Other authors prefer stepping sideways into normal but invented cities, like the Newford of Charles de Lint. Or for that matter the secret parts of the historical London in The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. There are often hidden parts, worlds beneath or beyond the normal streets and buildings – think of the London in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere or China Miéville's Un Lun Dun. The Malmö of our Swedish author Nene Ormes comes to mind. Some urban fantasy works are explicitly set in real, more or less contemporary cities, that we can recognize in different ways. I think we yearn for the fantastic here, among us, as a counterpoint to the stories where we get to visit other strange places. Cities are really fascinating, and it's also the kind of landscape most of us inhabit nowadays. But what makes urban fantasy urban is the city, the urban landscape as a setting that is important for the plot and for the feeling. Urban fantasy is a term that is often used to mean fantasy that intersects the world we know (and nowadays also very often used as a synonym for paranormal romance, even when they are not exactly the same). And yet, fantasy mostly looks like a choice between something looking a lot like medieval Europe or a contemporary metropolis. Why haven't we seen more stories exploring ancient cities? They have existed in various shapes and forms for perhaps 10000 years, depending on what you count as a city.
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