Revisiting Imaginary Worlds

Mark J. P. Wolf is a Full Professor and Department Chair of the Communication Department at Concordia University, Wisconsin. His books include Abstracting Reality, The Medium of the Video Game, Virtual Morality, The Video Game Explosion, Myst and Riven: The World of the D'ni, Before the Crash, Encyclopedia of Video Games, Building Imaginary Worlds, The LEGO Studies Reader, and Video Games Around the World. With Bernard Perron, he is the co-editor of The Video Game Theory Reader 1 and 2, and the Landmark Video Game book series.

"A ‘mixed bag’ in the best possible sense, Revisiting Imaginary Worlds offers a highly diverse collection of intriguing perspectives on the theory, history, practice, and reception of world-building across media that complements the editor’s earlier monograph Building Imaginary Worlds exceptionally well." -Jan-Noël Thon, author of Transmedial Narratology and Contemporary Media Culture"To understand why fictional realms become so deeply entangled with our culture and how materials, characters, and symbolic implications converge within them, the concept of subcreation again proves its value, also offering a distinct groundwork within the emergent scholarly field of world building." -Marta Boni, University of Montréal, editor of World Building. Transmedia, Fans, Industries

• ForewordRick CarterAcknowledgmentsIntroductionMark J. P. WolfWORLDS ON THE RISEWhy Worlds Now?Marie-Laure Ryan Fictional World-Building as Ritual, Drama, and MediumLily AlexanderThe Past as an Imaginary World: The Case of MedievalismDimitra FimiSTRUCTUREThe Subcreation of J. R. R .Tolkien’s Middle-earth and How it Became Transmedial CultureLars KonzackSecondary World Infrastructures and Tabletop Fantasy GamesNeal BakerBattlestar Galactica and Caprica: Using Religion to Create Imagined WorldsErica Hurwitz AndrusReligious Impulse in Video Games: Implications for World-BuildingEdward CastronovaMinecraft: Transitional Objects and Transformational Experiences in an Imaginary WorldLori LandayPRACTICEA New Wonderland: The Source of It AllMichael O. Riley"All Over the Map": Building (and Rebuilding) OzHenry JenkinsDiscovering the PlaniverseA. K. DewdneyA Thousand Stories in a Day: Building Rilao and Reimagining LagosLaura Cechanowicz, Brian Cantrell, Geoffrey Long, Alex McDowell, Jeff Watson, and Ann Pendleton-JullianRECEPTION‘The First Step into A Smaller World’: The Transmedia Economy of Star WarsWilliam Proctor and Matthew FreemanThe Hyper-enchantment of Visiting an Imaginary World: Liveness, Brand Fandom and Moments of ‘Being There’Matt HillsThe Importance of Overflow and Chunking in World-Building and the Experiencing of WorldsMark J. P. WolfLanguage Makes and Breaks Worlds: China Miéville’s EmbassytownGerard HynesDestroying Arcadia: Undermining Literary Britain in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the GalaxyJennifer Harwood-SmithBookland: Building England in a Time Travel Universe in Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the DogHelen Conrad-O’BriainBlocks and Buildings: Virtual Tangibility in Video Game Secondary WorldsKevin SchutAppendixWorlds Apart: Toward a Canon of Imaginary WorldsMark J. P. Wolf