing is so weird right now. I really thinking publishers don't understand their market anymore.
Why? Expand on that?
Wasn't charles de lint before Buffy I think of him as the urban fantasy writer
Yes, Charles de Lint was writing back in the late 80s. I think of him as the granddaddy of the movement. His Moonheart caught me at just the right time—I read it to bits.
Emma Bull's War For the Oaks came out in 1987. That was my first exposure to the genre. That and the Bordertown books edited by Terri Windling. (Bull and Shetterly were both contributors to those books.)
I think of Bull and Shetterly first when I think of the genre. I don't try and think of Shetterly so much anymore.
Oh, Moonheart! I loved the hell out of that book. That (er, and Sting's song Englishman in New York, with its whole idea of being a legal alien) is what prompted me to go to Canada for a year when I finished High School.
Another vague memory. Can anyone remember a fantasy which featured the phrase "Earl owl of owl hall"?
A google book search reveals that this phrase was mentioned in
The Nesbit tradition: the children's novel in England, 1945-1970 by Marcus Crouch. But they not only don't display the page, they don't tell the page number the phrase is found on. So still don't know the book or the author (Nesbit tradition is pretty vague - could be lots of authors)