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.

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.

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