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Secret Wars
There's a recurring trope in urban fantasy that the fantastical elements have to be concealed from the mortal population. I understand why on at least one level; if the ramifications of adding dragons or wizards or vampires to a modern setting were fully explored, the setting would be different enough to lose that easy context which fuels the genre. Alternately, some authors use the dodge that the fantastical elements just got here and therefore haven't had time to change the world yet-- which has the same effect.
And then there are superheroes.
Secret identities aside, superheroes are about as public as you can get. They've been around for a while in most timelines. And yet 90% of the time the world is still aggressively the same in those stories as it is out here in real life. Nobody's cured cancer, solved world hunger, assisted manned missions to other planets, or invented any piece of meaningful technology that's gone public. The fact that people can actually go to hell and talk to ghosts has had no impact on world religions. They stop disasters or crimes to preserve the status quo, but they never change anything. Universes where this isn't true (Watchmen, the Authority, Aberrant) always stand out as vanishingly rare.
As a writer, waving my hands at something fantastic and pretending it wouldn't change anything seems lame (unless it's a relatively minor addition). Making up a reason for the weird to remain secret feels like hamstringing myself. And having it just have cropped up recently prevents me from developing a rich history. The inescapable conclusion I'm reaching is that if I want to have a universe where multiple strands of the fantastic have been publicly and meaningfully around for a while, I can't do a realistic modern setting.
Am I missing something here, or do you guys concur with the assessment?
And then there are superheroes.
Secret identities aside, superheroes are about as public as you can get. They've been around for a while in most timelines. And yet 90% of the time the world is still aggressively the same in those stories as it is out here in real life. Nobody's cured cancer, solved world hunger, assisted manned missions to other planets, or invented any piece of meaningful technology that's gone public. The fact that people can actually go to hell and talk to ghosts has had no impact on world religions. They stop disasters or crimes to preserve the status quo, but they never change anything. Universes where this isn't true (Watchmen, the Authority, Aberrant) always stand out as vanishingly rare.
As a writer, waving my hands at something fantastic and pretending it wouldn't change anything seems lame (unless it's a relatively minor addition). Making up a reason for the weird to remain secret feels like hamstringing myself. And having it just have cropped up recently prevents me from developing a rich history. The inescapable conclusion I'm reaching is that if I want to have a universe where multiple strands of the fantastic have been publicly and meaningfully around for a while, I can't do a realistic modern setting.
Am I missing something here, or do you guys concur with the assessment?