Ahira's Hangar

Lately I have been wondering where the line is between horror and urban fantasy? I have been hearing a lot of authors who have traditional horror elements in their books (like vampires and werewolves and witches) being called urban fantasy writers.

Since most of these writers have novels set in the current day (such as Laurell K. Hamilton before her descent into writing mindless pron, Charlaine Harris, Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrris, and Jim Butcher) is the only difference between horror and urban fantasy the setting?

ie. Dracula, a book about vampires in the Victorian era would be considered horror and Bitten a book about werewolves in modern day NY state and Toronto would be considered urban fantasy?


(edited for spelling)

...buy keeping the device and "spirit" of classic monsters as part of urban fantasy that honors traditional horror doesn't it? (I just made no sense, right?)

*shrug* I'm not nearly so fussy in defining my genre's. If I had to, I would call Gaiman's Neverwhere urban fantasy maybe. (Oh yeah...book recommendation: Roofworld by Christopher Fowler. That's urban fantasy.

--A

But what makes classic horror classic? Does the author have to be dead for a certain amount of time?
To me, urban fantasy is a genre made-up by the Marketing dept to get people to buy a book they otherwise would not. "No, I'm not a fan of classic horror - I DO like urban fantasy, though..."

Meh.

dw