# Are there any good fantasy novels set in the USA? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 1, 2009, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923 "2009-05-01T02:24:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/21 "2009-05-01T11:46:43Z")
Glen Cook’s Garrett P.I. Novels are set in a city that could be recognized as (I believe) San Francisco. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/22 "2009-05-01T11:49:10Z")
Exapno Mapcase, you took the words out of my mouth though I was going to start a fresh thread. I never understood how someone people got tightly focused on SF = space ships and fantasy = psuedo-medieval and no one can save you if you step outside of that box. And for fantasy firmly established in the US… how about superhero comics? ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/23 "2009-05-01T12:05:56Z")
John C. Wright’s _Everness_ novels. Samuel R. Delany’s _Dhalgren_. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/24 "2009-05-01T12:39:22Z")
What American Fantasy? Sheesh – don’t you people read? What about most of H.P. Lovecraft’s _ouevre_? Or do you draw a line distinguishing fantasy from fantastic horror? What about Edgar Allen Poe and Ambrose Bierce? Robert E. Howard set many of his stories in the U.S. If you’re looking for lighter-veined stuff, try L. Sprague de Camp’s early works. There are lots of others from the pulps of the thirties through the seventies – look in back issues of the _Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_. Most of the authors aren’t household names, but there are certainly fantasy stories set in the US. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/25 "2009-05-01T12:56:43Z")
_Fur Magic_, by Andre Norton. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/26 "2009-05-01T13:08:21Z")
On slight reflection, there are a hell of a lot more. Althougyh better known for science fiction, you had a lot of famtasy from Fletcher Pratt (he and L. Sprague de Camp’s _Tales from Gavagan’s Bar_, among others), Robert Sheckley, William Tenn, Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Theodore Coggswell, “Lewis Padgett”, and – how could I forget – **Fredric Brown**. How about **Ray Bradbury**? And it’s one of my pet peeves that everyone talks about all the British writers of children’s fantasy, but ignore the voluminous output of **L. Frank Baum** , whose Oz books (and stage productions) were world-famous long before MGM decided to make a musical out of it. And who had other series besides the Oz series. And these aren’t simply American writers – their fantasies are mainly set in an American setting (even the Kansas parts of the Oz books), so they meet the OPs criteria. ---
**Author:** ![schnuckiputzi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecb155/32.png) [@schnuckiputzi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/schnuckiputzi)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/27 "2009-05-01T14:10:09Z")
Does Stirling’s _Dies the Fire_ series count? If you read enough of it, there is a definite hint of magic really happening with the Juniper/Rudy pagan stuff. John Nevitt’s wizard stories are set in California. Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson series is set in the Northwest and West. Wen Spencer wrote _Tinker_ and some others that I forget that is set in an alternate Pittsburgh. ---
**Author:** ![Elysium](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3be4f8/32.png) [@Elysium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elysium)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/28 "2009-05-01T15:42:14Z")
Jane Lindskold’s **Changer** is set in Albuquerque and focuses on immortals among us. The worlds of Oz is a great example, as well. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/29 "2009-05-01T15:55:52Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Books that are undoubtedly fantasy and are never counted as part of genre were a major part of the 60s Modernist movement. Philip Roth’s The Breast and The Great American Novel, John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy, Robert Coover’s The Public Burning, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, most of Richard Brautigan and Tom Robbins and the later Vonnegut, while recognizably mainstream are also modern American fantasy. The problem is that genre fiction has been so completely ghettoized that we don’t want to use the words “fantasy” or “science fiction” to describe books that we want to think of as more than fluff. Nowadays I think we call most of this sort of thing “magic realism” so that we can get our lit street cred hits in. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/30 "2009-05-01T16:08:39Z")
Apologies beforehand: I can’t cite the title or author but maybe someone else has heard of it? Also, not fantasy as such but an alternate-history America with feudalism and nobility. “Somewhere” I read an alternate-history story where Europeans first started settling North America during the middle ages. Because firearms hadn’t been invented yet, the Europeans were under much greater threat from native counterattack, and so maintained a feudal society with castles and fortified settlements. ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/31 "2009-05-01T16:11:35Z")
> [@Elysium](#): > > Jane Lindskold’s **Changer** is set in Albuquerque and focuses on immortals among us. _Child of A Rainless Year_ is also set in the SW and is excellent, imo, but is a touch more like magic realism, I suppose, and her latest _Thirteen Orphans_, is pretty good too. Both of them are set in contemporary America… ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/32 "2009-05-01T16:37:53Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Fletcher Pratt (he and L. Sprague de Camp’s _Tales from Gavagan’s Bar_, among others), Robert Sheckley, William Tenn, Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Theodore Coggswell, “Lewis Padgett”, and – how could I forget – **Fredric Brown**. Yeah, I was focusing on novels, but fantasy short fiction has a better and longer history, if not as well remembered or as influential. Fantasy was a separate genre as far back as the pulp days. The seminal fantasy pulp, _Weird Tales_, started in 1923. Lovecraft and Howard have also been mentioned, but dozens of other 20s and 30s writers wrote fantasy. While fantasy could be set in any time or place, much of it did take place in the contemporary U.S., especially pieces that shaded more toward horror. John W. Campbell, at the height of creating the Golden Age of sf, also started the fantasy magazine [Unknown](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown_(magazine)) in 1939. Look at the list of authors and stories on that page. Almost every major sf writer of the period also wrote for \*Unknown \*and their stories, as can be seen there, were frequently contemporary. Campbell couldn’t get the paper for two magazines during the war, so he folded _Unknown_. By the end of the 40s he had turned \*Astounding \*into such a rigid platform for his notions that Anthony Boucher and J. Frances McComas launched the _Magazine of Fantasy_ in 1949 (renamed the _Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_ with the second issue). _F&SF_ especially concentrated on fantasy, and did hundreds of fantasy stories throughout the 50s. The small presses that started around the same time to do hardback f&sf because the mainstream publishers wouldn’t touch it did probably 1/3 to 1/2 their lines in fantasy books, mostly collections of short stories from the magazines. So why did urban fantasy need to be reinvented in the 1980s? Well, Tolkien of course. But also Lester del Rey who founded Del Rey books in 1977 to publish Tolkien clones. The publishing industry had never been much interested in fantasy novels previously because they didn’t sell as well as sf. Suddenly they did. And so fantasy began to mean exclusively Tolkienesque fantasy. History was also rewritten so that when classic fantasy stories of the \*Unknown \*and _F&SF_ ilk were republished in anthologies and collections they were lumped together with the sf stories of those authors and called sf. Again, that sold better. So the field was ripe for an inversion. Authors who wanted to do something interesting and different deliberately left Tolkieniana behind and started writing contemporary and urban. These never got the sales figures of standard fantasy until the vampire books took off. Anne Rice pioneered them in the 1970s and then Laurell K. Hamilton and Charlaine Harris in the 1990s became bestsellers. That people can’t name more contemporary or urban fantasy is a shame. It’s a huge field with a sparkling history. I fulminated once that Science Fiction is not about spaceships. In the same way Fantasy is not about princes. Fantasy is the Other is our lives. That’s why it’s had a much longer, larger, and more pervasive history than science fiction. Ooof. You had to get me started, didn’t you? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/33 "2009-05-01T16:50:26Z")
[Here’s the most famous](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon). ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/34 "2009-05-01T16:55:25Z")
_Tam Lin_ by Pamela Dean, takes place at an American liberal arts college. I think most of Dean’s other stuff starts off, at least, in the U.S. as well. Madeline L’Engle, while bringing a global approach to her fiction, is classic American YA lit. In particular, _The Young Unicorns_ takes place in a gritty NYC – it’s actually a little cringy, because for all her contributions to literature for young people, L’Engle had a terrible ear for slang and the dialogue of the characters who are supposed to be in a vicious street gang are simply ridiculous – and specifically around St. John the Divine Cathedral. This seems particularly American in that St. John the Divine is supposed to be America’s version of a cathedral in the European tradition, and it’s both awesome and hippy-dippy, and we haven’t managed to finish it. ---
**Author:** ![Telperien](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/65b543/32.png) [@Telperien](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperien)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/35 "2009-05-01T17:00:08Z")
Robin McKinley’s _Dragonhaven_ is set in the United States, and I believe that _Sunshine_ is as well. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/36 "2009-05-01T17:28:08Z")
Charles De Lint- one of the pioneers of urban fantasy, along with Emma Bull. His Newford stories have a distinctly new age and Native American bent. I was into him a few years ago. Ilona Andrews- I cannot rave enough about her Kate Daniels series. Takes place in a future Atlanta where magic and tech alternate in waves. EDIT: Er, I think Charles De Lint is actually Canadian. But it’s North America, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/37 "2009-05-01T17:41:55Z")
It is hard to add to what **Exapno Mapcase’s** remarks in this area, as usual. All I can add is that you simply must read Gene Wolfe’s _Peace_, one of the finest novels of any genre I have ever read. It is set in the midwest. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/38 "2009-05-01T17:43:00Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > [Here’s the most famous](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon). Let’s not and say we did. If you want to call someone’s religion fantasy, start a thread in Great Debates. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/39 "2009-05-01T19:36:34Z")
By sheer coincidence, the just-released May issue of [Locus](http://locusmag.com/2009/Issue05_Toc.html) is a special urban fantasy issue. Most large bookstores carry it. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2009, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923/40 "2009-05-01T19:46:36Z")
> [@Lantern](#): > > Haven’t read it but I have heard good things about Fevre Dream by George RR Martin which is a vampire novel set on a Mississippi steam boat. Enthusiastically seconded. I’ve read it several times, and it’s a _great_ book! Ken Grimwood’s _Replay_ could be described as science fiction (it’s about a man reliving his life over and over again, a bit differently each time), but since the mechanism for his repeated return to his youth is never explained, it really is more of a fantasy. And a very good, compulsively readable one, too. The same could be said of Audrey Niffenegger’s _The Time Traveler’s Wife_, for that matter. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-there-any-good-fantasy-novels-set-in-the-usa/494923.md?page=3)