Fantasy that isn't fantasy, but ... um, is anyway.

[Extollager]

You're looking for Rachel Maddux's The Green Kingdom.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/rachel-maddux/the-green-kingdom/

 

[j d worthington]

Because the plot demands it. Or because the world lives in your imagination and you have to let it out. For instance, Gormenghast. Did Peake write it with a view toward publication, or because he couldn't not write it? (Not a rhetorical question. I am asking because I really don't know. Perhaps someone here does.)

I may be misremembering, but yes, I think he had to write it. And this was precisely the example which came to mind with me. This simply could not have happened anywhere but in that particular world, for all its relevance to our own.

 

[soulsinging]

100 Years of Solitude sort of fits this bill.

 

[Michael Colton]

I do not have any titles to contribute, but just wanted to say that I will find this thread quite useful. I was thinking about this sort of setting just the other day and wondering why I had never read anything of this sort.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Victoria said Shardik, but what I thought of first was Watership Down. Does that qualify? I'm not sure. I would have said it was in our world, and just told from the point of view of the rabbits. The rabbits telling the story might be considered a fantastical element, but I don't really think of that as anything other than POV. Hmm.

 

[Bick]

How about "Nineteen Eighty Four"? It's not alternate history (written to be the future), but it seems to me it wasn't meant to be our worlds possible future exactly, but a fantastical world's future envisaged to tell a totalitarian story.

 

[Bick]

Ah, another thought - and its a bit of a cheat admittedly - but Hardy's "Wessex" novels were set in an imaginary England of course, with place names all changed from the real ones.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Still England, though, and there is nothing that happens that couldn't have happened in any other rural part of England. Or is there something?

But I was hoping we would have a discussion, not just people naming books and me saying "that's not what I meant." (Which is not very helpful on my part.) What would interest me would be if everyone would expand on why they think a certain book or series fits.

 

[j d worthington]

Ah, another thought - and its a bit of a cheat admittedly - but Hardy's "Wessex" novels were set in an imaginary England of course, with place names all changed from the real ones.

That might also apply, then, to Faulkner's stories of Yoknapatawpha County, which sometimes have a fantastic feel to them without any genuine fantastic element, in much the same way as, say, McCarthy's Blood Meridian. There is often an almost Biblical feeling to some of these works, a mythic stature that makes them not only larger than life, but of a genuinely fantastic nature. And occasional pieces by Lawrence, as well, such as The Feathered Serpent or "St. Mawr". Each of these really falls under the heading of naturalistic or realistic fiction, but utilizes that air of fantasy very well; indeed, they wouldn't really work without it.

I sincerely doubt this is the sort of thing Teresa is asking about, but nonetheless they may be worth considering.

 

[HareBrain]

Or because the world lives in your imagination and you have to let it out. For instance, Gormenghast. Did Peake write it with a view toward publication, or because he couldn't not write it? (Not a rhetorical question. I am asking because I really don't know. Perhaps someone here does.)

I've recently read a biography of him (which I've now found, for those who read an earlier version of this post). The inspiration for Gormenghast seems to have come from an earlier work, Captain Slaughterboard (?) a children's illustrated book which itself sprang from his work as an illustrator (as well as his immense creativity), allied with the proximity of Arundel Castle to where Peake was then living (early in WWII). I think he mostly wrote it for himself, but had hopes from early on of getting it published.

Interestingly, the offshoot of the Gormenghast books, Boy In Darkness, has definite fantasy elements.

 

[The Judge]

I'd suggest China Mieville's The City & The City. It's most definitely not set in the real world, nor an alternative history-type one, though names suggest somewhere East European but with perhaps a westernised Islamic flavour such as Turkey, where two cities occupy much the same geographical space but their citizens don't see each other. That makes it sound as if it is fantasy, with invisible beings or something, but it's actually just a cultural imperative that everyone has been educated to not-notice the other city's inhabitants even though they may be walking down the same street. As far as I recall there's nothing that's supernatural in it, but it carries a flavour of being very "other" and odd. As to why it was written, I've read that he wanted to please his mother who loved murder/detective/police procedural stories (there is a murder in it which the main character has to solve) but he was also making a political point about how we don't "see" other people on the streets if they aren't like us, ie the homeless/beggars etc.

 

[Ursa major]

Otherwise, it's hard to imagine why someone would create the setting without fantasy or SF elements present, particularly as you're obviously looking for published works.

Because the plot demands it. Or because the world lives in your imagination and you have to let it out. For instance, Gormenghast. Did Peake write it with a view toward publication, or because he couldn't not write it? (Not a rhetorical question. I am asking because I really don't know. Perhaps someone here does.)

I'm sure some people do feel the need to write what you're looking for. My point was that not only did they have to write it for you to see it, but it had to be published, i.e. at least one person without the need to "let it out" is involved in getting it into the public eye. That makes the barrier quite high for the kind of books you're looking for:

"So your story is set in a magical of version of Earth."
"Not magical. And not Earth."
"Hmmm. If it isn't magical, why haven't you set it on Earth?"
"I wanted to give the reader a new experience, with a society with different mores, with a different history."
"So it's a kind of Ruritania write large, then?"
"No. Ruritania might be in Europe. There is no way my invented country is."
"I'm sorry, but to make this real, I can see half the book will be there to explain all this history. And it can't say how different it is to the rest of the world because it has nothing to do with the Earth. And while I might be ale to sell it if there was magic to invite the reader in, or elves, I'm not sure a book that isn't magical, isn't alternative history, isn't allegorical, but is likely to be info-dumpy to the reading public, is a viable proposition."
​

This may be why we're all having trouble coming up with suggestions for you: there aren't that many published books out there that meet your requirements. Or if there are lots of them, the vast majority weren't published in large numbers and so exist well below the radar. And which is why Gormenghast is seen to be so different from most other novels.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Alannah Knight is firmly set in Victorian Edinburgh or the Shetland Isles but there is a legend throughout the book that the MC is descended from a selkie and she has a dog that may or may not be a ghost. If the legend isn't true and her dog is just a stray then there is no fantasy. Having reread your post without a cold they don't fit.

With the Adventure Series they might be set in our world but some like Island of Adventure, Castle of Adventure, Valley of Adventure have a very distinct alternate world feel. Even the one set in Wales (forgot what that one is called) and the one in Egypt have elements that feel like they have left the world.

 

[Vertigo]

I think Mieville's New Crobuzon Books fall under your category; they have no real magic in them and are in a totally different universe to ours. I confess I was pretty much at a loss what to categorise them as!

Maybe ERB's Barsoom series; they're not really SF though some do classify them as such. They are really more fantasy (even when they were written); there's no magic, though there's definitely some unobtamium style 'science,' but the predominant the atmosphere of them is definitely fantasy.

 

[Ursa major]

Sorry, Vertigo, but there is a lot of magic in the New Crobuzon books. Just because some of it is called thaumaturgy doesn't mean it isn't magic.

 

[Vertigo]

Ah yes I suppose that is true. Though it was treated as a science, you're right, it was really magic!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I'm sure some people do feel the need to write what you're looking for. My point was that not only did they have to write it for you to see it, but it had to be published, i.e. at least one person without the need to "let it out" is involved in getting it into the public eye. That makes the barrier quite high for the kind of books you're looking for

Actually, I don't think it is particularly high. It's the story and the characters that will sell a book most of the time, so if the story needs that kind of setting, then publishers -- at least YA publishers -- aren't likely to be bothered at all if they love the plot and characters. And no, the history can be limited to the part that is necessary for the story and be woven in. For instance, in the YA book that reminded me of this "genre" we know just enough about the history to understand the plot and characters. No more, no less.

And in some books (like Gormenghast, for instance) the setting is one of the main characters, and if it is mad and original and transports readers to a different place, then so much the better.

 

[Extollager]

From the first post on this thread:

"I'm thinking about books that haven't the tiniest bit of magic or the supernatural or a single mythical beast, no time-travel, but which I (and many others) would identify as fantasy because it takes place in an alternate reality. Not alternate history, or anything identified as happening in our future, but a place with its own history, geography, culture(s), etc, and therefore a story that could not possibly happen in our world because ... well, there is no place or time for it to happen."

I recommended Rachel Maddux's The Green Kingdom. A little group of people, not all of whom really believe there's a "green kingdom," set out using a map that takes them perhaps from somewhere in the Midwest to somewhere in the Rockies. This may be happening some time after the Depression. They do find a place where, once every ten years, apparently through a natural process, mountains part and access to the hidden realm is briefly possible. They go through. I don't want to summarize what happens. Animals and plants that are found nowhere on earth live there, but there is no magic, etc. Conflicts between and within characters complicate things. Characterization is far more important in this book than in a lot of sf and fantasy. I don't know anything quite like this book, which took the author years to write; apparently this long novel was originally much longer. Maddux appeared a couple of times in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and published some other books and short stories, and, posthumously, an autobiography written in her twenties.

 

[Null_Zone]

A Song of Stone by Iain Banks.

An unspecified was in an unspecified country were all sides seem to have devolved into uncontrolled warlords.

Quite a few of the wife's crime novels seem to bear little resemblance to the real world. Yet another serial killer from a small geographical area pursued by exactly the same detective as all the other books who is so dysfunctional it's a miracle he can put his shoes on. I'm pretty sure the zombie stuff I read is less fantastic.

 

[hitmouse]

I've recently read a biography of him (which I've now found, for those who read an earlier version of this post). The inspiration for Gormenghast seems to have come from an earlier work, Captain Slaughterboard (?) a children's illustrated book which itself sprang from his work as an illustrator (as well as his immense creativity), allied with the proximity of Arundel Castle to where Peake was then living (early in WWII). I think he mostly wrote it for himself, but had hopes from early on of getting it published.

Interestingly, the offshoot of the Gormenghast books, Boy In Darkness, has definite fantasy elements.

That is interesting. Having owned and loved Captain Slaughterboard, I would say that whilst it is definately Peake-ish, it has never suggested Gormenghast to me.


I nominate The Wallet of Kai Lung by Ernest Bramah.