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Urban fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy, placing supernatural elements in an approximation of a contemporary urban setting. The combination provides the writer with a platform for classic fantasy tropes, quixotic plot-elements, and unusual characters—without demanding the creation of an entire imaginary world. While precursors of urban fantasy are found in popular fiction of the 19th century, and the present use of the term dates back to the 1970s, much of its audience was established in the 1930s-50s, and the success of light supernatural fare in the movies (and later on TV). The genre's current publishing popularity began in 1980s North America, as writers and publishers were encouraged by the success of Stephen King and Anne Rice. Characteristics Urban fantasy combines imaginary/unrealistic elements of plot, character, theme, or setting with a largely-familiar world—combining the familiar and the strange. Such elements may exist secretly in the world or may occur openly. Fantastic components may be magic, paranormal beings, recognizable mythic or folk-tale plots, or thematic tropes (such as a quest, or a battle of good and evil). Authors may use current urban myths, borrow fictional technologies, or even invent occult practices, as well as using established supernatural characters and events from folklore, literature, film, or comics. The urban component is usually found in the setting—typically a large or small city—or even a suburban community in a metropolitan area. Use of contemporary technology (such as automotive vehicles or communications) and everyday community and social institutions (such as libraries, schools/universities, or markets) establish a familiar context. The period in which the action occurs may be the fairly recent past or the near future, but will typically require merely only casual historical or other special knowledge from the reader. The city-setting is a tool; used to establish a tone, to help move the plot, and may even be acknowledged as a character itself. Urban fantasy is most often a sub-genre of low fantasy (where magical events intrude on an otherwise-normal world) and/or hard fantasy (treating magic as something understandable and explainable), and works may be found in the sub-genres of horror, occult detective fiction, or the various "punk" genres. Common themes include coexistence or conflict between humans and other beings, and the changes such characters and events bring to local life. Many authors, publishers, and readers particularly distinguish urban fantasy from works of paranormal romance, which use similar characters and settings, but focus on the romantic relationships between characters. The YA author Scott Westerfeld distinguished between urban fantasy and a subgenre called elfpunk on the basis that "Elfpunk is pretty much full of elves and fairies and traditional shit [...] Urban fantasy, though, can have some totally made-up fucked-up creatures." History Predecessors During the late Romantic era, writers of sensational fiction (including Mary Shelley, Dickens, Hoffmann, Le Fanu, Hugo, Poe, Wilkie Collins, Stoker, &c.) wrote melodramas that explored social anxieties induced by new technology, alienation resulting from population shifts to industrial centers, and fear of 'foreign' immigration. Re-imagining the contemporary universe by manipulating one or more social/technical realities exploded with highly-popular works by Jules Verne, and Doyle's Professor Challenger stories. Jack London's 1908 dystopian novel The Iron Heel preceded by a year H. G. Wells' novel The Sleeper Awakes. Karel Čapek, Aldous Huxley, and even Sinclair Lewis (in his novel It Can't Happen Here) all wrote along this axis, exploiting a market for adventure that was post-apocalyptic, and dystopian. The same timeline introduced popular mail-delivered periodicals in Europe and the Americas (The Saturday Evening Post (1821), Godey's Lady's Book (1830), and Harper's Weekly (1857)). The success of general-interest magazines led to others targeted at specific readerships: Boys' Own Magazine (1855), and Argosy (1882) among them. All of these magazines published short and serialized fiction features, as well as reportage, instructional articles, illustration, and opinion. Before WW1, fantasy vied for magazine space with westerns, romance, mysteries, military adventure, comedies, and horror. Writers often published stories in multiple genres - among them Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert E. Howard, Isaac Asimov, and Elmore Leonard. A sought-after hallmark for many of these writers was "realism" - although the stories were outrageously fantastic. Dime novels also arrived before the Civil War; some of the earliest re-printing serials from magazines. Commonly associated with Western adventure, they also encompassed romance and crime-fiction. Robert deGraff founded Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books in 1939, he distributed not only to the 2,800 US bookstores, but also in more than a hundred thousand drugstores, news-stands, 5-&-10s, cigar stores, groceries, and diners. By doing this, he established a market - not for copies of Shakespeare or Jane Austen - but for collections and book-length versions of popular magazine fiction. Early urban fantasy In 1899, Harper's Weekly editor John Kendrick Bangs altered fantasy parameters with The Enchanted Type-Writer (a series of humorous short-stories supposedly typed by the ghost of 18th century writer James Boswell) - introducing a benign revenant in a contemporary setting. Thorne Smith was successful in 1920s-30s, especially his two "Topper" farces about a middle-aged banker's adventures with a couple of ghosts (subsequently made into films, radio plays, and a 1950s television series); Smith's posthumously-released novel The Passionate Witch was made into the 1942 comic cinema romance I Married a Witch by Rene Clair. Writer Charles G. Finney's celebrated 1935 experimental novel The Circus of Dr. Lao placed mythical creatures in a contemporary setting to examine the society in a small Arizona town. Gruesome cartoons by Charles Addams began exploring the humorous side of horror in the New Yorker magazine around the same time. Occult detective stories, such as Manly Wade Wellman's John Thunstone stories - written originally during the 1940s -are credited by many current authors for bringing contemporary characters and American settings into the fantasy and horror genres. These early tales, however, differ from current urban fantasy - they present supernatural beings and acts as unnatural, aberrant, and a possible danger to ordinary citizens. Unknown magazine (1939–1943) was conceived by its editor John W. Campbell as a fantasy equivalent of Campbell's successful Astounding science fiction magazine; its stories often took place in the present and many had a thoughtful "science-fictional" approach. Writers such as Fritz Leiber ("Smoke Ghost", published in 1941), Jack Williamson with "D.... Discover the Jane Yolen Seanan Mcguire Marie Brennan popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jane Yolen Seanan Mcguire Marie Brennan books.