Urban Fantasy
In Urban Fantasy, magic, mythical creatures, and supernatural conflicts exist hidden within the setting of modern cities. The action does not take place in enchanted forests, but in subways, backyards, and office towers of our present day.
The genre experienced its commercial breakthrough in the early 2000s, largely shaped by Jim Butcher's "The Dresden Files". Butcher combined hard-boiled crime elements with magic and created a blueprint for countless successors with his wizard-private investigator Harry Dresden.
Another milestone is Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" (1996), which established a "London Below" beneath the streets of the metropolis. While Cassandra Clare successfully moved the genre into the young adult sector with "The Mortal Instruments", Ben Aaronovitch established a police-analytical view of the supernatural with his "Rivers of London" series.
Historical Fantasy
Historical Fantasy uses a real historical era as a foundation and enriches it with magic or myths. The essential difference from pure alternative history lies in the supernatural element: historical facts are not changed by technology, but by the existence of forces that our real history did not know.
A masterpiece of this genre is Susanna Clarke's "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" (2004), which is set in England during the Napoleonic Wars and depicts the return of magic to a society that has forgotten it. Authors like Guy Gavriel Kay often use settings based on the Renaissance to combine historical authenticity with narrative freedom.
Particularly popular is the combination of military history and fantasy, as seen in Naomi Novik's "Temeraire" series, in which dragons act as a flying air force, decisively changing the battles of Napoleon.
Portal Fantasy
In Portal Fantasy, a character from our familiar world enters a foreign reality through a gateway. The contrast between the world of origin and the destination world with its own laws is the central narrative principle.
C.S. Lewis established the basic pattern still known today with "The Chronicles of Narnia". Interestingly, Lewis and his friend Tolkien pursued fundamentally different approaches here: while Lewis sought a direct connection to the real world, Tolkien rejected portals and preferred a completely isolated secondary world without any points of contact with our reality.
Modern works like Lev Grossman's "The Magicians" often deconstruct this pattern today by showing that escaping to a magical world does not solve the psychological problems of the protagonists, but often even exacerbates them.
Steampunk / Gaslamp Fantasy
The world of Steampunk is characterized by steam engines, gears, and mechanical apparatus, embedded in an aesthetic of the 19th century. Here, magic and inventiveness often exist side by side in a world that is industrial, but never digital.
The term was coined in 1987 by the author K.W. Jeter to find a name for the Victorian-inspired science fiction works of his time. While Steampunk often focuses on mechanics, the related Gaslamp Fantasy shifts the emphasis more towards supernatural and occult elements within the same timeframe.
Outstanding examples are China Miéville's "Perdido Street Station", which combines industrial aesthetics with biological horror, or Gail Carriger's humorous combination of Victorian etiquette and werewolf myths.