Fantasy without magic?

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If anyone here is interested in writing or reading fantasy, have you ever considered the possibility of a fantasy world without magic? The world and its cultures would still be fictitious, but there would be no magic, gods, fairies, or other supernatural entities.

After revising the plot for my fantasy story, I've decided that I want its world to be completely devoid of the supernatural. People in the world still believe in magic and gods, but their beliefs are nothing more than pre-scientific superstitions and explanations for the unknown. The plot's backstory in its current form revolves around a meteorite that crashes into the desert and is considered a divine miracle, which an evil leader uses to manipulate his people and whip them into a fanatical horde bent on world conquest. I like the idea of unscrupulous elites using religion as a tool to control their population.

Fantasy without magic is just an alternative history with slightly different names or two cultures from two different time periods in the same world. Perhaps you have magic stop working for some reason.

I don't know if it would truly count as fantasy, in that case.

I will say this though... the 'tough' or the clever non-magical characters in Fantasy have always been my favorite. Their individual stories are always far more interesting, in my experience. I'm sure you will find an audience.

Have you read Gormenghast? It's a trilogy that's described as a fantasy, although there is nothing supernatural or magic going on. I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it.

Swordspoint is a good example of a fantasy book sans magic (mostly; I forget if there are minor allusions to it but certainly it's mainly magic free) - a 'fantasy of manners'.

'Fantasy' is somewhat of a sticky term; mostly in that it requires there to be major elements or technologies in the story line that aren't currently realized, aren't realizable by current understandings, and are kinda just thrown out there ad hoc. When I had a science fiction lit class back in high school the way the teacher explained it is that science fiction would be movies like, say, 1984 or possibly something like Star Trek, while Science Fantasy would be something like Star Wars (and essentially with the excuses made for Jedi capabilities its non-magic fantasy).

I think what we're left with, outside of inferring wild alien races and technologies, are the 'punk' genres - steampunk, dieselpunk, etc., where you try to unfold a different course of innovation and imagine what would have happened if we had been in a different world under different physical laws which made steam the way to go or something other than electricity. If you try to write a story, say, about the middle ages and its a fictional account but includes no magic, no goblins, no fairies, and the closest thing to magic is con-artistry perhaps - you don't have fantasy, rather you have something more like general fiction or historical fiction.

I'm not saying don't go for it if you have an idea, just understand as well that the term 'fantasy' is just a brittle classification, a product of language, and if your ideas end up being classified as fiction but fantasy inspired - nothing wrong with that!

I think some people consider talking animals to be fantasy.