McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
What do you wish would be done MORE in urban fantasy?
Cooper:
No worries.
Kristine:
--- Quote ---Basically its a story of a normal mundane world, like ours today, with all the wars, politics, and such, and flipping it, over night, into a fantasy world
--- End quote ---
Cooper, for inspiration you might want to read "Empire of the East" -(3 books in one) by Saberhagen. I don't want to ruin it for you but if you want a quick synopsis:
(click to show/hide)...Earth has experienced a dramatic Change not too distant from our own time. During a potentially apocalyptic nuclear war, an intelligent computer named Ardneh—Automatic Restoration Director/National Executive Headquarters—triggered a vast paradigm shift in the very fabric of reality. Physics died—saved for scattered technological remnants—and magic came to rule the planet. 50,000 years passed, during which a lamed Ardneh survived, guiding mankind, until a final showdown with the computer's evil nemesis, Orcus, during which both were destroyed and the role of magic considerably reduced.
Matthewd44 - Shadow Run is darker and postulates that the normal people of the world can only be the drones of society - there are no 'normal' people player characters. You are an outsider fighting corporate society (aka a Shadow Runner) or ...well, you wont survive long in the game. Although I can see the appeal - having lived in and around corporate society - I can see where it might be an acquired taste. You can still pick up used copies of the Sanctuary series fairly cheaply if you wanted to re-read them BTW.
JB has said one of his inspirations for the Dresden series is a film called "Cast a Deadly Spell" (Amazon description: A noir thriller set in 1948 L.A., pits Detective Harry Lovecraft against a cast of horrors in his search for a stolen book of ultimate mystical power. ' 'Imagine ?Who Framed Roger Rabbit?? with witches and zombies instead of toons.' ' (USA Today.) ' 'A great way to spend an evening.' ' (Entertainment Weekly)) seems to have the interesting premise in an alternate reality where magic never went underground and is a part of everyday life.
(A detective named Harry hmmm.)
MatthewD44:
I will admit I haven't read any of the novels for shadowrun but I did glance over the game box when it first came out... thinking it would be a cool game.
I did a quick search on Amazon and found some used THIEVES' WORLD books.. so I might pick them up again..
Kali:
The first three or so were excessively awesome. After that... eh. Not so much. There were still a couple of good stories here or there, but those first books were from some kind of alternate world where wonderful things grow on trees and fall from the skies like mana.
Sorryman105:
hmm I don't know what I would suggest, other then wanting less P.I.. How about say a baker who stumbles on a book from her Gramgram thats all about wardings which she then uses, which promptly manages to unseal a powerful spirit thats going to destroy the world. She fights and kills it, all while getting her soon to be best seller cookbook published ^^.
Theres two interesting and unique series that I like, Illona Andrews Kate Daniels series, and the Retrievers series by Laura Anne Gilman. They both ahve a unqie view on how magic works and give us charcters that are less predicatable.
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