In November of 2024, on Bluesky, Adrian Tchaikovsky (@aptshadow) put forward the suggestion of a small subgenre within Speculative Fiction which he defined in the skeets below, and expanded on in Episode 2 of the Starship Alexandria podcast with Emma Newman where he put forward the term Fantastical Realism.
In doing so, Tchaikovsky put into a clearer perspective and gave a frame of reference to a much more vague sense I had also been experiencing that there was a type of Spec Fic which I particularly enjoyed, set in a metropolis, but not Urban Fantasy; not-exactly Fantasy, but also not-exactly Sci Fi. Strange in ways that evoked the New Weird, and perhaps overlapped with much of how one might understand that subgenre, but those venn diagrams didn’t make the perfect circle. These ‘Fantastical Realism’ works present us with worlds in which there were elements which were fantastical to us, but mundane to the people inhabiting the world (for instance Perdido Street‘s Khepri, Vodyanoi, Garuda, Cactacae and various other sapient races share New Crobuzon without finding each other especially remarkable). These are grounded worlds with norms and expectations and structures which are different from our own, but which are reliable and familiar to the characters. We might be shocked when the club bouncer is a 7’ tall sapient cactus, but it is to be expected for the characters who live within New Crobuzon. The stories then shift once a new element is introduced, something which is fantastical both to the reader and the the characters, something which alters or changes those worlds.
I had also recently finished writing a manuscript which I had struggled to define/confine to genre when pitching to agents and the comp titles and qualities/features Tchaikovsky was suggesting for the micro-genre of Fantastical Realism seemed to fit well with what I was exploring in my writing. So… I resolved to do a proper exploration of these semi-charted territories, and to use the list of titles Tchaikovsky had provided as a kind of cartography for my journey.
So I got to work on putting together a reading list, and I dived in, and over the next little while, I’ll try to regularly post up reviews of the novels I have read (some I had read already, and loved, such as in the case of Perdido St Station, my recognition of Mieville’s work is all over the archives of this blog). Among which is Tchaikosky’s own Tyrant Philosophers series, as well as the Divine Cities series by Bennett and the standalone Etched City from Bishop mentioned in the screenshot below, as well as others that seem to fit the proposed ‘sub-sub-region’ I’m exploring.
J M Melican 
August 16th, 2026 at 10:36 pm
Let me know when you finish the Tyrant Philosophers. I have thoughts, and would love to chat about them.
Fantastical Realism is…an interesting label. My first thought was “who’s it for?” The author? Reader? Agent/editor… marketing? But maybe the question has no meaning – it does kind of serve to highlight, to new writers maybe, that there’s a language behind or within being a writer that is worth examining and, probably if you want to be successful, being fluent in.
The definition of the label though is very intriguing, and it brings to mind books (especially those listed of which I have read a few) where the world building is…I want to say properly integrated. Stories in which the author doesn’t spend time babying you through the Fantastical elements, instead just sitting them firmly in the Real. And yeah, the main characters are…kind of scuffed. Pulled along by the currents of powers greater than they are, and in this it’s still so very Real, even though that Real is very often also Fantastical, to us the outsiders, at least.
I’m currently reading the first book of the Malazan series (late to the party I know) and it feels like it has a lot of elements discussed. Maybe though I’m just confusing this with novels in which the author has been really good at, well…”show don’t tell”, to borrow the classroom parlance!
Anyway, do let me know when you’ve read some of the above! And thanks for adding some more to my own reading list 😄