1st Edition

Exploring Imaginary Worlds Essays on Media, Structure, and Subcreation

Edited By Mark Wolf Copyright 2021
    262 Pages
    by Routledge

    262 Pages
    by Routledge

    From The Brothers Karamazov to Star Trek to Twin Peaks, this collection explores a variety of different imaginary worlds both historic and contemporary.

    Featuring contributions from an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars, each essay looks at a particular imaginary world in-depth, and world-building issues associated with that world. Together, the essays explore the relationship between the worlds and the media in which they appear as they examine imaginary worlds in literature, television, film, computer games, and theatre, with many existing across multiple media simultaneously. The book argues that the media incarnation of a world affects world structure and poses unique obstacles to the act of world-building. The worlds discussed include Nazar, Barsetshire, Skotopogonievsk, the Vorkosigan Universe, Grover’s Corners, Gormenghast, Collinsport, Daventry, Dune, the Death Gate Cycle universe, Twin Peaks, and the Star Trek galaxy.

    A follow-up to Mark J. P. Wolf ’s field-defining book Building Imaginary Worlds, this collection will be of critical interest to students and scholars of popular culture, subcreation studies, transmedia studies, literature, and beyond.

    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.