Can you write Fantasy without magic?

Not sure if you're looking for a dictionary definition here, but to me, fantasy is about other realms...or fantastical adaptations of our own world (eg alternate histories, or fantastical elements added to the normal - such as vampires, etc). Whether or not magic appears doesn't matter to me.

I think there was another thread just recently that listed some fantasy novels that didn't feature magic. Someone more tech-savvy than me will probably be able to copy-paste a link here.

Well, authors like Haruki Murakami add fantastical elements to every day life--alternate realities and vanishing elephants mixed in seamlessly with monotonous every day life.

I'm not sure if it's fantasy or not but... it works out wonderfully for him

Let's see.
Ha! The phrase "fantasy without magic" has been used a few times. here:

Fantasy without magic?
Why magic?

For the record, there's an entire subgenre of fantasy (Fantasy of manners, dubbed "mannerpunk" by some) that has little or no magic in it, and if there's magic it's more part of the scenery than central to the story. Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint is probably the most oft-referenced fantasy of manners. Scott Lynch's "The Lies of Locke Lamora" is perhaps the biggest recent example, though I admit I liked Kushner's "Privilege of the Sword" better. (I did like both).

Quick tech derail

CBumpkin said:

I never have much luck with the search feature here.

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Faolmor said:

Someone more tech-savvy than me will probably be able to copy-paste a link here.

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Sooo... as you seem to have noticed, the forum software doesn't have great search options.
The "advanced search" can often help if you know a user name or subforum, stuff like that. But if you want to search on phrases, search with a not-this option, or search for really short words (4-letter minimum for this software), it's much harder.
Anyway, I've been told the solution by clever tech people.



Ready?


Use google.

You can put www.absolutewrite.com into a google search and then search for stuffs in it using normal googly search phrases and such. It works
ETA: Or better, do what SPMiller says a couple posts down, here.

CBumpkin said:

I'm not an idiot. I promise!

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Just a bumpkin?

The search feature hates me.

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Oh, the search feature hates humanity and has sworn to wipe it from the face of the earth. Fortuntely we can go behind its back.

Thank you for taking the time to find those threads (and the books) and post the links, Shweta. Your pox has been lifted from the banning thread! LOL

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Oh yay! So it was sort of a 7-hour itch?
Didn't take me much time at all, cause I remembered seeing the particular phrase in earlier threads. I'm sure I missed some that didn't contain it in my search, and I'm not sure how you'd have found the threads without memory to help you pick a search phrase.

The "Why Magic" thread is precisely the topic I was looking for.

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Hrm. So what you guys are talking about sounds magical-realism-y to me, but you might also like a lot of what's considered "mythic fiction", if I'm understanding your criteria right. Here's a reading list.

To go back to your original question, the category of fantasy (like so many categories) is more of a tree than a blob.

- Sometimes there are magical critters.
- Sometimes there's a wizarding school.
- Sometimes the story's a myth retelling, even if there is no obvious supernatural aspect to the story unless you know the myth.
- Sometimes there are events which could be explicable but are left mysterious.
- So are some stories involving magic/miracle that the writer and some readers actually believe to be true/possible.
- Sometimes it's dream logic.
- Sometimes it's a made-up world with a low tech level and there's no other category to lump that into.
- Sometimes something is fantasy cause its influences come from within the field.
- Swashbuckling stories and political intrigue stories are sometimes lumped under fantasy because they have characteristics and readers in common with their magical counterpart. (Sword and sorcery without the sorcery...)

I'm... sure I'm missing a bunch.

my fantasies could be said to be fantasy without magic because it's set on a fictional world with (mostly) fictional civilizations and languages

That sounds a lot like Magic Realism, have you heard about it?

Here's a brief primer. Speculative Fiction is the umbrella underwhich things like sci-fi and fantasy and such reside.

In my mind, if something isn't based on hard science, it's more likely to be fantasy. Many people consider Star Wars and Star Trek to be more fantasy than sci-fi.

Time travel, I believe, falls under fantasy.

So for a quick definition, if something happens in the story and it can't be explained by Stephen Hawking, then it's fantasy.

But seriously, my advice is: write the story first, worry about classifying it later. Genre classifications are pretty fluid.

Shweta said:

Anyway, I've been told the solution by clever tech people.

Ready?

Use google.

You can put www.absolutewrite.com into a google search and then search for stuffs in it using normal googly search phrases and such. It works

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Say what?

To my mind, Fantasy stems from the mythical and legendary, not the realm of science and facts. That's my dividing line between them.

So can you have Fantasy without magic? Sure. (Guy Gaveriel Kay's Lions of Al-Rassilon comes to mind easily) Do you need something fantastic, legendarily mondo-cool? Every time. At least for this reader. Other readers will disagree, but if it gets explained away by any kind of science "fact", then it's not Fantasy to me.

Magic is an easy fantastic/legendary/mythological mondo-cool thing to put into a story, so it gets done a lot. Doesn't mean it's the only thing that can be used.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Say what?

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Actually, you want to add site:absolutewrite.com to your search terms, and Google will narrow the results to AW.

For example, if you use the terms site:absolutewrite.com shweta, Google coughs up about 4100 posts.

Take a look at Charlie Stross's Merchant Princes series. It's Fantasy; says so right on the cover.

But... Parallel universes have been a staple of SF forever. The only other non-realistic element could be viewed as a very limited form of magic, producing only one effect. Or it could be viewed as a sort of low-tech SF. It definitely doesn't bear much resemblance to what people usually think of as "Magic".

Shadow_Ferret said:

Time travel, I believe, falls under fantasy.

So for a quick definition, if something happens in the story and it can't be explained by Stephen Hawking, then it's fantasy.

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Just because I'm argumentative, I'm going to have to disagree with you slightly. Time travel, like FTL travel, isn't physically possible (insofar as general relativity is concerned), but they are so much a part of sci-fi, have become such established tropes that no one really bats an eyelash at them.

Not sure why you want to be argumentative. Can't we just have a discussion? I was just stating what I've heard.

Time travel -- because as you yourself stated, it isn't physically possible -- is part of that blurred line where sci-fi and fantasy meet. Just as many people consider Star Trek closer to fantasy than hard sci-fi.

Yeah, I have to side with Shadow Ferret on this one. Once you start violating the laws of physics as we currently understand them, that puts your writing firmly in the territory of fantasy. For me, anyway. The industry often disagrees with me, and places more emphasis on the technological level (relative to the modern day) of the societies depicted in literature.

Actually, time travel is proven scientifically. Particles time travel.

Now, a complex organism time traveling is theoretically possible but is highly impractical (just saw a Science Discovery show on it in the last week).

Personally, whether time travel is Fantasy or SF depends on the means of the time travel. Magic, mythological or legendary, it's Fantasy. Something mechanical (whether man or alien-made), it's SF.

Like many things, it's not what happens, it's how it happens that makes the distinction for what gets stamped on the spine.

I agree with DeleyanLee. I've read stories in both camps that use time-travel, and I think it's the how not the what that defines fantasy.

Dave

Yes.

Fantasy is speculative (not the real world constrained by real physics) without being predominantly futuristic or horrific. Therefore things like alternative universe, magical realism etc would be fantasy even if the world the writer created contained no magic.

It so tricky to pin down exactly what fantasy is- I've just been reading Wikipedia's list of fantasy sub-genres and its pretty mind-boggling how many 'flavours' there are. I always think of fantasy as 'sword and sorcery' when in fact there's so much more. I think subgenres such as alternate history, steampunk, mannerpunk, science fantasy could be done without magic. Probably any fantasy could, you just have to have the fantastical some other way (fantastical creatures/beings etc)

DeleyanLee said:

Like many things, it's not what happens, it's how it happens that makes the distinction for what gets stamped on the spine.

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Oh, I don't not agree that time travel wouldn't be stamped Sci-Fi on the spine (if you can get through the triple negative and make sense of that, congratulations!). But publishing usually has things in very broad categories. I doubt that they have "Urban Fantasy" stamped on it. At least I haven't looked that closely.

I was talking about the distinction used by hardcore fans. Time travel, unless you really get into the quantum mechanics of it, is closer to soft science fiction. And often the line between soft science fiction and fantasy is blurred.

Space Opera is soft sci-fi. Star Wars was space opera, because besides ray guns and space ships it had an equal number of fantasy elements, the Force, Jedi Knights.

And as I've said, I've heard hardcore sci-fi fans argue with disdain that Star Trek is fantasy, not sci-fi.