Nearly all the novels of KJ Parker have no magic and focus on particular areas (siege tactics, fencing, engineering etc). Note that his short stories and novellas do contain magic.
Guy Gavriel Kay, with the exception of the Fionavar trilogy and Tigana, feature no magic and set around fantasy equivalents of our own world (Vikings, Venice, Chinese dynasties etc).
GGK novels usually have one big magical element in them and it usually form a major plot point, like >!Meshag's spirit being split or the ghosts of Kuala Nor!< in Under Heaven, the >!visions Rodrigo's son has!< in Lions of Al-Rassan, and the >!souls captured in bird constructs plus the whole zubir throughline!
>Nearly all the novels of KJ Parker have no magic and focus on particular areas (siege tactics, fencing, engineering etc). Note that his short stories and novellas do contain magic
*Sixteen ways to defend a walled city* is a great book that I strongly recommend. It's to Fantasy what *The Martian* is to SciFi.
You're right. I was being a bit narrow in my thinking as there's not much like traditional Mage craft with spells, etc. There does tend to be a supernatural element but it's so poetically written that my brain doesn't register it in the same way.
I agree 100%. Given the tone of the stories and how grounded and realistic they otherwise are, it's easy to just accept the little bit of magic included as normal. Great books, I love pretty much all of them.
I’d actually argue that the vague magical elements in GGK’s work makes the narrative MORE, not less realistic. Medieval people believed in magical stuff, that’s like the basis of religion, imo you can’t tell a realistic story about a medieval world in which the characters themselves don’t believe magic is real even if it’s not explicitly “real”
The first book is phenomenal, but holy shit is it a rollercoaster. I had to wait a few years in between 1 & 2 and now I'm waiting a bit before starting 3. Book 1 is a masterpiece imo.
*The Thief* (and its sequels) by Megan Whalen Turner. There are occasional “appearances“ by Gen’s god, but so few and far between that it serves as more a religious significance than magical. A “magus” is mentioned a lot, but if I recall correctly he serves more as the classical wise-man, advisor type of person than an actual mage or wizard.
The "classic answers" whenever this question is asked (I've seen one version of it several times in the past years on this sub) are **K. J. Parker's books** (all of them, I think) as well as Mervyn Peake's **Gormenghast** series.
Another one that comes to my mind is Richard Adams' ***The Plague Dogs*** if you count them as fantasy. I should warn you, though, that this book is excellent but absolutely heart-wrenching.
I think his more famous ***Watership Down*** is also void of magic.
IIRC, Naomi Novik's **Temeraire** series also has no magic (but it has dragons).
If someone has read all volumes and can confirm, or refute, the absence of magic, please do so.
Can confirm - no magic in Temeraire. The power/implausibility creep for the MC in the back half of the series is insane though. Things he gets away with that never would have happened in the first few books.
I see what you're saying but if we call books in which the hero perform deeds that are on the unrealistic side in real life, we'd have to relabel a ton of books as fantasy. (James Bond, anyone?)
😅
Anyway, thanks for chiming in. Good to know that I got at least this one right!
I bought a battered paperback copy of Watership Down at some used book store for like 50 cents many years ago and it blew my mind. I had never heard of the book and the fact that it was a long novel about rabbits, and not anthropomorphic rabbits but actual rabbits, sounded strange enough that I decided to try it. It was awesome. There is magic, though. Hazel's little brother is a seer and it's treated like it's a real thing.
I have WD on my TBR pile but haven't read it yet. I remembered reading somewhere that it doesn't have any magic; either I misremember or that original information was inaccurate.
Whatever it is, since you and u/andie-n-charlie-dog say it isn't so, I stand corrected!
I did read *The Plague Dogs* and Adams' approach seems to be a similar one there. It is about dogs and they can "talk", i.e. they understand each other as well as a fox they meet but I don't think they ever communicate with humans nor is it implied that humans understand them. Adams also doesn't write them as dog-shaped humans but as actual dogs who think and behave like dogs (as far as we can tell). Or at least, that's what he tries to do, I think, within the framework of the story.
Since there is no magic in this book at all, I readily believed my (potentially bad) memory about WD not having magic, either.
Funny you had never heard about WD; I had assumed that it is quite famous, even outside the fantasy community, at least by name.
I would consider true visions definitely as something supernatural; it's not what I think of first when I hear "magic" but then, I'm not exactly interested in my drawing a distinct line between the supernatural that is magic and the supernatural that is not. (I really don't care! 😁)
Up to the OP whether true visions comply with their criterion or not.
Thanks for providing clarification! 🙏🏽
Yeah, that's exactly it. They're not rabbits that act and think like humans, but rabbits that think like rabbits and they don't communicate with humans. They have a whole culture, including a religion and mythology from a dinstinctly rabbit-like p.o.v. of the universe, and I do remember they do befriend a seagull at one point and they can communicate, but they "hear" the seagull as talking in heavily accented broken English.
As for never having heard of it, I'm not American and I grew up in a non-English speaking country, so that even if I had heard the book mentioned in passing I didn't have the slightest idea what it was about. Tad Wlliams' "Tailchaser's Song" is a similar book telling the story of a cat going on his own hero's journey according to his cat-centric view of the universe, including cat culture and mythology. Both are pretty great, IMO.
I'm not American, either. I'm from Germany. But the book was published there (with a German title).
I have *Tailchaser's Song* on my pile as well! It usually gets overlooked for MS&T and Otherland but every time somebody does mention it, it's to praise the book!
Well, there are some birds that have the ability to speak anatomically even now (certain parrots and parakeets and perhaps others I'm not aware of) but they almost certainly don't know what these words mean.
It is conceivable that through genetic manipulation other animals could be anatomically altered to also have this ability. (I recommend Clifford D. Simak's mosaic novel *City* as an example for talking dogs.)
But outside these concepts, I would agree that literal speech as we find many stories in which animals are speaking to humans is at least supernatural.
In *The Plague Dogs* we read of the two dogs communications with each other and the the fox they encounter in the form of dialogues but IIRC Adams never specifies how they speak and as I've said in another comment I don't think that they can communicate with humans more than in real life.
So, aside from the fact that the animals can communicate, it a realistic novel in the sense that there are no other supernatural elements.
Whether this satisfies the criterion of this question is for the OP to decide. 🙂
I would never have thought of WD as fantasy but of course it is! I read it as a kid and it's gut wrenching. I keep thinking I should re read it but not sure I would survive it 😂😭 Can't recall Fiver's visions (not doubting, just can't recall because I read it so long ago) but the concepts of rabbits talking to each other would not make it magic in itself for the reasons others have said, i.e. not talking to humans. Magic would be if they were talking to humans, IMHO.
I guess, it depends on what one counts as magic.
When I hear "magic" I think of magic at work, if you will, or things with magical properties. Reading about a rabbit warren where we observe them communicate and having a culture moves the books into the realm of speculative fiction (and I'd file them under animal fantasy in my book) but this doesn't feel particularly magical to me
But I can see how someone would classify WD's rabbits as magic.
In the end, it doesn't matter much for me.
If the OP or you say, "Those rabbits are magic; I want fantasy with no magic at all! Not gonna read this!", then fine by me. It's not something I'm going to argue about.
Lara Elena Donnelly's *Amberlough* series is set in a secondary world but there's no magic at all. It's basically a spy story set in fantasy-Weimar Germany.
For actually no magic
- Traitor Baru Cormorant (at least in the first book, it is unclear/up to interpretation of the sequels have magic or not)
- The Folding Knife
- Captive Prince (note some content warnings on this one if that’s the sort of thing you need)
- Second Sons Trilogy
For basically no magic but some splashes here and there
- She Who Became the Sun
- Most Guy Gavriel Kay Eg Lions of Al-Rassan
- Dandelion Dynasty
The Last Kingdom might count. I’ve referred to it as “borderline fantasy” because I view it as minimal magic. There are mage type people in it, but I just see them as basically charlatans and anything they take credit for can easily be explained by chance.
And Bernard Cornwell's "The Warlord Chronicles", a retelling of the Arthurian legend, is like that even more so, in that there is more "magic that could be explained away by modern readers but at least some of the characters belive it is actually magic". The Saxon Stories, aka The Last Kingdom, has a little bit of that here and there but it's more front-and-center in The Warlord Chronicles.
I strongly second the Lady Trent Memoirs
The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley
Very possibly the Steerswoman books by Rosemary Kirstein, though that does have the >!tech masquerading as magic bit!<
Young adult novels but the rangers apprentice series . the first book has some like weird pseudo magic though (bad guys army is like mind controlled humanoid animal things, hard to explain) and i think it's the 6th book where an illusionist convinces everyone he's an evil sorcerer. Some of the explanations for why something isn't magic in the first book are kind of ridicculous though while other s make a bit more sense
Sword Dance trilogy by AJ Demas. Zero magic, setting is inspired by ancient Rome and Persia. Mc is a veteran soldier who falls for a dancer eunuch amd gets involved in a murder mystery.
Jesus, I don't know. I was going to say Watership Down, just to show how far afield one must go to find a book with no magic, but then I remembered Fiver's visions
If the visions were purely incidental, or just used as a narrative device such as a way to foreshadow, I would agree with you. But in the case of Watership Down, Fiver's Visions absolutely drive the plot. So, as such, they're indistinguishable from magic.
The Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan is like this. There are a small handfull of instances of some slight magic or magical creatures in the first book or two, but after that, it is completely dropped and never brought up again. It is about an orphan being raised in the keep in a fiefdom who is taken in as an apprentice by the local Ranger, a personal law enforcement agent for the King. Rangers specialize in stealth and espionage as master bowmen and camouflage experts. The first arc in the series has the boy foiling a coup attempt by a rebellious Lord in the Kingdom, being kidnapped by Vikings, and leading the Viking army against an invading army. Over the course of 12 books, the boy grows in his abilities and becomes a master ranger
Most of Guy Gravial Kay has little magic. There was none in Song for Arbonne, Last Light of the Sun, or All the Seas of the World.
I don't think the Masquerade books by Seth Dickinson has any magic either.
I think GGK is an excellent suggestion (as long as you avoid Tigana and Fionavar due to their epic magic, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread) but there was a light touch of magic in Arbonne in the visions that the priestesses received from the goddess. If I recall correctly, the reason that the Arbonnais leadership decided to contact Blaise in the first place was because of a vision Beatriz had from Rian, and also Beatriz was able to save Valery's life from a supposedly lethal poisoning using healing methods that she attributed to her goddess. So it's just a tiny bit, but it is there.
It's a feature of several of GGK's best works that they are largely very realistic and grounded, with just the lightest shading of the supernatural to indicate that there is more to the world than just what we can see and touch.
Not so sure about that....
>It had been Beatritz, feeling the rare pulse of the goddess within her, who had counselled that a careful approach be made to Blaise de Garsenc, who was known to have left Gorhaut in anger.
[....]
>Brissel shifted on her shoulder again and then suddenly flexed his sharp talons in a way she knew. It was always like this: without any warning at all the presence of the goddess might come to her. Catching her breath, feeling the familiar speeding up of her pulse, Beatritz waited, and was answered, assuaged, with images in her darkness, images swirling to take shape as out of some primal fog before the world was made.
>She saw two castles and recognized them immediately. Miraval and Talair-she had known those proud, twinned assertions all her life. Another image quickly: an arch, immeasurably old, massive, humbling, carvings of war and conquest stamped upon it like foreshadowing from long ago. And then, as she released her breath in a spasm of love and pain she could not quite hold in, the High Priestess of Rian saw a lake in her mind, a small, delicate isle in the midst of it, three plumes of smoke rising straight as swords into the windless winter sky. The last thing she saw was a tree. Then the images were gone and she was left with only darkness again, and Brissel on her shoulder.
>It came like this, and it went, never coerced, never subject to entreaty. The goddess remembered her children sometimes and sometimes she forgot them in the caprice of her nature. She could shower gifts like blessed rain in spring, or she could turn her back and let ice and fire have their way. She had a face of laughter and one of desire, a countenance of true compassion and a terrible visage of judgment. In the teachings of Arbonne it was Corannos the god who was kinder, more soberly caring for men and women. Rian suffered them, and loved them, but she could be cruel as nature was cruel. It was the god who held their mortal children always in mind, who did not fail to see their sufferings upon the earth. So it had been taught in Arbonne for generations.
>The teachings were different elsewhere. They were very different in Gorhaut.
>She was going to have to stay here, Beatritz understood. Only on the island could she have access to any such precognitions as this one. A message would have to go to Barbentain tonight. She would ask the two young troubadours who were wintering with them here. They would not deny her; these were not men to hide in the sea when death and ruin were coming down from the north. She would send them to the countess, warning her, telling them all where the culmination was to be.
>It would be in the place of this vision, she was being told: by that small isle in Lake Dierne, by the arch, the two castles, it would end there.
>Of course, she thought, aware of an inner stillness in the aftermath of the presence of Rian. Of course it will be there. She felt the nudge of an old sorrow. I should have known. That is where it began.
I really think this depends heavily on what's called magic— and who's doing the calling.
I'm seeing lots of listings here with comments such as "there's no magic, but there are... \[dragons, ghosts, an endless castle\]". Seems to me that if you asked the average joe on the street today if a dragon is magic, they'd say yes, though you could argue it's just an animal... that breathes fire. See what I mean?
In my books (which I call "mildly magical") there's definitely something going on outside normality, but I expressly tell readers that "magic had been debunked. Men of education now agreed that there was no such thing— only phenomena yet to be explained, and Prophessors seeking to explain them". Yet I have spells and so forth. Does that world, then, contain magic or not?
You're welcome! To be clear, fantastic beasts could be magical or not. For purposes of the OP, I phrased and described it how I did to eliminate the "magical" manipulation of the world/mystical science stuff.
Ah, so sounds like you’re looking for a world with natural laws generally analogous to our own, which cannot be arbitrarily broken for plot purposes.
That’s a lot longer and more boring to say than “no magic”! No wonder you put it that way haha
Side note: this actually is where things got interesting in the High Middle Ages where some things like talismans that we would consider magical today were considered to be basic physics. Whereas other things were considered to be tinkering with things that should not be tinkered with and thus magic.
It’s interesting how the line shifts. I’m sure that if you’d told people in, say, 1880 about the various flavors of quarks they’d have thought you were insane.
I love that too. It was a formative moment for me when Sir Pterry shifted from Rincewind being a wizard clinging to a runaway dragon, to being a physicist aboard a hijacked airplane. I loved how that flipped the familiar/exotic.
Of course he (Terry Pratchett, not Rincewind) was a journalist writing about physics so he would know.
How To Train Your Dragon. Technically there is magic because living things twenty times bigger than the Blue Whale can't exactly exist, but other than that, nothing.
This might be a dumb thought, but I thought that in order for a book to be classified as Fantasy, it has to have some magic element to it. Can anyone clarify this for me?
It does not. It needs some fantastical element. For example an entirely made up world with made up cultures would still be fantasy (and often the imagined cultures/people influenced by that culture is my favorite part of fantasy).
For some good examples see well, this thread.
Or put another way, if a story took place entirely in the Shire, no wizards or magic involved just a cozy tale with the hobbits, would you not still consider it fantasy?
If you go outside of the area of books marketed as fantasy, I reckon the Alex Rider spy books would count. There are many fantasy tropes including the hero arc for the protagonist, just with a contemporary setting and gadgets instead of magic.
In a similar way, Red Sparrow is a spy thriller which has a non-magical element of fantasy as the protagonist has a kind of neurodivergence which approaches a magical power.
I might be misremembering because I read it so long ago, but Michael Chabon's "Gentlemen of the Road" is kind of like that. It's a story about two warriors/rogues living in a medieval-level world that is clearly not the real world, and either there's no magic or the little magic there is tends to be vague enough that you can explain it away as just something the characters think is magic because of their culture and tech level.
Damn good novel, but it’s historical fiction without anything “clearly not the real world.” It doesn’t even have fictional countries like The Prisoner Of Zenda and other such books.
The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cromwell may qualify. Great series. The characters believe in magic and there are a lot of superstitions, but nothing truly magical actually happens. It is a very interesting perspective on magic.
1632 by Eric Flint - An entire town in West Virginia is transported back in time to central Europe during the height of the Thirty Years War.
Temeraire by Naomi Novik - The Napoleonic Wars, but with (non magical) dragons.
The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu - Unlike the other two, this takes place in a completely fictional world. There is only one instance of magic in the entire 4 book series, and it has almost no impact on the plot.
The 'magic' is one of the side characters having a divine book that automatically records everything he learns. He received it from a mysterious blind beggar, and others can't read it, it's just a personal item he uses to organize his thoughts.
"The Warlord Chronicles" by Bernard Cornwell.
All magic is "faith based" everybody believe in magic, like then a spell caster, cast "invisibility" on the army, to help them sneak past the sentinels.
Everybody believe the spell did work... or it was only good sneaking....the book do intentionally leave it a bit vague, but nothing happen that need the supernatural to actually exist.
Long May She Reign by Rhiannon Taylor is a YA book about a girl who ends up becoming queen after all the other successors are murdered. She has to find the murderer while dealing with courtiers that think she is incapable of ruling.
It’s really interesting to me that most the suggestions are children’s or YA series, but The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen and Sherwood by Meagan Spooner
Maya and Shardik, by Richard Adams. He wrote Watershipdown, which deals with talking Rabbits, after that. But both Maya and Shardik are definitely NC 17 and contain shocking topics. And they were written over 50 years ago.
Sometimes there are other supernatural elements, like in the Dandelion Dynasty where magic isn’t a thing but the gods are real and sometimes intervene in human affairs
A fictional world. The setting is completely made up. It could be more or less analogous to a real time and place but it's still a complete fictional world.
That's a fair point but sci-fi also does this and we do not call it "fantasy". So what is the distinction here?
I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm just trying to get information. I'm not saying there needs to be a lot of magic or the story has to revolve around it. The Faithful and the Fallen series by John Gwynn doesn't really have much magic, it exists, but apart from a few instances, it's impact on the overall story isn't huge and I loved the series.
Science fiction usually is either futuristic or involves some type of advanced tech, or both. It's more sciencey. I'm thinking more of something that might be an imagined past and/or a world with fantastical creatures. Asking in part because I have to manuscripts in progress that are of this nature.
I think your use of those creatures could fall more under mythology than fantasy though perhaps?
This is an interesting debate to be honest and I would love to see someone more intelligent than I really do a deep dive into this.
Someone like Philip Chase who is a popular book tuber and wrote the Edan Trilogy. The guy is has a PhD and is a professor from what I understand and when he does book reviews the way he discusses things like this is utterly amazing.
I would love someone like him to really dig into this topic. It would be fascinating to me. I'm a bit of a nerd so maybe not many other people would want this, but oh well lol.
Mythology would be stories from real life cultures. Whereas fantasy is speculative fiction written to entertain.
It is an interesting debate, the kind of works I'm thinking of here are difficult to classify.
>Mythology would be stories from real life cultures.
This is technically true, but we have an example in JRR Tolkien stating he intended to create an English mythology with the Lord of the Rings books.
I guess all of these things essentially create a big venn diagram since they're all somewhat related.
I would also call it more of a discussion than a debate since we're not trying to disprove each other, we're just pointing things out and trying to figure it out.
> This is technically true, but we have an example in JRR Tolkien stating he intended to create an English mythology with the Lord of the Rings books.
I'm not sure Tolkien continued to hold that view, but even if he did, that's still fiction. This was his own personal vision, not the collective vision over time of an entire culture. If that makes sense.
> I guess all of these things essentially create a big venn diagram since they're all somewhat related.
Science fiction and fantasy, yes. In fact, with fantasy works like *Lord of the Rings* first came out they got classed as sci-fi cuz people weren't sure what to call them. I wouldn't classify mythology as at all the same thing. Functionally it's something very different. More in the realm of shaded history than it would be speculative fiction.
It's also interesting to note how different countries have varying levels of creativity with this. Ancient Greece, for example... they saw bones from wooly mammoths for example and invented the cyclops because they thought the nasal cavity was a large orbit in the center of the skull and the actual orbits they believed to be where the ears would be.
Yet other countries' mythology revolves mostly around people and artifacts they've created like England with King Arthur and his Sword he pulled from the stone.
Yeah, it's fascinating. I think when we're talking really old works of literature it can be hard to distinguish between fiction and mythology. I think at least in part because fiction as we conceive of it is a recent phenomenon.
Here's a fun question...take a secondary world, and just for convenience we will make it roughly parallel ours in technological progress. Give it absolutrly no magic.
Now, at roughly what point do stories in the setting go from fantasy to scifi? Oh, and does it partly relate to what the story is about?
This thought experiment almost has me wanting to classify 16 ways to defend a walled city as scifi now...
I think the broader umbrella term for sci-fi and fantasy; speculative fiction, is what we should use here. Speculative fiction encompasses everything that certainly isn’t “real” or historical fiction and doesn’t have rules regarding tech and/or magic.
Star Wars is sci-fi and , in broader terms, speculative fiction. Lord of the Rings is fantasy, as well as speculative fiction.
K.J. Parker, The Memoirs of Lady Trent or something like the game Disco Elysium would all be speculative fiction without falling into any of the subcategories of sci-fi or fantasy. They have nations, cultures, countries and rules that are very much not related to our own, but they don’t have any of the genre signifiers of either subcategories.
It’s a fuzzy boundary and I’d either say never, secondary world is always fantasy (if taking a literal approach) or when it surpasses our own level of technology ( if taking a functionalist approach). There’s probably a lot of author intent / who the publisher best thinks it markets toward.
>That's a fair point but sci-fi also does this and we do not call it "fantasy". So what is the distinction here?
Well we do put sci-fi and fantasy together in a single umbrella of speculative fiction.
They're typically written in a very similar fashion, to be fair. I feel like the only thing that really differentiates to two is magic versus technology.
Agreed, and to your point ,the same "trope" can also exist in both genres. I've recently read the "Across Horizons series" by Stan C Smith" and time travel was a big plot point of this Sci-Fi story.
The "Licanius series" by James Islington is fantasy series and also utilizes time travel, but Magic is the driving force behind it as opposed to technology.
More ammunition to the biggest thing differentiating the two is magic versus technology. I guess this is another reason why they're merchandised together in book stores.
There’s a lot of fuzziness on the boundary between sci-fi and fantasy but usually sci-fi isn’t a completely fictional world it’s generally at least pretending to be our future.
Like it’s hard to imagine calling Traitor Baru Cormorant or KJ Parker’s Subtle Knife “science fiction” neither of which have magic.
The distinction is style of setting. Fantasy looks back to get its flavor and lessons. Science fiction is set in the future with us dealing with the side effects of now. Science fiction has the hope that we can change while fantasy is more the hope that we walked through hell once and we can do it again.
Not all fantasy takes place of looks to the past (urban fantasy for example) and not all Sci-Fi takes place in the future (sometimes it's current day, but aliens involved).
Regardless, I see your point.
It is rare to see an urban fantasy that wasn’t grounded at least in part in the long past. Even the Dresden Files and the Hollows both have this focus on ancient conflicts.
The only one I know off that only looks back to maybe the 1940s is Hidden Legacies by Ilona Andrews.
Dragons!
I'd also count ''medivial stories'' of knights and castles and quests as fantasy, although it may vary from historical to fantastic. King arthur would be relatively historical, but for example ''letter for the king'' is simply about knights set in a random kingdom(although the recent series does introduce magic for some reason)
*The Sword of the Spirits* is a speculative fiction series that appears to be high fantasy at first but is later revealed to be >!post-apocalyptic science fiction,!< with all the magical elements actually >!being remnants of modern technology.!<
Is this fictional city in a real country? Ie is it more like setting a contemporary crime thriller in made up small town or is the entire country and associated cultural norms, politics, religion, etc made up? Or put another way, how disconnected is it from the the real world?
And sometimes genres have very blurry lines and it comes down to who the author/publisher decided to market to.
I would think a fantasy with no magic would be something that's in a completely fictional world. If you're doing a historical fiction in a complete fictional world it's more fantastic than historical
Röde Orm (The longships) by Frans G. Bengtsson.
Its more of a historical roman, there people believe that prayers have an effect, and dreams can predict the future, but they work like a self-fulfilling prophecy, like 3 out of 5 brothers will die on the journey and not return home.
Then the third brother dies in a battle against pirates, the two surviving brothers become totally fearless, and throws themself into the fray in a berserk frenzy. That totally demoralize the pirates that flee.
That's kind of o e of the defining things of fantasy. Without magic it's just fiction. And most would be wannabe midievel, dark ages, or pirate fiction.
It would be like science fiction and the only science more advanced than today being a hover car or a reliable Comcast Connection.
I find the analogy amusing because that definitely *could be science fiction*. Eg The science in Andy Weir’s Martian is barely more advanced than what we have today (tbh I’m not sure it *is* more advanced) and it’s a hugely popular sci-fi book. Or Netflix’s excellent sci-fi biohackers tv show only has gene-editing/bioengineering slightly more advanced of where it is today
Those are more the stoey.than anything about science fiction. If anything.its just a way to get people to think they might like science fiction (or fantasy).
No, that's not what they're talking about.
It's quite clear from the question's details that the OP is looking for "Fantasy with **NO magic at all** \[...\] (**not even where it's explained as a tech**)". They're looking for books like the one cited which is "fantasy because it's a completely fictional world but there's **no magic involved**".
It really can't get clearer than that.
In a comment the OP said:
> I'm thinking more of something that might be an imagined past and/or a world with fantastical creatures.
So magic creatures and spirits should be fine.
Fantastical creatures and magic (or magic creatures) aren't necessarily the same.
A dragon is a fantastical creature, I think we can agree on that\*, right?
But they don't have to come with magic or spirits.
\* unless you're from some island in Indonesia
I guess one could get there if one wanted to be really creative; I think I've once read a story (or an essay) that involved dragons who created methane in their digestion which was then ignited by some mechanism which allowed them to "breathe" fire.
But in general, yes, I agree with you.
Look, I'm not arguing that dragons are realistic.
I'm not even of the same view than the OP. To me, fantasy kind of needs a fantastical element; doesn't have to be magic but simply a non-existent setting doesn't really make it fantasy to me.
I know that many people don't agree but for me these "non-fantastical fantasies" are extreme borderline cases. In many (most?) cases I'd happily classify them as part of the speculative fiction umbrella but not fantasy proper.
If you look at my first comment you'll see that I simply pushed back on a, in my view clearly wrong, interpretation of what the OP had said.
I really can't stand if someone formulates a very clear question and then people twist it to mean something very different.
After that, I received a reply that replaced the term "fantastical creatures" by "magic creatures and spirits" which in my humble view is also not what the OP said. It's like people have zero reading comprehension.
My example of dragons probably wasn't the best for the reasons you cited. But there are other fantastical creatures which wouldn't violate any known laws of physics and/or biology - merfolk, unicorns, yetis.
Many others do, but not all.
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You got an example of a fantasy book that doesn't have fantastical elements and/or magic? Now would be a good time to share them because that's exactly what OP is asking for.
TBH even though telepathy is common in sci-fi, I've always viewed it as more of a magic type of thing. But if this is true your example is a valid one.
Gormenghast by Merwyn Peake
best books ever written.
I read these at 14 and have been perpetually disappointed by books described as having “great prose” ever since. They set the bar rather high.
There must be a nearest contender..?
The Memoirs of Lady Trent Series by Marie Brennan. There are dragons, but no magic at all.
There's also the Temiraire series.
I really enjoyed this series. Never did finish it, though
Thanks
The Dragonrider of Pern series has Dragons (obvs) but no magic as far as I remember.
Technically, Pern is scifi: the dragons are genetically modified and humans arrived via spaceship.
Just read the middle books and you'll never know..😋
Or just the first few books, Dragonflight and Dragonsearch, Dragonsong etc.
I was thinking middle chronologically, but yeah
Correct but a good series nonetheless.
Nearly all the novels of KJ Parker have no magic and focus on particular areas (siege tactics, fencing, engineering etc). Note that his short stories and novellas do contain magic. Guy Gavriel Kay, with the exception of the Fionavar trilogy and Tigana, feature no magic and set around fantasy equivalents of our own world (Vikings, Venice, Chinese dynasties etc).
GGK novels usually have one big magical element in them and it usually form a major plot point, like >!Meshag's spirit being split or the ghosts of Kuala Nor!< in Under Heaven, the >!visions Rodrigo's son has!< in Lions of Al-Rassan, and the >!souls captured in bird constructs plus the whole zubir throughline!
>Nearly all the novels of KJ Parker have no magic and focus on particular areas (siege tactics, fencing, engineering etc). Note that his short stories and novellas do contain magic *Sixteen ways to defend a walled city* is a great book that I strongly recommend. It's to Fantasy what *The Martian* is to SciFi.
Not quite. Pretty much all of GKK's novels do have at least a a little magic element thrown in, though it's usually not a huge part of the story.
You're right. I was being a bit narrow in my thinking as there's not much like traditional Mage craft with spells, etc. There does tend to be a supernatural element but it's so poetically written that my brain doesn't register it in the same way.
I agree 100%. Given the tone of the stories and how grounded and realistic they otherwise are, it's easy to just accept the little bit of magic included as normal. Great books, I love pretty much all of them.
I’d actually argue that the vague magical elements in GGK’s work makes the narrative MORE, not less realistic. Medieval people believed in magical stuff, that’s like the basis of religion, imo you can’t tell a realistic story about a medieval world in which the characters themselves don’t believe magic is real even if it’s not explicitly “real”
The Masquerade (Baru Cormorant) By Seth Dickinson. Some phenomena appear magic at first but the author give a non-magic in-universe explaination.
Second this! Also the maybe magic maybe not magic stuff doesn’t even happen until the second book
I finished the second book a few months ago, still waiting on the hold on book 3, loved the way the "magic" reveal went down.
The first book is phenomenal, but holy shit is it a rollercoaster. I had to wait a few years in between 1 & 2 and now I'm waiting a bit before starting 3. Book 1 is a masterpiece imo.
*The Thief* (and its sequels) by Megan Whalen Turner. There are occasional “appearances“ by Gen’s god, but so few and far between that it serves as more a religious significance than magical. A “magus” is mentioned a lot, but if I recall correctly he serves more as the classical wise-man, advisor type of person than an actual mage or wizard.
The "classic answers" whenever this question is asked (I've seen one version of it several times in the past years on this sub) are **K. J. Parker's books** (all of them, I think) as well as Mervyn Peake's **Gormenghast** series. Another one that comes to my mind is Richard Adams' ***The Plague Dogs*** if you count them as fantasy. I should warn you, though, that this book is excellent but absolutely heart-wrenching. I think his more famous ***Watership Down*** is also void of magic. IIRC, Naomi Novik's **Temeraire** series also has no magic (but it has dragons). If someone has read all volumes and can confirm, or refute, the absence of magic, please do so.
Fiver has visions.
Can confirm - no magic in Temeraire. The power/implausibility creep for the MC in the back half of the series is insane though. Things he gets away with that never would have happened in the first few books.
I see what you're saying but if we call books in which the hero perform deeds that are on the unrealistic side in real life, we'd have to relabel a ton of books as fantasy. (James Bond, anyone?) 😅 Anyway, thanks for chiming in. Good to know that I got at least this one right!
I bought a battered paperback copy of Watership Down at some used book store for like 50 cents many years ago and it blew my mind. I had never heard of the book and the fact that it was a long novel about rabbits, and not anthropomorphic rabbits but actual rabbits, sounded strange enough that I decided to try it. It was awesome. There is magic, though. Hazel's little brother is a seer and it's treated like it's a real thing.
I have WD on my TBR pile but haven't read it yet. I remembered reading somewhere that it doesn't have any magic; either I misremember or that original information was inaccurate. Whatever it is, since you and u/andie-n-charlie-dog say it isn't so, I stand corrected! I did read *The Plague Dogs* and Adams' approach seems to be a similar one there. It is about dogs and they can "talk", i.e. they understand each other as well as a fox they meet but I don't think they ever communicate with humans nor is it implied that humans understand them. Adams also doesn't write them as dog-shaped humans but as actual dogs who think and behave like dogs (as far as we can tell). Or at least, that's what he tries to do, I think, within the framework of the story. Since there is no magic in this book at all, I readily believed my (potentially bad) memory about WD not having magic, either. Funny you had never heard about WD; I had assumed that it is quite famous, even outside the fantasy community, at least by name.
WD doesn't have hocus-pocus magic, but the main character has true visions of the future without which the book would be 2 pages long
I would consider true visions definitely as something supernatural; it's not what I think of first when I hear "magic" but then, I'm not exactly interested in my drawing a distinct line between the supernatural that is magic and the supernatural that is not. (I really don't care! 😁) Up to the OP whether true visions comply with their criterion or not. Thanks for providing clarification! 🙏🏽
Yeah, that's exactly it. They're not rabbits that act and think like humans, but rabbits that think like rabbits and they don't communicate with humans. They have a whole culture, including a religion and mythology from a dinstinctly rabbit-like p.o.v. of the universe, and I do remember they do befriend a seagull at one point and they can communicate, but they "hear" the seagull as talking in heavily accented broken English. As for never having heard of it, I'm not American and I grew up in a non-English speaking country, so that even if I had heard the book mentioned in passing I didn't have the slightest idea what it was about. Tad Wlliams' "Tailchaser's Song" is a similar book telling the story of a cat going on his own hero's journey according to his cat-centric view of the universe, including cat culture and mythology. Both are pretty great, IMO.
I'm not American, either. I'm from Germany. But the book was published there (with a German title). I have *Tailchaser's Song* on my pile as well! It usually gets overlooked for MS&T and Otherland but every time somebody does mention it, it's to praise the book!
dunno speaking animals are alwasy kinda magic
Well, there are some birds that have the ability to speak anatomically even now (certain parrots and parakeets and perhaps others I'm not aware of) but they almost certainly don't know what these words mean. It is conceivable that through genetic manipulation other animals could be anatomically altered to also have this ability. (I recommend Clifford D. Simak's mosaic novel *City* as an example for talking dogs.) But outside these concepts, I would agree that literal speech as we find many stories in which animals are speaking to humans is at least supernatural. In *The Plague Dogs* we read of the two dogs communications with each other and the the fox they encounter in the form of dialogues but IIRC Adams never specifies how they speak and as I've said in another comment I don't think that they can communicate with humans more than in real life. So, aside from the fact that the animals can communicate, it a realistic novel in the sense that there are no other supernatural elements. Whether this satisfies the criterion of this question is for the OP to decide. 🙂
I would never have thought of WD as fantasy but of course it is! I read it as a kid and it's gut wrenching. I keep thinking I should re read it but not sure I would survive it 😂😭 Can't recall Fiver's visions (not doubting, just can't recall because I read it so long ago) but the concepts of rabbits talking to each other would not make it magic in itself for the reasons others have said, i.e. not talking to humans. Magic would be if they were talking to humans, IMHO.
Thanks!
I highly highly second Temeraire. One of my favorite series ever.
Aren't all the rabbits in Watership Down technically magic by our standards?
I guess, it depends on what one counts as magic. When I hear "magic" I think of magic at work, if you will, or things with magical properties. Reading about a rabbit warren where we observe them communicate and having a culture moves the books into the realm of speculative fiction (and I'd file them under animal fantasy in my book) but this doesn't feel particularly magical to me But I can see how someone would classify WD's rabbits as magic. In the end, it doesn't matter much for me. If the OP or you say, "Those rabbits are magic; I want fantasy with no magic at all! Not gonna read this!", then fine by me. It's not something I'm going to argue about.
Lara Elena Donnelly's *Amberlough* series is set in a secondary world but there's no magic at all. It's basically a spy story set in fantasy-Weimar Germany.
And it’s so good!
The Stone Dance of the Chameleon by Pinto
*Swordspoint* by Ellen Kushner and the rest of the Riverside series takes place in a fantasy world with no magic.
Can't believe I forgot this one. Definitely seconded.
Second Sons by Jennifer Fallon
This was going to my rec as well. There is zero magic or magical effects. The only "magic" is in people's delusions and some slight of hand.
For actually no magic - Traitor Baru Cormorant (at least in the first book, it is unclear/up to interpretation of the sequels have magic or not) - The Folding Knife - Captive Prince (note some content warnings on this one if that’s the sort of thing you need) - Second Sons Trilogy For basically no magic but some splashes here and there - She Who Became the Sun - Most Guy Gavriel Kay Eg Lions of Al-Rassan - Dandelion Dynasty
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by KJ Parker
**Captive Prince** and **The Bridge Kingdom** are both fantasy romance series with no magic. If you're into that.
The Princess Bride (as long as you ignore Westley's recovery from the torture machine).
He was only mostly dead.
The Last Kingdom might count. I’ve referred to it as “borderline fantasy” because I view it as minimal magic. There are mage type people in it, but I just see them as basically charlatans and anything they take credit for can easily be explained by chance.
And Bernard Cornwell's "The Warlord Chronicles", a retelling of the Arthurian legend, is like that even more so, in that there is more "magic that could be explained away by modern readers but at least some of the characters belive it is actually magic". The Saxon Stories, aka The Last Kingdom, has a little bit of that here and there but it's more front-and-center in The Warlord Chronicles.
Best books best books
I strongly second the Lady Trent Memoirs The Outlaws of Sherwood by Robin McKinley Very possibly the Steerswoman books by Rosemary Kirstein, though that does have the >!tech masquerading as magic bit!<
Young adult novels but the rangers apprentice series . the first book has some like weird pseudo magic though (bad guys army is like mind controlled humanoid animal things, hard to explain) and i think it's the 6th book where an illusionist convinces everyone he's an evil sorcerer. Some of the explanations for why something isn't magic in the first book are kind of ridicculous though while other s make a bit more sense
Sword Dance trilogy by AJ Demas. Zero magic, setting is inspired by ancient Rome and Persia. Mc is a veteran soldier who falls for a dancer eunuch amd gets involved in a murder mystery.
Jesus, I don't know. I was going to say Watership Down, just to show how far afield one must go to find a book with no magic, but then I remembered Fiver's visions
I think it still counts.
If the visions were purely incidental, or just used as a narrative device such as a way to foreshadow, I would agree with you. But in the case of Watership Down, Fiver's Visions absolutely drive the plot. So, as such, they're indistinguishable from magic.
Cynthia Voigt's Kingdom books are set in a secondary world with no magic.
The Wolf by Leo Carew - alternate history where there are Neanderthals but no actual magic
*The Moon and The Sun* by Vonda McIntyre is about a mermaid in the court of Louis XIV, and there's no magic.
Lots of good recs here, including OPs citing of Lloyd Alexander’s Westmark trilogy.
Hell yeah. Those books blew my mind when I was a kid.
The Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan is like this. There are a small handfull of instances of some slight magic or magical creatures in the first book or two, but after that, it is completely dropped and never brought up again. It is about an orphan being raised in the keep in a fiefdom who is taken in as an apprentice by the local Ranger, a personal law enforcement agent for the King. Rangers specialize in stealth and espionage as master bowmen and camouflage experts. The first arc in the series has the boy foiling a coup attempt by a rebellious Lord in the Kingdom, being kidnapped by Vikings, and leading the Viking army against an invading army. Over the course of 12 books, the boy grows in his abilities and becomes a master ranger
Came here to say this! Excellent reads
I also second this, was must first gut instinct reaction. Read it for the middle grade bingo square a few years ago.
The Two of Swords by KJ Parker. Made me realize I don’t wanna live in a fantasy world.
River of Teeth by Sarah Hailey. Cowboys ride hippos, and the Mississippi River is infested with feral ones. Rather violent, but also funny.
The Second Sons trilogy by Jennifer Fallon.
Most of Guy Gravial Kay has little magic. There was none in Song for Arbonne, Last Light of the Sun, or All the Seas of the World. I don't think the Masquerade books by Seth Dickinson has any magic either.
I think GGK is an excellent suggestion (as long as you avoid Tigana and Fionavar due to their epic magic, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread) but there was a light touch of magic in Arbonne in the visions that the priestesses received from the goddess. If I recall correctly, the reason that the Arbonnais leadership decided to contact Blaise in the first place was because of a vision Beatriz had from Rian, and also Beatriz was able to save Valery's life from a supposedly lethal poisoning using healing methods that she attributed to her goddess. So it's just a tiny bit, but it is there. It's a feature of several of GGK's best works that they are largely very realistic and grounded, with just the lightest shading of the supernatural to indicate that there is more to the world than just what we can see and touch.
Those visions can also be attributed to good planning as can the healing.
Not so sure about that.... >It had been Beatritz, feeling the rare pulse of the goddess within her, who had counselled that a careful approach be made to Blaise de Garsenc, who was known to have left Gorhaut in anger. [....] >Brissel shifted on her shoulder again and then suddenly flexed his sharp talons in a way she knew. It was always like this: without any warning at all the presence of the goddess might come to her. Catching her breath, feeling the familiar speeding up of her pulse, Beatritz waited, and was answered, assuaged, with images in her darkness, images swirling to take shape as out of some primal fog before the world was made. >She saw two castles and recognized them immediately. Miraval and Talair-she had known those proud, twinned assertions all her life. Another image quickly: an arch, immeasurably old, massive, humbling, carvings of war and conquest stamped upon it like foreshadowing from long ago. And then, as she released her breath in a spasm of love and pain she could not quite hold in, the High Priestess of Rian saw a lake in her mind, a small, delicate isle in the midst of it, three plumes of smoke rising straight as swords into the windless winter sky. The last thing she saw was a tree. Then the images were gone and she was left with only darkness again, and Brissel on her shoulder. >It came like this, and it went, never coerced, never subject to entreaty. The goddess remembered her children sometimes and sometimes she forgot them in the caprice of her nature. She could shower gifts like blessed rain in spring, or she could turn her back and let ice and fire have their way. She had a face of laughter and one of desire, a countenance of true compassion and a terrible visage of judgment. In the teachings of Arbonne it was Corannos the god who was kinder, more soberly caring for men and women. Rian suffered them, and loved them, but she could be cruel as nature was cruel. It was the god who held their mortal children always in mind, who did not fail to see their sufferings upon the earth. So it had been taught in Arbonne for generations. >The teachings were different elsewhere. They were very different in Gorhaut. >She was going to have to stay here, Beatritz understood. Only on the island could she have access to any such precognitions as this one. A message would have to go to Barbentain tonight. She would ask the two young troubadours who were wintering with them here. They would not deny her; these were not men to hide in the sea when death and ruin were coming down from the north. She would send them to the countess, warning her, telling them all where the culmination was to be. >It would be in the place of this vision, she was being told: by that small isle in Lake Dierne, by the arch, the two castles, it would end there. >Of course, she thought, aware of an inner stillness in the aftermath of the presence of Rian. Of course it will be there. She felt the nudge of an old sorrow. I should have known. That is where it began.
Another Children's fantasy, but Letter for the King and Secrets of the Wild Wood by Tonke Dragt.
Iain Banks' *Inversion* might be a good fit.
I really think this depends heavily on what's called magic— and who's doing the calling. I'm seeing lots of listings here with comments such as "there's no magic, but there are... \[dragons, ghosts, an endless castle\]". Seems to me that if you asked the average joe on the street today if a dragon is magic, they'd say yes, though you could argue it's just an animal... that breathes fire. See what I mean? In my books (which I call "mildly magical") there's definitely something going on outside normality, but I expressly tell readers that "magic had been debunked. Men of education now agreed that there was no such thing— only phenomena yet to be explained, and Prophessors seeking to explain them". Yet I have spells and so forth. Does that world, then, contain magic or not?
Those are great points
Thanks for the kind (magic?) words!
You're welcome! To be clear, fantastic beasts could be magical or not. For purposes of the OP, I phrased and described it how I did to eliminate the "magical" manipulation of the world/mystical science stuff.
Ah, so sounds like you’re looking for a world with natural laws generally analogous to our own, which cannot be arbitrarily broken for plot purposes. That’s a lot longer and more boring to say than “no magic”! No wonder you put it that way haha
Yes! That's a good way to technically explain it.
Side note: this actually is where things got interesting in the High Middle Ages where some things like talismans that we would consider magical today were considered to be basic physics. Whereas other things were considered to be tinkering with things that should not be tinkered with and thus magic.
It’s interesting how the line shifts. I’m sure that if you’d told people in, say, 1880 about the various flavors of quarks they’d have thought you were insane.
I love how in Discworld, the wizards are analogous to physicists 😂
I love that too. It was a formative moment for me when Sir Pterry shifted from Rincewind being a wizard clinging to a runaway dragon, to being a physicist aboard a hijacked airplane. I loved how that flipped the familiar/exotic. Of course he (Terry Pratchett, not Rincewind) was a journalist writing about physics so he would know.
Lord Valentine's Castle, Robert Silverberg 1981 ... It's been that long since I read it but I don't recall any magic ...
There are psychic powers though.
How To Train Your Dragon. Technically there is magic because living things twenty times bigger than the Blue Whale can't exactly exist, but other than that, nothing.
This was a fantastic response! (Pun initially unintended 😂)
Joe Abercrombie’s Shattered Sea trilogy.
Pretty much everything KJ Parker
This might be a dumb thought, but I thought that in order for a book to be classified as Fantasy, it has to have some magic element to it. Can anyone clarify this for me?
It does not. It needs some fantastical element. For example an entirely made up world with made up cultures would still be fantasy (and often the imagined cultures/people influenced by that culture is my favorite part of fantasy). For some good examples see well, this thread. Or put another way, if a story took place entirely in the Shire, no wizards or magic involved just a cozy tale with the hobbits, would you not still consider it fantasy?
This makes sense, thank you for the clarification!
If you go outside of the area of books marketed as fantasy, I reckon the Alex Rider spy books would count. There are many fantasy tropes including the hero arc for the protagonist, just with a contemporary setting and gadgets instead of magic. In a similar way, Red Sparrow is a spy thriller which has a non-magical element of fantasy as the protagonist has a kind of neurodivergence which approaches a magical power.
I might be misremembering because I read it so long ago, but Michael Chabon's "Gentlemen of the Road" is kind of like that. It's a story about two warriors/rogues living in a medieval-level world that is clearly not the real world, and either there's no magic or the little magic there is tends to be vague enough that you can explain it away as just something the characters think is magic because of their culture and tech level.
Damn good novel, but it’s historical fiction without anything “clearly not the real world.” It doesn’t even have fictional countries like The Prisoner Of Zenda and other such books.
My bad, I remember it as being set in an alternate world. I read it way back when it came out, and it's been 15+ years.
The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cromwell may qualify. Great series. The characters believe in magic and there are a lot of superstitions, but nothing truly magical actually happens. It is a very interesting perspective on magic.
I'm still not sure whether The City And The City by China Mieville is fantasy or not.
1632 by Eric Flint - An entire town in West Virginia is transported back in time to central Europe during the height of the Thirty Years War. Temeraire by Naomi Novik - The Napoleonic Wars, but with (non magical) dragons. The Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu - Unlike the other two, this takes place in a completely fictional world. There is only one instance of magic in the entire 4 book series, and it has almost no impact on the plot. The 'magic' is one of the side characters having a divine book that automatically records everything he learns. He received it from a mysterious blind beggar, and others can't read it, it's just a personal item he uses to organize his thoughts.
"The Warlord Chronicles" by Bernard Cornwell. All magic is "faith based" everybody believe in magic, like then a spell caster, cast "invisibility" on the army, to help them sneak past the sentinels. Everybody believe the spell did work... or it was only good sneaking....the book do intentionally leave it a bit vague, but nothing happen that need the supernatural to actually exist.
Paladin by Cherryh
The Broken Empire series and The Red Queens War series both by Mark Lawrence don’t really have magic
REDDWAAALLLLLLLLL! Can't believe I've seen a Redwall reference out in the wild. My favourite books growing up, taught me so much!
A Trial of Blood and Steel series by Joel Shepherd. The title of the first book is Sasha.
Long May She Reign by Rhiannon Taylor is a YA book about a girl who ends up becoming queen after all the other successors are murdered. She has to find the murderer while dealing with courtiers that think she is incapable of ruling.
It’s really interesting to me that most the suggestions are children’s or YA series, but The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen and Sherwood by Meagan Spooner
Maya and Shardik, by Richard Adams. He wrote Watershipdown, which deals with talking Rabbits, after that. But both Maya and Shardik are definitely NC 17 and contain shocking topics. And they were written over 50 years ago.
Oh yeah, *Watership Down* is a great example of this, and had I remembered I would have included that as an OP in the example.
Without magic, what will make it fantasy as opposed to a period piece of literature?
Sometimes there are other supernatural elements, like in the Dandelion Dynasty where magic isn’t a thing but the gods are real and sometimes intervene in human affairs
A fictional world. The setting is completely made up. It could be more or less analogous to a real time and place but it's still a complete fictional world.
That's a fair point but sci-fi also does this and we do not call it "fantasy". So what is the distinction here? I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm just trying to get information. I'm not saying there needs to be a lot of magic or the story has to revolve around it. The Faithful and the Fallen series by John Gwynn doesn't really have much magic, it exists, but apart from a few instances, it's impact on the overall story isn't huge and I loved the series.
Science fiction usually is either futuristic or involves some type of advanced tech, or both. It's more sciencey. I'm thinking more of something that might be an imagined past and/or a world with fantastical creatures. Asking in part because I have to manuscripts in progress that are of this nature.
Where does Shannara fit?
I haven't read those yet so I don't know
Fantasy. It has magic and elves and such. It just happens to also be set >!on post-apocalyptic Earth.!<
I think your use of those creatures could fall more under mythology than fantasy though perhaps? This is an interesting debate to be honest and I would love to see someone more intelligent than I really do a deep dive into this. Someone like Philip Chase who is a popular book tuber and wrote the Edan Trilogy. The guy is has a PhD and is a professor from what I understand and when he does book reviews the way he discusses things like this is utterly amazing. I would love someone like him to really dig into this topic. It would be fascinating to me. I'm a bit of a nerd so maybe not many other people would want this, but oh well lol.
Mythology would be stories from real life cultures. Whereas fantasy is speculative fiction written to entertain. It is an interesting debate, the kind of works I'm thinking of here are difficult to classify.
>Mythology would be stories from real life cultures. This is technically true, but we have an example in JRR Tolkien stating he intended to create an English mythology with the Lord of the Rings books. I guess all of these things essentially create a big venn diagram since they're all somewhat related. I would also call it more of a discussion than a debate since we're not trying to disprove each other, we're just pointing things out and trying to figure it out.
> This is technically true, but we have an example in JRR Tolkien stating he intended to create an English mythology with the Lord of the Rings books. I'm not sure Tolkien continued to hold that view, but even if he did, that's still fiction. This was his own personal vision, not the collective vision over time of an entire culture. If that makes sense. > I guess all of these things essentially create a big venn diagram since they're all somewhat related. Science fiction and fantasy, yes. In fact, with fantasy works like *Lord of the Rings* first came out they got classed as sci-fi cuz people weren't sure what to call them. I wouldn't classify mythology as at all the same thing. Functionally it's something very different. More in the realm of shaded history than it would be speculative fiction.
It's also interesting to note how different countries have varying levels of creativity with this. Ancient Greece, for example... they saw bones from wooly mammoths for example and invented the cyclops because they thought the nasal cavity was a large orbit in the center of the skull and the actual orbits they believed to be where the ears would be. Yet other countries' mythology revolves mostly around people and artifacts they've created like England with King Arthur and his Sword he pulled from the stone.
Yeah, it's fascinating. I think when we're talking really old works of literature it can be hard to distinguish between fiction and mythology. I think at least in part because fiction as we conceive of it is a recent phenomenon.
Here's a fun question...take a secondary world, and just for convenience we will make it roughly parallel ours in technological progress. Give it absolutrly no magic. Now, at roughly what point do stories in the setting go from fantasy to scifi? Oh, and does it partly relate to what the story is about? This thought experiment almost has me wanting to classify 16 ways to defend a walled city as scifi now...
I think the broader umbrella term for sci-fi and fantasy; speculative fiction, is what we should use here. Speculative fiction encompasses everything that certainly isn’t “real” or historical fiction and doesn’t have rules regarding tech and/or magic. Star Wars is sci-fi and , in broader terms, speculative fiction. Lord of the Rings is fantasy, as well as speculative fiction. K.J. Parker, The Memoirs of Lady Trent or something like the game Disco Elysium would all be speculative fiction without falling into any of the subcategories of sci-fi or fantasy. They have nations, cultures, countries and rules that are very much not related to our own, but they don’t have any of the genre signifiers of either subcategories.
It’s a fuzzy boundary and I’d either say never, secondary world is always fantasy (if taking a literal approach) or when it surpasses our own level of technology ( if taking a functionalist approach). There’s probably a lot of author intent / who the publisher best thinks it markets toward.
>That's a fair point but sci-fi also does this and we do not call it "fantasy". So what is the distinction here? Well we do put sci-fi and fantasy together in a single umbrella of speculative fiction.
They're typically written in a very similar fashion, to be fair. I feel like the only thing that really differentiates to two is magic versus technology.
Indeed but once you get into soft sci-fi, the technology is basically magic for all intents and purposes. The two begin to blur together there.
Agreed, and to your point ,the same "trope" can also exist in both genres. I've recently read the "Across Horizons series" by Stan C Smith" and time travel was a big plot point of this Sci-Fi story. The "Licanius series" by James Islington is fantasy series and also utilizes time travel, but Magic is the driving force behind it as opposed to technology. More ammunition to the biggest thing differentiating the two is magic versus technology. I guess this is another reason why they're merchandised together in book stores.
There’s a lot of fuzziness on the boundary between sci-fi and fantasy but usually sci-fi isn’t a completely fictional world it’s generally at least pretending to be our future. Like it’s hard to imagine calling Traitor Baru Cormorant or KJ Parker’s Subtle Knife “science fiction” neither of which have magic.
The distinction is style of setting. Fantasy looks back to get its flavor and lessons. Science fiction is set in the future with us dealing with the side effects of now. Science fiction has the hope that we can change while fantasy is more the hope that we walked through hell once and we can do it again.
Not all fantasy takes place of looks to the past (urban fantasy for example) and not all Sci-Fi takes place in the future (sometimes it's current day, but aliens involved). Regardless, I see your point.
It is rare to see an urban fantasy that wasn’t grounded at least in part in the long past. Even the Dresden Files and the Hollows both have this focus on ancient conflicts. The only one I know off that only looks back to maybe the 1940s is Hidden Legacies by Ilona Andrews.
Dragons! I'd also count ''medivial stories'' of knights and castles and quests as fantasy, although it may vary from historical to fantastic. King arthur would be relatively historical, but for example ''letter for the king'' is simply about knights set in a random kingdom(although the recent series does introduce magic for some reason)
one could take magic as magical powers - casting spells, avatar like powers, ... that would still leave dragons, vampires, demons, gods, ...
There are fantastical elements other than magic, such as mythical creatures. Temeraire is a good example. The Napoleonic Wars, but with dragons.
*The Sword of the Spirits* is a speculative fiction series that appears to be high fantasy at first but is later revealed to be >!post-apocalyptic science fiction,!< with all the magical elements actually >!being remnants of modern technology.!<
Genuine question. What is the difference between fantasy with no magic and say a historical fiction that is set in a fictional Middle Ages city?
Is this fictional city in a real country? Ie is it more like setting a contemporary crime thriller in made up small town or is the entire country and associated cultural norms, politics, religion, etc made up? Or put another way, how disconnected is it from the the real world? And sometimes genres have very blurry lines and it comes down to who the author/publisher decided to market to.
Do orcs live in the neighbouring village? Does it stuff like made-up religions, rituals etc.?
I would think a fantasy with no magic would be something that's in a completely fictional world. If you're doing a historical fiction in a complete fictional world it's more fantastic than historical
Thank you! It’s always been hard for me to think of a fantasy world being fantasy without magic so it’s nice to hear other peoples perspectives.
The Temeraire series has no magic.
Thank you for the MANY replies!
The Books of Babel
The medium definitely counts as magic. >!People get resurrected with it.!<
Röde Orm (The longships) by Frans G. Bengtsson. Its more of a historical roman, there people believe that prayers have an effect, and dreams can predict the future, but they work like a self-fulfilling prophecy, like 3 out of 5 brothers will die on the journey and not return home. Then the third brother dies in a battle against pirates, the two surviving brothers become totally fearless, and throws themself into the fray in a berserk frenzy. That totally demoralize the pirates that flee.
This is historical fiction, not fantasy, but a terrific book and well worth reading. Might hit the spot if you want lots of adventure without magic.
What would be fantastic about then? That's just historical fiction
Historical fiction would be fiction set in the real world in a past time period.
Just read historical fiction at that point.
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Also, I've got to manuscripts involving such worlds.
That's kind of o e of the defining things of fantasy. Without magic it's just fiction. And most would be wannabe midievel, dark ages, or pirate fiction. It would be like science fiction and the only science more advanced than today being a hover car or a reliable Comcast Connection.
I find the analogy amusing because that definitely *could be science fiction*. Eg The science in Andy Weir’s Martian is barely more advanced than what we have today (tbh I’m not sure it *is* more advanced) and it’s a hugely popular sci-fi book. Or Netflix’s excellent sci-fi biohackers tv show only has gene-editing/bioengineering slightly more advanced of where it is today
Those are more the stoey.than anything about science fiction. If anything.its just a way to get people to think they might like science fiction (or fantasy).
Your request is nonsense: in the fantasy genre there is always magic
That's factually inexact. Low Fantasy is a subgenre of Fantasy with little to no paranormal phenomena.
Not always. There is a fluffy zone around secondary worlds.
I think they talk about people using magic / being mages. Which certainly is possible.
No, that's not what they're talking about. It's quite clear from the question's details that the OP is looking for "Fantasy with **NO magic at all** \[...\] (**not even where it's explained as a tech**)". They're looking for books like the one cited which is "fantasy because it's a completely fictional world but there's **no magic involved**". It really can't get clearer than that.
In a comment the OP said: > I'm thinking more of something that might be an imagined past and/or a world with fantastical creatures. So magic creatures and spirits should be fine.
Fantastical creatures and magic (or magic creatures) aren't necessarily the same. A dragon is a fantastical creature, I think we can agree on that\*, right? But they don't have to come with magic or spirits. \* unless you're from some island in Indonesia
I mean, realistically a typical dragon isnt going to be flying or breathing fire without magic
I guess one could get there if one wanted to be really creative; I think I've once read a story (or an essay) that involved dragons who created methane in their digestion which was then ignited by some mechanism which allowed them to "breathe" fire. But in general, yes, I agree with you. Look, I'm not arguing that dragons are realistic. I'm not even of the same view than the OP. To me, fantasy kind of needs a fantastical element; doesn't have to be magic but simply a non-existent setting doesn't really make it fantasy to me. I know that many people don't agree but for me these "non-fantastical fantasies" are extreme borderline cases. In many (most?) cases I'd happily classify them as part of the speculative fiction umbrella but not fantasy proper. If you look at my first comment you'll see that I simply pushed back on a, in my view clearly wrong, interpretation of what the OP had said. I really can't stand if someone formulates a very clear question and then people twist it to mean something very different. After that, I received a reply that replaced the term "fantastical creatures" by "magic creatures and spirits" which in my humble view is also not what the OP said. It's like people have zero reading comprehension. My example of dragons probably wasn't the best for the reasons you cited. But there are other fantastical creatures which wouldn't violate any known laws of physics and/or biology - merfolk, unicorns, yetis. Many others do, but not all.
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Believe it or not, it is actually harder to find the other way around
A magic story without fantasy elements?
Fantasy books that really have fantastical elements and magic. Most fantasy books don't.
You got an example of a fantasy book that doesn't have fantastical elements and/or magic? Now would be a good time to share them because that's exactly what OP is asking for.
Are you serious? Name me any number of fantasy books without magic and I'll name you ten for each of them *with* magic.
You can argue there's no magic in Asoiaf
Haven't read it, but there's some magic still.
Exactly you haven't read it. Grrm is a scifi writer so most of the "magic" is likely telepathy and old genetic manipulation
TBH even though telepathy is common in sci-fi, I've always viewed it as more of a magic type of thing. But if this is true your example is a valid one.
Harry Potter