Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology

The concept of world and the practice of world creation have been with us since antiquity, but they are now achieving unequalled prominence. In this timely anthology of subcreation studies, an international roster of contributors come together to examine the rise and structure of worlds, the practice of world-building, and the audience's reception of imaginary worlds. Including essays written by world-builders A.K. Dewdney and Alex McDowell and offering critical analyses of popular worlds such as those of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and Minecraft, Revisiting Imaginary Worlds provides readers with a broad and interdisciplinary overview of the issues and concepts involved in imaginary worlds across media platforms.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Rick Carter Acknowledgments Introduction Mark J. P. Wolf WORLDS ON THE RISE Why Worlds Now? Marie-Laure Ryan Fictional World-Building as Ritual, Drama, and Medium Lily Alexander The Past as an Imaginary World: The Case of Medievalism Dimitra Fimi STRUCTURE The Subcreation of J. R. R .Tolkien’s Middle-earth and How it Became Transmedial Culture Lars Konzack Secondary World Infrastructures and Tabletop Fantasy Games Neal Baker Battlestar Galactica and Caprica: Using Religion to Create Imagined Worlds Erica Hurwitz Andrus Religious Impulse in Video Games: Implications for World-Building Edward Castronova Minecraft: Transitional Objects and Transformational Experiences in an Imaginary World Lori Landay PRACTICE A New Wonderland: The Source of It All Michael O. Riley "All Over the Map": Building (and Rebuilding) Oz Henry Jenkins Discovering the Planiverse A. K. Dewdney A Thousand Stories in a Day: Building Rilao and Reimagining Lagos Laura Cechanowicz, Brian Cantrell, Geoffrey Long, Alex McDowell, Jeff Watson, and Ann Pendleton-Jullian RECEPTION ‘The First Step into A Smaller World’: The Transmedia Economy of Star Wars William Proctor and Matthew Freeman The Hyper-enchantment of Visiting an Imaginary World: Liveness, Brand Fandom and Moments of ‘Being There’ Matt Hills The Importance of Overflow and Chunking in World-Building and the Experiencing of Worlds Mark J. P. Wolf Language Makes and Breaks Worlds: China Miéville’s Embassytown Gerard Hynes Destroying Arcadia: Undermining Literary Britain in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Jennifer Harwood-Smith Bookland: Building England in a Time Travel Universe in Connie Willis’s To Say Nothing of the Dog Helen Conrad-O’Briain Blocks and Buildings: Virtual Tangibility in Video Game Secondary Worlds Kevin Schut Appendix Worlds Apart: Toward a Canon of Imaginary Worlds Mark J. P. Wolf

About the Author :
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.

Review :
"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