1st Edition
Exploring Imaginary Worlds Essays on Media, Structure, and Subcreation
List of Contributors
Foreword
Scott Adams
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Mark J. P. Wolf
WORLDS OF WORDS
The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground by Ludvig Holberg: Subcreation and Social Criticism
Lars Konzack
‘A Little Bit of England Which I Have Myself Created’: Creating Barsetshire across Forms, Genres, Time, and Authors
Helen Conrad O’Briain
Mythopoetic Suspense, Eschatology and Misterium: World-Building Lessons from Dostoevsky
Lily Alexander
Building the Vorkosigan Universe
Edward James
AUDIOVISUAL WORLDS
Our World: World-Building in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town
Mark J. P. Wolf
"Suckled On Shadows": States of Decay in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Novels
Edward O’Hare
The Gothic World-Building of Dark Shadows
Andrew Higgins
Daventry and the Worlds of King’s Quest
Christopher Hanson
TRANSMEDIA WORLDS
The Softer Side of Dune: The Impact of Social Sciences on World-Building
Kara Kennedy
Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: Balance and Interconnectivity in the Fractured Worlds of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s The Death Gate Cycle
Jennifer Harwood-Smith
Welcome to the "Second-stage" Lynchverse – Twin Peaks: The Return and the Impossibility of Return Vs. Getting a Return
Matt Hills
The Fault in Our Star Trek: (Dis)Continuity Mapping, Textual Conservationism, and the Perils of Prequelization
William Proctor
Appendix: On Measuring and Comparing Imaginary Worlds
Mark J. P. Wolf
Biography
Mark J. P. Wolf is Professor in the Communication Department at Concordia University, Wisconsin. His 23 books include The Video Game Theory Reader 1 and 2 (2003, 2008), The Video Game Explosion (2007), Myst & Riven: The World of the D’ni (2011), Before the Crash: An Anthology of Early Video Game History (2012), Encyclopedia of Video Games (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds (2012), The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies (2014), LEGO Studies (2014), Video Games Around the World (2015), Revisiting Imaginary Worlds (2016), Video Games FAQ (2017), The World of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (2017), The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds (2018), and The Routledge Companion to Media Technology and Obsolescence (2018), which won the SCMS 2020 award for Best Edited Collection.
