Why is GoT an example of "fantasy without magic"?

I don't get that either. It's certainly not a series with magic everywhere, but it does have some magic.

First instinct is to go "GOT is fantasy sans magic" because the magic is not as in-your-face as many other fantasy series. It's political intrigue in a medieval setting. But on second thought, there is magic, as you've said. It's just easier to forget. It's more sword than sorcery, and for some reason, that makes it easier to forget that the sorcery is there at all.

I think the magic in GoT is muted somewhat, and there are several things that seem ambiguous. A few things could be magic or they could just be perception.

LotR, on the other hand, has a wizard who practices actual magic with demonstrable results. There are Elves. There is a dark force that made magic rings and who is neither living nor dead. There are necromancers.

I think it's not so much that GoT has no or little magic. It's that the magic is not the story. It's mostly people doing crap that people do rather than a quest about something magical.

Yeah, and doesn't Melisandre do some actual magical stuff? I mean she uses a sex ritual to summon a shadow-demon assassin. And that one Stark kid has prophetic visions.

Are we talking about the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, or the entire series itself?

The whole series deffenitly has magic, and wouldn't work the same without the magic. However, there isn't a whole lot of magic actively being used in the first book. Yes, there's magical elements in the back story but they're not front and center. The conflict revolves around non-magic users (more the most part), much of the magical elements (like Others and dragons) are considered in-story to be long lost or nonexistent, and a hefty portion of the book is about the political/monarchy situation.

And does including dragons/fantasy-creature count as magic?

heza said:

I think it's not so much that GoT has no or little magic. It's that the magic is not the story. It's mostly people doing crap that people do rather than a quest about something magical.

Click to expand...

This was my first thought too. Yes, there is magic in GoT, but for the most part it isn't the main plot-driving force. In a lot of fantasies, magic is the cause (LOTR: magical ring of evil that can destroy the world) or the solution (Sanderson: Allomancers consuming metals that give them magical powers so they can fight the government). In GoT, if you have a problem, chances are it was caused by the characters, and the characters will solve it in a gritty, non-magical way. Even though magic exists, it stays in the background most of the time.

Of course, some of the plot is motivated by magic (like the Bran stuff, or the Melisandre stuff). But take it out and the main plot is still decent. The series doesn't rely on magic, hence it being a "fantasy without magic" - even though there still is some

amergina said:

So, I keep seeing Game of Thrones brought up as the quintessential example of a fantasy that has little to no magic.

Why?

There's a 1000-year long winter. A freaking huge ice wall. The Others, Reanimated corpses. Direwolves with empathic connections to their owners. Dragons. Etc. etc.

If this is a fantasy without much magic... why isn't LoTR considered a fantasy without much magic?

Or is it the grit? Does it seem "more real" and "less magic" because it's darker and more political?

I've always been confused about this...

[This post springs from a thread in YA, but I was going to derail that thread horribly by asking it there. SF/F seemes the better place.]

Click to expand...

I wish I could answer this question, but I can only guess. The only thing I can guess is that the magic in Martin's world is mostly in the background, or used by non pov characters (like Melissandre). This contrasts with books like Mistborn by Sanderson or NoTW by Rothfuss, where the main/pov character is a wizard of some kind, and magic (and how it actually works in the world) is more central to the main plot.

But by the same definition, yes, LoTR is low magic also, as the magical elements are mostly in the background, and magic isn't used by any of the "main" or focal characters.

amergina said:

There's a 1000-year long winter. A freaking huge ice wall. The Others, Reanimated corpses. Direwolves with empathic connections to their owners. Dragons. Etc. etc.

Click to expand...

Just thought I'd guess that only some if those things are magical. The Direwolves and connections to owners and Reanimated corpses. A 1000-year long winter sounds like just a weather thing for the setting, the giant ice wall is a structure, the Others and Dragons are just creatures in the world. Those things help make it fantasy.

Many think of "old men throwing fireballs " or "women healing wounds through touch" as magic. I do (sadly). LotR had Gandalf using magic and the Elves too. There's even a magic duel with magic and staves. Yay! I'd say it's a bit more magical than GoT. XD

That's what I think anyway!

GoT has lots of magic. I've also never understood people choosing it as an example of fantasy without magic.

K. J. Parker writes fantasy with no magic. Like, NO magic. At all. His/Her books are always set in an alternate world that generally appeals to fantasy readers, but that's all ya get; there is no magic or odd happenings or non-physical outcomes at all, whatsoever.

A lot of Guy Gavriel Kay's books would make better examples of books with almost no magic than Game of Thrones does. I seem to recall in Lord of Emperors that the only magic was a strange fire that occasionally crackled along the streets of the city of Sarantium. Other than that, it was basically the Roman empire.

ETA: I'm not sure if Jo Walton's Ha'penny is considered science fiction or fantasy, but that's another one where it's only an alternate universe; there are NO speculative fiction elements beyond that. In fact, Jo Walton is another one who is a much better example of a SFF writer who only has the slimmest of SFF premises in her books. Again, her novels are better examples of "fantasy with (almost) no magic" than George R. R. Martin's are.

I've heard the phrase "low magic fantasy" used more than "no magic" regarding GoT. It seems a more honest description.

amergina said:

There's a 1000-year long winter. A freaking huge ice wall. The Others, Reanimated corpses. Direwolves with empathic connections to their owners. Dragons. Etc. etc.

Click to expand...

Winter: See the ice age. Natural for its time and place.

Wall: See the pyramids, igloos...

Reanimated corpses: the Walking Dead doesn't count as fantasy or magic, so it might just be a weird natural phenomenon. There are parasites that make you a zombie. Who knows.

Empathic animals: that's not magic; telekinesis or telepathy are sorta real, too. And when I see how my dog shuts down when I'm only the least bit irritated....

Dragons: the existence of a creature in itself isn't magic. There were dinosaurs. There are/were acid-spitting creatures. Why shouldn't some be able to set their defense substance on fire?

If this is a fantasy without much magic... why isn't LoTR considered a fantasy without much magic?

Click to expand...

Magic, per the definition offered by Google, requires someone actively summoning it in order to bestow it and influence stuff with it. A wielder. So unless some bastard has summoned that long winter or cooked up those dragons... Not magic.
Gandalf, Saruman, etc. are wielders and summoners of magic. Otherwise there wouldn't be any. A world different from our own, with different creatures or climates, doesn't qualify as magical or hence all science fiction would be riddled with it.

Swordspoint is the quintessential fantasy novel without magic.

It does have magic. Not sure who/what entity is claiming otherwise, but yeah. Magic.

Martin has specified that he prefers a low-magic take on his own fantasy writing, opting to leave more to mystery.

Red Priestess birthing shadow people from her womb. Magic.
Bran warging INTO Summer. Magic.
Bran (in the books) seeing through the Weirwood (into past, present and future). Magic.
The children (in the north) using a staff to "magic" away the White Walkers. Magic.
Faceless men and women use magic to alter their appearances. (Jaqen H'gar.)

The undead in the series come in different types. The "Others" (white walkers) seem to be a race of sorts. Others can be "created" through "questionable science," and turned into zombies, so both don't necessarily have to be magic.

SPOILERS...
Dragons aren't magic in this series, imho, but are fantastical. That said, they were hatched from magic--Mirri Maz Duur is called a maegi and uses "blood magic." When she's burnt in a fire (along with Dany's horselord husband), only then are the eggs hatched.

END SPOILERS...

Asshai is rumored to have shadowbinders, spellsingers, and aeromancers.

Just because Martin takes a subtle approach doesn't mean that magic doesn't exist.

From Martin himself:

The other factor is, this is a fantasy series, and there is magic in my world. Magic is something that I think requires handling very delicately. You can easily make a mistake with magic. It's like a little salt in a stew, I think. You put in a little salt, the stew tastes a lot better. You put in too much salt and ruin the stew. So I try to be very careful with magic. And Bran is the character who's most involved with the overt fantasy elements. So that's another reason that I have to be very, very careful in writing the Bran chapters and wind up rewriting them a lot.

Click to expand...

Now, naturally occurring events might be misconstrued by the common folk and people at large as magical. (The red comet, for example) But, yeah, these books have magic. I rather like the mystery of it.

NaeimGiladisLegacy said:

Winter: See the ice age. Natural for its time and place.

Wall: See the pyramids, igloos...

Reanimated corpses: the Walking Dead doesn't count as fantasy or magic, so it might just be a weird natural phenomenon. There are parasites that make you a zombie. Who knows.

Empathic animals: that's not magic; telekinesis or telepathy are sorta real, too. And when I see how my dog shuts down when I'm only the least bit irritated....

Dragons: the existence of a creature in itself isn't magic. There were dinosaurs. There are/were acid-spitting creatures. Why shouldn't some be able to set their defense substance on fire?


Magic, per the definition offered by Google, requires someone actively summoning it in order to bestow it and influence stuff with it. A wielder. So unless some bastard has summoned that long winter or cooked up those dragons... Not magic.
Gandalf, Saruman, etc. are wielders and summoners of magic. Otherwise there wouldn't be any. A world different from our own, with different creatures or climates, doesn't qualify as magical or hence all science fiction would be riddled with it.

Click to expand...

I suppose we can argue all day about whether telekinesis, telepathy and so on are magical or parascience or what. I tend to think of them as magical, since they've never held up to any controlled, double blind investigation in the so-called real world. The Warging thing, seeing the world through your wolf's eyes, definitely seems pretty magical, however.

Creatures the size of adult dragons in Martin's world wouldn't be able to fly without magic, let alone carry human-sized riders.

And a women birthing out shadows that then go (on her orders) to kill people? I can't think of a way for that to be anything but magical, even by the fairly narrow definition you googled.

I don't think you're going to get a consensus for what constitutes magic, even in a scholarly or mythological context, however, let alone among modern fantasy readers.

I was just going to mention Swordspoint. I've read a few other fantasies without magic, but can't recall 'em at the moment.

ASoIaF/GoT definitely has magic. I find it interesting that people often cite it as an example of a fantasy story with little/no magic, because it's such a central part of the story. The political side is obviously very important (I haven't watched the show, but I think it puts more emphasis on politics over magic than the books, so maybe that's where people are getting this idea from), but as GRRM himself says,
"It is important that the individual books refer to the civil wars, but the series title reminds us constantly that the real issue lies in the North beyond the Wall.”
The big battle of the series is shaping up to be dragons vs Others. Which is pretty heavily magical if you ask me.

jjdebenedictis said:

K. J. Parker writes fantasy with no magic. Like, NO magic. At all. His/Her books are always set in an alternate world that generally appeals to fantasy readers, but that's all ya get; there is no magic or odd happenings or non-physical outcomes at all, whatsoever.

Click to expand...

That probably explains why I didn't even get 100 pages into the only Parker book I read. When I read fantasy, I'm looking for magic or fantastic creatures or something mysterious at least.

I think I'm a little late to the discussion, but GoT has a ton of magic.

Daenerys hatching the dragons is a large turning point in that world. Everything starts to change. I can only remember two points in the series where people point out the shift, but others might remember more.

The shadow guys in that tower, the ones that successfully steal the dragons, start to produce real magic, and other people comment "they're not just tricks anymore". The recipe for alchemist's fire starts to actually work (even though they're not doing anything different) and someone points out that some of the old pots of the goo in King's Landing recently turned viable.

rwm4768 said:

That probably explains why I didn't even get 100 pages into the only Parker book I read. When I read fantasy, I'm looking for magic or fantastic creatures or something mysterious at least.

Click to expand...

Don't read Jo Walton either, then, Hugo award be damned.

I honestly think Walton should not be shelved in fantasy. She's a wonderful writer, with incredibly realistic, quirky characters, but her stories belong on the other end of the shelf that's already got Margaret Atwood on it. She's a literary writer with some spec-fic buttons on her shirt.

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, however, is quite lovely and I'd recommend giving that one a try regardless.

I think the big reasons that GoT is described as a fantasy novel with no magic is because:

1. None of the important characters is labelled "wizard", and
2. The people who describe the books as such haven't actually read them.

Like me. If you asked me yesterday how much magic there was in the series I'd probably say little or none. Same if you asked me how much romance was in the Harry Potter series, or how original the Divergent books were. Since I'm not interested in reading the series I take the word of people around me -- but apparently, it's not wise to trust random people on the internet.

(I do try not to talk about books I haven't read, though.)

I really dislike it when people try to push a book into a sub-category like this.

There is plenty of magic in Game of Thrones, and anyone who has actually read the series would agree.

There is magic in every single book, in dozens of different representations. The fact there there is not a wizard in a pointed hat wandering around waving a wand doesn't make any difference at all.

I love how subtle of most of the magic presents as a matter of fact, and it comes off as being very "real" as a result.

rwm4768 said:

That probably explains why I didn't even get 100 pages into the only Parker book I read. When I read fantasy, I'm looking for magic or fantastic creatures or something mysterious at least.

Click to expand...

I'm generally with you on this, though a really intriguing set of characters who live in a world where the history and social rules are different can be really cool. I tend to like magic in fantasy, though, because it can level the playing field between men and women in various ways. Modern "gritty" fantasy sometimes seems to be about going back to a style of fantasy where the traditional male and female gender roles and sexual mores that were the norm in the fantasy I read as a kid are back in force.

One thing that's interesting is that the subgenre often referred to as Sword and Sorcery is sometimes referred to as low magic. Strange, given that half the name is "sorcery," which refers to magic. I guess it's because Conan wasn't a wizard and was generally suspicious of them. But he still ran across them often enough, and other classic S&S titles by writers like Leiber, Moorcock, and Poul Anderson had plenty of magic in them.

For YA, I would have used the Winner's Curse as a much better example of a true YA fantasy without magic. It's an alternative universe, loosely based on the Roman empire.