Exploring Imaginary Worlds

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.

Introduction Worlds of Words 1. The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground by Ludvig Holberg: Subcreation and Social Criticism 2. ‘A Little Bit of England Which I Have Myself Created’: Creating Barsetshire across Forms, Genres, Time, and Authors 3. Mythopoetic Suspense, Eschatology and Misterium: World-Building Lessons from Dostoevsky 4. Building the Vorkosigan Universe Audiovisual Worlds 5. Our World: World-Building in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town 6. "Suckled on Shadows": States of Decay in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Novels 7. The Gothic World-Building of Dark Shadows 8. Daventry and the Worlds of King’s Quest Transmedia Worlds 9. The Softer Side of Dune: The Impact of Social Sciences on World-Building 10. Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: Balance and Interconnectivity in the Fractured Worlds of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s The Death Gate Cycle 11. Welcome to the "Second-stage" Lynchverse – Twin Peaks: The Return and the Impossibility of Return Vs. Getting a Return 12. The Fault in Our Star Trek: (Dis)Continuity Mapping, Textual Conservationism, and the Perils of Prequelization 13. Appendix: On Measuring and Comparing Imaginary Worlds