Types of mythological or fantastic beings in contemporary fiction

Updated on Sep 27, 2024

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Many works of modern fiction contain variations on similar beings, mostly drawn in one way or another from classic mythology, folklore, or other traditional tales.

Definitions

Vampires: Undead and/or immortal humans who feed by draining life essence from the living, usually in the form of blood. Vampires are typically sapient, and may or may not be inherently evil.

Werewolves/shifters: Beings with a few defined forms, usually explicitly including a human form and the form of some sort of more or less natural-looking non-human animal. Skin-shifters are those who change shape by putting on or taking off some sort of magical skin or hide. This category is not used for other magical creatures, such as dragons or mer folk, who are capable of assuming human form in a particular setting, only those that are capable of becoming a near variant of a natural animal, and/or a blend between human and some natural animal.

Fae folk: Varied, any setting usually has several types. Often semihuman in appearance, generally intelligent, and generally come from and/or are capable of escaping to "the Summerlands", "underhill", or some other magical parallel realm. Often capricious, but not necessarily inherently malevolent. Frequently divided into two "courts", usually either Summer and Winter, or Seelie and Unseelie (broadly, good and bad—sometimes with other spellings, such as Seleighe).

Deities/demideities: Beings that were individually worshiped as gods or goddesses at least at some point in history (such as Zeus, Thor, or Kali), and/or functionally immortal beings with nearly unlimited power who in some way are shaped, assisted, and/or powered by human worship or reverence, or the children or other near descendants of either one. For this table, only deities or demideities that actually show up as characters, at least in passing, are counted, not simply deities or demideities that are stated/known to exist but never actually appear in the work personally.

Human magic users: Apparently physically normal (or mostly normal) humans who have some inherent capacity to do magic, generally one that most humans lack.

Magical/talking animals: Apparently physically normal animals with magical abilities and/or human-level intelligence, or magical beings that are minor variations on natural animals, such as unicorns or hellhounds.

Zombies/undead: Undead, generally mindless humans that crave human flesh, often specifically brains, or other variations on reanimated, often rotting corpses.

Dragons: Giant reptiles, often flying, sometimes intelligent. European-style dragons are lizard-like, usually hostile, and have a tendency towards hoarding, Asian-style dragons are more snake-like, usually wise, and often friendly.

Mer folk: Partially human sea-dwelling people, often with the top half of a human and the bottom half of a fish.

Demons: Beings, almost always intelligent, from and/or associated with an infernal realm of some sort. Usually evil.

Ghosts/spirits: Beings that are primarily noncorporeal, though some can take corporeal form in certain circumstances. Some are the souls/spirits of deceased humans or other corporeal beings, while some never were corporeal.

References

Types of mythological or fantastic beings in contemporary fiction Wikipedia

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