B R U M A L Revista de Investigación sobre lo Fantástico DOI: https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/brumal.416 Research Journal on the Fantastic Vol. V, n.º 2 (otoño/autumn 2017), pp. 65-84, ISSN: 2014-7910 GOTHIC LONDON: ON THE CAPITAL OF URBAN FANTASY IN NEIL GAIMAN, CHINA MIÉVILLE AND PETER ACKROYD arno MeTeling University of Cologne [email protected] Recibido: 09-05-2017 Aceptado: 23-11-2017 absTracT There are good reasons to call London the capital of urban fantasy. Like no other city it embodies an intertwinedness of enlightenment and modernity with notions of the oc- cult, the mythical and the magical. The idea of an urban underworld that somehow is the dark mirror of the city is central for the depiction of a fantastic London. I will look into three examples of urban fantasy: Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere (1996), China Miéville’s story «Reports of Certain Events in London» (2004), and Peter Ackroyd’s novel Hawksmoor (1985) that portray London as a liminal space and a gothic heterotopia. Key words: London, urban fantasy, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Peter Ackroyd, heter- otopia. resUMen Hay buenas razones para denominar a Londres la capital de la fantasía urbana. Como ninguna otra ciudad, encarna un entrelazamiento de la ilustración y la modernidad con las nociones de lo oculto, lo mítico y lo mágico. La idea de un submundo urbano que de alguna manera es el espejo oscuro de la ciudad resulta central para la represen- tación de un Londres fantástico. Examinaré tres ejemplos de fantasía urbana: la novela Neverwhere (1996), de Neil Gaiman, el relato «Reports of Certain Events in London» (2004), de China Miéville, y la novela Hawksmoor (1985) de Peter Ackroyd, que retratan Londres como un espacio liminal y una heterotopía gótica. palabras clave: Londres, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Peter Ackroyd, heterotopía. 65 Arno Meteling 1. on epic and Urban fanTasy The beginning of the fantasy genre can not be pinpointed. At the very least, modern fantasy —like all genres— can be understood as the history of accumulated figures, motifs, tropes and narrative procedures. Influences can be found in ancient mythologies and religious writing as well as in texts at the beginning of Western literary history —in epics like the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as in mediaeval romances about knight-errants and their adventures. Novels of the eighteenth century about knights, adventures, ghosts and secret societies as well as the romanticism of the early nineteenth century can be re- garded as direct precursors. Furthermore, modern fantasy since the late nine- teenth century often oscillates between and combines the fantastic with the realism of the historical novel. At the end of the twentieth century fantasy literature seems to be domi- nated by two very different traditions or sub-genres —the «epic» or «high fan- tasy» on the one hand and the «weird» or «urban fantasy» on the other (Men- dlesohn & James, 2009: 255). The epic fantasy, most popularly represented by J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), is characterized in short by the themes of the heroic journey (Campbell, 2008) and epic war (Meteling, 2016). Furthermore, it is about the establishment of an orderly, coherent and closed world, a «Secondary World» (Tolkien, 2006: 140), usually decorated with mediaeval trappings. In contrast, urban fantasy is a hybrid of different traditions and styles, in which a modern and civilized high-tech world —es- sentially marked as our world, the «Primary World»—, is combined with fan- tastic characters or another fantastic world. The urban fantasy’s narrative is almost always about the confrontation of the fantastic and realism. It ponders on the concepts of borders, perspectives and liminality thriving on the con- trasts and possibilities of the clashes. Famous examples of urban fantasy are written by Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere, 1996, American Gods, 2001, Anansi Boys, 2005), China Miéville (King Rat, 1998, Un Lun Dun, 2007, The Kraken, 2010), Clive Barker (Weaveworld, 1987, Imajica, 1991, Abarat, 2002) or by Stephen King and Peter Straub in The Talisman (1984) and Black House (2001). The English writer Michael de Larrabeiti can be regarded as one of the most important precursors of a tradition that may be called «London Urban Fantasy». He is the author of the seminal Borrible Trilogy, which explore the adventurous albeit dangerous and dark side of London from 1976 to 1986 (Lar- rabeiti, 2002). In a nutshell, the Borrible books present a thorough discussion of the Peter Pan trope. They are about children who have left their homes and live 66 Brumal, vol. V, n.º 2 (otoño/autumn, 2017) Gothic London: On the Capital of Urban Fantasy in Neil Gaiman, China Miéville and Peter Ackroyd under the city of London on the fringes of society —more or less like homeless people with a tribal spin. The borribles are persecuted by the police who wants to bring the children back into society and thus to a boring, controlled and bourgeois life. Successively these children’s bodies transform— further dis- tancing them from human’s civilized society. Eventually, they develop pointy ears, becoming elf-like or resembling some depictions of Peter Pan. According to Michael Moorcock (1978), fantasy literature can be divid- ed into two traditions: on the one hand there is the romantic, antimodern and apolitical fantasy, represented by the likes of C. S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Nar- nia, 1950-1956), Richard Adams (Watership Down, 1972) and Tolkien. It is pre- dominantly concerned with a «vanished» idealized rural world and «senti- mentality» (Moorcock, 1978: 2). Fredric Jameson’s postmodernist concept of «nostalgia» (Jameson, 1991: 279-296) may come to mind here. Moorcock iden- tifies this fantasy as «corrupted romanticism» (Moorcock, 1978: 5) and as the product of a conservative Anglican Toryism. It serves as social affirmation and means of escapism rather than criticism. On the other hand, there is a tradition that, mirroring the New Wave in science fiction literature, focuses on the political, the contemporary and the urban. Exemplary writers are —in Moorcock’s pers- pective— Ursula K. LeGuin (Earthsea series, 1968-2001, Hainish series, 1966- 2000), Alan Garner (Elidor, 1965, The Owl Service, 1967), and Terry Pratchett (Discworld series, 1983-2015). Despite Moorcock’s denial that the first tradition is by any means like a «romance, let alone an epic» (Moorcock, 1978: 2), his concept of two different and mutually exclusive fantasy traditions can easily be identified with the two sub-genres already mentioned —«epic fantasy» and «urban fantasy». According to Moorcock’s definition urban fantasy functions as a coun- terpoint to the idyllic and ahistorical hermetic secondary worlds in epic fanta- sy, establishing some kind of «reality principle» (Freud, 1991: 36) in fantasy writing. Therefore, urban fantasy should be about contemporary problems and the hardships of (post-)industrialized modernity, it should be about soci- ety and politics and it especially should be about living in an urban environ- ment, in a big city. Poetologically, one could add, urban fantasy discusses the juxtaposition of a world portrayed as realistic and referential and the self-re- ferential world of the fantastic and of miraculous events and characters. While epic fantasy —like all literature— cannot exist without referential aspects and, for example, also has to deal with concepts of society, politics and war, it is done only in an allegorical way. Despite Tolkien’s famous denial of an alle- gorical or topical reading of The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1991: 10), it is, for Brumal, vol. V, n.º 2 (otoño/autumn, 2017) 67 Arno Meteling example, perhaps unavoidable to interpret the war not as some depiction of World War One or Two. In urban fantasy contemporary subjects and develop- ments are portrayed in a much more literal way. Urban fantasy is more like science fiction literature in the way that it presents alternatives to our modern lives —be it social, political or cultural or generally referring to our under- standing of reality and perception. However, above all it is the notion of spatiality that characterizes urban fantasy. If epic fantasy is about —maybe dwindling— pastoral landscapes, one of the definitive features of urban fantasy are spaces that can be recog- nized as parts of our contemporary world or at least as versions or interpreta- tions of them. Urban fantasy is about cemented roads, technological means of transport and about borders and transitions, about how to get from one place to another. So, urban fantasy is especially about looking at transitions, at the boundaries between the worlds of realism and of the fantastic and at charac- ters who are go-betweens, who —like the heroes in ancient myths and epics— are able to switch between these places and between different planes of exist- ence, be it Heaven or Hell, Elysium or Tartarus. Furthermore, it is often the case that these worlds or planes occupy the same space so that the fantastic is less a question of place but rather one of perception or state of consciousness. 2. The Underside of london: neil gaiMan’s neverwhere Comic and fantasy author Neil Gaiman’s debut novel Neverwhere (1996) is the literary adaptation of his eponymous BBC television series. The story begins when the young Scotsman Richard Mayhew moves to the city of Lon- don. Still in his hometown, he is in a prophetic way warned by an old home- less woman about London and about doors: «I’d watch out for doors if I were you». (Gaiman, 2016: 3) In a proleptic way she also mistakenly thinks he is homeless, too. Later —Mayhew already lives and works for some time in Lon- don— he walks with his fiancée Jessica to the Modern Tate Museum. On their way they stumble upon an injured girl lying on the street. Jessica, who needs to meet an important customer, wants to ignore her, but Mayhew helps the girl who is called «Door», takes her to his home and unknowingly enters a parallel world —London Below, the underside of the city. In the tradition of the heroic journey as it is described by Joseph Camp- bell (Campbell, 2008), Mayhew meets fantastic creatures, friends and mentors like Door, Anaesthesia, the Marquis de Carabas and the treacherous Hunter as 68 Brumal, vol. V, n.º 2 (otoño/autumn, 2017) Gothic London: On the Capital of Urban Fantasy in Neil Gaiman, China Miéville and Peter Ackroyd well as opponents like the two predator-like killers Croup and Vandemar and their employer, the fallen angel Islington. Above all, the characters have to fulfil quests which, like the adventures in a mediaeval romance or in a video game, are segmented into various separate tasks. For example, Mayhew has to get a key from the Black Friars, and in their abbey, he has to pass a test like an ancient hero or a knight-errant in a King Arthur story, for the «ordeal» (Gaiman, 2016: 272) for him is not a physical one but is addressed at his cha- racter. Finally, like mythical Theseus, Mayhew even defeats a monster in a labyrinth, the great beast of London, with the help of Hunter and her magical spear (Gaiman, 2016: 317-354). Neverwhere’s story is in many aspects based on the conventions of an- cient mythology and probably even more of epic fantasy. But the tropes of fantasy all come with a twist, are normalized or just hinted at, and the novel often uses them to deal with very contemporary discourses, such as politics of identity, for example. Door, the injured girl who sets everything in motion, seems to be subjected to some kind of racial formatting epic fantasy usually employs, so when her «elfin face» (Gaiman, 2016: 79) is described, she is clear- ly no elf but simultaneously a normal human being and something very dif- ferent. The evil henchmen Croup and Vandemar seem to be some sort of werefox and werewolf respectively, but this is never spelled out. The vam- pires called «velvets» are special as they are no Dracula-type vampires but refer to the folkloric lamia-vampires or to the cannibalistic queen from Greek mythology. Even the beast in the labyrinth is no minotaur but has qualities of an ox as well as those of a giant boar. The characters’ gender and skin colour are highlighted in the narrative and stress the diversity of the characters, when, for example, it is emphasized that Hunter has a skin «the color of burnt caramel» (Gaiman, 2016: 135) and the Marquis de Carabas possesses an «ex- tremely dark face» (Gaiman, 2016: 52). Gender roles are also somehow invert- ed as, for example, the female warrior Hunter is physically without any doubt superior to the novel’s hero Mayhew. So the role of heroic fighting is fulfilled by a woman, right up to the conflict with the beast of the labyrinth. Maybe even more importantly is the fact that the story of the main character Mayhew is not his own. He is only an agent, an effect of the charac- ter Door who wants to solve and avenge the murder of her family. Neverthe- less, in a very conventional way Neverwhere is a novel about the development of the hero throughout his heroic journey. Mayhew does not develop any ini- tiative of his own in his surface life and almost always behaves like a child. Not only does he collect magic trolls on his desk, he does not even like them. Brumal, vol. V, n.º 2 (otoño/autumn, 2017) 69 Arno Meteling He is simply not able to convey the truth to his friends and colleagues, so they keep giving him these figures as presents. Above all this, he obeys his fiancée Jessica in all aspects of his life. She is the one who dictates his behaviour and personal preferences. It is Mayhew’s adventures in the dangerous under- world of London that change him. Starting with the rescue of Door against Jessica’s will, he slowly becomes an adult developing a mind of his own. This leads right up to his two final decisions at the ending of the story: his wish to return to the upper world and thus to regain his old life, something that sur- prisingly turns out better than before, only to acknowledge that a bourgeois life in London does nothing for him and then finally returns to London Below. The society of this London underworld does seem fairly conventional in an epic fantasy way for it is organized like a mediaeval feudal system. But like the trope of the heroic journey this social system is not used without any comment, either. It might be on the brink of a revolutionary change as Door’s father, the Baron Portico, has planned to «unite London Below, to unite the baronies and fiefdoms, bond with London Above» (Gaiman, 2016: 324). Also, the underworlds’s Earl and his court live rather poorly in a railway waggon. So the fake-mediaeval trappings of epic fantasy are —one could say: in a sa- tirical way— modernized and thereby maybe undermined and questioned. The objects the characters find and use are another aspect that somehow re- flects an epic fantasy world but is twisted. Similarly to the characterization of the people who dwell in London Below the underside is a place for the stolen, the forgotten and the abandoned. It is clearly the dump for London society’s trash from above. But it is exactly this mix of «lost property» (Gaiman, 2016: 123) that leads to an interestingly heterogeneous collection of objects in the world of London Below, objects that seem to come from the fake-mediaeval discourse of epic fantasy as well as from modern context. The warrior Hunter, for example, uses a magical spear, a quarterstaff and a knife —but also a flash- light (Gaiman, 2016: 113). In the floating market one can find objects as diverse as antique radios or the «hand of glory», as described in hermetic and occult discourses. Furthermore, there is no currency in London Below. The floating market where everyone is selling and buying goods is a trading market. Urban fantasy’s decisive difference to epic fantasy is the setting —name- ly contemporary London, its underworld and, above all, its Underground, the «tube» (Gaiman, 2016: 152), where «commuters [are] wandering the tun- nels» (Gaiman, 2016: 152). Neverwheres’s setting is mostly subterranean, therefore echoing the dark corridors and dungeons of the gothic novel. The characters go through «deep tunnels» (Gaiman, 2016: 104), built during 70 Brumal, vol. V, n.º 2 (otoño/autumn, 2017) Gothic London: On the Capital of Urban Fantasy in Neil Gaiman, China Miéville and Peter Ackroyd World War Two, or even into London’s «sewer» (Gaiman, 2016: 140) or enter the «labyrinth», «one of the oldest places in London Below» (Gaiman, 2016: 339). Yet this obscure parallel world is somehow a reflection of the world above. It is understood as a strange «unreal mirror of (...) London» (Gaiman, 2016: 136), a notion that can easily be read as a self-referential comment about London as it is depicted in the novel. Rhetorically, this mirror works with plays on words and speaking names for they represent buildings or spaces in London, thereby anthropomorphizing them. «Knightsbridge» (Gaiman, 2016: 103) becomes the dark and dangerous «Night’s Bridge» (Gaiman, 2016: 114), the character «Old Bailey» takes his name from the well-known central criminal court building in London, and the «Angel, Islington», the name of the novel’s villain, is a famous landmark in London as well. «Door», her mother «Portia» and her father «Portico», who revealingly all bear the same name, carry their supernatural ability to open all doors in their names like in a fairy-tale. Finally, the name of every «underground station» (Gaiman, 2016: 142) shows what is to be found there. There are shepherds at «Shepherd’s Bush» (Gaiman, 2016: 151) while the angel Islington is to be found at «Angel station» (Gaiman, 2016: 147) in Islington. Furthermore, the Underground is so important that there is not only a special edition of the novel for an Ame- rican readership, which gives additional information about it, but there is also a map of the underground network printed in the book —just like the maps of fictitious worlds in epic fantasy novels (Meteling, 2016). Neverwhere —like every literary text— can be read in several ways. On the one hand it obviously is about social differences and the contradictions between the «possessors above us, and the dispossessed, we who live below and between, who live in the cracks» (Gaiman, 2016: 108). The people living in London Below can allegorically be read as society’s losers. The Underside of London is a refuge for the underprivileged and the homeless, the people who have fallen through the «cracks» of urban society —or as the Marquis curiously puts it in a more ontological manner: «Young man, (...) understand this: there are two Londons. There’s a London Above —that’s where you lived— and then there’s London Below —the Underside— inhabited by the people who fell through the cracks in the world» (Gaiman, 2016: 140). So in Neverwhere London is literally divided vertically taking its cue from the trope of the «they above» versus «we below». It is also about the mythical heroic journey of katabasis that not only prefigures this concept but is the secret drive of the narrative as well for it is always about getting above or below. The hero Mayhew wants nothing more than to get back to the upper-side of London Brumal, vol. V, n.º 2 (otoño/autumn, 2017) 71 Arno Meteling while the villainous angel Islington —like the original fallen angel Lucifer in John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost (1667)— wants to go back to Heaven. Re- garding the spatial confinements the characters are in it is striking that the novel is not only about the differences between the rich and the poor and their social positions, echoing a vertically oriented class theory, but it is also about the asymmetry of perception. While the inhabitants of the Underside of Lon- don perceive and observe upper London’s inhabitants, people from London Above are not able to perceive or recognize people from Below as soon as they belong to this underworld. Jessica, for example, no longer recognizes her fiancé Mayhew, even when he directly talks to her (Gaiman, 2016: 211-214). In Neverwhere —as the title conveys— the politics of society as well as personal identity are bound to the notion of space. Of special importance is the concept of verticality which is derived from social or economic discourses and marks the difference between the characters. While the emphasis on the sub- terranean space echoes the tradition of gothic literature, the verticality curious- ly mirrors H. G. Wells’ science fiction novel The Time Machine (1895), which is a social novel as well. In the far future, the novel describes, the childish Eloi do not know anything about their world. They live in luxury and blissful igno- rance. Their food and lifestyle is provided by the Morlocks, degenerated tro- glodyte-like descendants of the working class who live underground. The secret behind this arrangement is that the Morlocks breed and batten the decadent Eloi like cattle and eat them. The main difference between Neverwhere and this novel is, of course, the topography of sovereignty, because in The Time Machine authority is inverted as it is the workers who rule from the underground. Ne- verwhere does not invest that much thought into revolution or the structures and possible changes of society but is more interested in the development of the characters living in this world. Therefore, it still continues traditions that are usually attributed to conventional fantasy —albeit in a modern and urban way. So, it does not only present itself as an «unreal mirror» (Gaiman, 2016: 136) of London or of reality but also of a genre called «epic fantasy». 3. The secreT wildlife of london: china Miéville’s «reporTs of cerTain evenTs in london» China Miéville is one of the most prominent writers of urban fantasy. His three novels about the city of New Crobuzon in the alien world of Bas- Lag are probably the most popular ones: Perdido Street Station (2000), The Scar 72 Brumal, vol. V, n.º 2 (otoño/autumn, 2017) Gothic London: On the Capital of Urban Fantasy in Neil Gaiman, China Miéville and Peter Ackroyd (2002) and The Iron Council (2004). The setting of Bas-Lag is a mix of different figures, narratives and tropes (topoi) from science fiction, steampunk, fantasy and horror. In addition to describing technically advanced inventions, mod- ern civilization and alien species it also has magic and demons —all rolled up in an urban environment, the sprawling metropolis of New Crobuzon. The description of this multicultural, baroque and labyrinthine moloch shows how different urban fantasy is to epic fantasy and accentuates the political, social and cultural aspects of Miéville’s writing. There is no monarchy in the city, no absolutist rule, as in most mediaeval-like epic fantasy, but an opaque oligarchy with several factions, which cooperate, but above all, scheme against each other. Some of Miéville’s novel titles such as The City & the City (2009) and Embassytown (2011) explicitly stress the importance of urbanity. Some of his texts are also clearly located in London, such as the youth novel Un Lun Dun (2007) that operates with the urban fantasy trope of the dark side of a city, namely the eponymous «UnLondon» as the mirror of the London we know. The novel The Kraken (2010), some stories and his novellistic debut King Rat (1998) are also set in London, especially in a specific London parallel-, un- der- or mirrorworld. King Rat, for example, interweaves mythical and fairy- tale elements such as animal gods, especially Anansi, the spider god, and Loplop, the bird god, and the history of the Pied Piper of Hameln, with a modern setting clearly represented by the club culture of London in the late twentieth century. Miéville’s story «Reports of Certain Events in London» was first pu- blished in McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astronomy Stories (2004), edited by Michael Chabon, and then later reprinted in Miéville’s anthology Looking for Jake (2005). The title conveys a documentary story, a «report» of events based in London. So there is the notion of reality and referentiality right at the begin- ning. This is continued by using exact dates as well as a first-person narrator who is identified as China Miéville the writer. The first sentence is: «On the 27th of November 2000, a package was delivered to my house» (Miéville, 2005: 55). This strategy of authentication is even more reflected by the style of the story, which starts with a narrative framing. In the tradition of the editor’s fiction —a device that is used, for example in gothic fiction of the eighteenth century like in The Castle of Otranto as well as in postmodern novels such as Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1980)— the narrator Miéville who lives in London in the «–ley Road» (Miéville, 2005: 55) receives a package with vari- ous documents. It is obviously a misunderstanding because the papers are Brumal, vol. V, n.º 2 (otoño/autumn, 2017) 73 Arno Meteling directed to a certain Charles Melville who lives in the «–ford Road» (Miéville, 2005: 55). The content of this package, which mainly consists of letters, is tran- scribed in this report. The authenticity of this transcription is even more stressed by its reproduction in a facsimile way, including different fonts and simulated handwriting. There are the notes of observations, charts and also transcriptions of photographs (Miéville, 2005: 64). For the most part of the story the reader is wondering what really is happening in this convoluted collection of letters and other documents. There are a lot of abbreviations and obscure references in addition to the fact that it is very heterogeneous material and its subject is quite confusingly about the living streets of London. But what becomes clearer and clearer is that the main part of the text is the correspondence between members of a secret society, especially between Charles Melville and Edgar Nugen. This society is called the «BWVF» (Miéville, 2005: 74) or «Brotherhood of Witnesses to//Watchers of the Viae Ferae» (Miéville, 2005: 74). The mission of this more or less crypto- zoological group seems to be the observation of strange creatures called «viae ferae», «rues sauvages» or «wild streets». These names —as it becomes more transparent during the story— are meant to be understood quite literally. There are streets that are alive, moving and even travelling —within cities, but also between cities and even crossing national borders. Most of the time they seem to exist together peacefully, wandering whale-like through the city- scapes. Yet they also mate, fight and hunt each other. One of the conclusions drawn in the letters is that there is an «antag- onistic» relationship between «Stay Street» and «Varmin Way» or «VW» (Miéville, 2005: 65) as it called sometimes. The rivalry or fight between these two streets has been observed since the «early 1700s» (Miéville, 2005: 65). Nevertheless, the history of living streets seems to be even older. Since the fourteenth century «errant alleyways» are watched. It is even assumed that this has been the case since the beginning of the existence of roads: «Viae are fighting, and I think they always have». This is Nugen’s «bellum theory» (Miéville, 2005: 67). The internationality of the wild streets, which do not care about national boundaries, is also given attention. There is, for exam- ple, the «Ulica Nerwowosc», a «visitor from Krakow» (Miéville, 2005: 67) that attends London. A chart that lists viae ferae-related events (Miéville, 2005: 67) underlines the scientific nature of the secret society’s writing pro- ject. Their task is one of positivistic recording and classification in an en- lightened Linnéan tradition. The classifying and scientific language of the secret observers is similar to zoological descriptions referring to wild ani- 74 Brumal, vol. V, n.º 2 (otoño/autumn, 2017)