The Routledge Companion To Imaginary Worlds [PDF]

Zitiervorschau

The Routledge Companion to ­Imaginary  Worlds

This companion provides a definitive and cutting-edge guide to the study of imaginary worlds across a range of media, including literature, television, film, and games. From the Star Trek universe, Thomas More’s classic Utopia, and J. R. R. Tolkien’s Arda to elaborate, user-created game worlds like Minecraft, contributors present interdisciplinary perspectives on authorship, world structure/design, and narrative. The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds offers new approaches to imaginary worlds as an art form and a cultural phenomenon, explorations of the technical and creative dimensions of world-building, and studies of specific worlds and world-builders. Contributors: Jessica Aldred, Lily Alexander, David Alff, João Araújo, George Carstocea, Edward Castronova, Astrid Ensslin, Dimitra Fimi, Peter Fitting, Matthew Freeman, David Glimp, Chris Hanson, Jennifer Harwood-Smith, Dan Hassler-Forest, Andrew Higgins, Matt Hills, Gerard Hynes, Ian Kinane, Lars Konzack, Lori Landay, David Langdon, Irène Langlet, Rodrigo Lessa, Mary McAuley, Edward O’Hare, Jeremiah Piña, William Proctor, Michael O. Riley, Benjamin J. Robertson, Marie-Laure Ryan, Michael Saler, Peter Sands, Kevin Schut, Anne M. Thell, Mark J. P. Wolf. Mark J. P. Wolf is a Full Professor in the Communication Department at Concordia University, Wisconsin, USA. 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, Video Games Around the World, and Revisiting Imaginary Worlds. He is also the founder of the Imaginary Worlds book series. With Bernard Perron, he is the co-editor of The Video Game Theory Reader 1 and 2, and the Landmark Video Game book series.

This page intentionally left blank

The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds Edited by Mark J. P. W   olf

First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Wolf, Mark J. P., editor. Title: The Routledge companion to imaginary worlds/ edited by Mark J. P. Wolf. Description: New York: Routledge, 2018. Identifiers: LCCN 2017018653 | ISBN 9781138638914 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Imaginary places in mass media. | Imaginary places in literature. | Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) | Virtual reality. | Imaginary places. | Imaginary societies. Classification: LCC P96.G46 R68 2018 | DDC 700/.472–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017018653 ISBN: 978-1-138-63891-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-63752-5 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

A. M. D. G.

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS

About the Contributors Preface  Acknowledgments

xi xviii xx

PART 1 Content and Story

1 3

  1

Locations and Borders Gerard Hynes

  2

The Hero’s Journey Lily Alexander

11

  3

Invented Languages Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins

21

  4

Invented Cultures Mark J. P. Wolf

30

 5 Backstory Benjamin J. Robertson

37

  6

Narrative Fabric Mark J. P. Wolf

45

 7 Saviors Mark J. P. Wolf

51

 8 Portals Jennifer Harwood-Smith

56

PART 2 Form and Structure   9

65 67

World Design Mark J. P. Wolf vii

CONTENTS

10

Ontological Rules Marie-Laure Ryan

74

11

World Completeness Benjamin J. Robertson

82

12

World Consistency Rodrigo Lessa and João Araújo

90

13

Geography and Maps Gerard Hynes

98

14

History and Timelines Benjamin J. Robertson

107

15 Mythology Lily Alexander

115

16 Philosophy Edward Castronova

127

17 Transmediality Lars Konzack

134

18

141

World-Building Tools David Langdon

PART 3 Types of Worlds

151

19

Island Worlds Ian Kinane

153

20

Underground Worlds Peter Fitting

161

21 Planets Jennifer Harwood-Smith

169

22

Utopias and Dystopias Peter Sands

177

23

Uchronias, Alternate Histories, and Counterfactuals George Carstocea

184

24

Virtual Worlds Mark J. P. Wolf

192

viii

CONTENTS

25

Interactive and Participatory Worlds Matthew Freeman

PART 4 Authorship and Reception

198

207

26 Subcreation Lars Konzack

209

27 Authorship Jessica Aldred

216

28

224

Reboots and Retroactive Continuity William Proctor

29 Canonicity William Proctor

236

30 Escapism Lars Konzack

246

31 Genre Lily Alexander

256

32 Fandom Matt Hills

274

33

Worlds as Satire George Carstocea

281

34

Worlds as Paracosms JEREMIAH Piña

291

35

Worlds as Experiments Edward Castronova

298

36

Worlds and Politics Dan Hassler-Forest

305

PART 5 Worlds and World-Builders 37

315 317

More’s Utopia David Glimp

325

38 Cavendish’s Blazing-World Anne M.Thell ix

CONTENTS

39

Swift’s World of Gulliver’s Travels David Alff

332

40

Holberg’s Nazar and the Firmament Peter Fitting

339

41

Paltock’s Sass Doorpt Swangeanti Edward O’Hare

344

42

Defontenay’s Starian System Irène Langlet

351

43

Baum’s Oz Michael O. Riley

359

44 Wright’s Islandia Michael Saler

369

45

Tolkien’s Arda Dimitra Fimi

377

46

Roddenberry’s Star Trek Galaxy Mary McAuley

385

47

Lucas’s Star Wars Galaxy Chris Hanson

394

48

Linden Labs’s Second Life Astrid Ensslin

402

49 Persson’s Minecraft Lori Landay

410

50

425

Hello Game’s No Man’s Sky Kevin Schut

Index

433

x

About the Contributors

Jessica Aldred  is a scholar, journalist, and producer whose research focuses upon transmedia franchises, the convergence of cinema and digital games, and the challenges of translating film characters into successful game characters. She holds a Ph.D. from Carleton University, and her work has appeared in Games and Culture, Animation, The Oxford Handbook for Sound and Image in Digital Media, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post and Canadian Business. Jessica teaches courses about digital cinema, transmedia, and gender and gaming, and is the co-founder of Rule of Three Productions, where she explores the intersections between documentary, narrative cinema, and digital games. [[email protected]] Lily Alexander  Lily Alexander writes on media, narrative theory, and interactive storytelling. She has taught in New York City since 2003 at NYU and CUNY. Her degrees include drama, film, anthropology, and comparative cultural studies. World mythology and literature, global media and genre studies, fantasy and science fiction, as well as screenwriting are among the subjects Lily has taught and wrote about; all fields are essential to fictional worldbuilding (FWB), her main scholarly interest. Her interactive work on the Journey Worlds in Fellini, Antonioni and Tarkovsky was part of the collaborative experimental digital volume Filmbuilding (Toronto, 2002). Her recent study “Fictional World-Building as Ritual, Drama, and Medium” appeared in Revisiting Imaginary Worlds (Routledge, 2017). An award-wining researcher, Lily Alexander authored the Fictional Worlds book series (2013–14), which includes a print volume and interactive digital books (also on iTunes): The Genre System & The Symbolic Journey; Dramatic Characters & Action; Tragedy & Mystery; and Comedy & The Extraordinary. Alexander wrote for television and media forums, such as History Channel, Cinema Journal, Cinema Art,The Russian Review, Journal of Narrative Theory, and henryjenkins. org. Her essays also appeared in the media and scholarly collections in the United States, Netherlands, Russia, Israel, Canada, France, and Italy. Her website is: s­torytellingonscreen. com [[email protected] and [email protected]] David Alff is an Assistant Professor of English at SUNY-Buffalo. He is the author of The Wreckage of Intentions: Projects in British Culture 1660–1730 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). His work has appeared in Eighteenth-Century Studies and The Eighteenth Century:Theory and Interpretation, and is forthcoming in PMLA. [[email protected]] João Araújo  is a Ph.D. candidate at the Graduate Program in Contemporary Communication and Culture, in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. He holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary xi

Ab o u t t h e C o n tr i b u t o r s

Communication and Culture and a Bachelor’s degree in Social Communications (with an emphasis on Journalism). He currently holds a CAPES Foundation scholarship, and is a member of the Brazilian research group A-Tevê—Laboratory of Television Analysis (UFBA—Brazil) and the transnational collective Obitel—Ibero-American Observatory of Television Fiction. [[email protected]] George Carstocea  is a doctoral candidate in the Cinema and Media Studies program at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. [[email protected]] Edward Castronova  wonders why vanilla ice cream is even produced in a world that knows chocolate. He is a Professor of Media at Indiana University and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Castronova specializes in the study of games, technology, and society. Notable works include Wildcat Currency: The Virtual Transformation of the Economy (Yale, 2014), Virtual Economies: Analysis and Design (with Vili Lehdonvirta, MIT, 2014), Synthetic Worlds:The Business and Culture of On-line Games (Chicago, 2005), and Exodus to the Virtual World (Palgrave, 2007). Castronova was born as Edward Bird in 1962, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1995, and took his wife’s name on marrying in 2000. He has two sons, two God-children, and a beagle named Tilly. Castronova thinks God is a game designer: Get to Heaven for the win. [[email protected]] Astrid Ensslin is a Professor of Media and Digital Communication at the University of Alberta, Canada. Among her key publications are Literary Gaming (2014), The Language of Gaming (2011), Canonizing Hypertext (2007), and Creating Second Lives: Community, Identity and Spatiality as Constructions of the Virtual (2011). [[email protected]] Dimitra Fimi  is a Senior Lecturer in English at Cardiff Metropolitan University, U.K. She is the author of Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), which won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies. She has also published articles and essays in journals, edited collections, and reference works, including The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia (Routledge, 2006), Picturing Tolkien (MacFarland, 2011), Critical Insights: The Fantastic (Salem Press, 2013), Tolkien: The Forest and the City (Four Courts, 2013), and A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien (Blackwell, 2014). With Andrew Higgins, she co-edited J. R. R. Tolkien’s A Secret Vice (HarperCollins, 2006), a new critical edition of Tolkien’s essay on invented languages, and her new monograph on Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan. She lectures on Tolkien, fantasy literature, science fiction, children’s literature, and medievalism at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. For more information see her website at: www. dimitrafimi.com/. [[email protected]] Peter Fitting  is an Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Toronto, Canada, and the former Director of the Cinema Studies Program. Author of more than fifty articles on science fiction, fantasy, and utopia—from critical analyses of the works of various science fiction and utopian writers (from P. K. Dick to Marge Piercy); to theoretical examinations of the reading effect in utopian fiction, the problem of the right-wing utopia, or gender and reading; to overviews of cyberpunk, feminist utopias, and the turn from utopia in the 1990s, or the Golden Age and the foreclosure of utopian discourse in the 1950s; as well as articles on science fiction and utopian film and architecture. He has also completed a critical anthology of subterranean world fiction. He has had a long-time commitment to the xii

Ab o u t t h e C o n tr i b u t o r s

study of utopia through his work with the Society for Utopian Studies (for which he has twice served as president). He is presently at work on a collection of his writing on science fiction and utopia. [[email protected]] Matthew Freeman  is a Senior Lecturer in Media Communications at Bath Spa University, U.K., and Director of its Media Convergence Research Centre. He is the author of Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth-Century Transmedia Story Worlds (Routledge, 2016), the author of Industrial Approaches to Media: A Methodological Gateway to Industry Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and the co-author of Transmedia Archaeology: Storytelling in the Borderlines of Science Fiction, Comics and Pulp Magazines (Palgrave Pivot, 2014). His research examines cultures of production across the borders of media and history, and he has also published in journals including The International Journal of Cultural Studies, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, and International Journal of Communication. [[email protected]] David Glimp  is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of Increase and Multiply: Governing Cultural Reproduction in Early Modern England (Minnesota, 2003), and co-editor of two volumes: with Michelle Warren, Arts of Calculation: Quantifying Thought in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave, 2004); and with Russ Castronovo, After Critique?, a special issue of ELN (Winter 2014). [david.glimp@ colorado.edu] Chris Hanson is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Syracuse University, where he teaches courses in game studies, digital media, television, and film. His manuscript Game Time: Understanding Temporality in Video Games is under contract with Indiana University Press, and he is currently working on a book project on video game designer Roberta Williams. His work has appeared in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film Quarterly, the Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies (2014), and LEGO Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon (2014). [[email protected]] Jennifer Harwood-Smith has a Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin, and is researching world-building in science fiction. She has contributed two chapters to Battlestar Galactica: Mission Accomplished or Mission Frakked Up?, “I Frak,Therefore I Am” and “Dreamers in the Night.” She has also co-authored “‘Doing it in style’: The Narrative Rules of Time Travel in the Back to the Future Trilogy” with Frank Ludlow, published in The Worlds of Back to the Future: Critical Essays on the Films. Her essay “Fractured Cities: The Twinning of Tolkien’s Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis” has been published in J.R.R. Tolkien: The Forest and the City. She is the 2006 winner of the James White Award and has published fiction in Interzone and with Ether Books. [[email protected]] Dan Hassler-Forest  is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Utrecht University. He has published books on superhero movies, comics, adaptation studies, and transmedia storytelling, and enjoys writing about critical theory, popular culture, and zombies. His most recent book, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics (2016), focuses on fantastic world-building and radical political theory. [[email protected]] Andrew Higgins  is a Tolkien scholar who specializes in the role of language invention in Tolkien and in other fiction. Andrew did his postgraduate work at Cardiff Metropolitan xiii

Ab o u t t h e C o n tr i b u t o r s

University. His Ph.D. thesis The Genesis of Tolkien’s Mythology explored the interrelated nature of myth and language in Tolkien’s earliest work on his Legendarium. He has also co-edited, with Dr. Dimitra Fimi, A Secret Vice: J. R. R.Tolkien on Language Invention (2016), a new edition of Tolkien’s 1931 talk, published by Harper Collins. In 2016, Andrew taught a thirteen-week online course for Signum University/Mythgard Institute called “Language Invention through Tolkien,” and he is currently working on turning his thesis into a book, as well as planning another book surveying language invention in all of fiction from Thomas More to Elvish to Dothraki. Andrew has given Tolkien-related papers at The UK Tolkien Society, the International Medieval Conference at both Kalamazoo and Leeds, and The Mythopoeic Society. Andrew is also the Director of Development at Glyndebourne Opera in Sussex, England. [[email protected]] Matt Hills is a Professor of Media and Film at the University of Huddersfield. He is the author of Fan Cultures (2002) and Triumph of a Time Lord (2010), among other titles. His work has been published in the Journal of Fandom Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Science Fiction Film and Television, Participations: The Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, and the Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures. His latest book is Doctor Who: The Unfolding Event (Palgrave 2015), and he’s currently working on a new monograph, Sherlock—Detecting Quality Television. [[email protected]] Gerard Hynes  teaches at Trinity College Dublin where he received a Ph.D. for his thesis on Creation in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. He teaches on fantasy literature in Trinity College’s M.Phil. in Popular Literature and M.Phil. in Children’s Literature. He is the co-editor of Tolkien: The Forest and the City (Dublin, 2013) and has published on geology, deforestation, and dwarves in Tolkien’s fiction. His research interests include world-­ building and landscape in medieval and fantasy literature. [[email protected]] Ian Kinane  is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Roehampton, where he teaches popular genre fiction, postcolonial literatures, and children’s literature. He is the author of Theorising Literary Islands (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), co-editor of Landscapes of Liminality: Between Space and Place (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), and editor of Didactics and the Modern Robinsonade (Liverpool University Press, forthcoming). He is currently preparing a manuscript on Anglo–Caribbean relations and Ian Fleming’s Jamaica-set James Bond stories, and he is the editor of the International Journal of James Bond Studies. [­[email protected]] Lars Konzack  is an Associate Professor in Information Science and Cultural Communication at the Royal School of Library and Information Science (RSLIS) at the University of Copenhagen. He is interested in subjects such as game analysis, role-playing games, ludology, acafandom, digital culture, and transmedial culture. His works include, among others, “Computer Game Criticism: A Method for Computer Game Analysis” (2002), “Geek Culture: The 3rd Counter-Culture” (2006), “Philosophical Game Design” (2009), “The Origins of Geek Culture: Perspectives on a Parallel Intellectual Milieu” (2014), “The Cultural History of LEGO” (2014), and “Scandinavia” [video game history] (2015). [­[email protected]] Lori Landay is a Professor of Cultural Studies at Berklee College of Music, and an interdisciplinary scholar and new media artist exploring the making of visual meaning xiv

Ab o u t t h e C o n tr i b u t o r s

in twentieth- and twenty-first-century culture. She is the author of two books, I Love Lucy (2010) and Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women:The Female Trickster in American Culture (1998), and of articles on virtual worlds, digital narrative, silent film, television culture, and other topics. Her creative work includes animation, graphic design, creative documentary, machinima, interactive virtual art installations, and music video. Her current project combines critical and creative work to explore subjectivity, presence, and the “virtual kino-eye” in interactive media, continuing the inquiry begun during her NEH Enduring Questions Grant for “What is Being?” in 2010–2012. [[email protected]] David Langdon  is a recent Ph.D. graduate from the University of South Wales, Cardiff. His work explores the persistence of the Gothic literary mode in the modern digital game. His research interests include narrative in modern media forms, the function and relevance of Gothic media in contemporary culture, and the digital game as representative form. [[email protected]] Irène Langlet is a Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Limoges, France, where she is in charge of the Master of Arts and Literature. She specializes in contemporary fiction (and especially science fiction) and nonfiction (and especially essays), media cultures, and cultural studies. Her books include Le recueil littéraire. Pratique et théorie d’une forme (2003), La Science-fiction. Lecture et poétique d’un genre littéraire (2006), and L’Abeille et la balance. Penser l’essai (2015). She is co-founder and director of ReS Futurae, the first journal of science fiction studies in French (http://resf.revues.org). [irene.langlet@ unilim.fr] Rodrigo Lessa  holds a Ph.D. in Contemporary Communication and Culture, obtained in the Graduate Program in Contemporary Communication and Culture at the Federal University of Bahia, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. His doctoral internship was at the University of Hertfordshire, U.K., where he worked asVisiting Professor (TV Drama, undergraduate classes) and Visiting Researcher under the supervision of Professor Dr. Steven Peacock from 2014 to 2015. Lessa also holds a Master’s degree in Contemporary Communication and Culture and a Bachelor’s degree in Social Communications (with an emphasis on Journalism). He is currently an Associate Researcher at the Brazilian research group A-Tevê—Laboratory of Television Analysis (UFBA—Brazil) and a member of the transnational collective Obitel— Ibero-American Observatory of Television Fiction. [[email protected]] Mary McAuley  reads English and History at Trinity College Dublin, where she also completed an M.Phil. in Literatures of the Americas—with a special interest in William Burroughs and the anti-national figure of the “junkie” in U.S. culture. She is currently researching the subversive potential of liminal spaces and science fictions, as explored through art and film. [[email protected]] Edward O’Hare  is a Ph.D. student at Trinity College Dublin. After studying for a Degree in Philosophy, he completed the M.Phil. in Popular Literature in 2009. Since 2012, he has been working on a thesis on Antarctic Gothic Literature, focusing on the Polar Fictions of writers including Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, H. P. Lovecraft, and John W. Campbell Jr. A regular contributor to The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, he has published articles and reviews on a range of subjects. His research interests include Victorian Gothic fiction; imaginary voyage narratives; ghost stories and other supernatural fiction; the weird tale; xv

Ab o u t t h e C o n tr i b u t o r s

British and American horror and science fiction of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s; and cult cinema and television of the past and present. [[email protected]] Jeremiah Piña is a doctoral student at the University of Georgia studying giftedness and creativity. His research interests are diverse and include topics related to the development of the creative identity, the creativity of geek cultures, lifespan fantasy play, and, especially, paracosms. [[email protected]] William Proctor a Lecturer in Media, Culture, and Communication at Bournemouth University, UK. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on subjects as varied as Batman, James Bond, The Walking Dead, One Direction, Ghostbusters, and more. William is currently writing his debut monograph, Reboot Culture: Comics, Film & Transmedia for Palgrave. He is also editor of the forthcoming collections: Disney’s Star Wars (with Richard McCulloch) (University of Iowa Press), The Scandinavian Invasion: Critical Perspectives on Nordic Noir and Beyond (also with Richard McCulloch) (Peter Lang); and Transmedia Earth: Critical Perspectives on Global Convergence Cultures (with Matthew Freeman) (Routledge). William is creator and director of The World Star Wars Project. [[email protected]] Michael O. Riley is the author of Oz and Beyond: The Fantasy World of L. Frank Baum (University Press of Kansas, 1997) and A Bookbinder’s Analysis of the First Edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Book Club of California, 2011). He is the owner, printer, and bookbinder of The Pamami Press that has published limited editions of rare stories by L. Frank Baum. He is also Professor Emeritus of English at Georgia College. His specialties are Children’s Literature and British Romanticism. [[email protected]] Benjamin J. Robertson  teaches genre studies, media studies, and literary theory in the English Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder. [[email protected]] Marie-Laure Ryan is an independent scholar based in Colorado. She is the author of Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory (1991), Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (2001), and Avatars of Story (2006). She has also edited several collections, including The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative (2005) with David Herman and Manfred Jahn, Storyworlds Across Media (2014) with Jan-Noël Thon, and The Johns Hopkins Guidebook to Digital Humanities (2014) with Lori Emerson and Ben Robertson. She has been Scholar in Residence at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Johannes Gutenberg Fellow at the University of Mainz, Germany. [[email protected]] Michael Saler is a Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, where he teaches modern intellectual history. He is the author of As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (Oxford UP, 2012) and The Avant-Garde in Interwar England: ‘Medieval Modernism’ and the London Underground (1999); editor of The Fin-de-Siècle World (Routledge, 2014); and co-editor, with Joshua Landy, of The Re-Enchantment of the World: Rational Magic in a Secular Age (Stanford, 2009). Peter Sands  is an Associate Professor of English and Director of the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He teaches and writes about science fiction and xvi

Ab o u t t h e C o n tr i b u t o r s

utopias, law and literature, cannibalism in literature, and emerging technologies. [sands@ uwm.edu] Kevin Schut is the Associate Dean of the School of the Arts, Media + Culture and a Professor in the Department of Media + Communication at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Communication Studies at the University of Iowa in 2004, with a focus on media ecology theory, social construction of technology theory, and critical cultural studies. His research interests are the intersection of culture, technology, faith, and history, and he finds that computer and video games are a perfect place to investigate this. He has published Of Games and God: A Christian Exploration of Video Games (2012), as well as articles and chapters on fantasy role-playing games and masculinity, mythology in computer games, Evangelicals and games, and the presentation of history in strategy games. He is fatally vulnerable to turn-based games of any sort. [[email protected]] Anne M. Thell  is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at National University of Singapore. Her first book, Minds in Motion: Imagining Empiricism in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Literature, examines the ways in which travel literature expedites individual engagements with epistemology. She is currently at work on a range of projects related to travel literature, mental illness, and the history of the imagination. [[email protected]] Mark J. P. Wolf is a Professor in the Communication Department at Concordia University, Wisconsin. He has a B.A. (1990) in Film Production and an M.A. (1992) and a Ph.D. (1995) in Critical Studies from the School of Cinema/Television (now renamed the School of Cinematic Arts) at the University of Southern California. His books include Abstracting Reality: Art, Communication, and Cognition in the Digital Age (2000), The Medium of the Video Game (2001), Virtual Morality: Morals, Ethics, and New Media (2003), The Video Game Theory Reader (2003), The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to PlayStation and Beyond (2007), The Video Game Theory Reader 2 (2008), Myst and Riven: The World of the D’ni (2011), Before the Crash: Early Video Game History (2012), the two-volume Encyclopedia of Video Games:The Culture,Technology, and Art of Gaming (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation (2012), The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies (2014), LEGO Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon (2014), Video Games Around the World (2015), the four-volume Video Games and Gaming Cultures (2016), Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology (2017), Video Games FAQ (forthcoming), The World of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (2017), The Routledge Companion to Media History and Obsolescence (2017), and two novels for which his agent is looking for a publisher. He is also founder and co-editor of the Landmark Video Game book series from University of Michigan Press, the founder and editor of the Imaginary Worlds book series from Routledge, and the founder of the Video Game Studies Scholarly Interest Group and the Transmedia Studies Special Interest Group within the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. He has been invited to speak in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Second Life; has had work published in journals including Compar(a)ison, Convergence, Film Quarterly, Games and Culture, New Review of Film and Television Studies, Projections, and The Velvet Light Trap; is on the advisory boards of Videotopia, the International Arcade Museum Library, and the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations; and is on several editorial boards, including those of Games and Culture and The Journal of E-media Studies. He lives in Wisconsin with his wife Diane and his sons Michael, Christian, and Francis. [[email protected]] xvii

Preface

In this book, as well as the anthology Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology (2017), I have had the pleasure of working with many of the finest scholars writing about imaginary worlds today, whose research and writings have broadened and enriched my own knowledge of the field. This collaboration continues in The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds, with a wide range of topics explored that pertain to the theorizing and understanding of imaginary worlds and their tradition. Whether viewed as transmedia entities, the receptacles of interrelated narratives, or objects of study of interest in themselves, imaginary worlds deserve the in-depth examination they receive here, in this unique, authoritative, and multidisciplinary overview. The Routledge Companion to Imaginary Worlds addresses a series of themes pertinent to the ongoing theoretical and methodological development of the study of imaginary worlds, or what might be termed Subcreation Studies, to use Tolkien’s term. With growing interest in transmedia studies and franchising, an increasing amount of attention has turned toward the study of imaginary worlds, with a number of monographs and anthologies approaching it from different angles. Attempting to remain true to the key issues, texts, and approaches to examining imaginary worlds, the Companion features essays on a wide variety of topics, from form and content, to authorship and reception, to types of worlds and examples from the imaginary world tradition. I have included some new divisions or topics in order to encourage study and stimulate analysis from new angles—for instance, saviors and portals, which appear in so many worlds, or completeness and consistency, which are goals to be pursued in the construction of worlds. Of course there are many more that could have been included; it was difficult narrowing the number of topics and essays down to fifty, and the volume could have been easily twice the size it is. The imaginary world tradition extends over at least three millennia, with thousands of examples of worlds, and thus a wealth of avenues to explore. As worlds, there are also the social, cultural, linguistic, political, technological, and anthropological angles to consider, especially in some of today’s imaginary worlds, which have grown to such an enormous size that a single person will never be able to see and experience them in their entirety. The art of world-building is something that one is aware of the more imaginary worlds one visits; yet relatively little has been written about it academically. The study of imaginary worlds is a fascinating and productive endeavor, as the essays here attempt to show. Together, this collection presents an excellent introduction to the world-based approach, and integrates and situates it alongside all of the other approaches mentioned above. Overall, the Companion’s essays are organized into five broad sections, examining the content and form of worlds, various types of worlds, the authorship and reception of worlds, and historical exemplars.The first section, “Content and Story,” examines things appearing within xviii

Pr e f a c e

worlds, such as languages, cultures, the hero’s journey, saviors, portals, and, of course, narrative elements. The second section, “Form and Structure,” considers formal aspects of worlds, their design and ontological rules, and the infrastructures that hold them together and organize their data. The third section, “Types of Worlds,” looks at different types of worlds, including islands, planets, underground worlds, utopias, uchronias, virtual worlds, and interactive and participatory worlds. The fourth section, “Authorship and Reception,” examines the contexts in which world-building occurs, issues like canonicity, genre, escapism, retcon, reboots, and fandom, and also uses for worlds, such as satire, paracosms, and thought experiments.The fifth and final section, “Worlds and World-Builders,” looks at some of the important worlds and world-builders throughout the imaginary world tradition. Naturally, a single volume can give only a sampling of the many topics and ideas through which imaginary worlds can be considered and studied; worlds can be enormous objects of study, and naturally require an interdisciplinary approach. Hopefully, readers will find the Companion useful and interesting, as well as a point of departure for the vast realms of imagination waiting to be explored; not only those worlds already created by authors, filmmakers, game makers, and others, but all of the potential and possible worlds that have yet to be created. As media technology advances in its ability to create images, sounds, and interactive simulations, our journeys to imaginary worlds will grow ever more vivid, and these, in turn, will inspire even more fantastic places. And perhaps amidst all of this imagination and inspiration, we will find new ways to better our own world, the one in which we live, and appreciate it as we should.

xix

Acknowledgments

A Companion like this is only possible with readers and scholars whose interest and desire brings about the study of imaginary worlds. Therefore, great thanks goes out to all of the contributors to this volume, who graciously agreed to join in this endeavor: Jessica Aldred, Lily Alexander, David Alff, João Araújo, George Carstocea, Edward Castronova, Astrid Ensslin, Dimitra Fimi, Peter Fitting, Matthew Freeman, David Glimp, Chris Hanson, Jennifer Harwood-Smith, Dan Hassler-Forest, Andrew Higgins, Matt Hills, Gerard Hynes, Ian Kinane, Lars Konzack, Lori Landay, David Langdon, Irène Langlet, Rodrigo Lessa, Mary McAuley, Edward O’Hare, Jeremiah Piña, William Proctor, Michael O. Riley, Benjamin J. Robertson, Marie-Laure Ryan, Michael Saler, Peter Sands, Kevin Schut, and Anne M. Thell. Thanks also to Lyman Tower Sargent, Rebecca Totaro, and Marta Boni for their help and support; Erica Wetter and Routledge for asking for this Companion and supporting it along the way; and all those who will use it in the classroom and elsewhere. Finally, I also must thank my wife Diane Wolf and sons Michael, Christian, and Francis who were patient with the time taken to work on this book. And, as always, thanks be to God.

xx

Part 1

Content and Story

This page intentionally left blank

1

Locations and Borders Gerard Hynes The number of imaginary worlds that could potentially be created is nearly infinite. Given how many imagined worlds have gone unrecorded, being either orally transmitted or private to an individual in the first place, they are also uncountable. The admittedly selective timeline in Mark J. P. Wolf ’s Building Imaginary Worlds (2012) lists more than 1,400 worlds and since then dozens more have been created, from Anne Leckie’s Radch Empire and Ken Liu’s Dara to the universe of Jupiter Ascending (2015) and the eighteen quintillion planets of No Man’s Sky (2016). Imaginary locations have been the vehicles of philosophical, anthropological, political (both utopian and dystopian), historical, and linguistic speculation for thousands of years. Many of these worlds are defined as much by specific locations—the Shire, the Battlestar Galactica, Silent Hill—as by the characters or narratives that populate and shape them. Dictionaries of imaginary places are notable for their inherent eclecticism. Pierre Versins’s Encyclopédie de l’utopie, des voyages extraordinaires et de la science-fiction (1972) includes the world of the Epic of Gilgamesh as well as Poul Anderson’s history of the future, the Psychotechnic League. J. B. Post’s Atlas of Fantasy (1973; rev. ed. 1979) features the Azores of late-­medieval geographic speculation and Matthäus Seuter’s didactic map Mappa Geographiae Naturalis (1730) alongside Edgar Rice Burrough’s Barsoom and Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique. Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi’s Dictionary of Imaginary Places (1980; rev. ed. 1999) contains over 1,200 entries, from Sir Thomas Bulfinch’s Abaton in the Scottish Highlands to Sylvia Townsend Warner’s elven Zuy, under the restriction that they be places a traveler could “theoretically” visit, thus excluding metaphysical realms, planets, and future societies, as well as overlaid worlds such as Thomas Hardy’s Wessex. Brian Stableford’s Dictionary of Science Fiction Places (1999) links science-fictional locations according to thematic concerns, though it restricts itself to worlds created in science fiction literature rather than film or other media. Umberto Eco’s Book of Legendary Lands (2013) differentiates itself by focusing on lands that were once believed (at least by some) to have existed but have subsequently been recategorized as imaginary: Eden and Hyperborea, Cockaigne and the hollow Earth. The thousands of locations described in these works are heterogeneous in their scale, temporal extent, and connection to the Primary World of everyday experience, yet could all be considered secondary worlds (for the terminology of ‘Primary World’ versus ‘secondary worlds’ see Tolkien, 2008, pp. 59–64; and Wolf, 2012, pp. 25–26). “World” is as much an experiential as a spatial term, defined by culture, customs, and events as well as by space and place. For this reason, Wolf (2012) defines an imaginary world as “the surroundings and places experienced by a fictional character (or which could be experienced by one) that together constitute a unified sense of place which is ontologically different from 3

Gerard Hynes

the actual, material, and so-called ‘real’ world” (Wolf, p. 377). If imaginary worlds are defined as experiential realms, they may be “as large as a universe, or as small as an isolated town” (Wolf, p. 377). Secondary worlds may exist within the Primary World, in the case of fictional towns such as Night Vale in Welcome to Night Vale (2012–present) and Stephen King’s Castle Rock, or “lost worlds” located on islands, mountain ranges, or beneath the earth. Conversely, the secondary world may encompass the Primary World, such as the universes depicted in the future histories of the television series Firefly (2002), the novel Dune (1965), and the game EVE Online (2003–present). Secondary worlds may be placed on a spectrum of “secondariness,” depending on how detached they are from the Primary World, how different their world defaults are, and how thoroughly their details have been developed (Wolf, 2012, pp. 26–27). Westeros and Tatooine are more secondary than the fictional towns of Derry, Salem’s Lot, and Castle Rock, all located in the Primary-World Maine. For a world to be considered secondary it must have a distinct border, or some sort of buffer zone, dividing it from the Primary World. This may be physical distance, compounded by hostile terrain, as in the cases of El Dorado or Robinson Crusoe’s island. Expanses of time as well as space can also separate the imaginary world, with both the Star Trek universe and Terry Brook’s Four Lands ostensibly set in the future of the Primary World. (For portals between worlds see Jennifer Harwood-Smith’s chapter in this ­volume.)

Locations or Worlds? Each imaginary world is itself a locus but is also constructed from smaller, discrete loci, defined by their own borders and boundaries. Transnarrative characters, such as King Arthur or Robin Hood, may imply a world beyond each individual narrative, but unless the world is concretized with specific locations the diegetic world will not become a fully developed secondary world. Without Avalon and Camelot, the Arthurian cycles occur in a fictionalized Primary World. Only one location needs to be explored in detail, the rest of the world can be extrapolated or represented through visual or verbal paratexts. Just as characters may connect worlds, when locations from one story appear in another they connect the two, forming a shared narrative world. Journeys between locations, whether these locations appear in multiple texts or within a single narrative, establish that they exist in the same diegetic world. The Star Wars and Star Trek universes, for example, are defined not by any single location but by a vast system of overlapping locations, characters, and stories in various media. Individual locations may also function as secondary worlds in their own right, such as Metropolis and Gotham City, or the fictional countries of Vlatava and Zandia. However, in their aggregate, they form a larger fictional world, in this case the DC Universe. A location may still be considered part of the Primary World if the level of difference from the Primary World is sufficiently small. These are what Wolf (2012) calls overlaid worlds: a “fictional diegesis in which an existing, Primary World location is used, with fictional characters and objects appearing in it, but without enough invention to isolate it from the Primary World into its own separate secondary world” (Wolf, p. 379). An example would be New York City as it exists in the Marvel Universe where the cityscape, culture, language, and politics are largely unchanged by the activities of super villains and the presence of the Baxter Building and Avengers Tower. Though events such as the battle of New York in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have altered the cityscape as much as major Primary World events like 9/11, the fundamental characteristics of the city remain unchanged. 4

L o c at i o n s a n d B o r d e r s

Whether or not the New York City of Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1986), where Richard Nixon is still president in 1985 and America has won the Vietnam War, can be considered a secondary world could be debated, though its changed history and geopolitical context would argue for its inclusion. The dystopian, future Los Angeles of Blade Runner (1982) and the Japanese-occupied San Francisco of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) could also be compared. Despite being Primary World locations, they are arguably sufficiently defamiliarized and altered to count as secondary worlds.

Borders between Worlds For most of recorded literary history, the majority of imaginary worlds have been connected to the Primary World. We can, however, see a development in the last two centuries whereby imaginary world-building has increasingly moved from creating secondary worlds located in the Primary World to generating worlds further and further detached from it. Modern imaginary worlds are likely to be, or take place in, fully independent universes, with some inverting their relationship with the Primary World and including it as one small part of their larger universe. Early imaginary worlds, often created for mythical, philosophical, or satirical purposes, were connected to the Primary World in order to comment upon it. Plato’s Atlantis is located beyond the pillars of Heracles, and so in the Atlantic Ocean, while his ideal republic, Kallipolis, should it ever be built, would also be located in the Primary World.Though Dante’s Commedia would eventually reach the heavenly Empyrean, both Hell and Mount Purgatory are solidly connected to the Primary World, located beneath Jerusalem and in the southern hemisphere respectively, and constantly refer to the history and politics of Dante’s society. Sir Thomas More’s Utopia is located off the coast of South America and the islands of Gulliver’s Travels (1726) are ostensibly near Sumatra, North America, Japan, and Australia. The remoteness and inaccessibility of these largely unexplored locations isolate and detach them from the known Primary World, yet they remain, just about, within the scope of the cartographical domain of their respective periods. It may be significant that islands were the most popular locations for imaginary worlds before the twentieth century. As Ricardo Padrón (2007) puts it: An island is clearly bounded and set off from the rest of the world. It has no terra incognita, no feisty neighbours, no disputable borders, no porous frontiers. Unlike a continent, with its vast spaces, islands can be taken in at a glance, giving us the impression that we can know them completely. (Padrón, p. 265) They, like planets, are surrounded by uncharted regions and do not need to accommodate to pre-existing borders (see Wolf, 2012, p. 159). A significant breakthrough occurred in the nineteenth century when world-builders first ceased to fit their worlds, however distantly, into the Primary World. E. A. Abbott’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884) was the first work to present a secondary world totally detached from the Primary World in terms of both location and fundamental physical defaults. The novella takes place in a two-dimensional universe populated by geometric figures. The protagonist, A. Square, guides readers through the nature of Flatland and the practicalities of living there, including the gender and class distinctions encoded into the number of sides a Flatlander may have. A. Square has a vision of Lineland, a one-dimensional world, and is visited by a three-dimensional being, a Sphere, from Spaceland, who shows him both the 5

Gerard Hynes

possibilities of three-dimensional existence and the solipsism of Pointland, “the Abyss of No Dimensions” (Abbott, p. 91). Here, Abbott was innovative in creating a series of interrelated secondary worlds that form their own multiverse without attempting any connection, save satirical, to the Primary World. William Morris’s The Story of the Glittering Plain (1890) and The Wood Beyond the World (1894) likewise severed the link with the Primary World, generating the first medievalist fantasy worlds that purport to exist on their own terms. Unlike Morris’s earlier News from Nowhere (1890), set in England in a neo-medieval future, neither The Story of the Glittering Plain nor The Wood Beyond the World is ever connected with any Primary World location. The former sees Hallblithe of the House of the Raven attempt to rescue his betrothed from pirates and end up in the utopian Land of Living Men. In the latter, Golden Walter sets out on a trading expedition and, after escaping from an enchantress and striking up a relationship with an unnamed Maid, becomes king of the city of Stark-wall. Despite the English nomenclature—the stories begin respectively in the fictional villages of Cleveland by the Sea and Langton upon Holm—and the deliberately archaized English used throughout, England is never mentioned in the novels. Morris never names the worlds in which these events take place, but even if they are set in a fictional historical period their fantastical elements separate them from the Primary World as surely as Tolkien’s Middle-earth. This combination of a medievalist world and supernatural elements established a pattern for fantasy world-building, later followed by Tolkien and his innumerable imitators. But the comparison with Tolkien brings up certain complications. On the one hand,Tolkien followed Morris in creating, or sub-creating, to use his preferred term, a fully independent secondary world (one that has served as the model for countless later fantasists and that remains unusual among single-authored imaginary worlds for the degree and quality of its world-building). On the other hand, he insisted that Arda, the planet containing Middle-earth, was the Primary World in a fictional historical period (Carpenter, 1995, p. 220, p. 239, p. 283, p. 376), reflecting the ambiguity of Morris’s relationship with the Primary World. Morris and Tolkien have both exerted contradictory impulses on subsequent fantasy world-building, equally inspiring independent secondary worlds and slightly mythologized versions of Northern Europe in the early Middle Ages. L. Frank Baum’s Oz equally marks a transition in the treatment of the connection between Primary and secondary world. It was the first major series to be linked by world rather than by main character and remains the first transmedial world, appearing on stage, in film, and in cartoon strips as well as in the Oz books (Wolf, 2012, p. 109, pp. 117–119). In the early instalments of the series, Dorothy must travel from Kansas to Oz, while in The Emerald City of Oz (1910) she moves there permanently. She is joined in later volumes by native protagonists who have no connection to the Primary World.This reflects the expectation Baum could have that readers, already familiar with the series, would no longer need to have the world explained (see Michael O. Riley’s chapter on Baum’s Oz in this volume). As audiences became more accustomed to interacting with imaginary worlds, the need for framing devices and connections to the Primary World diminished. Brian Stableford ­comments: A heterocosmic creator cannot organize the informational thread of a text in the same way as can the creator of simulacra. The reader’s attention must be drawn to similarities and differences between the world within the text and the primary world. Even in its simplest variants, this process requires considerable skill and versatility [...] As with the skills in reading mimetic fiction, there has been a gradual 6

L o c at i o n s a n d B o r d e r s

e­ volution during the last two centuries in the skills required in reading heterocosmic ­constructions. (Stableford, 2005, pp. liii–liv; emphasis original) Where some nineteenth-century works dealing with the far future had felt the need to include prefatory essays explaining the world they depicted, the emergence of genre labels (especially science fiction in the 1920s and fantasy in the 1960s; see Prucer, 2007, p. 171; and James, 2012, pp. 72–73) served to provide audiences with a paratextual warning that the story may not be set in the Primary World (Stableford, 2005, p. lix). This was reinforced by the increased use of paratextual material, in the form of maps, time-lines, and genealogies, as well as distinctive styles of cover art. Travel to distant lands, dream sequences, and time travel became less and less necessary to prepare readers for an immersive secondary world.

Borders within Worlds While every secondary world is separated from the Primary World by some form of border, any secondary world of sufficient size will contain its own internal borders and boundaries. Borders differ from boundaries in the relationship they establish between locations. Borders are lines, whether physical or metaphysical, that separate two adjacent locations. Boundaries surround a location, indicating its limitations and circumference. Both separate two areas, but a boundary encircles, placing one location within another. Borders always serve a dual function, connecting as well as defining and excluding. As Stefan Ekman (2013) states: Borders and boundaries unite rather than divide. A border between two domains would be impossible if those domains were not juxtaposed; a polder boundary would not have a purpose unless the polder were part of the outside world. Both types of thresholds hold the [secondary] world together but they also keep it variegated, a patchwork of distinct realities that opens up the geography in a fashion that mere distance cannot do. They expand the world by joining different realities together. (Ekman, p. 126) Borders do not just delimit areas within worlds, they insist on the mutual ontological interdependence between these areas. They may reveal the limitations of a particular culture’s ambitions and interests, but not of the world in which it exists. Unexplained borders can stimulate audience speculation leading to greater immersion in a world. In Patrick Rothfuss’s series, The Kingkiller Chronicle (2007–present), the mapped world is titled “The Four Corners of Civilization.” Despite being mapped, there are a number of borders left unexplained. The island that contains the country of  Yll is divided by borders into three zones, leaving it unclear if the northern and southern extremities belong to Yll or one of its neighbours. Peninsulas to the north of Ceald and the west of the Commonwealth are likewise demarcated but untitled. The Four Corners are themselves bordered by water on three sides and the Stormwal Mountains on the fourth. By having a limited location define itself as the civilized world, Rothfuss appears to suggest the existence of a larger world, with other cultures who may consider themselves equally as civilized as the Four Corners. The existence of this larger world, Temerant, was finally confirmed in the novella The Slow Regard of Silent Things (2014). 7

Gerard Hynes

Secondary world borders are not limited to separating mundane realms. Many imaginary worlds fall into Lubomír Doložel’s (1998) concept of a dyadic world: “a unification in one fictional world of two domains in which contrary modal conditions reign” (Doložel, p. 128). Doložel compared the world of mythology to the mundane world, where different rules of permission and prohibition, different dietary, sexual, and ethical systems, apply. The concept describes imaginary worlds as different as Terri Windling’s Borderland series (1986–present), where Faerie and mundanity meet, or the Matrix universe that contains both a dystopian future Earth and the virtual world of the Matrix. The number of possible domains is, of course, not limited to two, and may be extended indefinitely. While consistency of world details and defaults is usually essential to maintain the immersiveness of a world, dividing a world into different domains allows for an exploration of mutually contradictory rules: “What is possible or natural is a question of in which domain, not in which world, the story is set” (Ekman, 2013, p. 127). One domain-border that imaginary worlds have proven adept at exploring is that between the worlds of the living and the dead. In the Primary World, it is normally passed only in one direction (with ghosts and apparitions an unconfirmed complication). In imaginary worlds, however, it is a border frequently traversed in both directions, generating domains from Virgil’s underworld and Dante’s Inferno to the river of Death in Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series (1995–present). In this way, secondary worlds may usefully explore the interplay between realms whose Primary World counterparts are usually kept strictly separate. Where one domain is surrounded by another, we have what Roz Kaveney and John Clute call a polder. These are, in Clute’s (1997b) formulation: enclaves of toughened Reality demarcated by boundaries (Thresholds) from the surrounding world. [...] these boundaries are maintained [...]. A polder, in other words, is an active Microcosm, armed against the potential Wrongness of that which surrounds it, an anachronism consciously opposed to wrong time. (Clute, p. 772) As Clute points out, the polder is often chronologically as well as physically separated, with a different temporal progression than the outside world.Two defining examples are the domain of Tom Bombadil within the Old Forest and the elven realm of Lothlórien in The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). Bombadil is one of the oldest beings in Middle-earth (along with Treebeard), able to remember “before the river and the trees [...] the first raindrop and the first acorn.” Lothlórien is experienced as stepping “over a bridge of time into a corner of the Elder Days [...] walking in a world that was no more” (Tolkien, 2004, p. 131, p. 349). The concept can also usefully be applied to various lost worlds located within the Primary World, from Arcadia onwards. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) depicts a South American plateau where dinosaurs, pterosaurs, marine reptiles, and other extinct megafauna from various geological epochs have survived. A society of ape-men is presumably also a remnant from earlier ages, though they coexist with and are conquered by modern humans. In James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933), the inhabitants of Shangri-la, a lamasery in the Kunlun mountains, approach immortality and live preternaturally peaceful and satisfied lives in an isolated valley that has managed to preserve peace while the outside world is consumed by the First World War. Such polders are not merely nostalgic redoubts, though they can be that, but may also challenge assumptions about the experience and trajectory of temporal change. The differing modal conditions in separate domains need not be physical or temporal but may be cultural. A recurring concern of certain secondary worlds has been the ­generation 8

L o c at i o n s a n d B o r d e r s

of extreme forms of social engineering in isolated domains. In Lois Lowry’s The Giver quartet (1993–2012), the world of the Community is divided from the Elsewhere by the impassable Forest, which allows for and reinforces the extreme conformity of the society. By cutting themselves off from the heterogeneity of the outside world, the inhabitants of the Community are able to suppress the social ills of war and starvation but also such essentials as emotion and memory. It is only in later installments of the series that the existence of outside civilization is revealed. Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series (2008–2010) presents a climate change-­transformed North America as the dystopia Panem with a decadent Capitol in the Rockies and twelve subjugated districts forming the rest of the country. The political system is maintained through a combination of repressive policing and the combined threat and public spectacle of the titular gladiatorial games. Curiously, the fascistic rule of the Capitol over the districts is never rationalized as a reaction to external threats. A previous rebellion by the districts was put down with the destruction of District 13 serving as a warning. The actually surviving District 13 is able to engage in its own social experimentation, in this case communistic, precisely because it too is cordoned off from the outside world. Borders between domains may be precise or fuzzy, a line or a gradient. Where borders are debatable, they create zones that John Clute (1997a) terms crosshatch; areas where: the demarcation line is anything but clearcut, and two or more worlds [or domains] may simultaneously inhabit the same territory. [...] In other words, when borderland conventions are absent, there is an inherent and threatening instability (Wrongness) to regions of crosshatch; a sense of imminent Metamorphosis. (Clute, p. 237) For example, in China Miéville’s The City and the City (2009), the twin cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma occupy the same world, a fictionalized Balkans, but attempt to totally separate themselves not just into two domains but almost into two worlds. Despite physically overlapping in a number of areas, they are culturally, linguistically, and psychologically divided. This results in each city’s inhabitants dividing their world into three zones: total, describing areas completely in the observer’s city; alter, in the other, resolutely unperceived, city; and crosshatched, co-inhabited by residents deliberately ignoring each other (Miéville, p. 56). Denizens must at all times “unsee” the other city and, even in crosshatched areas, breaching the border, either by physically crossing it or interacting with inhabitants of the other city, will result in the offender disappearing into the custody of the secretive organization Breach (Miéville, p. 64). Here, Miéville simultaneously exposes the artificiality and porousness of borders within worlds while also highlighting the ideological and often physical power that border constructs exert over the inhabitants of worlds, whether secondary or Primary. Imaginary locations and the borders that connect them to or separate them from the Primary World have historically served to question the norms of the Primary World and the divisions that define it. Their usefulness for this purpose is not likely to diminish. Debates about contemporary globalization, including recent attempts to reassert national borders in the face of large-scale human migration, will undoubtedly be played out in future imaginary worlds.

References Abbott, E. A. (1884) Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, London: Seeley & Co. Carpenter, H. (ed) (1995) The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien, London: HarperCollins. 9

Gerard Hynes

Clute, J. (1997a) “Crosshatch,” in Clute and Grant, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 237. Clute, J. (1997b) “Polder,” in Clute and Grant, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, pp. 772–73. Clute, J. and J. Grant (eds) (1997) The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, London: Orbit. Doložel, L. (1998) Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Eco, U. (2013) The Book of Legendary Lands, trans A. McEwen, London: MacLehose Press. Ekman, S. (2013) Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. James, E. (2012) “Tolkien, Lewis and the explosion of genre fantasy,” in E. James and F. Mendlesohn (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 62–78. Manguel, A. and G. Guadalupi (1999) The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, London: Bloomsbury. Miéville, C. (2009) The City and the City, London: Pan Macmillan. Padrón, R. (2007) “Mapping imaginary worlds,” in J. R. Akerman and R. W. Karrow Jr. (eds), Maps: Finding our Place in the World, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, pp. 255–87. Post, J. B. (1979) An Atlas of Fantasy, rev. ed., New York: Ballantine Books. Prucer, J. (2007) Brave New Words:The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, Oxford: OUP. Rothfuss, P. (2007) The Name of the Wind, London: Gollancz. Stableford, B. (1999) The Dictionary of Science Fiction Places, New York: Wonderland Press. Stableford, B. (2005) Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Books. Tolkien, J. R. R. (2004) The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary Edition, London: HarperCollins. Tolkien, J. R. R. (2008) Tolkien On Fairy-stories: Expanded Edition with Commentary and Notes, ed. D. A. Anderson and V. Flieger, London: HarperCollins. Versins, P. (1972) Encyclopédie de l’utopie, des voyages extraordinaires et de la science-fiction, Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012) Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York and London: Routledge.

10

2

The Hero’s Journey Lily Alexander “The Hero’s Journey” (THJ) is a phrase coined by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces first published in 1949 (see also the revised 1968 edition, and collections: Campbell 1990, 2011). Quickly becoming a catchphrase and new critical idiom, THJ refers to a formula that has inspired and governed the best adventure stories ever written, as well as those filmed and scripted into the road movies, the space/time travel TV series and video games.Yet, what Campbell defined as THJ is pivotal to many realms of human existence and to a range of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, education, social studies, and the scholarship on ritual and religion. Unsurprisingly, THJ has a vital significance to myth, literature, cinema, television, comic books, and interactive media. The exploration of THJ phenomenon has a shared interest in the studies of imaginary worlds, as the two overlap. It is through the Wonderworld where the trajectory of the heroic journey lies. Similarly, every imaginary world—to be discovered and described—must be first visited by the traveler, through whose eyes we see it for the first time (Homer’s Odyssey, 8th century BC; Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, 1726; or Stanisław Lem’s Solaris, 1961). A journey story, by its nature, requires its unique “world of adventure” (it may be real yet astonishing, or otherworldly and fantastic, but always “full of wonder”).This newly discovered world must be traveled around and surveyed. Imaginary worlds in myth and fiction are revealed to readers and audience inevitably by their “tour guides” and principal explorers—the adventurous noble knights and similar heroic figures, who both actively engage with the Unknown and reflect on it. Campbell suggested that most adventure stories and journey tales of world mythologies, even ones created in distant cultures unknown to each other, have similar story patterns and include the same set of necessary phases. Campbell explains THJ as a sequence of three acts, Departure, Initiation, and Return, which can be further broken down into the following phases: DEPARTURE: 1. The Call to Adventure, 2. Refusal of the Call, 3. Supernatural Aid, 4. Crossing the Threshold, 5. Belly of the Whale; INITIATION: 6. The Road of Trials, 7. The Meeting with the Goddess, 8. Woman as Temptress, 9. Atonement with the Father, 10. Apotheosis, 11. The Ultimate Boon; RETURN: 12. Refusal of the Return, 13. The Magic Flight, 14. Rescue from Without, 15. The Crossing of the Return Threshold, 16. Master of Two Worlds, 17. Freedom to Live. Working on this topic between the 1920s and 1940s, Campbell seized the essence of this phenomenon, previously unknown to narrative studies. Campbell described the discovered scholarly paradigm in his various books, eventually widely popularizing the mytheme of THJ. Yet, he has never claimed the authorship of THJ narrative. But who created this storytelling recipe, this brilliant formula, and why is it so influential? If Campbell is not its true author, then who is? This issue has been a subject of confusion, and even a lawsuit. 11

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

In the 1970s, a young journalist was assigned by her newspaper to investigate what was behind the strange data showing that the middle-class men, aged 30–33, were leaving their homes in large numbers.There was no explanation why these seemingly normal, trouble-free, and well-situated males showed the determination to alter their lives. They often took off on a journey, or “unreasonably” switched from safe corporate jobs to the risky/artistic ones, and from the wives or girlfriends of their choice to those with polar opposite traits (blonds to brunettes, the smart to the silly, and vice versa). Neither small children nor the stunned, scandalized parents could stop the departing young men. But the men themselves were unable to explain their irresistible drive for a new path. Some later gained wisdom and returned to their loved ones, while others changed their life trajectories for good. What was behind this pattern, as well as the variations of outcomes? Since there were no scholars to help the young journalist in her investigation, she acted as a pioneer and discovered “life passages.” (She later acknowledged having taken classes with renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead.) This was the beginning of the highly successful career of a reporter-turned-writer and political guru, Gail Sheehy. Her book Passages and its expansion into a book series (1976, 1999) earned her fame and enviable income, but that same year she was accused of plagiarism and sued by Californian psychiatrist Roger Gould. He proved that the notes on the life crises and passages of his patients, which appeared in his medical records, predate Sheehy’s book Passages. He claimed, therefore, that he was really the inventor or discoverer, and not Ms. Sheehy. The suit was settled out of court, thus partly confirming that the psychiatrist “had a point” asserting his primary “authorship.” The story of this lawsuit, ironic to the core, highlights how little the educated participants of the controversy had known about the subject of their dispute. The anthropologists had been aware, by then, of life passages for more than a century, while humankind—our collective ancestors—not only merely acknowledged it for millennia, but had carefully addressed the means of ritual-narrative practices. The first scholar who brought attention to the phenomenon later signified as THJ was the Dutch anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in his foundational book The Rites of Passage (1909/1961). His work helped to launch an array of subfields in anthropology, resonating in the works of Mikhail Bakhtin (1928/1984; 1965/1984; 1981), Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1935/1983), Claude Levi-Strauss (1966, 1974, 1995), Mary Douglas (2002), Marshall Sahlins (1986), Ronald Grimes (1990, 2002), Peter Stoller (2008), Tom F. Driver (2006), Catherine Bell (2009), and the disciplines of symbolic anthropology and the anthropology of experience pioneered by Victor Turner (Turner 1969, 1975, 1976;Turner and Bruner, 1986; Armstrong, 1981; Losev 1985/2003), as well as the anthropology of religion that overlaps with the theories of ritual (Lambeck, 2008) and the emerging field of biosocial studies (Rappoport, 1999; Ingold and Palsson, 2013). Unlike the theorists of myth-criticism, including Campbell, who researched the connections between mythology and literature, the anthropologists focused on socio-ritual practices, which intertwined with the symbolic stories—the embedded myths.The era’s disciplinary walls prevented scholars in narrative studies from learning about the new ideas in social sciences (particularly the emerging breakthrough ideas in anthropology addressed by Levi-Strauss in the 1950s). The utmost authority on the subject, van Gennep, was followed by his disciple Victor Turner, who rose to prominence in the 1960s. An American scholar of Scottish origin, he spent many years studying ritual rites in social contexts around the world, particularly in Africa.Turner also investigated the discourse of life crises, which he linked to the forms of ritual death-rebirth, examined by him as a cultural code in his body of work. His ideas were followed by Alexander’s investigation of the ritual codes of symbolic death and symbolic death-rebirth in poetics, aesthetics, and narrative/media culture (Alexander 2007, 2013a/b, 2014, 2017). 12

T h e H e ro ’ s J o u r n e y

Indeed, we live the lives that are not the straight arrows, but ones marked by crises, c­ hallenges, thresholds, phases, and transitions. Hence, our life trajectories are punctuated by all forms of “symbolic death,” a psychological state defined by Turner as human plasma or prima materia. In this “limbo” state of “liminality,” we attempt to forsake (reject, leave) everything we know and rediscover a new sense of reality and identity; this psychological need and action is investigated by Victor Turner in the contexts of symbolic anthropology in his seminal article “Betwixt and Between,” part of the collection of his works The Forest of Symbols (1967: pp. 93–112). A crux, according to Turner, is to achieve a true transformative impact by means of turning the “symbolic death” into the “symbolic death-rebirth.” Through its structure, originated in ritual,THJ narrative amplifies and frames this transformative phenomenon, which encompasses any self-doubts, disappointments, dangerous adventures, and mortal battles that one must experience to ultimately achieve a new Self (see also: Freud, 2003). A ritualsymbolic tale, THJ enhances its transformative impact by employing a variety of immersive techniques and sensory stimuli, which refresh, excite, estrange, and sharpen our sense of reality, often by employing astonishing, colorful, and artistic images and the mysterious ways of tests, riddles, puzzles, magic, miracles, and m ­ etamorphosis. Communal experience has shown that there is no other way of changing, for the humans, including psychologically growing, than through drastic turns that lead us toward emerging identities, transforming biologically (as well as hormonally), emotionally, socially, and spiritually. Notably, these transformations must happen in a sequence of necessary steps. This type of phase transition—observed by our savvy ancestors to have occurred in all nature—is also underscored in Hegel’s laws of dialectics: the negation of negation, and the transformation of quantity into (emerging new) quality. To reflect and to facilitate such processes of change and social adjustment, humankind, in its collective wisdom—even while separated by continents and eras—distilled the most successful experiences, creating and promoting the effective type of adventure stories. Later, Campbell termed “the Hero’s Journey” that which represents the most operational developmental templates in human culture. Rooted in ancient initiation rituals—for which it was designed, and within which it was initially tried and perfected—the symbolic journey facilitates transformation, adjustment, and growth. Its initial purpose was to aid a male youth in his social transition from boy to man. Over time, this ritual-mythic narrative has expanded from the initiation rituals of the young to embrace and stimulate a range of transformative ritual-symbolic experiences for people of different ages and genders, becoming a meta-ritual template, or defining a transformative “ritual structure” per se. For example, this model also matches the scenario of a mature man’s ritual initiation into a shaman. It has also informed the increasingly popular Heroine’s Journey (or application of the traditional initiation ritual to the female youth), exemplified by such prominent media texts as Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Spirited Away (2001), Whale Rider (2002), and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Religious narratives of monotheistic belief systems have also integrated the Hero’s Journey paradigm into these faiths’ core canonical tales. Classical literature has deepened our understanding of how these socio-transformative processes are shaped in the modern world. William Shakespeare’s reflections on the critical threshold events are manifest in the dramatic life passages of the young man Hamlet and the “old fool” King Lear. These stories have added the knowledge on the new types of age-related, yet acutely political crises vital for the coherent development of individuals and societies in modernity. The Romantics—writers of Romanticism—rediscovered the power of folklore, reflecting on ritual and magic in their work at the dawn of the 19th century. They were followed by the Modernists who aspired to add the mythic-ritual elements to their artistic creations. 13

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

These trends informed the two prominent narrative studies movements of the 1920s and 1930s: the Ritual School and Myth-Criticism (also known as Mythic or Mythological Criticism), initially inspired by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James Frazer and later advanced by the Canadian narrative theorist Northrop Frye et al. Frazer was the first who, in his seminal book The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1890), highlighted the interrelated phenomena: culture’s intense focus on the cyclical processes in the natural environment and human life, and on the symbolic death-rebirth, as a cultural code. Both would later influence the scholars and artists of THJ discourse. In the avenue of myth-criticism, Joseph Campbell wrote a set of influential books, bringing attention to THJ as a timeless mythic story, while also highlighting the continual impact of myth on narrative culture. A new theory of narrative developed in the 1920s with an interest in symbolic codes (a shared focus of emerging structuralism and cybernetics; see also Cassirer, 1929/1970; Ivanov, 1977, Meletinsky, 1976/2000). The Russian narrative theorist Vladimir Propp published his exhaustive systematic study of thousands of folktales (1928), highlighting recurrent narrative formulas, including those related to THJ and its essential components and phases. Propp’s development of Structural Narratology introduced new perspectives and methods (Propp was among the earliest structuralists, mistakenly referred to as a Formalist, while he was the Formalist group’s contemporary rather than their methodological ally). Propp’s “narrative algebra” and acute interest in all things related to steps, paths, and phase transition in the story development, his acknowledgment that ritual structures are at the bottom of fairytales, defined a new direction in the study of symbolic journey and its paradigmatic plots and storylines. In his Morphology of the Folktale (1928/1968) and, particularly, in his later work, Historical Roots of Fairytale (1946), Propp linked structural narratology with anthropology, preceding the methodologies of Claude Levi-Strauss. Another turning point in THJ studies became a development of Functionalism in anthropology, inspired by the work of Emile Durkheim, Alfred Radcliffe-Brown, and Bronislaw Malinowski. This school of thought focused on the questions: how society functions as a whole. In the 1960s, Victor Turner, the disciple of van Gennep and the Functionalists, redefined symbol as a cornerstone of social processes. A follower of Functionalism, Turner can be credited with examining how the symbolic processes operate, particularly while aiding as changes; he offered new analytical techniques, an emphasis on social dynamics, and uncompromising concern with society and state. Advanced by Turner, this method had led to his unique and highly efficient blend of disciplines, Turner’s uniquely successful methodological synthesis—a productive fusion of functionalism, conflict theory, semiotics, structuralism, and ­poststructuralism—giving birth to his conceptualization of a new field termed “symbolic anthropology.” Turner’s method sees symbols as processes, and all main processes of culture as the dynamic and functional spheres of influence on society. In this context, rite of passage was evaluated as one of the primary means of socialization, as applied to both traditional and modern societies. The symbolic script of THJ is now contextually viewed as a tool of integration of individuals into a healthy community-society. Victor Turner wrote about the Sacred Journey as a core of a ritual structure. He insisted that the Journey remains capable of influencing contemporary societies, but does so by new forms of ritual-symbolic activity, including those by means of the media (Turner, 1975, 1976; Alexander, 2007, 2013a, 2017; Jenkins and Alexander, 2014. See also chapters “Mythology” and “Genre” of this volume). Summarizing the ideas of these thinkers—Frazer, van Gennep, Propp, Campbell and Turner et al.—L. A. Alexander bridged anthropological and narratological approaches, proposing “the Masterplot,” a ten-phase transition that navigates a successful rite of passage via 14

T h e H e ro ’ s J o u r n e y

a symbolic plot structure and storytelling process (Alexander, 2013a/b). Highlighted as a key narrative paradigm in Alexander’s Fictional Worlds, the symbolic journey has many goals, most importantly, epistemological: the leapfrogging of knowledge. THJ with its embedded mythologemes provides plentiful resources and has a special importance for fictional world-building, which implies the creation of the original and diverse Wonderworlds, as well as the believable Homeworlds. The former is a mysterious world in which a journey takes place, while the latter is a journey’s both: its starting point and destination—the place where the Hero’s family and community live. What lies beneath the Hero’s Journey is a phenomenon rooted in the logic of socialization, discovered and utilized by humans at the dawn of culture. Its anthropological significance explains why this formula is so influential for narratology and media theory, while encompassing and defining storytelling from myth to video game. Updates to the formulization and interpretations of THJ are not only possible but are due and timely. Encompassing the deliberations of at least four generations of scholars, THJ as an academic discourse received theoretical and methodological updates, which are important to highlight. Informed by Frazer, aided by Jung, and inspired by the artistic boom of Modernism, the myth-criticism school demonstrated impressive insight, originality, and enthusiasm in the study of narrative. Yet, it reached methodological dead-ends, neglecting the study of historicity and cultural diversity of a symbolic expression, and the influential dynamics between literature and society. Campbell established his earlier theoretical framework borrowing from psychoanalysis and the semiotics of culture, largely influenced by Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. The dated components of Campbell’s approach toward THJ reside in the umbrella of Jungian conception of culture and a trend to firmly explain symbols as “defined once and for all” while disregarding the ethnic and historical diversity of symbolization in culture. (For example,Vogler, a fervid follower of Campbell, in The Writer’s Journey, 3rd ed., 2007, defines the sirens of the Greek mythology as the universal symbol of “women as danger”; without even suggesting that alternative interpretations are possible.) While Campbell remains one of the most inspirational and effective scholars of THJ discourse, some concepts, typically revoked as outlined by Campbell, may be viewed as dated or questionable. For example, the notion of archetype has been replaced in anthropology with the concept of dominant symbols (provable and rooted in the practices recorded by ethnographic research, as proposed by Turner). Another questionable term is a monomyth, which implies that there is one core mythic paradigm that defines all mythology. Instead, contemporary symbolic anthropology identifies a spectrum (more than one!) of dominant symbols and core symbolic processes that cover the main spheres of human experience. Psychoanalysis, particularly the Jungian method used by Campbell as his underlying theoretical basis, has been replaced in the discussions of THJ with the framework of new emerging disciplines, such as social and symbolic anthropology, semiotics, narratology, cultural theory, etc. Other often highlighted flaws include reliance on universal symbolic categories and thinking in generic terms about meaning-making in various cultures, ethnicities, and demographics. As mentioned above, it is precisely the lack of the following that diminished the authority of the Jungian method in THJ studies: (a) an historical approach toward symbolism (usually containing the layers of meaning), (b) the acknowledgment of diversity in cultural, ethnic, demographical, and gender-defined formation and interpretation of symbols, as well as (c) the dynamic and fluid nature of symbols. The latter is highlighted in such recent notions as symbolic processes (Turner), crystallization of symbols (Freidenberg), unfolding symbols (Lotman), and signification or resignification—giving a new symbolic meaning (­ poststructuralism), as 15

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

well as the simulacrum—a symbolic construct aimed at displacing or even replacing reality (Baudrillard, 1995). Some elements of sequential logic in Campbell’s formula may be questioned when ­factoring in the substantial works of other anthropologists and narratologists. In the sequence of THJ phases, as proposed by Campbell, some segments may be viewed as optional (No. 3 “Refusal of the Call”), or placed in a different order. For example, No. 4 “Meeting a Mentor” is not principal at the early phase preceding “Crossing the Threshold,” and can be more logically placed at the epicenter of the journey, at the onset of “Resurrection.” In fact, meeting various examiners and helpers (Propp) happens earlier while the Mentor (Donor or Sacred Instructor, as per Propp and Turner) emerges essentially later, with the message of paramount importance and while sharing the breakthrough knowledge. Alternatively to Campbell’s succession, “The Reward,” “The Road Back,” and “The Resurrection” can be more logically linked as a following sequence: “Meeting the Mentor” (who is a catalyst of rebirth), “The Resurrection,” “The Reward” (only offered to the one enlightened), followed by “The Road Back” (see Alexander’s Fictional Worlds, chapters 3–4). In our grasp of the logic of THJ, recent theories of the ritual process, particularly rites of passage, including initiation rites, which respond to developmental crises, must be taken into consideration, particularly those by Arnold van Gennep, Emile Durkheim,Victor Turner, and their followers in ritual theory (Mead, 1928a/b, 1999, 2003; Douglas, 2002; Lewis, 2003; Eliade, 1998; Lambeck, 2008; Grimes, 2002; Sahlin, 1986; Somé, 1997; Ingold and Palsson, 2013).The rise of structural narratology, stemming from Propp and advanced by Levi-Strauss, followed by the Tartu School’s thinkers (Lotman, Ivanov), adds not merely plentiful new narrative examples but also the alternative models of the embedded phase transition. While close to those of Frazer, van Gennep, Propp, Campbell, and Turner, other emerging and possible interpretations may offer useful takes on the sequential logic of THJ. Regardless of different approaches to the “thresholds of change” in THJ, the comprehensive understanding of its meaning offers the artist a deeper grasp of THJ paradigm in its anthropological significance. Curious writers are advised to examine various discussions on the phase transition in the author’s book Fictional Worlds, and then compare/contrast them, in order to establish one’s own understanding of this profoundly inspiring creative formula. In the media today, the Hero’s Journey formula and treatise are gaining increasingly more significance. Its influence spreads with the emergence of the visually intensified, immersive, and interactive narrative discourse. Much has been written about the Hero’s Journey as an underlying structure in contemporary storytelling—one that is explicitly evoked by many working in the industry, from George Lucas’s open acknowledgment of the insights he drew from Joseph Campbell to the use of these concepts in many of the most widely used books on screenwriting. From Star Trek to The X-Files, and from the Harry Potter series to The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) and beyond, most of contemporary adventure stories employ the core elements of the Symbolic Journey. THJ is a continuous source of inspiration, unfailing and infinite, for creative writers in any medium. It offers a reliable logical structure on which to lean and a plethora of modifiable exciting elements from which to choose. The formula requires a modeling system structured by means of the tests, trials, and suspenseful elements of “symbolic death-rebirth,” which Turner defined as the ritual-symbolic forms of “dying from” and “dying to”—the excruciating path of growing into a new and matured person. We can call THJ a “framework of the thresholds of change” that constitutes a logical phase transition (or a cultural approach toward understanding change as a process). While the core of THJ is cogent and iron-clad, the variable parts are narratively astonishing and gripping. They encompass stimulating events and characters, such as riddles, challenges, 16

T h e H e ro ’ s J o u r n e y

battles, thresholds, taboo, magic beings, mystery, dragons, aliens, confinement, devouring, saving, noble knights, supportive gurus, enlightening, magic gifts, and manifestations of sacred knowledge. The ­dramatic encyclopedia of THJ, with its array of movable parts, ensures a thrilling entertainment. Yet, while flexible, these variables must be properly aligned with the logic of the process. The THJ databank of imagery serves as the means to both: creating plots and making sense of contemporary tales, particularly those with the adventure, fantasy, or sci-fi storylines, even for crime fiction and neo noir. What can we find as the use value of the Hero’s Journey as a tool for authors in structuring contemporary stories is addressed in Vogler (2007) and Alexander (2013a/b). The popularity of THJ in the media discourse is not without controversies, particularly when the formula and its components are superficially overused, misused, and even abused. As any efficient symbolic order, endowed with an intrinsic persuasive power,THJ is especially attractive to those eager to employ it for political or commercial gain. Western societies have lost or given up on the effective initiation mechanisms, similar to those employed by the ancients (Mead, 1928a/b, 1942, 1999, 2000, 2003). It is not a secret that it is the modern media that has attempted to take upon itself this role, with mixed results. Most media practitioners or those who manage them as a business have little understanding of the true “initiating” role of THJ for individuals and societies. They see its profitability, resulting from the continuously flocking audiences, and promptly harvest the profits. Since THJ, in actuality, is manifest today within the media realm, the deeper understanding of its logic and message by the practitioners, audiences, critics, parents, and affected individuals is vital to culture and society. The anthropological significance of THJ explains how it functions as both a tool for the authors in structuring the story and a means by which the audience (readers/game players) can interpret this narrative formula and benefit from it. It is through the use of this tool, the “journey”—essentially a ritual mechanism—that the two groups meet, as the Initiating and the Initiands (to borrow Turner’s terms). Both the former and the latter need the knowledge encoded within this narrative paradigm. Initiands are the story heroes and all of us, the audience. The Initiating, however, are those who embed in the story their ideology in the form of the “sacred message” they deem essential. Any idea adeptly promoted as the story’s enlightening moment obtains immediate social influence. Thus, through any new THJ media text, the propositions for the “superior” and “necessary” knowledge can be propagated and advanced. In any era, audiences are exposed to the enormous persuasive power of THJ texts, which promote the range of the know-how templates we “should” link to the idea of progress, and build our futures upon. Along with politically controversial messages promoted as “enlightenment,” no less destructive are the superficial uses of THJ with no real message at all. Readers are aware of the fact that popular culture is overpopulated with fake heroes and recognize that media is oversaturated with cheap imitations of the Journey story. Dragons and zombies have been overworked and lost their evil appeal. Software makes it a breeze to create assembly lines of unimaginable beings (Men in Black, 1997), but often neither the monsters nor the authors know what they are doing in the story. The Initiands, sword-wielding or shooting from the hip, promptly destroy their enemies, but gain no wisdom and return without a message for community. The visual candy of special effects has been widely accepted as the exciting “key points” of the story. Aspiring artists and game developers, who seriously study THJ, need to know what is missing from their scripts, what “can go wrong,” and which missteps to avoid in designing an innovative yet true to its purpose Journey World of their own. Writers and video game designers, who are making scriptwriting choices and searching for effective narrative forms, will be rewarded by the audiences’ grateful attention. 17

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

While watching stories or participating in games, modern-day audiences are already invested in the transformative journey. To make sense of contemporary stories, which employ the Hero’s Journey in obvious or subtle ways, audiences consciously or subconsciously focus on the story structure and its embedded transformative arc. In the best media examples, their identification with the Initiand is empathetic and profound.The hero could be an undercover agent, or a youth in a road movie, while the confusing circumstances and hard-to-read strangers may substitute for the symbolic maze of the Wonderworld and its magic populace. The crux of the matter is that the hero must face the unknown, be insightful and diplomatic, face pain, confront fears, open his or her mind to the new higher knowledge, and thus “win” and then return as a transformed grown man, or an empowered confident woman, with a gift of new wisdom to community; and so does the audience, which has accompanied the Heroes on the Journey all along.

References Alexander, Lily A. (2007), “Storytelling in Time and Space: Studies in Chronotope and Narrative Logic on Screen,” Journal of Narrative Theory,Vol. 37, No. 1, Winter 2007, 27–64. Alexander, Lily A. (2013a), Fictional Worlds:Traditions in Narrative & The Age of Narrative Culture. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace. Alexander, Lily A. (2013b), Fictional Worlds I:The Symbolic Journey & The Genre System. Expanded, interactive, and illustrated edition. iTunes, iBookstore. Alexander, Lily A. (2017), “Fictional World-Building as Ritual, Drama & Medium,” in Mark J. P. Wolf, editor, Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology, New York, NY: Routledge, p.14–45. Armstrong, Robert P. (1981), The Power of Presence: Consciousness, Myth, and Affective Presence. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ashley, Kathleen. M. (1990), Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1928/1984), Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1965/1984), Rabelais and His World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Baudrillard, Jean (1995), Simulacra and Simulations. Ann Arbor, MI. University of Michigan Press. Bell, Catherine (2009), Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Revised Edition. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Campbell, Joseph (1949), The Hero with A Thousand Faces. New York: Pantheon Books. Campbell, Joseph (1968), The Hero with A Thousand Faces. 2nd edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Campbell, Joseph (1990), Transformations of Myth through Time. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. Campbell, Joseph (2011), Myths to Live by:The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell. Kindle Edition. Cassirer, Ernst (1929/1970), The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. 3 Vol. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Douglas, Mary (2002), Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London and New York: Routledge. Driver, Tom F. (2006), Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual. Charleston, SC: BookSurge Publishing. Eliade, Mircea. (1998), Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth. New York, NY: Spring Publications. Frazer, James George (1890/1996), The Illustrated Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Freidenberg, Olga (1997), Image and Concept: Mythopoetic Roots of Literature. New York, NY: Routledge. Freud, Sigmund (2003), The Uncanny. London: Penguin. Geertz, Clifford (1993), “Religion as a cultural system,” in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, London: Fontana Press. 18

T h e H e ro ’ s J o u r n e y

Grimes, Ronald L. (1990), Ritual Criticism Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Grimes, Ronald L. (2002), Deeply into the Bone: Re-Inventing Rites of Passage. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ingold, Tim and Gisli Palsson, eds. (2013), Biosocial Becomings: Integrating Social and Biological Anthropology. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Ivanov, Vyacheslav V. (1977), The Essays on the History of Semiotics in the USSR. In Russian. Moscow: Science. Jenkins, Henry and Lily Alexander (2014), “Why Humans Tell the Stories They Do: An Interview with Lily Alexander,” A six-part dialogue and interview series, April 1–15, 2014, available at http://henryjenkins.org/2014/04/why-humans-tell-the-stories-they-do-an-interview-with-lily-alexanderpart-one.html. Jung, Carl, ed. (1964), Man and His Symbols. New York, NY: Doubleday. Lambek, Michael, ed. (2008), A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion. 2nd edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1966), The Savage Mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1974), Structural Anthropology. New York, NY: Basic Books. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1995), Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture. New York, NY: Schocken. Levy-Bruhl, Lucien (1935/1983), Primitive Mythology: The Mythic World of the Australian and Papuan Natives. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Losev, Alexei (1985/2003), The Dialectics of Myth. London and New York: Routledge. Lewis, I. M. (2003), Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession. 3d edition. London and New York: Routledge. Lotman, Yuri (2001), Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Mead, Margaret (1928a/2016), Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. Reprint edition. New York, NY: William Morrow. Mead, Margaret (1928b), Growing Up in New Guinea: A Comparative Study of Primitive Education. Reprint edition. New York, NY: William Morrow. Margaret Mead (1999), Coming of Age in America. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. Mead, Margaret (2000), The Study of Culture at a Distance: The Study of Contemporary Western Culture. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books. Mead, Margaret (2003), Studying Contemporary Western Society: Method and Theory. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books. Meletinsky, Eleazar M. (1976/2000), The Poetics of Myth. London and New York, Routledge. Propp,Vladimir (1946), Historical Roots of the Wonder Tale. In Russian. SPB: Leningrad State University. Propp,Vladimir (1968), Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd edition. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Propp,Vladimir (1984), Theory and History of Folklore. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rappoport, Roy. (1999). Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity: Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Sahlins, Marshall (1986), Islands of History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sheehy, Gail. (1976), Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. U.S.: E.P. Dutton. Sheehy, Gail. (1999), Understanding Men’s Passages: Discovering the New Map of Men’s Lives. U.S.: Ballantine Books. Somé, Malidoma Patrice (1997), Ritual: Power, Healing and Community. London, U.K.: Penguin. Stoller, Paul (2008), The Power of the Between: An Anthropological Odyssey. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Turner,Victor W. (1967), The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press. Turner, Victor W. (1969), The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press. Turner, Victor W. (1975), Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Turner,Victor W. (1976),“African Ritual and Western Literature: Is a Comparative Symbology Possible?” Ed. Angus Fletcher. The Literature of Fact. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, pp. 45–81. Turner, Victor W., and Edward M. Bruner, eds. (1986), The Anthropology of Experience. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.

19

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

Van Gennep, Arnold. (1909/1961), The Rites of Passage. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Vogler, Christopher (2007), The Writer’s Journey. 3rd edition. LA: Radio City: Michael Weisman Productions. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York, NY: Routledge. Wolf, Mark J. P., ed. (2017), Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology. New York, NY: Routledge.

20

3

Invented Languages Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins Language invention has occupied many brilliant minds throughout history, from the ­philosophically driven pursuit for the prelapsarian “perfect language” of Adam in the Middle Ages (Eco, 1995) to the more utilitarian 20th-century aim of facilitating communication in an increasingly globalized world by creating languages such as Esperanto and its offspring (see Okrent, 2009). At the same time, language play and language invention seem to be as much of a common human activity as is the building of imaginary worlds. In fact, one field where the two often meet naturally and effortlessly is the case of childhood paracosms (see “Worlds as Paracosms” in this volume). Invented languages emerging out of childhood play and world-building can be seen in the childhood experiences of several authors and artists, often leading to more developed imaginative works in adulthood. Root-Bernstein’s recent study of paracosms includes in children’s “world-play” the composition of “languages and codes” alongside stories, histories, ­pictures, maps, etc. (2014: 70). An early example is recounted by the British writer and scholar Benjamin Heath Malkin in his A Father’s Memoirs of His Child (1806), an account of the life and premature death of Malkin’s son, Thomas Williams Malkin. Memoirs describes Thomas as a child prodigy and the inventor of an imaginary country called Allestone, which included an invented language based on Latin (Ibid.: 82). The son of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hartley Coleridge, also invented a world called Ejuxria, complete with peoples, geography, and invented languages (Ibid.: 85). Moreover, in childhood, the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, along with his sister Nannerl, invented the fantasy kingdom of Rücken (“the backward kingdom”) in which Mozart and his sister were the king and queen. Inhabitants of Rücken spoke a secret backward language (Morris, 1994: 52). Perhaps the most significant early example of “world-play” that included language invention comes from the early works of the Brontë children, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne. As children the Brontës created several invented worlds that they brought to life with narratives, maps, pictures, and elements of language invention. These activities occurred in 1826, after the death of their mother, when Charlotte Brontë was ten years old, Branwell nine, Emily eight, and Anne six. Branwell had received a set of twelve wooden soldiers from their father, which sparked a set of imaginary characters who the children called the “Young Men” or the “Twelves.” In their adventures, the “Twelves” eventually set foot in Africa, where the children conceived a fanciful “Great Glass Town” encompassing a confederacy of soldier-ruled lands, and an invented language based upon the Yorkshire dialect (Brontë, 2010: 47). Even arguably the greatest inventor of fictional languages, J. R. R. Tolkien, indicates in his essay “A Secret Vice” that his earliest experience with language invention and elements of world-building 21

Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins

may have been partially inspired by play with his two cousins Mary and Marjorie Incledon, who were engaged in inventing nursery languages such as Animalic (Tolkien, 2016: 8–12). As the example of childhood paracosms demonstrates, language invention is often an ­integral “infrastructure” for building imaginary worlds, and this is true both for fiction and for contemporary cinematic and digital narratives. Indeed, “con-langs” (constructed languages) or “art-langs” (art languages) have been used widely to support and enhance world-building, though with varying degrees of complexity and completeness. The spectrum of language invention is a broad one. Often authors only mention an imaginary language, without necessarily giving any samples of that language in their narratives. For example, in The Memoirs of Planetes, or a Sketch of the Laws and Manners of Makar (1795), Thomas Northmore describes a strange place called Makar where his fictional explorer learns the language of the natives.The language is evoked by Northmore to emphasize the strangeness of the people encountered in Makar, but no actual examples of the language are recorded (Wolf, 2012: 186). Moreover, several authors of “weird literature” have invented and evoked just the name of languages to add a sense of mystery and even horror to their narratives. A good example of this is the invented language of Aklo first mentioned by Arthur Machen in his story “The White People” (1899) and then used again by H. P. Lovecraft in his Cthulhu mythos (specifically in his stories “The Dunwich Horror” (1929) and “The Haunter in the Dark” (1936)) to describe a necromantic language that if spoken would call forth demonic and evil powers (see Clore, 2009: 32–33). Nevertheless, by ascribing to them particular qualities and values, such merely named languages can still be used to characterize their speakers and their culture. A frequent usage of invented languages is naming. Ursula K. Le Guin notes that all writers of fiction with an entirely imaginary setting have to “play Adam” in that they must make up names for the characters and creatures of their fictive world (Conley and Cain, 2006: xvii). Naming is, indeed, a subcreative act: it can be used to introduce new ideas or concepts, or to cast the Primary World word in a new light. Naming can also be used to emphasize the “otherness” of a particular race or culture in a secondary world. For example, in many English science fiction works there is a tendency to use infrequent English consonants (such as Q, X, and Z) and dense consonant clusters in the names of aliens in order to stress this sense of “otherness” (ibid.). Language inventors who take particular care to construct nomenclature that is coherent and consistent exploit the potential of linguistic invention even further, using it to give the illusion of an imaginary world with what Tolkien called the “inner consistency of reality” (Tolkien, 2008: 59), himself being a chief practitioner. As we shall see below, Tolkien did not only invent names, but also complete vocabularies, phonologies, grammars, visual writing systems, and other paratextual documents. Tolkien’s legacy of detailed language invention is clear in the work of Ursula K. Le Guin, Tom Shippey, and more recently Mark Okrand and David J. Peterson. The invention of fictional languages that contribute to world-building has historically moved alongside a number of different parallel cultural and literary processes: (a) the development of genres that rely on constructing imaginary worlds (from utopias and travelers’ tales to science fiction and fantasy); (b) the evolution of learned or scientific thinking about the origins, nature, and role of language in human societies; (c) the history of invented languages in the Primary World, with the intention to be used for communication (from a priori philosophical languages to a posteriori International Auxiliary Languages); and (d) ultimately the historical, cultural, and social context in which they (and their imaginary worlds) are born. It is not an accident that the earliest example usually cited of an “art-lang” to flesh out an imaginary world is to be found in a genre known as “the traveler’s tale.” This narrative framework became popular in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. It merged fiction and 22

I n v e n t e d L a n g ua g e s

­ on-fiction in accounts of travels to distant lands and encounters with strange peoples, some n real and some invented.Two early examples of this mix of historical and fictional traveler’s tales is Marco Polo’s account of his real journey to the East in his Travels (c. 1298) and the fictional account of a crusader knight’s supposed travels and adventures in the East in The Book of Sir John Mandeville (c. 1357) that actually imitated Polo’s chronicle. The fictional “traveler’s tales” that followed used this trope to mirror these real-world explorations and have an invented traveler encounter new and strange lands, peoples, and languages. One of the earliest of these is Thomas More’s Utopia (1516). More included in the back of the 1516 edition of Utopia a poetic quatrain written in his invented language of “Utopian.” This quatrain starts with the line “Utopos ha Boccas peu la-chama polta chamaan” (Conley and Cain, 2006: 202) and clearly indicates that Utopian was an a posteriori language based on elements of Latin, Greek, Italian, and even Persian (before becoming Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor and subsequently executed, More was a noted European diplomat). More included a Latin translation of the quatrain for his readers. Editions that followed included an invented alphabet either by More or his humanist colleague Peter Giles to visually represent the Utopian language (see Conley and Cain, 2006: 201–203). After More, arguably the best-known traveler’s tale is Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), an important landmark in this early use of language invention as a key component of world-building combined with political satire. Swift created names, place-names, and phrases in several imaginative languages spoken by the residents of the fantastical places where Lemuel Gulliver is shipwrecked. One of the unique elements of Swift’s language invention was its sound-aesthetic construction, which helped distinguish between the nature and culture of the different peoples that Gulliver encountered on his fantastical travels (see David Alff ’s chapter in this volume). A good example of how this works is to contrast the phonetic makeup of the fragments Swift gives of the Lilliputian language, which tends to have words that end in open vowels, with the sound aesthetic of the language spoken on the island of Glubbdubdrib (“The Island of Sorcerers”), which tends to use hard consonants and word endings in plosive and dental phonemes. Another example of Swift’s focus on the sound of his invented languages can be seen elsewhere in the language of the Houyhnhnm, a race of civilized horses. For the Houyhnhnm, Swift invents and gives examples of words that use onomatopoeia to bring to mind the sounds of a horse’s whinny (e.g., “Gnnauyh” means “bird of prey”). The Enlightenment brought a new focus on philosophy, science (especially mathematics), and a desire for a language that would express the new scientific “truths” as clearly and perfectly as mathematical notation. Several philosophers, including Francis Lodwick, Gottfried Leibniz, John Wilkins, and George Delgarno attempted to construct a universal philosophical language that would be based on a logical and mathematical description of the universe (see Okrent, 2009: 19–75). These types of philosophical languages are called a priori languages as they do not reflect any overt elements of real world languages. Several fiction authors would reflect the flavor and structure of philosophical languages in their world-building. For example, in his 1676 work La Terre Australe Connue (The Southern Land Known) Gabriel de Foigny invented a language called “Australian” that reflects the a priori structure of the universal philosophic languages (see Conley and Cain, 2006: 167–169). In “Australian,” for example, the five vowels represent the five primary elements: fire (a), air (e), salt (o), water (i), and earth (u), while the consonants stand for other elemental words or ideas (e.g., c = hot). Foigny wrote that “the advantage of this system is that one becomes a philosopher as soon as one learns the first elements of speech. One can not name anything in that country without at the same time making explicit its nature” (cited in Rogers, 2011: 168). By the 19th century, the a priori languages of the previous era had given way to international languages that sought to bring different peoples closer together by simplifying the 23

Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins

vocabulary, grammatical structure, and syntax of existing natural languages. These “auxiliary languages” were meant to facilitate communication at a time when the world was seemingly becoming smaller. The most well-known of these auxiliary languages is Esperanto (see Okrent, 2009: 79–124). Alongside what became a vogue for international languages, a paradigm shift in the study of language also influenced the construction of art-langs. Philosophy gave way to philology, with 18th- and 19th-century philologists becoming interested in the existence of a “proto-language” spoken by a hypothetical common people, the Indo-Europeans, which through time and migration had become splintered into different language groups and dialects. A good example of this dialogue between this academic paradigm shift and the invention of art-languages is the idiom of Vril-ya in Edward BulwerLytton’s early dystopian science fiction story The Coming Race (1871), which Bulwer-Lytton dedicated to the Oxford philologist Max Müller (1823–1900). Bulwer-Lytton imaginatively incorporated Müller’s ideas on language development and decay that had been explored by Müller in The Stratification of Language (1868). Yaguello (1991) has characterized BulwerLytton’s The Coming Race as a work that “most deserves the name of fiction-linguistics. For the language of Vril-ya is constructed as an extrapolation from the accepted truths of the linguistic science of the time” (p. 45). By the late 19th and early 20th century, BulwerLytton’s The Coming Race had become very popular with various occult groups in England and Germany. In 1891, a group of fans of Bulwer-Lytton’s work organized a “Coming Race Bazaar” fundraiser. For one weekend, the Royal Albert Hall in London was converted into the cavern of the Vril and participants were encouraged to speak in Vril-ya aided by printed brochures containing a glossary of the language, including some conversational phrases to be used in greeting (Anon, 1891: 129)—an event that can easily be considered as a predecessor of today’s science fiction and fantasy conventions where participants speak art-languages like Klingon and Dothraki. It was upon these academic principles and imaginative predecessors that the author and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien built his own unique body of invented languages intertwined with his myth-making and world-building. Tolkien both built upon the tradition of language invention for fiction that preceded him and at the same time pushed forward the role of art-langs as capable of mythopoeia. Tolkien was also one of the first practitioners to theorize language invention for fiction, most importantly in his paper “A Secret Vice” delivered at Pembroke College, Oxford, on November 29, 1931. In this talk Tolkien charts his own experience with early language play and invention, moving gradually from codes or replacement languages such as Animalic to languages that exhibited elements of unique phono-aesthetic qualities that Tolkien found attractive, such as “Naffarin” (see Tolkien, 2016). These early attempts would lead in circa 1915 to Tolkien inventing the earliest versions of his Elvish languages that, as they developed, would become inextricably connected to his world-building of Arda (see “Tolkien’s Arda” in this volume). In “A Secret Vice” Tolkien outlined several key characteristics that invented languages for fiction should have, all of which are reflected in his own Elvish language invention. The first two of these are interrelated and mutually supporting: the creation of word forms that sound aesthetically pleasing and a sense of fitness between word form and meaning. These ideas are most prevalent in Tolkien’s Elvish language of Quenya, one of the main languages spoken by Tolkien’s Elves, and meant to reflect the highest and purest of his imagined beings. An example of this aesthetic can be seen in the first line of the Elvish poem “Namarië” from The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955):“Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen, / yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!” (Tolkien, 2004: 377). As this line shows, Quenya words and names tend to contain open vowels reflecting the Finnish language sound aesthetic that Tolkien had found attractive from an early age. 24

I n v e n t e d L a n g ua g e s

A contrasting use of invented words with a different sound-sense to emphasize the nature of the peoples speaking it is evident in Tolkien’s Black Speech (a language invented by the Dark Lord Sauron in mockery of the Elvish languages), as evident in the first line of the inscription on the Ring of Power with its use of harsh consonant clusters: “Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul” (Ibid.: 254). A third characteristic of Tolkien’s language invention is his construction of elaborate grammars that very few previous inventors of fictional languages engaged with in such detail. Tolkien’s language papers are still in the process of being published, and they reflect a rich corpus of phonologies, grammars, and word-lists from the different conceptual periods of Tolkien’s creative work. The fourth characteristic that Tolkien emphasized is the intertwining of myth and language to create “an illusion of historicity” (Tolkien, 1981: 143) through which art-langs could imaginatively reflect how languages change over (hypothetical) time and through cross-migration of peoples. Tolkien used these four elements to invent a complex and detailed system of art-langs that reflected the different conceptual periods of Tolkien’s creative development of his legendarium. As explored above, Tolkien focused on ensuring that the nomenclature that built his world, and appeared in such para-textual elements as maps and family trees, had a coherence and consistency as well as a dominant element of sound-symbolism by developing a series of base roots from which words and names were derived and could be traced back to. In the 1930s Tolkien expanded the two key strands of his Elvish language invention to reflect the growing world and cultures he was building. It would be this work that would first appear to readers in his two key published works The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955). Tolkien’s use of invented languages to world-build up to this point is unique and would also greatly influence the art-languages for fiction that would follow him. By the late 1960s, the aftermath of two World Wars, the advent of the Cold War, and growing political and social tensions became reflected in some of the key art-langs that were developed for dystopian fiction. A linguistic theory of the time that was used by several authors to conceptualize these types of art-langs is known as the “Sapir-Whorf ” hypothesis. According to this theory, named after linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, the structure of language influences the modes of thought of the culture in which it is spoken. Authors of fiction would explore this concept in their world-building by reflecting the type of culture they invented in the vocabulary of the invented language. In his dystopian novel of the future, Nineteen Eighty-Four (written in 1947–8), George Orwell imaginatively explored the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis by depicting a linguistic horror in which thought is suppressed through the diminishment of words (and thus ideas) in the language of Newspeak. Orwell invented the a posteriori language of Newspeak to represent the thought control applied by “Big Brother” (IngSoc). As with other art-languages surveyed above, Orwell drew his inspiration for Newspeak from an attempt by a real-world philologist, C. K. Ogden, to distill the English language down into 850 core words, called “Basic English” (see Okrent, 2009: 139). In A Clockwork Orange (1962) Anthony Burgess invented an a posteriori language called Nadsat that falls more into the category of slang, cant, or argot, from elements of Russian and Eastern European languages. Nadsat represents the rebellious language that Alex and his band of delinquent “droogs” speak. It is through Alex’s first-person narration of the text in Nadsat that the reader becomes part of the dystopian and violent world of A Clockwork Orange. Another example of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis influencing the use of language in fiction is Jack Vance’s Languages of Pao (1958) in which Vance explores how a whole race’s mental framework can be converted from one of pacifism to one of aggression by changing the nature of the language the next generation of the Paonese is taught. This is achieved by developing a new language in which words and grammatical structure are designed to c­ reate 25

Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins

more aggressive feelings and attitudes among the new generation of learners. This use of language to change thinking prevents the planet of Pao from being invaded but also creates a new more aggressive race that becomes a threat itself. In the late 20th century and up to the present day, language invention as part of worldbuilding would ultimately become the domain of professional linguists hired by producers of motion-pictures, television shows, and computer games to include invented languages in the transmedial storytelling of such franchises as Star Trek, Star Wars, and most recently George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. With the rise of the Internet in the early 1990s, many of these art-languages would become part of online communities of fans who would both learn and use the languages as they engaged with, and built upon, these transmedial texts. For example, linguist Mark Okrand was hired to invent Klingon, an art-lang spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe, one of the largest and most popular science fiction franchises that has been created around a secondary world (see Mary McAuley’s chapter in this volume, “Roddenberry’s Star Trek Galaxy”). As Okrent (2009) has discussed, Klingon is one of the first art-languages that has truly superseded its role as a fictional language in a diegetic secondary world environment (the transmedial world of Star Trek) to become a language that is used in a community for social communication (in varying degrees) by a group of speakers who dress up as Klingons and celebrate the Klingon culture at conventions called “qep’a.”What started as an art-language for fictional characters has now moved into the realm of a type of auxiliary language for communication among a group of people who are interacting and immersing themselves in the imaginary culture this language helped shape (see Okrent, 2009: 255–272). Another art-language that came out of a fictional television series was Paku, developed for the American television series Land of the Lost (1974–1976) in which the Marshalls, a family of modern explorers, become trapped in a prehistoric alternative universe, ostensibly revising the age-old traveler’s tale trope for television. Paku was invented by a professor of linguistics,Victoria Fromkin, to be spoken by the small ape-like humanoids that the family encounters and befriends, the race of the Pakuni. To invent the dialogue Fromkin created an English-to-Paku dictionary (Conley and Cain, 2006: 107). In a similar fashion, in 2009, Paul Frommer, a professor at the USC Marshall School of Business with a doctorate in linguistics, invented Na’vi for the world-building of Pandora in the film and later transmedial computer game of Avatar (Wolf, 2012: 188). Language invention has also been used in the world-building of computer games, from the earliest text-based world-building games to the massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) of today, like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) and Dragon Age: Origins (2009). Gargesh, the language of Gargoyles in Ultima IV (1990), was one of the first languages developed for a video game.This a posteriori language was designed by Herman Miller and was intended to be difficult to learn. It features a flexible word order and parts of speech and tenses that are made clear through gestures and intonations. Another highly complex and enigmatic imaginary language is D’ni, which was invented for the immersive world of Myst (1993). D’ni was the diegetic language of an ancient race who had the ability to create portals to other worlds by writing about them in books. In the sequel to Myst, the video game Riven (1997), the player needed to understand the numeric system of D’ni to solve puzzles in the game. To aid the player, additional materials on D’ni were published giving clues as to how to read the language (see Portnow, 2011: 144–146; and Wolf, 2012: 228–229). To date, the most complex invented language created for a MMOG has been Logos, created for Tabula Rasa (2007), a MMOG that failed to catch on with players. Logos was designed to be a highly complex symbolic language that a player would master through immersing themselves in the environment of the online secondary world by collecting logos and symbols, which they would add to their Logos Table. 26

I n v e n t e d L a n g ua g e s

However, the game itself had many flaws and after investing millions in its production it was pulled after one year and taken offline in 2009 (see Portnow, 2011: 154–155). Current games like Lord of the Rings Online (2007) also use elements of Tolkien’s Elvish languages to build a virtual Middle-earth environment. The most recent major example of language invention inextricably linked to world-building is Dothraki, which was created for HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–present), the television adaption of George R. R. Martin’s historical fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–present). In the novels, Dothraki is spoken by a population of Hun-like, loosely confederated tribes of horse-riding warriors who make their home on the steps of Essos in the invented world of Westeros. The Dothraki do not have a writing system or use books, and the language is used purely for day-to-day communication. In 2008, the creators of the HBO series D. B. Weiss and David Benioff approached the Language Creation Society about creating the Dothraki language which, in the first three volumes of his series, Martin gave a fairly small set of words and phrases for but did not invent as a language that could be used in dialogue. A contest of linguists from around the world was launched to invent this language. After two rounds of judging from among 30 language inventors, David J. Peterson’s 300-page Dothraki proposal was selected and he became the “inventor” of the dialogue for the pilot to the HBO series. The Sapir-Whorf element of the language can be seen in the Dothraki expression Ana Dothrak Chek, which is used for “I am fine” but literally means “I ride well,” indicating the centrality of the horse culture of the Dothraki people. The very name Dothraki comes from the verb “dorthralat,” to ride (Peterson, 2014: 37–38). For the last season of the HBO series, Peterson also developed another invented language, High Valyrian, which, again, is only mentioned in Martin’s original novels. In contrast to Dothraki, High Valyrian is meant to be a language used for learning and education among the nobility of Essos and Westeros, as well as in song and literature, not unlike the role that Tolkien’s Quenya would play in the Third Age of Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings. Peterson has gone on to invent languages for other transmedial world-building environments, including Castithan, Irathient, and Omec for a post-apocalyptic Earth in the science fiction television show Defiance (2013–2015) as well as the language of Dark Elves, Shivaisith, for the Norse underworld of the movie Thor:The Dark World (2013) (see Peterson, 2015). The interlacing of language invention with other elements of world-building is now a natural element of fantasy and science fiction texts.The prevalence of these languages attached to some of the most popular transmedial franchises of all time has also inspired people to invent their own languages not just for fiction (of all types) but also as a purely private pleasure. For example, the inventor of the art-language Dothraki (and many others) David Peterson has stated that he was inspired by a puzzling use of a word in one of the Star Wars languages used in The Return of the Jedi (1983) to start inventing his own languages (Peterson, 2015: 3–4). The Language Creation Society (http://conlang.org) currently lists hundreds of language inventors and books such as Mark Rosenfelder’s Language Construction Kit (2010) and David Peterson’s own The Art of Language Invention (2015) to give aspiring language inventors handbooks with which to invent new languages. Today, both in the Primary World and secondary worlds, language invention is being used not only for world-building but also to enhance, better describe, and illuminate the real world as well.

Further Reading Adams, M. (ed.) (2011), From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 27

Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins

Conley,T. and Cain S. (eds.) (2006), Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages, London: Greenwood Press. Okrent, Arika (2009), In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon, Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers who Tried to Build a Perfect Language, New York: Spiegel & Grau. Peterson, D. (2015), The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark-Elves, the Words behind WorldBuilding, New York: Penguin Books. Tolkien, J. R. R. (2016), A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Language Invention, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins, London: HarperCollins. Yaguello, Marina (1991), Lunatic Lovers of Language: Imaginary Languages and Their Inventors, translated by Catherine Slater, London: Athlone Press.

References Anon. (1891), “Revelations of a Reveller,” Punch, 100 (March 14), p. 129. Brontë, C., Brontë, E., and Brontë, A. (2010), Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal: Selected Writings, edited by Christine Alexander, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bulwer-Lytton, E. (2009[1871]), Vril:The Power of the Coming Race, New York: CreateSpace. Burgess, A. (1962), A Clockwork Orange, New York: Penguin Books. Clore, D. (2009), Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon, New York: Hippocampus Press. Conley,T. and Cain, S. (eds.) (2006), Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages, London: Greenwood Press. Eco, U. (1995), The Search for the Perfect Language, translated by James Fentress, Oxford: Blackwell. Foigny, G. (1676), Les Adventures de Jacques Sadeur dans la Decouverte et la Voyage de la Terre Australe, Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes. Lovecraft, H. P. (2014)The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Leslie S. Klinger, New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation. Machen, A. (2012 [1899]), The White People and Other Weird Stories, New York: Penguin Modern Classics. Malkin, B. (1997 [1806]), A Father’s Memoirs of His Child, London: Woodstock Books. Mandeville, J. (2005), The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, London: Penguin Classics. More, T. (2003 [1516]), Utopia, London: Penguin Books Ltd. Morris, J. (1994), On Mozart, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Müller, M. (1868), On the Stratification of Language, London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer. Northmore, T. (2010 [1795]), Memoirs of Planetes: Or a Sketch of the Laws and Manners of Makar, London: Kessinger Publishing. Okrent, Arika (2009), In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon, Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers who Tried to Build a Perfect Language, New York: Spiegel & Grau. Orwell, G. (1954), Nineteen Eighty-Four, New York: Penguin Books. Peterson, D. (2014), Living Language Dothraki: A Conversational Language Course based on the Hit Original HBO Series Game of Thrones, New York: Random House. Peterson, D. (2015), The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark-Elves,The Words behind WorldBuilding, New York: Penguin Books. Polo, M. (2015), The Travels, New York: Penguin. Portnow, J. (2011), “Gaming Languages and Language Games” in M. Adams (ed.), From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 135–160. Rogers, S. (2011), The Dictionary of Made-Up Languages, New York: Adams Media Corp. Root-Bernstein, M. (2014), Inventing Imaginary Worlds: From Childhood Play to Adult Creativity Across the Arts and Sciences, New York: Bowman and Littlefield Publishers. Rosenfelder, M. (2010), The Language Construction Kit, Chicago:Yonagu Books. Swift, J. (2005 [1726]), Gulliver’s Travels, edited with an introduction by Claude Rawson and notes by Ian Higgins, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1981), The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, with the assistance of Christopher Tolkien, London: George Allen & Unwin. Tolkien, J. R. R. (2004), The Lord of the Rings, 50th Anniversary Edition, edited by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, London: HarperCollins. Tolkien, J.R.R. (2007 [1937]), The Hobbit, London: HarperCollins. Tolkien, J. R. R. (2008), Tolkien On Fairy-stories, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson, London: HarperCollins. 28

I n v e n t e d L a n g ua g e s

Tolkien, J. R. R. (2016), A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Language Invention, edited by Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins, London: HarperCollins. Vance, J. (1958), The Languages of Pao, New York: Avalon Books. Wolf, M. J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation, London: Routledge. Yaguello, M. (1991), Lunatic Lovers of Language: Imaginary Languages and Their Inventors, translated by Catherine Slater, London: Athlone Press.

29

4

Invented Cultures Mark J. P. Wolf By the loosest definition, culture includes everything made by human beings, as opposed to nature, which is what exists without human interference. According to a widely accepted definition by Almaney and Alwan, cultures may be classified by three large categories of elements: artifacts (which include items ranging from arrowheads to hydrogen bombs, magic charms to antibiotics, torches to electric lights, and chariots to jet planes); concepts (which include such beliefs or value systems as right or wrong, God and man, ethics, and the general meaning of life); and behaviors (which refer to the actual practice of concepts or beliefs). (1982:5) Additionally, artifacts are related to concepts and beliefs, since the latter usually help determine the design of the former; a culture’s worldview, combined with the natural resources it has available to work with, produces the solutions to problems encountered by the members of the culture, such as how to construct shelter, design clothing, prepare food, and so forth. In imaginary worlds, then, one can start with the environment in which the culture develops (for example, a desert, a swamp, tropical or snowy regions, and so on), what natural resources are available to build with and supply needs (what kinds of stone, wood, or other building materials, plants, animals, and so on are available), and extrapolate what sort of cultures might arise. For example, in James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), the Na’vi culture in the jungles of Pandora is built on the planet’s unique fauna and flora, and like Earth’s jungle cultures, is technologically limited, whereas the desert cultures of the planets Arrakis and Tatooine (from the Dune and Star Wars franchises, respectively) are both built around the need for shelter and water in the arid regions of the desert. Even these last two examples differ somewhat based on their planets; Arrakis is much drier, requiring the Fremen to wear stillsuits that recycle the body’s water, whereas Tatooine, which appears to have more greenery, gets its water from moisture farms like the one run by the Skywalker family. Invented cultures are occasionally developed beyond the immediate needs of the story being told, in ancillary materials, or merchandising, especially if there is interest from an audience. An author may also develop more of an invented culture than what is released, to make what does appears in the story seem more consistent and realistic, just as creating more backstory for characters can give them more depth, even when that backstory is not entirely used within the story.The amount of development given to invented cultures has grown over time and has changed along with the venues used by imaginary worlds (Wolf, 2012). 30

I n v e n t e d C u lt u r e s

Growth of Invented Cultures in Imaginary Worlds The earliest imaginary worlds mainly consisted of strange sights and things encountered by travelers; members of fictional cultures were described very little; it might be noted that they might have some curious traits, customs, clothing, or physical peculiarities, but rarely more than this. The traveler, who was also usually the narrator, was often more of an observer than a participant, travelling to the other realm and then returning and reporting on it. Later, after works like Marco Polo’s account of his travels, and with the rise of the traveler’s tales genre of literature, the amount of detail given about imaginary peoples and countries would grow, as authors would try to answer more questions regarding the invented culture, and more interaction with a world’s natives would also require more cultural norms and customs to be developed. Works like More’s Utopia (1516) described their invented cultures to some extent, particularly their way of life and governmental aspects that pertain to the organization of society, often as a kind of proposal or thought experiment. Utopia also included a bit of the Utopian language and its alphabet, one of the first imaginary cultures to do so, though it was only a small sample in the form of a quatrain. A short history of the country is also given, adding some depth to the description. By the mid-1700s, works like Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and Robert Paltock’s The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1750) would see the main character interacting much more with the cultures encountered, and greater detail and explanation given to the cultures and customs encountered (see the chapters on the books by Swift and Paltock elsewhere in this volume). Whereas Swift used cultural differences for a satiric effect, Paltock’s invented culture is quite elaborate, with invented food, clothing, architecture designed for people with wings, and enough invented language for an “Explanation of Names and Things mentioned in This Work” listing 103 terms, most of which are specific to the culture. Paltock’s protagonist marries one of the natives, and much of the cultural explanations are given through her. In the 19th century, the utopian tradition continued, and several imaginary worlds appeared whose stories seemed to be little more than a vehicle for the presentation of new foreign cultures. For example, Charles Ischir Defontenay’s Star (Psi Cassiopeia) (1854) has no main character or storyline, but is made up almost entirely of the history of its imaginary world, including lengthy samples of its literature (even complete short plays) and poetry. One piece is even a book-within-a-book, The Voyage of a Tassulian to Tasbar, in which a member of the Tassulian culture describes his experiences visiting another culture, in Tasbar. Throughout most of the book, alien cultures are described directly to the reader, and the entire book is designed to be a set of documents supposedly found inside a meteor by an explorer in the Himalayas. Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) and Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland (1884) both contain satirical elements, and use their narratives as vehicles for the descriptions of their unusual cultures, which parody cultural norms and customs of the Victorian era. By the 20th century, invented cultures could appear with a wealth of detail, and the rise of audiovisual media venues for worlds meant that invented cultures could now be visualized instead of merely being described (see the “World Design” chapter in this volume). For example, the planet Mongo first appeared in Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comic strips (1934–1946), and featured several countries and cultures, including Coralia, an underwater city carved from coral, populated by water-breathers, and ruled by Queen Undina; the Ice Kingdom of Naquk; the Land of the Lion Men; Fria’s Kingdom; Desiria’s Kingdom; Barin’s Kingdom; and others. Technology amongst these cultures ranges from Stone Age level to highly advanced, and detailed depictions of these cultures, including native costuming and architecture, can be seen in the drawings of the comics. Later, the franchise would become a 31

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

movie serial (1936–1940) that visualized the world in low-budget black-and-white imagery (which often did not equal the imagery of the comics). A feature film of 1980, directed by Mike Hodges, featured a larger-budget and color version of Mongo and its cultures, with more elaborate detail and production design. And as of 2017, a new feature film of Flash Gordon is apparently underway. Audiovisual media require invented cultures to be designed and made into material artifacts, with their own visual and sonic appearances. Sometimes the aesthetic choices made in the development of invented cultures strive more for exoticism than realism, resulting in interesting but ultimately impractical designs (for example, several of the cities and spaceships in the film Jupiter Ascending (2015)). To produce plausible new cultures, there needs to be a unifying worldview and outlook that shapes the customs and designs of everything in the culture, so that whatever glimpses the audience gets of that culture will be consistent and appear to have a cultural logic behind them. Thus, even if not much of an invented culture is needed for a particular work, all the elements involved should be thoroughly worked out in conjunction with each other. This is especially important when there are multiple invented cultures within the same story that are intended to be distinct from each other.

Culture Clashes in Imaginary Worlds In many stories set in imaginary worlds, a clash between cultures provides much of the narrative conflict, resulting in everything from humorous misunderstandings to full-scale wars. Many large-scale franchises, like those of Dune, Star Trek, and Babylon 5, as well as novels like A Princess of Mars (1912) or The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), and films like Avatar (2009), include cultural clashes that are also wars, but also other clashes that result in characters coming to learn more about each other’s cultures, bringing them to work together (for example, the nine-member Fellowship in Tolkien’s novel includes four hobbits, two human men, an Istari, a Dwarf, and an Elf, the last two of which were naturally suspicious of each other, stemming from a long-running animosity between Dwarves and Elves). The centuries-long tradition of utopias, and the utopia’s dark mirror image, the dystopia, feature stories that are often centered on a cultural clash between the utopia and visitors from outside of it, or its own dissidents. In these cases, and others, cultural clashes can comment on real-world cultures and their norms without specifically naming particular cultures, and invented cultures can be constructed and fine-tuned to make whatever points the author deems necessary. Occasionally, the cultural clashes found in imaginary worlds can also comment on the unbridgeable nature of the gap between cultures that can exist. In Stanisław Lem’s novel Solaris (1961), for example, scientists study the planet Solaris from an orbiting space station. The planet is almost completely covered by a sentient ocean, a vast, alien intelligence with whom the scientists try to communicate, but are unable to find a way, and the novel ends with no understanding being made. Ultimately, stories about clashing cultures can be used to help to make audiences more aware of their own cultural norms and assumptions. For the same reason, invented cultures are often compared with or in conflict with actual world cultures, either to satirize them or to critique them from an outside point of view. For example, Samuel Butler’s Erewhon: or, Over the Range (1872) features an invented culture in a satiric country that parodies practices and institutions of British Victorian culture, while many of the foreign cultures in the Star Trek and Babylon 5 universes can often be compared with aspects of existing human cultures. In science fiction one also finds many planetary cultures, which has the effect of combining Earth’s cultures into “human culture,” a single thing, rather than the diverse set of many 32

I n v e n t e d C u lt u r e s

cultures as it is normally seen, underscoring the similarities found across all human cultures by providing alien cultures where such things are apparently lacking. In many stories, alien attacks on Earth cause different human cultures to form an alliance against a common enemy, forcing them to find common ground in order to work together. More often than not, however, invented cultures share aspects and structures of Primary World cultures.

Overlaps with Primary World Cultures Just as secondary worlds use the Primary World as a template, changing world defaults until a unique imaginary world is achieved, invented cultures often are inspired by actual world cultures of Earth and then are changed and fictionalized with the addition and subtraction of various cultural traits. Thus, Frank Herbert’s Fremen culture of the desert planet of Arrakis (from Dune (1965)) shares similarities with Islamic and Middle-Eastern cultures, while a jungle-based culture like the Na’vi of Pandora (from Avatar (2009)) shares cultural similarities with jungle cultures of Earth, like the human cultures found in the Amazon rain forests. Invented cultures that appear in transmedial worlds take on an audiovisual form and materiality, which in turn also makes them more like real-world cultures. In order to synthesize a new culture, audiovisual designs of invented cultures may take their inspiration from multiple real-world cultures and meld them together in new ways. For example, the culture of the planet Naboo in the Star Wars franchise includes designs inspired by Tibetan culture (several of Queen Amidala’s robes and headdresses), with African-inspired designs (found in Naboo’s military vehicles and droid army), Italian architecture (the interiors of Theed Palace, shot in Reggia Palace in Caserta, Italy), and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (Wright’s blue-domed Marin County Civic Center was the inspiration for the Theed Palace exteriors) (Bouzereau and Duncan, 1999). At the same time, many invented cultures strive to move away from the designs and outlooks of existing cultures. In Austin Tappan Wright’s country of Islandia, from the novel of the same name, Islandian culture is carefully thought out in detail and described at length, as the main character, John Lang, experiences Islandia and learns about it along with the book’s readers. Whereas many invented cultures find their roots in either the Western or Eastern cultures of Earth, Islandian culture is a subtle combination of traits from both Western and Eastern cultures, resulting in a very consistent and believable culture that is neither Western nor Eastern in design and outlook. Many of the culture’s concepts are given their own words in the Islandian language, including tanrydoon (literally, soil-place-custom, which is the privilege of having a room set aside for you in a friend’s home); ania, amia, apia (three types of love); and solvadia, which Lang attempts to translate into English: “Sol- was an intensive prefix; di or dee was green; the final a was feminine; but the va puzzled me until I had a happy thought. Va- or van was the word for eye; a far-seen thing was vant-; Vantry was the place seen far away…. The idea conveyed to me … the girl with the very green-green eyes” (Wright, 1942: 221).The resulting culture and country of Islandia was so believable that sixteen years after the novel’s publication, the press was still receiving “footnotes and confessions of homesickness” for Islandia (Finch, 2016). Some invented cultures strike a chord and become so popular with audiences that they inspire people to adopt some of their elements into their own lives and cultures.The invented language of Klingon from the Klingon culture in the Star Trek universe inspired the creation of the Klingon Language Institute (KLI) in 1992, which has members from all around the world and even published a quarterly journal, HolQed (Klingon for “linguistics”), for thirteen years. Institute members have made translations of literary works including Shakespeare’s 33

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

Hamlet (circa 1602) and Much Ado about Nothing (1612), and the Epic of Gilgamesh from antiquity. Some fans have attempted to learn to speak Klingon conversationally (Marc Okrand’s The Klingon Dictionary (1985) has sold more than 250,000 copies), and one man, d’Armond Speers, even attempted to raise his son bilingually, speaking to him only in Klingon while his wife spoke to him only in English (Dean, 1996). Likewise, on censuses worldwide, thousands of people have declared “Jedi” as their faith or religion, a trend now referred to as the “Jedi census phenomenon,” which even has its own Wikipedia page. For example, in England and Wales alone, on the 2001 census, 390,127 people stated their religion as Jedi, making it the fourth-largest religion reported in the country that year. Social and religious ideas are not the only ones to spill over from invented cultures into existing real-world cultures. Invented cultures can also include technological ideas and artifacts that audiences may come to desire, or that suggest new designs or solutions to problems. The world of the film Minority Report (2002) began with the short story of the same name by Philip K. Dick, but was opened up and further developed when it was turned into a feature film. In 1999, Steven Spielberg convened a 15-member three-day think tank of futurists and other experts to come up with a vision of what the year 2054, in which the film is set, could realistically be like. The film’s production designer, Alex McDowell, collected all of the ideas in the 80-page “2050 bible,” which integrated them into the world of the film. Eventually, ideas from the world of Minority Report would result in over 100 patents spread over such areas as gestural interfaces, driverless cars, multi-touch interfaces, retinal scanners, 3-D video, personalized advertising, electronic paper, and crime prediction software. Thus, a complex interaction exists between Primary World technologies and those of secondary worlds, with inspiration moving in both directions between them. One could even consider invented cultures to be a means of accelerating cultural change in the Primary World, since the development of invented cultures is more deliberate and often occurs in a more concentrated form and at a faster rate. When one considers the vast number of cultural references to the worlds of Star Wars, Star Trek, Oz, and other worlds, it becomes clear that imaginary world cultures are firmly a part of our Primary World cultures.Worlds like those of the franchises mentioned above have resulted in an enormous amount of fan productions, including fan fiction, film and videos, artwork, re-creations, and so forth, as well as billions of dollars of merchandise. As popular aspects of invented cultures become adopted into existing real-world cultures, such cultural elements call into question traditional notions of what is considered culture. Since all culture is made by human beings, can we really distinguish between “invented culture” and “authentic culture”? Or is it more a matter of scale; the number of people adopting a cultural element, the number of people involved in its development, the length of time required for its adoption? The boundary between “invented” and “authentic” culture, then, appears either arbitrary at best or artificial, just as the boundary between “high” and “low” culture has been questioned and critiqued (Inglis, 2005). Perhaps it becomes more a question of how a particular cultural element is generated; for while all culture is made by human beings, the tools used to make it have changed drastically, changing the nature of cultural artifacts.

Generating Cultures While all culture is human-made, the methods of its making have changed over time, from handmade cultural artifacts to machine-made ones. Today, computer technology even allows programmers to write algorithms that can select and combine elements of design, generating artwork according to a set of rules.When enough parameters are defined, this can be extended 34

I n v e n t e d C u lt u r e s

to the production of entire styles, and even families of styles. If culture can be seen as design solutions combined with styles, then perhaps aspects of culture can be procedurally generated. Procedural generation techniques have already been used in video games to generate terrain, architecture, names and languages, and events and histories (Wolf, 2015), and continue to be extended to other kinds of content. Writing in 2016 about the procedural generation of culture in his work-in-progress game Ultima Ratio Regum, Mark Johnson explained, The core technical and creative objective of the game is the procedural generation of culture. Ultima Ratio Regum generates aesthetic choices for each culture (preferred shapes, colours, ideas, symbols, and so forth), a massive range of ideological choices which then influence what the player finds in those cultures, variation within clothing styles, cultural signifiers (like facial tattoos, or turbans, or particular jewellery, scarification, etc), and also different architectural styles. Religions procedurally generate their religious altars which are always logical to their beliefs and make aesthetic/thematic sense, their prayer mats, holy books, anything like incense stands, and so forth. To further deepen this kind of cultural detail, the current version has what I think is the first ever dialect generator implemented into a game; people from different cultures say the same things in different ways depending on their cultural and religious background (with tens of millions of potential sentences), and these statements are designed in such a way that the game makes sure people sometimes give little “hints” about their background for the observant player. I’m also starting to develop future systems that will generate artistic styles and painting, poetry styles and poems, and there are also a few remaining cultural items I want to generate for particular cultures such as statues, obelisks, and the like. With all of that in place, I can finally begin implementing the actual game – finding clues in the world’s cultures to solve the world’s central riddle/mystery – which is fundamentally dependent on creating so much cultural detail, and so much detail within that variation. ( Johnson, 2016) In such a system, the settings and parameters used by the algorithm still represent a particular approach to culture, but once the lower-level decision-making processes are automated, there is no reason why the setting of the parameters themselves might not be automated in later iterations of this kind of program. Invented cultures are one of the infrastructures of imaginary worlds, and are often one of the main things that attracts or repels audiences, since they determine so much of the audience’s experience of a world. Invented cultures also provide a tool with which to examine existing cultures by comparison and to explore cultural possibilities. Successful invented cultures may become adopted into real-world cultures, and reflect not only the audience’s attitude toward the invented culture, but to their own cultural background as well, as they blur the boundaries between the culture we consider “real” versus that which is invented.

References Almaney, A. J.; and A. J. Alwan (1982), Communicating with the Arabs, Prospect Heights, Illinois: Waveland Press. Bouzereau, Laurent; and Jody Duncan (1999), Star Wars, The Making of Episode I: The Phantom Menace, New York, New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group. 35

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

Dean, Eddie (1996), “Klingon as a Second Language: D’Armond Speers Teaches His Son an Alien Tongue,” Washington City Paper, August 9, 1996, available at http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/ news/article/13011269/klingon-as-a-second-language. Defontenay, Charles Ischir (1854), Star (Psi Cassiopeia):The Marvelous History of One of the Worlds of Outer Space, first published in 1854, adapted by P. J. Sokolowski, Encino, California: Black Coat Press, 2007. Finch, Charles (2016), “The Forgotten Novel That Inspired Homesickness for an Imaginary Land,” The New Yorker, November 2, 2016, available at http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/ the-forgotten-novel-that-inspired-homesickness-for-an-imaginary-land. Inglis, David (2005), Culture and Everyday Life, New York and London: Routledge. Johnson, Mark (2016), E-mail sent to the author, December 13, 2016. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York, New York: Routledge. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2015), “Procedurally-Generated Space in Video Games,” Invited presentation at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, June 10, 2015. Wright, Austin Tappan (1942), Islandia, New York, New York: Farrar & Rinehart Inc., Quote taken from the 1992 Reprint Edition, Salem, New Hampshire: Ayer Company Publishers, Inc.

36

5

Backstory Benjamin J. Robertson In the simplest sense of the term, backstory refers to any and all events that have taken place prior to the main events of a given narrative, whether related in the main story, developed in prequels or ancillary or paratextual materials, or only implied. In a somewhat more complex sense, backstory can refer to those specific past events that in some way explain or ground the plot of a given narrative. In the study of imaginary worlds, this latter definition provides a good place to start, with the caveat that the backstory of an imaginary world reveals the way in which it stands distinct from the Primary World of the reader and therefore not only explains or grounds the events that take place in that world, but participates in a set of assumptions about how that world operates, which stand in some degree of contrast with those the reader makes while navigating her own world. As Mark J. P. Wolf writes, “Stories set in secondary worlds may need to rely on backstory more than those set in the Primary World, since much Primary World history is already known, or at least accessible, to the audience” (Wolf, 2012: 202). In other words, the backstory of an imaginary world is part and parcel of what makes it imaginary rather than “real.” To be clear: although not always explicitly described or related, backstory must involve some form of explanation, even if the reader is left to imagine an explanation for herself and even if the reader remains, in the end, unsatisfied with a stated or implied explanation for whatever reason (see the “World Completeness” chapter in this volume). The reader cannot assume an imaginary world’s backstory as she might that of her own world. Even the worlds in which naturalistic, realist, and mimetic fictions are set must deviate from those of the Primary World of the reader and thus imply backstories contrary to historical fact, even if contradiction remains minimal and wholly believable. However, because “backstory” remains relatively untheorized in discussions of narrative, possible worlds, and genre fiction, this definition must itself make no assumptions and therefore must be explained. This explanation requires several steps. First, I will discuss other uses of this term, in relation to dramatic performance and in the context of narrative theory, and a related concept, “origin story” (borrowed from discussions of superhero media). Second, I will discuss several critical and theoretical concepts in order to ground the present definition of “backstory” in related scholarship. Finally, I offer a brief discussion of Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), which exemplifies these concepts in this context and allows for further development of the term here under question. One of the most prominent, if colloquial and difficult to trace, uses of “backstory” comes in the context of dramatic performance, where it refers to those aspects of a character’s past upon which an actor focuses and draws to motivate, define, or otherwise comprehend the character in the present (for a brief but telling discussion of backstory in the context of performance, see Bryon, 2014: 24–25). While we may glimpse in this concept certain elements 37

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

of a more ­r igorous understanding of the term, namely the causal relationship of past to present, it remains nonetheless largely unsatisfactory. Specifically, aside from the lack of scholarly grounding, this understanding of backstory implies, or perhaps even requires, a certain selectivity on the part of the actor with regard to her character’s history. That is, an actor does not (indeed cannot) focus on her character’s entire past and use it to create for that character a coherent present. Indeed, to the extent that narrative involves selection and exclusion, such must always be the case. However, such selectivity—the capacity to choose which aspects of the past define the present—makes little sense when we are speaking of the brute materiality of a world where ignorance of cultural norms, criminal law, gravity, and/or magic does not free a character from the effects and constraints thereof. Of course, any imaginary world, like the characters who populate it and the narratives in which they participate, is bound to principles of selection; no description of any world can, finally, be complete in an absolute sense. However, even if no narrative fiction offers a complete backstory, many nonetheless imply such a backstory as they strive for completeness and consistency. Slightly more useful here is the definition given the term in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory: A type of exposition often involving analepsis or flashback; a filling in of the circumstances and events that have led to the present moment in a storyworld, and that illuminate the larger implications of actual or potential behaviours [sic] by characters occupying a particular narrative ‘now’. Narrative techniques such as beginning a story in medias res require that backstory be given analeptically, whereas in other cases (e.g., in many realist novels) the backstory is provided at the outset. (Herman et al., 2010: 39) That the term warrants only this brief entry suggests its relative lack of utility in a field with other, more developed tools—such as “exposition,” “analepsis,” etc.—for discussing similar issues. Thus, in a manner similar to the definition given the term in relation to performance, backstory in narrative theory becomes a shorthand for that which precedes the narrative being told now, whether actually stated or implied, whether related as flashback in the course of the present narrative or provided at that narrative’s outset, etc. Odysseus’ journey to Ogygia, where he is imprisoned by Calypso (which precedes the beginning of The Odyssey but is only told later) exemplifies a stated backstory, whereas the history of the Trojan War up to Book I of The Iliad represents an implied one (although these matters are told of elsewhere). Like the previous definition, this one provides some grounds for the present discussion; namely the sense of exposition and/or causality that backstory provides for present concerns. However, given that the study of imaginary worlds, in contrast to narratology, foregrounds discussions of the world itself over the stories set within those worlds (to the extent such prioritization is possible), backstory might best be theorized not as simply the stated or implied prologue to present events, but such prologue as it intersects with the ontological rules as well as the cultural, social, political, and economic conditions that emerge out of these rules, all of which distinguishes the imaginary world from the Primary World. For example, although each of Homer’s epics deals with backstory in some manner, in both cases the backstory is mainly of interest as a prologue to the narrative itself rather than serving as an explanation for the world. Even if the intervention of the gods in each epic does not accord with the sensibilities of the modern reader, the assumption of such intervention was likely shared by Homer’s audience making the world in question “naturalistic” rather than “imaginary.” Again, in the present context, a discussion of backstory requires not only recognition of its importance to 38

B a c k s t o ry

what takes place in a given world in the form of narrative, but the underlying conditions of that narrative, the ontology and epistemology of the world itself. A definition apposite the present context emerges when we draw together an understanding of backstory as those events that condition the present narrative with the notion of origin story common to superhero comics, film, and television. Such origin stories—Bruce Wayne becoming Batman as a result of seeing his parents murdered during a mugging, Peter Parker becoming Spider-man by way of a radioactive spider bite—are, of course, conventions of the genre. Beyond mere convention, however, they speak to the manner in which the rules governing the world of the superhero are not those that govern the world of the reader. Thus, the origin story of a given superhero will explain why that hero does what she does—that is, how this narrative came to pass rather than another. As one study puts it, “The origin stories of these characters then become the basis for a reader’s understanding of who these characters are, where they come from, and how they’ll reflect on the character going forward” (Romagnoli & Pagnucci, 2013: 109–110). Most important, for a discussion of imaginary worlds, are the fantastic aspects of most of these stories, those parts of the stories that explain “where they come from” not only in a psychological or sociological sense, but in an ontological one. That is, origin stories make clear that subsequent stories are authorized not only because of select personality quirks cemented in the hero by way of some past trauma, but also because the world in which the superhero lives operates in such a way as to make possible her becoming a true superhero, one with this or that superpower or ability. The following statement about origin stories, although focusing on the psychological, makes this point clear by also cataloging the ways in which a superhero’s world likely stands distinct from that of the reader: To read origin stories about destroyed worlds, murdered parents, genetic mutations, and mysterious power-giving wizards is to realize the degree to which the superhero genre is about transformation, about identity, about difference, and about the tension between psychological rigidity and a flexible and fluid sense of human nature. (Hatfield et al., 2013: 3) To be clear: Spider-man exists in a world in which not only can the death of a loved one prompt vigilantism, but also a world in which radioactive spider bites can confer superpowers derived from a spider’s nature. The necessity of this discussion of origin stories becomes clear when we turn our attention to the discussion of imaginary worlds by way of theorizations of the genres of the fantastic. Among other genres, science fiction and fantasy often (or perhaps even exclusively) deal with worlds that in some more than trivial manner depart from the empirical environment of their readers. Whatever distinctions exist between these genres, they nonetheless share a concern with subcreation (even if this term would be anathema to many writers of each genre). Consider Darko Suvin’s account of the distinctions amongst naturalistic fiction, fantasy, and science fiction. Drawing upon Robert M. Philmus, Suvin writes: “naturalistic fiction does not require scientific explanation, fantasy does not allow it, and [science fiction] both requires and allows it” (Suvin, 1979: 65). Suvin intends in this passage to differentiate science fiction from fantasy by aligning it in a certain respect with the empirical environment of the author writing it; that is, like naturalistic fiction, science fiction in some ways obeys cognitive laws and remains—at least insofar as the fiction in question explains its plots, events, and devices—­possible. In the present context, we might redraw this distinction to differentiate science fiction and fantasy from naturalistic fiction, the latter a category that makes the 39

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

same ­assumptions about how reality operates as does the reader of the text (accounting for historical differences in knowledge practices and numerous other caveats). Science fiction and fantasy may each enjoy a different relationship with the conventions of science and the scientific method of the Primary World in which the reader reads, but insofar as it requires any explanation at all on this front, beyond whatever clarifications a reader may seek out in a reference text such as Wikipedia, science fiction reveals itself to be part of an imaginary world, one whose backstory in some manner departs from both what the reader understands as history but also what the reader understands as nature. With regard to fantasy, even if the genre cannot be explained cognitively and must resort to non-cognitive explanations (e.g., “A wizard did it!”), the necessity of explanation again implies a backstory to the world altogether different than that of the world to which the reader belongs, where the operation of gravity, transportation infrastructure (or lack thereof), forms of government, etc., are given and therefore require no explanation beyond the factual. Farah Mendlesohn’s discussions of the portal fantasy and the immersive fantasy clarify this line of argument while adding nuance to it. In Rhetorics of Fantasy, Mendlesohn defines the portal fantasy as “a fantastic world entered through a portal” (Mendlesohn 2008: xix; see the “Portals” chapter in this volume). Because the world of a portal fantasy must be entered, that world will likely, if not always, be unfamiliar to the one who enters (and the reader as well). Moreover, the presence of the portal itself, which serves as a threshold between one world and another and thus between one set of rules and another, signals a difference in backstory. Mendlesohn notes that portal fantasy nearly always involves explanation by a character familiar with the world to a character not familiar with the world. Thus, Gandalf (and Elrond and Aragorn, etc.) explain Middle-earth and its backstory (why the Ring must be destroyed, the nature of the stakes in the battle between good and evil, key moments in said battle) to Frodo (see the “Tolkien’s Arda” chapter in this volume). In similar fashion, Holmes explains to Watson, Obi-wan to Luke, Doctor Who to with whomever he is traveling. The latter half of each of these pairs stands in for the reader, who benefits from such explanation and comes to understand how the world beyond the threshold differs from her own. By contrast, “The immersive fantasy invites us to share not only a world, but a set of assumptions” (p. xx). These assumptions differ from those the reader unconsciously makes in order to navigate her own world. Thus, the immersive fantasy is, for the reader, often more difficult to apprehend than the portal fantasy by virtue of the fact that the reader must learn to intuit the assumptions of the imaginary world from hints given in the narrative rather than through direct (if vicarious) explanations from experts on the world’s backstory. Importantly, Mendlesohn also makes clear that the immersive fantasy is, in many respects, close to naturalistic fiction insofar as it refuses to directly explain its world. However, as Suvin claims, naturalistic fiction does not require explanation. Given that immersive fantasy does, we must therefore note that the backstory of a given imaginary world may be implied rather than stated. The definition of backstory offered here relies not so much on imaginary worlds being explainable in a manner satisfying to readers grounded in the scientific method, secularism, or other modern sensibilities, as in Suvin’s distinction between science fiction and naturalistic fiction on one hand and fantasy on the other. Rather, both Suvin and Mendlesohn point us toward the fact of explanation itself, regardless of its merits in the Primary World, as full or definitive. Thus, we should take explanations of imaginary worlds, whether stated or implied, less in terms of their truth than in terms of their sheer existence, which itself points toward the difference between the Primary World and the imaginary one. Some examples of such explanations, the manner in which these examples are conveyed to readers, and some further reflections on the significance of backstory will further clarify this discussion. 40

B a c k s t o ry

Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan (1946) and Steph Swainston’s The Year of Our War (2004) e­xemplify the immersive fantasy. In Titus Groan, the denizens of Gormenghast Castle live according to rigid, inscrutable, and unquestionable rituals. As such, they cannot imagine a world beyond their own and remain always and inextricably caught up in the assumptions of it. Peake describes the relationship between Lord Sepulchrave, the Earl of Groan, and the castle, thusly: How could he love this place? He was part of it. He could not imagine the world outside it; and the idea of loving Gormenghast would have shocked him. To have asked him his feelings for his hereditary home would be like asking a man what his feelings were towards his own hand or his own throat. (Peake, 1992: 46) Because Sepulchrave and most of the other characters in the novel cannot distance themselves from their surroundings, they are never able to explain their world to anyone (or even capable of contemplating doing so). Everyone operates according to the same assumptions. However, even if the reader never receives such an explanation, she nonetheless understands, because of the sheer difficulty of inhabiting the assumptions made by Sepulchrave and others, that some explanation, which is to say some backstory, must exist for this situation even if it would never satisfy her desire for realism or naturalism. In contrast to Titus Groan, The Year of Our War presents itself with less difficulty to readers, even if it too denies them the satisfaction of a well-defined backstory. In one notable passage, Jant, an immortal (or Eszai) unique for his ability to fly, lands before a mortal, common soldier during a battle: [He] gasped at me and threescore emotions appeared on his face—fear was the first and reverence the last. It was easy to recognize me—who else can fly?—but he found it hard to believe that an Eszai would ever cross his path. (Swainston, 2004: 25, my emphasis) Jant’s question, within the context of this world, remains rhetorical. The story we are reading, within that world, is his; he has written it and anyone reading it (including, the text assumes, the actual reader) would know that the only person in the world capable of flight is he. However, for the reader this question provides crucial information about the world and its backstory without the need for explicit statement, namely that Jant is the only person in this world who can fly. The reader comes to understand why Jant alone can fly in this world and thus gains more of the backstory. However, even before she learns explicitly why Jant alone can fly, merely knowing that only Jant can fly tells the reader that there is some backstory here, one grounded in a very different reality and the rules thereof, even if she does not yet know it. The conception of backstory as not only what came before, but that which conditions the present and what can happen in it, is further explained through recourse to several Marxist notions, namely those having to do with history. In the opening pages of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), Marx himself famously writes of the manner in which history constrains action in the present: Men make their own history, but not spontaneously, under conditions they have chosen for themselves; rather on terms immediately existing, given and handed down to them.The tradition of countless dead generations is an incubus to the mind of the living. (Marx, 1983: 287) 41

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

If Marx at this point remains somewhat of an idealist, his further development of a ­materialist dialectic would authorize a materialist determinism. As an example of this determinism, Fredric Jameson offers the manner in which the United States, by prioritizing the compactness of its nuclear arsenal, fell behind the USSR in the space race because of the fact that their smaller bombs did not require the large rockets the Soviets needed for their larger bombs: In further development, of course, the situation is once again reversed: the Americans, precisely because their missiles are not so powerful, find themselves forced to develop smaller and more sophisticated packages of transitorized instruments for projection aloft; while the less refined machinery of the Soviets, who are under no such pressure, transmits back relatively smaller amounts of information. And so forth. ( Jameson, 1974: 310) In other words, one development leads to another, but also constrains and in part determines future development because of the material conditions it manifests. Neither Jameson nor Marx means to say that the present is fully determined by the past, but rather that what has come before retains considerable power in the present as it sets the stage for what can be thought, what can be said, what can be done, what can be built. Both, of course, assume that the physical rules of the world they describe are those of the real world, the world in which the reader reads. In the study of imaginary worlds, as we have seen, no such assumption can be made. In this sense, historical determinism is not synonymous with backstory. It nonetheless suggests the tenor of the current concept, namely the manner in which it grounds the present. The concept of totality further adds to this definition. Martin Jay begins his study of totality in Marxist theory with a discussion of the manner in which intellectuals in the Marxist tradition explicitly or implicitly claimed to speak for all, to offer a total or totalizing view of culture and society (Jay, 1984: 10–14). In his own work on the concept, John E. Grumley writes, “The idea of a totalising [sic] historical process can be viewed as a modern reaction to a later, seemingly permanent, historical crisis; the epochal transition to dynamic, bourgeois socioeconomic relations and forms” (Grumley, 1989: 1). In other words, totality offered thinkers a means by which to contemplate the world all at once, at a moment when that world had begun to fragment under the pressures of modernity and capitalism. Georg Lukács, one of the concept’s biggest proponents and the thinker who did the most to import the concept to literary theory, offers the following explanation: History as a totality (universal history) is neither the mechanical aggregate of individual historical events, nor is it a transcendent heuristic principle opposed to the events of history, a principle that could only become effective with the aid of a special discipline, the philosophy of history. The totality of history is itself a real historical power—even though one that has not hitherto become conscious and has therefore gone unrecognised [sic]—a power which is not to be separated from the reality (and hence the knowledge) of the individual facts without at the same time annulling their reality and their factual existence. It is the real, ultimate ground of their reality and their factual existence and hence also of their knowability even as individual facts. (Lukács, 2013: 151–152; see also Lukács, 1983) In short, totality refers not to a simple addition of everything that exists in the world, nor does it refer to some principle apart from the world itself. Rather, it is that which grants the world 42

B a c k s t o ry

its reality and out of which our capacity to know it emerges. Totality, therefore, refers not to a static condition, but the grounds of a process by which we are enabled to know what we know. Subsequent Marxist literary critics, especially those interested in science fiction such as Jameson (2005: 4–5) and Carl Freedman (2000: 45–48), make use of Lukács in their discussions of the generic utopia and the nature of the science fiction text. By way of conclusion, I offer the following brief discussion of Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974) as a means to better understand Mendlesohn’s discussion of the immersive fantasy and the Marxist conceptions of determinism and totality, as well as the manner in which these critical and theoretical tools inform a definition of backstory. The novel takes place on two planets, Anarres and Urras, the former settled by refugees from the latter who sought to establish an anarchist community devoid of private property. Its protagonist, Shevek, is a physicist on Anarres who travels to Urras to discuss his cutting-edge work with other physicists there. Throughout the novel, which moves between Shevek’s present trip to Urras and the “backstory” that brought him to that trip, characters constantly misunderstand one another based on the fact that their assumptions about what things mean, how the world works, etc., are so informed by the historical circumstances and material conditions in which they were raised. Shevek, whose homeworld is nearly without any plants whatsoever and whose water resources are scarce, does not understand the way people on Urras waste paper and water, each of which is carefully managed on Anarres. The lack of paper, for example, limits publication and dissemination of scholarship and, in part, results in science on Anarres being impoverished relative to science on Urras. Cultural misunderstandings are even more pronounced. In one scene, Shevek wonders how women on Urras are able to respect themselves, when they are clearly not respected by the men there. Shevek assumes that these women do, in fact, respect themselves because on Anarres women and men are considered equal, so much so that Shevek admits at one point a desire to be a woman, which is cause for some extreme confusion on the part of his listener from Urras. Some of the long backstory that explains such confusion is offered explicitly in the text through analepsis, flashback, and other devices. Some of it, however, must be intuited or discerned by the reader from clues and hints. Some of this backstory is that of an individual, Shevek, who is from the communityoriented Anarres but is still somewhat susceptible to “egoizing,” behaving selfishly and ­prioritizing his own thoughts and being over that of others. However, the novel makes clear that Shevek’s backstory has material foundations, that a history grounds and determines what he can do and think and, by extension, the manner in which the societies of the individual planets and the exchange between them might develop.While the novel does not suggest that the reader can or should understand the whole of this history, it nonetheless suggests that this history is totalizing, that it creates not only the manner in which things take place, but also the manner in which characters understand what takes place. It does not seek to draw upon what the reader already knows, to show the reader a world that can be explained through recourse to her assumptions about her own world, but rather to distinguish this imaginary world from the Primary World. In short, it offers a backstory proper to the study of worlds themselves.

References Bryon, E. (2014) Integrative Performance: Practice and Theory for the Interdisciplinary Performer, London: Routledge. Freedman, C. (2000) Critical Theory and Science Fiction, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Grumley, J.E. (1989) History and Totality: Radical Historicism from Hegel to Foucault, London: Routledge. Hatfield, C., Heer, J. & Worcester, K. (eds.) (2013) The Superhero Reader, Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. 43

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

Herman, D., Jahn, M. & Ryan, M.-L. (eds.) (2010) The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, London: Routledge. Jameson, F. (1974) Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jameson, F. (2005) Archaeologies of the Future:The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, New York: Verso. Jay, M. (1984) Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukács to Habermas, Berkeley: University of California Press. Lukács, G. (1983) The Historical Novel, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Lukács, G. (2013) History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Marx, K. (1983) The Portable Karl Marx, E. Kamenka (ed.), New York, NY: Penguin Books. Mendlesohn, F. (2008) Rhetorics of Fantasy, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Peake, M. (1992) Titus Groan, Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press. Romagnoli, A.S. & Pagnucci, G.S. (2013) Enter the Superheroes: American Values, Culture, and the Canon of Superhero Literature, Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Suvin, D. (1979) Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, New Haven: Yale University Press. Swainston, S. (2004) The Year of Our War, New York: Eos. Wolf, M.J.P. (2012) Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York: Routledge.

44

6

Narrative Fabric Mark J. P. W   olf A narrative thread is usually defined as a particular storyline either following a character, object, place, or a causal chain of events, over some duration of time. Several narrative threads following a similar trajectory together could then be referred to as a narrative braid, but a large number of narrative threads that crisscross each other, sharing moments in time and spatial locations, could be referred to as a narrative fabric (Wolf, 2012: 199). In such a case, one could map out all the events occurring in a world along synchronic and diachronic dimensions, which could be seen as the warp and the woof of the fabric, resulting in a network or fabric of narrative moments that make up a world. While most of this chapter’s discussion of narrative fabric will be concerning the fabrics that make up imaginary worlds, it should be pointed out that narrative fabrics can exist regarding real-world events that involve large numbers of people and timelines of events;World War II, for example, has thousands of stories all of which intersect each other, with many important events occurring simultaneously and large-scale events affecting everyone’s lives. Since it is the deliberate construction of narrative fabric that concerns this chapter most, the discussion shall be limited to fictional narrative fabrics.

Forming the Fabric: Interconnecting Stories Multiple stories or storylines set in the same world need not overlap at all, but typically an author will have some link between them, by having some kind of shared assets that appear in both stories. These can include characters, objects, locations, and events. Each character’s life can be seen as a narrative thread woven through the world, from birth to death (and afterward), crossing the lives of other characters, passing through locations, and so forth. If each character, location, and significant object is seen as having a narrative thread tracing out its history over time, then we can see that each narrative will cross many others during the course of a story. If we are aware that all these threads that we encounter each contains its narrative line that could be followed, the sense of a rich, interconnected world will be greatly enhanced, and the world will feel more like a real place. Likewise, events at different scales can be shared by multiple storylines. In the tales of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legendarium, Beren and Túrin each has his own tale in the stories, and the scene in which their paths cross briefly appears in both stories. Such shared events, even small ones, serve to link stories together and strengthen the narrative fabric of a world. Large-scale events, like wars, technological revolutions, the rise or fall of empires, or extreme weather can link together even more narrative threads, even if they remain relatively distant and in the background of the characters’ lives. Mythologies and national histories also tie together entire peoples, and add depth to a culture and society. 45

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

Interconnected stories, when read in sequence, can also recontextualize each other, as events are seen from new perspectives, and missing information completes a picture and forces a new interpretation of known events. The film Vantage Point (2008), for example, relates the events of a presidential assassination six times, each time from the viewpoint of a different character, revealing more and more of what is actually going on. Comparisons of events from competing accounts can reveal biased or unreliable narrators, hidden motives, and unseen consequences, when the actions in one storyline result in consequences in another. Episodes of the television show Once Upon A Time (2011–2016) are continually revealing new information about the linked imaginary worlds of Storybrooke, Maine, and The Enchanted Forest, with characters’ backstories interwoven with each other as well as with the present-day events of Storybrooke. Evil characters have their motivations revealed, making them better understood and more sympathetic; kinship connections are revealed, linking characters into a family tree; and earlier moments where characters’ lives crossed paths are continually revealed. As the narrative web thickens, making it increasingly difficult to weave in new threads, the web is extended and expanded.

Extension and Expansion Narrative fabric is extended into space (through the additions of new locations for new events and for which additional history can be given) and through time, through sequels carrying narrative situations forward in time, and prequels that reach backward in time, filling in backstories. Extensions are the easiest way to continue a narrative fabric because the new places and times can move the storylines in new directions. Sequels are the most flexible, since they depend only on what has gone before them, while prequels must connect to what comes after them, limiting them more than sequels, since we already know something about some of the characters, objects, and locations seen in prequels that appear in the works set in a time after the prequels. Watching the Star Wars prequel trilogy after the original trilogy, for example, we know that Anakin, Ben Kenobi, Yoda, and others will not die, since they appear in Episodes IV–VI. Thus, prequels inevitably lack some of the suspense and uncertainty that standalone works and sequels can use to dramatic effect. Narrative fabric can also be expanded by filling in gaps, going into greater detail regarding already existing events, and elaborating upon existing material in other ways. Following the example of sequels and prequels, we could call such additional works midquels, paraquels, and transquels. Midquels, which occur in between existing story elements, can be divided into interquels (which take place in between already existing works in a narrative sequence) and intraquels (which fill in a narrative gap occurring within a single already existing narrative work). Facing even tighter constraints than prequels, interquels and intraquels are challenged with presentation of an interesting story even though the audience knows the beginning and endpoints of the story, which are found in the existing stories that surround the gap into which the interquel or intraquel is set. Thus, it is not surprising that many midquels are more about the journey or transition between two states of affairs, since the outcome is generally known. Or, such a story could occur in a different setting and use many new characters, though the more this is done the more tenuous its link back to the other work or works becomes. Star Wars Episodes II and III could be considered interquels, since each came between existing episodes, as well as Rogue One (2016), which has action set between Episodes III and IV; thus, interquels can join existing storylines together (like Episodes II and III) or present a new story that arises from the background events of other works (like Rogue One). 46

N a r r at i v e F a b r i c

An example of an intraquel is Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather (1969); there is a narrative gap in Michael Corleone’s storyline during the time when he is exiled in Sicily. This twomonth gap is mentioned in the last paragraph of Book VI, and it is within this gap that the story of Puzo’s The Sicilian (1984) takes place. Michael Corleone appears only in scenes at the beginning and end of the book, tying it to The Godfather, while most of the book is about the title character, Salvator Guiliano, who is not even mentioned in The Godfather. Paraquels are stories or storylines that run in parallel with existing ones, along with their events. While they may share many assets with the already existing works, they usually have a different main character and storyline, though one that ties into an existing one enough to warrant the presence of the paraquel. Paraquels can show what was going on behind the scenes of an existing work—for example, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) takes place at the same time as Shakespeare’s Hamlet (c. 1602)—and include events from the latter seen from a different perspective. Transquels are works that extend across or beyond multiple works, and usually are histories or chronologies meant to tie together the history of a world. The Silmarillion (1977), for example, covers the entire history of Tolkien’s world, with The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) both summarized within the last nine paragraphs of the book. Due to their nature, transquels only appear once a world is well-established enough to have a lengthy history and the audience’s desire for it. One might also consider reference works, the chronologies available for Star Wars and Star Trek, to be transquels, since a number of them compile the narrative spanning the whole world’s history. In both extension and expansion, the question is always what balance between old and new material will be right, since old material is needed to connect with existing works set in the world. Another consideration is how the additional material will affect other aspects of the narrative fabric.

Fabric Size, Scope, Shape, and Density In order to discuss narrative fabrics, it is useful to have a set of characteristics by which they can be measured and compared. Each narrative fabric can be described according to its size, scope, shape, and density. The size of a narrative fabric refers to how many narrative threads it involves, and the number of narrative works that make up the world, whereas the scope of the narrative fabric refers to the amount of space and time covered by the fabric. Some narrative fabrics may cover whole planets or series of planets, and thousands of years, or only cover the events of a few days in a small town; and a fabric may do either of these in a single story or in a vast array of works across multiple media. Considering the warp and woof of the fabric as the synchronic and diachronic dimensions, we can see that worlds can lean heavily (or lightly) in either dimension. For example, the world of Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual (1978) is an apartment building at the address 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier in Paris, and it takes place at just before 8 p.m. on June 23, 1975, describing what all the residents are doing at that precise time, interweaving their stories and backstories together and giving detailed descriptions of all their apartments, one chapter per room. Thus, the book’s narrative fabric is heavily synchronic, since all of its narrative threads all coincide at the same moment, although they are extended through time to varying degrees; and the book contains a chronology of events pertaining to the story that begins in 1833. A world can be heavily diachronic as well; Richard McQuire’s Here (1989 and 2014) chronicles the entire history of a small plot of land where a living room of a house is eventually built, spanning across time from 500,957,406,073 BC to 2213 AD. All the narrative 47

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

threads present cross through this little space, some remaining there for a while, some crossing it only once. Both works trace out the extremes of the possibilities involved in the construction of a narrative fabric. Narrative and narrative fabric can also be discussed in terms of their density as well. Long novels that take place in a single day (like Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), DeLillo’s Cosmopolis (2003), or Murakami’s After Dark (2004)) give a great amount of detail to the happenings of a short period of time resulting in a high-density fabric, while the narratives of other books like Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future (1930) and Star Maker (1937) cover millions of years, resulting in a low-density fabric. Likewise, some films have narratives covering months, years, or more, while others take place in real time (like Rope (1948), Nick of Time (1995), Timecode (2000), and Birdman (2014)). Of these, Timecode is interesting in that it has four narrative threads, each following a different character, which are present on-screen simultaneously during the film. Naturally, the narrative density of a story or a narrative fabric can also vary greatly across even a single work, much less a fabric spanning an entire world. Certain areas may have a greater degree of detail and examine events moment-by-moment, while others may ellipsize heavily or even leave out whole sections. Once a narrative fabric has been mapped out, the variations in narrative density can be overlaid, revealing patterns that may lead to new insights in narrative and world analysis. Narrative fabric may also have a tight or loose weave, a measure of how much the various narrative threads depend on each other, how close their timing is, and how many shared assets they have in common. One book with a tight weave of many threads is The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), which has multiple storylines running simultaneously that Tolkien mapped using extensive timelines to coordinate the action during the writing of the book. The travel of characters on different journeys who cross paths had to be carefully timed, and other larger events such as weather or phases of the moon had to also coincide between all storylines taking place at the same times. Other narrative fabrics may have a loose weave, where few events coincide or have to be carefully timed, or where events take place far apart, spatially and temporally, so that there is less overlap and less of a chance that problems of in consistency will arise; the Narnia stories, for example, are set far enough apart that they do not overlap very much, other than featuring some of the same characters and lands. Popular worlds will often have narrative fabrics that continue growing, as new works add new characters, places, and events to them. As they grow, and new sections are added, one problem encountered is that the new materials will likely grow farther and farther away from the original material that made the world or franchise popular in the first place.

Growth Away from the Origin The growth of a narrative fabric occurs due an author’s (or group of authors’) interest in expanding it, and sometimes it even expands in directions chosen by the interest shown by fans (for example, the expanding role of Boba Fett within the Star Wars franchise). Whatever the reasons for growth, the addition of sequels and prequels moves the story further into the future or into the past. As story material is added, the content of the sections being added inevitably moves farther and farther away from the original material that made it popular in the first place, risking declining popularity and eventual discontinuation. Solutions to this problem include new material of equal quality as the old material, characters with long lives, midquels, adaptations, and remakes or reboots. New material as good as the old material is the best solution, but is easier said than done. Audiences will reject new material that does not match the quality and spirit of the original, 48

N a r r at i v e F a b r i c

or is too disconnected from and dissimilar to the original, or is too derivative and similar to the original; such problems have given sequels a bad name. There are, of course, sequels that are arguably better than the originals they follow, including The Lord of the Rings, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and Riven: The Sequel to Myst (1997). The question is how long a certain of level of quality can be attained as additions keep being made. The next solution involves extending the original narrative threads into new material, particularly those of characters’ lives. As franchises age, their characters do as well, leading to limitations as to what kinds of stories could be told about them. Some franchises simply have characters that age slowly or not at all; for example, DC Comics and Marvel Comics characters do not age as one would expect them to, and both companies like to keep many of the superheroes in their 20s and 30s. Detective Nancy Drew also never ages. Other characters age but have long lives whose stories can be carried on over long periods of time. There are some characters who live thousands of years, for example, Swift’s Struldbruggs, Defontenay’s Nemsédes, and Tolkien’s Valar, Maiar, Elves, and Ents. Vampires and robots also typically have unlimited lifespans in many works, due to their supernatural and technological natures, respectively. Such characters can tie together multiple eras of history, and can appear in many stories, becoming the central thread to a franchise, spanning its entire narrative fabric and even holding it together. The problems with long-lived characters are the inevitably changing situations they are in; quests and wars have to eventually end, and characters themselves change through character arcs, although these can be slow and drawn out as well. Audiences may grow tired of characters who do not change (or do not change enough), or cease to identify with them; a lack of change also usually means a lack of depth. If an entire franchise depends heavily on a single character, it will be difficult to believably put the character’s life in any real jeopardy, since the audience does not expect the author to kill off the character, since it would end the franchise. Thus, neither stasis nor change can guarantee continued success. Another solution is to return to the original sections of narrative fabric and find holes to patch and fill. Midquels can be set in the gaps between existing works (interquels) or in the gaps within a single existing work (intraquels), and paraquels can feature events occurring simultaneously with those in existing works (Wolf, 2012: 208–212). These new works are close to the works into which they are integrated, with characters, places, and situations close to the original works. Such works can even provide greater insight into the original works, recontextualizing elements of their stories and providing explanations or motivations that may have been lacking or absent in the original. Stories that run in parallel with existing stories can introduce new characters connected to events of existing works, giving them motivation or additional consequences. For example, Electronic Arts’s video game The Godfather (2006) ties into the book and films by having the player-character, named Aldo, complete actions whose consequences appear in the book and films; for example, Aldo helps put the decapitated horse’s head into Jack Woltz’s bed and hides the gun that Michael Corleone uses to kill Captain McCluskey. The main difficulty with the midquel approach is that the more that the new material is connected to existing events, the harder it will be to fit into those events without disrupting continuity; and narrative possibilities will be limited by events and outcomes already known to the audience. Another difficulty midquels face is that so much of their design is determined by the need to fit into a particular gap in the franchise that the midquel’s own dramatic structure and emotional impact are compromised, often turning the work into just a piece of connective tissue within the franchise, rather than something that could stand on its own. 49

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

A fourth solution, and one particularly used for closed worlds (for which no new canonical material is being made), is the adaptation of existing works into other media. For example, new interest in The Lord of the Rings occurred as a result of Peter Jackson’s film adaptations, which provided an interpretation and visualization of the books without providing any new canonical material. Adaptations can help maintain an audience’s interest in a franchise, by enabling the discussions sparked by the adaptation itself, be they good or bad. An adaptation can also spoil the experience of the original work on which it is based, and it inevitably colors what one thinks of it (children first encountering Darth Vader as a LEGO minifigure are less likely to find him menacing in the movies). Thus, adaptations are a double threat; they may change material too much while at the same time not offer anything new (canonically speaking) to interest the audience. The last solution is a reboot that resets a franchise back to its starting point, reimagining and retelling its origin stories and updating everything to the present. Reboots are perhaps the most drastic and troublesome solution, because they wreck the canonicity of the previously existing franchise material. Although, like retroactive continuity (retcon), a reboot changes the past, reboots are the opposite of retcon insofar as they break with the past; instead of trying to strengthen continuity, they deliberately restart continuity, most often to update characters to the present day (such as James Bond and Batman) or to clear out years of tangled continuity that has grown too complex (like the reboots found in DC Comics and Marvel Comics). While reboots can bring in new audiences to a franchise, they also alienate old audiences who are familiar with the earlier version (or versions) of the franchise. Reboots are almost never done by the franchise’s original author, and are typically ordered by corporations who have come to own franchises and are hoping to keep them alive and profitable. Reboots also rely heavily on the history of a franchise to sell the new version, and this instant familiarity is what makes them a better risk than brand new material that is unknown to an audience.Thus, there is a tension between old and new within a reboot, and the question of what balance will be the most palatable to the combined audience of old and new audience members. In the end, narrative fabric inevitably grows away from its point of origination, and even with frequent rebooting, what made the original material popular may become lost. In the end, it will be the experience of the world and the new material added to it that will largely determine whether audiences will want a particular narrative fabric to continue growing.

References McQuire, Richard (2014), Here, New York, New York: Pantheon Graphic Novels and Penguin Random House. Perec, Georges (1978), Life: A User’s Manual, translated by David Bellos, Boston, Massachusetts: David R. Godine, Publisher. Puzo, Mario (1969), The Godfather, New York, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Puzo, Mario (1984), The Sicilian, New York, New York: Random House. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1937), The Hobbit, London, England: George Allen & Unwin. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954–1955), The Lord of the Rings, London, England: George Allen & Unwin. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1977), The Silmarillion, London, England: George Allen & Unwin. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York, New York: Routledge.

50

7

Saviors Mark J. P. W   olf Imaginary worlds allow authors to tell stories that require everything in those worlds to rely on individual characters and events for their well-being, or even their continued existence, to an extent that one rarely sees in the Primary World in which we live. This is expressed colloquially as “saving the world,” a way of raising the stakes (which hinge on the success or failure of a story’s main character or characters) as high as they can be raised, for maximum dramatic impact and suspense. The urtext for such stories is, of course, the Christian Bible, which tells of Jesus Christ, the prophesied and long-awaited Savior and Messiah. While these stories follow the structure of the Biblical story to varying degrees—occasionally even allegorically, as with Lewis’s Aslan, who is very blatantly positioned as the Christ-like savior of Narnia—the “saving of the world” that occurs in most worlds tends to be less spiritual and more of the materialistic and militaristic kind, and centuries of stories have also added many new tropes to the tradition. Most of the time, saviors are not Divine but begin as average people who gradually discover their special role in the world, allowing the audience to better identify with them, since they are often the story’s main character. Typically, they either come from the Primary World and journey to the secondary world (like Niels Klim going to Nazar, Dorothy going to Oz, or the Pevensie children going to Narnia) or they reside in a rural, remote, or marginalized part of the secondary world (like the Shire or Tatooine) and then journey further into the world, experiencing it for the first time along with the audience; thus, the savior is often a newcomer or even a stranger to the place being saved (and many will often leave once their work is done). Similar to the hero of the Monomyth or Hero’s Journey (which some saviors undergo; see the “Hero’s Journey” chapter in this volume), the savior usually must adjust to his or her role, and may even be reluctant to take it on at first, but in the end he or she accepts the responsibility (if not, there would be no story).

The Savior Arrives As the world is first introduced, there is often a people of a land or some common background who were once free but are now oppressed by another group, dark lord, or evil force of some kind.This dark force may be threatening to take over the world (like Sauron in Middle-earth), or may have already done so (like the White Witch in Narnia), and it may even be the case that there are people unaware of the threat or takeover (like many of the people growing up in the Matrix without realizing it, until they are freed; or hobbits of the Shire who are unaware of what transpires beyond their borders).The oppressed populace are given hope, however, by prophecies that predict the coming of a savior who will help them, and quite often the savior 51

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

is unaware of the prediction until people start to identify him or her as the awaited savior. Probably the first instance of the main character traveling to a secondary world only to find he is inadvertently fulfilling the prophecy of a long-awaited savior occurs in Robert Paltock’s The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1750), in which Wilkins, the main character, is shipwrecked and later finds himself meeting the flying people of Normnbdsgrsutt. In chapter 37 of the novel, he learns that he is expected to fulfill a prophecy and destroy a “tyrant-usurper” that threatens to enslave the kingdom, “a thing foretold so long ago by a holy ragan, kept up by undoubted tradition ever since, in the manner I have told you, in part performed, and now waiting your concurrence for its accomplishment,” as Nasgig, one of the natives, tells Peter, and then proceeds to show how Peter matches the description of the prophesized savior. The savior can be identified by prophecy, or by an unusual ability (for example, in the Arthurian stories, Arthur is the only one who can remove the sword from the stone), or by their parentage, or even by the mere circumstances of their appearance, like Dorothy Gale’s house landing accidentally on the Wicked Witch of the East when she entered Oz. More typically, someone in the know usually recognizes and identifies the savior early on, and the savior is often given different titles (as in Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), where Paul Atreides is said to be the Kwisatz Haderach, the messiah bred by the Bene Gesserit). A title that often occurs is that of “The Chosen One,” and expectations that this person will become the savior and free the people from their bondage often set in motion the machinations that bring him or her (sometimes getting pushed, or even forced) to the forefront of the conflict; for example, Bastain Balthazar Bux in The Neverending Story (1979), Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars galaxy, Neo in the Matrix franchise, and Emma Swan in the TV series Once Upon A Time (2011–present), all of whom are “discovered” and urged on to their destinies. In the film The Last Starfighter (1984), teenager Alex Rogan is chosen as a Starfighter based on his high-scoring performance at a video game (placed on Earth to find worthy recruits), but after receiving the invitation, he turns down the role and returns to Earth. While on his way back, all the other Starfighters are killed, and Alex finally accepts the role.The idea of “the Chosen One” is occasionally parodied as well. On “Vacation” (Episode 33, Season 1) of Uncle Grandpa (2013–present), Uncle Grandpa finds that he fulfills an ancient prophecy on a tropical island, and tries his best to get out of the supposed responsibilities forced upon him. And on the BBC radio program Elvenquest (2009– present), the Chosen One turns out to be Amis, the main character’s dog. As several of these examples show, the savior is sometimes identified as such at an early age, so that burden of the role can be a large part of the character’s development. Saviors often have missing parents and are on their own to some extent; for example, Dorothy Gale, Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and Emma Swan all begin as orphans leaving them in need of a mentor figure, but also free to go off on adventures without anyone worrying about them. (Some saviors, however, later learn that one or both of their parents is actually not dead; saviors often discover that they are related to other characters in the story, including even the main villains that they are fighting against; though this has become somewhat overused since its appearance The Empire Strikes Back (1980).) Saviors often will not believe that they are saviors, doubting themselves and those who identify them as saviors; trust, self-acceptance, and acceptance of their savior role are often part of the character arc that they undergo, and among the earliest narrative obstacles faced in the story. Ironically, it can be the strong belief of the enemy, who tried to stop or destroy the discovered savior, that finally convinces some saviors of their role, or at least spurs them on to accepting it, and giving them a reason to fight. Another aspect of the savior’s growth as a character is often the learning of the special powers that he or she possesses; either from an older mentor figure, or from trial and error, or 52

S av i o r s

both.The savior must learn to control and use these powers to fight enemies who have similar powers, powers that are unique to the imaginary worlds in which they occur (and to some extent, which require them), like the Force in the Star Wars galaxy, or Tuning in Dark City (1998), or the manipulation of the Matrix world in The Matrix (1999). The savior’s learning period is also usually used for expository purposes in which the history of the conflict can be given, and the powers and workings of the world involving them can be explained. This is usually done under the guise of the savior asking questions and getting them answered, or the making of plans to attack the enemy or oppressor’s forces. While the savior learns to fight his or her friends’ enemies, the enemy learns of the savior’s appearance or arrival, and readies an attack, first trying to stop the savior and then trying to kill the savior. The early encounters between the savior and the enemy tend to be inconclusive, with the two sides learning about each other’s abilities, and looking for weaknesses as well; often, the savior is underestimated and proves to be more resourceful or powerful than the enemy expects, or even more than the savior expects of himself or herself. But soon the enemy no longer underestimates the savior, and new attacks, at a more lethal level, are planned. Not only does the savior have an enemy to contend with, but there is often trouble on the home front, as saviors have doubters and betrayers among their followers and the people who are supposed to be supporting them. For example, Edmund Pevensie betrays Aslan, Dr. Wellington Yueh betrays the Atreides family, and Cypher betrays Neo (each traitor also receives punishment or a bad end as a result of his betrayal; but, oddly enough, usually not by the hand of the savior). Often, betrayers are an effective threat to the savior because their deeds are unexpected and unforeseen by everyone, providing some of the harshest setbacks to be experienced by the savior. Less damaging than betrayal, some supporters may just doubt the approach taken by the good side against the evil side, or give in to a momentary temptation, as when Boromir attempts to seize the Ring in The Fellowship of the Ring (1954). In both cases, these kinds of characters provide additional dramatic tension and make life even more difficult for the savior (and thus, narratively more interesting for the audience). The savior’s understanding of the savior role continues to grow, sometimes along with the savior’s powers. Despite the fact that the savior typically has a loyal band of companions, eventually the savior will have to take a stand and fight evil alone, usually in a part of the world some distance from home and under the control of the evil side, possibly even in the evil side’s headquarters (for example, Mount Doom, the Death Star, the Matrix, or the Castle of the Wicked Witch of the West). The evil side is often quite confident that they will win, often overconfident, though they usually have some reason for believing that they have the upper hand. But, naturally, something important has been overlooked.

Saving the World, and Afterward Unless the victory is being planned for a later sequel, the savior will win over evil at the end. Even if such a major, final, victory is being saved for a sequel, the initial story will end with at least a smaller victory of some kind, with the main enemy being temporarily conquered, set back, or chased away for a time. For example, at the end of the first Star Wars film, Luke Skywalker successfully destroys the Death Star but Darth Vader gets away and eventually builds another (and the Emperor is still in power as well); at the end of the first Matrix film, Neo rescues Morpheus and fights off the Agents, whose bullets are no longer effective against him, yet Agent Smith gets away and is able to return en masse in the sequel; and in the first Dune novel, Paul Atreides takes the throne and control of Arrakis, but in the sequel there is trouble and dissent in the empire he now rules, as the Bene Gesserit, Spacing 53

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

Guild, and Tleilaxu form a conspiracy to overthrow him. In a sense, this kind of ending, of the first work in a series, is similar to the point in the story mentioned above where the first encounters between the savior and the enemy are concluded and both sides plan their next moves. And although the savior eventually wins, it is often at a cost. The savior may sacrifice his or her own life in order to save the world, though the occasional resurrection will bring the savior back for a happy ending. Or, it may be that the savior is unable to stay with those who were saved, and departs the world that was saved, like the cowboy riding off into the sunset. For example, due to homesickness, Dorothy returns home to Kansas, and Frodo’s injuries still pain him and keep him from living out the rest of his life in Middle-earth; yet, in both cases, companions who accompanied them on their journeys remain and rule over various parts of the world (Aragorn as King of Gondor, Gimli as Lord of the Glittering Caves, Sam as Mayor of Hobbiton, the Tin Woodsman as ruler of the Winkies, the Lion as King of the Forest, and the Scarecrow as ruler of Oz). In earlier works, there was thought to be a need to bring the main character back to the Primary World so that the story could be told there, which meant forcing the main character to return even if such a return seemed unlikely. For example, in Paltock’s tale, Peter Wilkins marries one of the native women and starts a family with her, stops an attempt to overthrow the kingdom, brings about a technological revolution by introducing European technology, persuades the kingdom to abolish slavery, creates alliances with neighboring countries and joins them to the kingdom, and even renames the country, but still wants to return to England after his wife’s death, despite the fact that he is much loved in the land he has saved, and has been away from England for so many years that he could not possibly have much there to which to return. Occasionally, the savior returns to the world, or does not depart at all. If this happens, the savior sometimes ends up ruling the world; but, in order to provide new narrative conflict, this does not go well, or else some new threat or evil appears. Niels Klim becomes the king of the Quamites, marries and has a son, and greatly changes the world by leading the Quamites to conquer other nations, starting an empire, but he eventually becomes a tyrant who is overthrown and must flee the country; when the Childlike Empress is gone, Bastian Balthasar Bux decides to take the throne of Fantastica himself, and ends up battling his friend Atreyu who tries to stop him; and Paul Atreides, as Emperor, finds himself a religious leader responsible for a bloody jihad across the universe. In other cases in which saviors return and rule in sequels, they find themselves fighting new evils and threats, like the Pevensie children who rule in Narnia, or Dorothy who becomes a princess of Oz in The Emerald City of Oz (1910).

Variations on the Saving of the World Saviors may save their respective worlds from destruction, domination, or enslavement, either permanently or on a temporary basis. Some “saving-the-world” stories represent variations on the trope; in superhero stories, saviors like Superman, Batman, or Spider-man may save their worlds multiple times from various villains, or even the same villain who becomes a nemesis and keeps returning for further encounters.The savior role can be taken on as a team, for example, groups of superheroes like the Avengers, or an ensemble like the four Pevensie children, or the main character along with companions, like Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and Cowardly Lion in Oz. In the case of superhero saviors, the superhero sometimes keeps his or her identity secret, and is known to others through an alter ego that allows the superhero to go unknown among the people whom he or she has saved, making it only appear that the hero has departed after saving the world. 54

S av i o r s

In video games, the player-character is often given the savior role, as in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006), or like Link in the Legend of Zelda series of games, who is sometimes even referred to as the Chosen Hero. Playing as the Chosen One in these games sometimes results in every major power wanting to kill you, as in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011). The Bard’s Tale (2004) even parodies the idea of the Chosen One; the player-character begins as the Chosen One and then meets a series of characters throughout the game, each of who also claims to be the Chosen One. Other structures and variations are also possible. George Lucas uses the savior story structure at two different scales in the Star Wars galaxy. In the original trilogy of films, taken by itself, Luke Skywalker is the main character, and he saves the galaxy by defeating Darth Vader and turning him back to the side of good. But when all six of Lucas’s films (Episodes I–VI) are taken together, then Darth Vader (also known as Anakin Skywalker) is the main character, and he saves the galaxy by killing the Emperor and “restoring balance to the Force.” Thus, in Return of the Jedi (1983), Luke’s saving of Anakin becomes repositioned as one of the necessary events needed for Anakin to save the galaxy by overthrowing the Emperor, which Luke could not have done on his own. Ironically, while saving the world, the savior often makes it difficult for a sequel and the continuation of a franchise, because once the main evil facing the oppressed people is eliminated and the world is saved, the main narrative conflict is gone.Tolkien tried writing a sequel to The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), only to abandon it for lack of real conflict, and many worlds have not had sequels due to the happy state of equilibrium reached after the world is saved. Subcreators who continued their worlds had to either show that their savior was not yet done saving the world (as in Matrix Reloaded (2003) and Matrix Revolutions (2003)), or find new villains and disasters to trouble the world with new narrative conflict (some of which might give the savior more to do), for example, when Rey approaches Luke Skywalker in the final scene of Star Wars Episode VII:The Force Awakens (2015) and hands him his lightsaber, with the unspoken request that he return to action and help vanquish the First Order, a remnant of the evil left after the fall of the Empire. The value of the savior trope is that it demonstrates how a single person can make a difference and have an enormous impact on the world he or she inhabits.While often exaggerated or heavily dependent on the particular peculiarities of the imaginary world in which the story takes place, the trope of the savior remains popular and a celebration of the power of the individual.

References Baum, L. Frank (1900), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chicago, Illinois: George M. Hill Company. Baum, L. Frank (1910), The Emerald City of Oz, Chicago, Illinois: Reilly & Britton. Ende, Michael (1979), The Neverending Story, Stuttgart, Germany: Thienemann Verlag. Herbert, Frank (1965), Dune, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Chilton Books. Herbert, Frank (1969), Dune Messiah, New York: Putnam Publishing. Holberg, Ludvig (1741), The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground, available at http://www. archive.org/stream/nielsklimsjourne00holb/nielsklimsjourne00holb_djvu.txt. Lewis, C. S. (1950), The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, London, England: Geoffrey Bles. Lewis, C. S. (1951), Prince Caspian, London, England: Geoffrey Bles. Paltock, Robert (1750), The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, available at https://archive.org/details/ lifeandadventur02paltgoog. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954–1955), The Lord of the Rings, London, England: Allen and Unwin. “The Chosen One,” TVtropes.com, available at http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ TheChosenOne.

55

8

Portals Jennifer Harwood-Smith Farah Mendlesohn identifies portal and quest fantasies as having similar structures: both involve the protagonist leaving their known world, and passing through a portal into an unknown place, though she elaborates that not all portal fantasies become quests, though they are commonly so (2008: 1). While Mendlesohn’s focus was on fantasy, her observations on portals help to define the limits of this chapter. By taking her definition that a “portal fantasy is simply a fantastic world entered through a portal” (2008: xix), and John Clute’s definition of a portal as “a liminal structure or aura” (Clute and Grant, 1997: 776), we can interpret portals as identifiable thresholds leading to another world. For the sake of brevity, this chapter will study the portal in both science fiction and fantasy as it appears as an identifiable threshold, which literally removes the protagonist from their own world at some point in the narrative to another place, time, or both. Thus, this chapter will not include such texts as Back to the Future (1985) as time travel is established through a moving object rather than a defined or relatively fixed portal. It will also exclude allegorical texts, such as The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), or texts explicitly dealing with virtual reality, such as The Matrix (1999). This definition will differ slightly from Mendlesohn’s in one crucial aspect: where she defines the fantasy portal as one-way, in that magic does not come back into the protagonist’s world (2008, xix), the science fiction or horror portal has the effect of exposing the first world to outer dangers, which would not be present without the portal, such as the Stargate series (1994–2011), in which the reactivation of the Stargate serves to the Earth at risk of invasion. This difference can be understood to represent a difference in the physical laws of the worlds; in fantasy portal fiction, the portal brings the protagonist to another world, where the universal laws can be significantly different, while in science fiction, the protagonist is more often than not transported to a different part of their own world (this changes when the protagonist in science fiction is removed from their universe entirely, and the portal behaves as it does in fantasy, such as the interuniversal portals in Sliders (1995–1999)). In horror, magic can move back through the portal in order to threaten the safety of the protagonist’s world, though this need not always be the case. In this chapter, I will explore the purposes and types of portals, as well as discussing the ultimate purpose of a portal in world-building. Finally, I will examine some of the more extensive portal texts with a view to demonstrating how portals function both as narrative catalyst and as a fundamental act of world-building itself. Why did portal fiction arise? It could be argued that it shares its impetus with space fiction, in that it gives writers the opportunities to create new worlds with new rules, without needing to refer to the ever more detailed maps of the author’s world. Portals therefore fall easily into exploration or travel fiction, as their structures typically have an innocent entering a strange world that must be explained to them, as in Mike Resnick’s Stalking the Unicorn (1987), 56

P o rta l s

where John Justin Malllory is introduced to the magical version of New York that exists alongside his own. The earliest portals in literature include Aeneas’s journey to the underworld (The Aeneid), and, as Mendlesohn argues, early Christian texts in which the journey to heaven is the ultimate portal journey (2008: 3–4). However, these are religious journeys, and could be considered more allegorical than literal. By the definitions that limit this chapter, the earliest portal text is arguably Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), in which Alice enters Wonderland via a rabbit hole. Wonderland’s nonsensical rules demonstrate the artistic freedom portals present, as real world laws can be completely suspended after a journey through a portal. Portals have three main functions: the first two are connected, as they can be used to see other places and/or communicate, as with the palantír in The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955); the third function, travel, is arguably the most common. Portals can serve an important narrative purpose, as they allow the protagonist to move to new locations instantaneously or at least faster than would normally be allowed. This narrative convenience can create restrictions on the text, as will be explored later.This chapter will only focus on portals whose primary function is travel, not due to just their ubiquitousness, but also because of their sheer variety. Clute provides a list of a wide range of portals, including doors, gates, and other thresholds, which can sometimes function as a method of selecting or finding the hero or heroine for a specific purpose (Clute and Grant, 1997: 776).The introduction of a portal can be the audiences’ clue that pure subcreation, the replacement or resetting of the Primary World’s “defaults” (Wolf, 2012: 24), has happened in the text. No matter their shape or purpose, portals can be divided into two types: natural and artificial. Natural portals are often seen through waterways, as in Once Upon a Time (2011–present), where mermaids are capable of moving between worlds through the seas, or tunnels or caves, as in the rabbit hole in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), or even through bad weather, such as the whirlwind that carries Lucian to the moon in A True History (Lucian of Samasota, 2nd century), or the tornado that carries Dorothy Gale from Kansas to Oz in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).These previous examples are all fantasy, and all share a level of permanence, even Dorothy’s tornado, as a similar event brought the Wizard himself to Oz. In comparison, in science fiction, natural portals are much more dangerous and impermanent: one of the few natural wormholes in Star Trek appears in The Next Generation episode “The Price” (1989) and the Voyager episode “False Profits” (1996), and is one that shifts to different points in the galaxy, making it an unreliable means of travel, while the wormhole in Voyager’s “Eye of the Needle” (1995) is not only collapsing, but also connects disparate times, again proving unreliable. The original significance of the wormhole in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) is in its presumed natural state; however, this is overturned when its artificial nature is discovered, and natural portals remain unreliable and relatively unusable in the series. Sometimes, natural portals are an indication of the disintegration of the boundary between worlds, as with the thinnies in Stephen King’s Dark Tower novels (1982–2015). Natural portals require no real effort on the part of the protagonist; they will either be guided to them or stumble upon them accidentally, as Alice did. Human or other ingenuity is absent beyond the occasional sacrifice to the gods. By comparison, artificial portals are representations of invention and brilliance, and typically take the forms of wormholes, mirrors, and doors. The aforementioned wormhole in Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) is the home to non-linear, incorporeal beings, with the stable conduit to another part of the galaxy apparently a side effect and not an intention, though its presence is the catalyst for a war reaching across the galaxy. This significant sociocultural impact can also be seen in the Stargate series (1994–2011), in which wormholes are generated by large circular gateways, created by a race known as the Ancients, presumably with 57

J e n n i f e r H a rwo o d - S m i t h

the intention of encouraging interplanetary travel in at least four galaxies in the series. As with Deep Space Nine, the wormhole in Stargate is the catalyst for war, though this time on an intergalactic scale. Stargate also experimented with the smaller mirror portals, which lead to alternate universes, first introduced in Stargate SG-1’s “There But for the Grace of God” (1998), which is reminiscent of Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871). Mirrors as portals to a specific realm of mirrors can be seen in the Doctor Who episode “The Family of Blood” (2007), in which a villain is trapped in a mirror; similarly, in Once Upon A Time’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” (2016), the protagonists actually enter the mirror world, shown as a shadowy realm touching on the real world. The third form of artificial portals, doors, are perhaps the most evocative image; doors are solid, real objects that should not lead to another world, and door portals are often associated with monsters and horror. In Monsters Inc. (2001), children’s bedrooms are accessed through door portals by monsters, and a similar form appears in the witch’s cottage in Brave (2012). The free-standing doors in The Dark Tower II:The Drawing of the Three (1987a) and series four of Haven (2010–2015) are uncanny in their ordinary appearance in unusual locations, typically free-standing on beaches or hillsides. However, artificial portals need not be limited to the aforementioned forms: the back of the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion,The Witch, and The Wardrobe (1950) is a portal too, while in The Magician’s Nephew (1955), the magician has created rings capable of bringing the wearer to the wood between the worlds, a place that touches on multiple parallel worlds, accessible through pools, as long as one is wearing the correct color of ring; this becomes a rare mix of portal object and threshold. In Sandman, Destiny’s realm must be reached first by entering any other maze, which will mirror the maze Destiny constantly walks, in a kind of universal hypermaze (Gaiman, 1994). There are also the portals inadvertently created by scientists who do not understand how the universe works, from the ruptured thinny in “The Mist” (1985), which releases a mist full of horrors, to the gateway to the Upside Down in Stranger Things (2016–present); both are accidental portals that claim lives because scientists overreached their knowledge and caused a rip in the fabric of the universe.This is by no means an exhaustive list of artificial portals; however, whether created by magic or science, these particular portals and portal items all imply an implicit understanding, or misunderstanding, of how the universe works, and how to control it. It is this last point that makes portals interesting to world-building criticism. At their core, portals inform the audience of the otherness of the fictional world, and a significant difference between its laws and the Primary World’s, as currently there are no known natural or artificial portals to other worlds. A universe with a portal is one in which, naturally or artificially, places or times far apart can be connected. The challenge in world-building with portals is in establishing the rules for portals, and enforcing them; as Mark J.P. Wolf says, consistency, “the degree to which world details are plausible, feasible, and without contradiction,” is necessary to successful world-building (2012: 43). This means portal narratives must work to enforce their own laws, as they cannot be dependent on only those of the Primary World. In Sliders (1995–1999), the inventor of sliding between universes finds he is unable to control where and when he travels; thus, narrative tension is caused by the episodic working within the timeline of the visit to another world in order to avoid being stranded, and the overall objective of attempting to return home. In the Aeneid, the underworld can be reached, but first one must make a sacrifice to the gods to ensure the safety of the quest. These rules are necessary for the audience to invest in the subcreation: Mendlesohn describes this by defining the fantastic as “an area of literature that is heavily dependent on the dialectic between author and reader for the construction of a sense of wonder, that it is a fiction of consensual construction of belief ” (2008: xiii). David Gerrold, in his guide to writers, advises that the 58

P o rta l s

“reader will s­uspend disbelief—he won’t suspend common sense” (emphasis in the original, 2001: 29). By keeping to the rules of portals, the author allows the reader to engage with the text without having to question their fundamental laws.This can be accomplished even if the rules are not laid out: this can been in the Narnia sequence, in which the protagonists and audience are never made privy to how and why someone—presumably Aslan—chooses when and where to open portals to Narnia. The only rule ever alluded to is that past a certain age—or in Susan’s case, maturing into a young woman—the children cannot return. However, the different portals, from the train in Prince Caspian (1951) to the painting in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952), all imply an apparent randomness to how entering Narnia functions. This is not to say there is not an in-depth explanation, but it is not explained in-text. However, the consistency of the randomness of these entries into Narnia serves to reinforce the unknown rules and make it clear that ultimately the protagonists cannot choose to enter Narnia, but will be acted upon by an outside force. The presence of portals also influences sociocultural world-building, often by inciting or worsening wars, as discussed above for Deep Space Nine and Stargate. While the presence of the wormhole near the planet Bajor in Deep Space Nine allows it to become important on a previously unknown scale, and arguably allows the government to bargain for more resources to rebuild after decades of annexation, positive results of wormhole travel are relatively rare. In Farscape:The Peacekeeper Wars (2004), it is revealed that the knowledge of wormhole science embedded in John Crichton’s brain not only holds the key to intergalactic travel, but also to weaponized black holes. This “ultimate weapon” allows Crichton to broker peace in a centuries-old war, though to do so he must sacrifice all knowledge of wormholes, and give up his return to Earth. In the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever” (1967), the portal that allows time travel is shown to be potentially devastating to history; as it never appears again in any Star Trek series or movie, it can be presumed the Federation decided not to use it again. Portals, like all means of travel and communication, give power to those who control them, and serve to reshape power structures on a sometimes interplanetary scale, as seen in Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007), in which the Goa’uld, who ruled the galaxy for thousands of years, are defeated within a decade of humans from Earth activating their Stargate. There is a more basic function to portals in world-building, and that is to allow worldbuilding itself. Portals provide instant access to other places, be they alien or fantasy worlds. Mendlesohn points out that portal fantasies have a point of entry, and are highly descriptive, with the protagonist helping to tell the audience about the new worlds they are encountering, with elaborate descriptive elements (2008: xix). These make portal fantasies similar to travel narratives (xix), with perhaps one significant difference: travel narratives often include details about the journey, while portal narratives omit the journey in favor of exploring only the destination. There are some suggestions that journeys through portals can be dangerous, as in King’s short story “The Jaunt” (1981), in which a teleporter must be used while unconscious, as madness inevitably follows. Whether consciousness in a portal is a positive or negative, in general, portal travel is near instantaneous, with perhaps the most evocative example being in the Valve computer game Portal (1997). With the right aim, the player is capable of looking through a portal and seeing themselves looking into the same portal.While Portal is limited in its world-building, Portal 2 (2007) takes the player through successively stranger levels, metaphorically moving the player through time by showing an alternate history of mad science culminating in the psychotic computer GLADOS running a nightmare facility. Portals give the author the opportunity to show the audience another world, be it magical, scientific, or ahistorical, while taking a shortcut to get there. Rather than having to invent a warp drive, as in Star Trek, portals allow authors to skip to pure world-building. It is this world-building 59

J e n n i f e r H a rwo o d - S m i t h

that I will examine next, in the first of two extensive portal narratives: the Stargate series (1994–2011). Stargate was a motion picture released in 1994, in which an archaeologist deciphers the hieroglyphs that allows the titular Stargate to open a wormhole to another world. Not only does this challenge echo the hero’s challenges of legend, such as Aeneas plucking a golden bough to bring as a gift to the underworld (Book VI, Lines 206–213), the Stargate itself has intimations of both natural and artificial portals. While it is clearly an alien artifact, its event horizon resembles a pool of water, and the journey through it is represented by what looks like a tunnel through both water and stars. The team who goes through in the film finds themselves spurring a revolution, but more importantly, discovers their history is not as they presumed: Egyptian gods were in fact aliens who enslaved the Earth, and the pyramids are landing pads for alien vessels. Not only does the Stargate, by its very existence, challenge presumptions about extraterrestrial life and the nature of the universe, but what they find beyond it challenges their own history. The god Ra’s attempt to send a nuclear weapon back through the Stargate to destroy Earth contrasts the series against Mendlesohn’s fantasy portals where magic cannot touch the original world (2008: xix): alien interference can, if left unchecked, reach back through the portal to Earth. Stargate SG-1 ran from 1997 to 2007 and picks up a year after the events of the film, and begins with another Egyptian “god,” Apophis, coming through the Stargate to Earth and kidnapping a female soldier while killing three others, so where Ra failed to bring his threats to Earth, Apophis succeeds. Within the first episode, the world-building from the film is expanded; there are thousands of Stargates, not two, and potentially thousands of civilizations waiting to be explored. With the addition of more gods, or Goa’uld as the species is called, this threat is amplified, all the more so in the episode “The Enemy Within” (1997), where a major character from the film is possessed by a Goa’uld, and must be killed to protect Earth. The Stargate thus becomes not only a means of travel to new wonders, but also a threat; its dichotomy lies in its use being necessary to undo its own threat. The wormhole’s similarity to a tunnel is evocative of Alice’s rabbit hole, including the disorientation from the first trip through; similarly, the second portal in the series, the mirror device in “There But for the Grace of God” (1998) that permits travel to alternate universes, is reminiscent of Alice’s looking glass, though the universe that archaeologist Daniel Jackson finds himself in is closer to Star Trek’s “Mirror, Mirror” (1967) episode, going so far as to feature an evil doppelganger of a main character, complete with sinister facial hair. While narratively this served as a warning to the usual world of an impending attack, it fundamentally alters the view of physics in the subcreation; not only can one travel to other worlds, but other universes. As the series progressed, travel through the Stargate brought new revelations, such as the potential for human beings to ascend to a higher plane of existence (“Maternal Instinct,” 2000). World-building in Stargate then becomes a feedback loop: with each new world explored, more is revealed about the history of Earth and humanity. When seeking a weapon to destroy the Goa’uld, they learn the Norse gods are benevolent small grey aliens, of the type known often as Roswell Greys (“Thor’s Chariot,” 1998). While attempting to defeat religious jihadis from a third galaxy, they learn Merlin and Morgan Le Fay were Ancients who ascended to a higher plane of existence (“The Pegasus Project,” 2006). History then becomes warped and changed, questioned and re-examined through the eye of the Stargate. The spinoffs, Stargate Atlantis (2004–2009) and Stargate Universe (2009–2011), both participated in this expansion, but in Stargate SG-1, it is the consistent return to Earth, the drawing of the universe back through the Stargate, that reinforces the world-building effects of the portal. The portal, therefore, works not only through where it goes, but also through what it brings back. 60

P o rta l s

The sociocultural effects become apparent through an initially rocky but ultimately successful global cooperation in the Stargate program (“Disclosure,” 2003). The Stargate, then, acts as a unifying force in its subcreation; however, there is a utopianist element to the series. Despite running through to 2007 and featuring the U.S. Air Force, Stargate SG-1 never references the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or the subsequent War on Terror. By failing to do so, it identifies itself as an idealized version of the Primary World, and in this regard, the Stargate itself can never be anything other than a benefit. However, not all extensive portal fantasies are so idealistic. King’s Dark Tower series is unusual in that it leaks out beyond the main novels of the series, and it does so precisely because of portals. In the 1982 novel The Gunslinger (1988: 211), other worlds are first suggested by Jake’s final words before he falls to his second death: “Go then. There are other worlds than these.” This is proven true as Roland Deschain later encounters Jake through a free-standing door on a beach. There are three doors on the beach in The Drawing of the Three (1987a), which lead to different times in what could be the same version of Earth, but are possibly different ones. By entering these doors, Roland does not physically travel, but rather takes over the bodies of those he encounters on the other side. Crucially though, Roland is able to draw them back with him to his world. While these are undeniably fantasy portals, magic is seeping between the worlds. Whether this is because it is the nature of the subcreation, or only because the walls between the worlds are weakening as the Dark Tower is attacked, is never made clear. However, King’s world-building is one that experiences multiple layers; as a self-inserted character in his own works, his works can be present in other works, such as the novels investigated by Toren in Song of Susannah (2004a). Because of these unusual layerings, doors and thinnies in King’s works are not only clues to the somewhat porous nature of his universe, but also signifiers of the text’s position in the series. In Haven, a TV show working within the Dark Tower’s sphere of influence, there are references to Shawshank Prison from Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (1982), and a particularly gruesome reference to Misery (1987b), with a first edition of Misery Unbound, the last novel written by Paul Sheldon “before that lady cut off his foot” (“As You Were,” 2010). However, it is the doors that identify Haven as a Dark Tower text, as well as a magic portal that can only be opened by those from another world, and more of King’s thinnies. Portals for King then become signifiers of risk; the magic of the other world was brought into the town of Haven and has been terrorizing the citizens of the town ever since. This magical seepage is likely because King is a horror writer first, and a fantasist second: it is far more frightening for portals to be permeable, and for magic to be able to invade. This seepage allows for cultural items to be spread among worlds: The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” appears in nearly all worlds encountered in the series, as do references to “The Man Jesus,” while in Wolves of the Calla (2003), the Calla folk find themselves attacked by creatures brandishing lightsabers and explosive Harry Potter snitches. Portals in the Dark Tower also appear to serve a slightly different function to portals in other fantasy fiction, as they are part of the quest, but are not necessarily placed at the beginning of the quest. In the Stargate series, the Stargate serves as a bracket to the narrative; while it is used mid-narrative on occasion, it is the beginning and end of all quests, with the departure and return through the wormhole serving as iconic steps for the adventurers. However, in The Dark Tower series, portals serve mid-narrative functions. They allow movement between worlds for the purpose of moving the quest along, or, in the case of The Drawing of the Three, bringing others into the quest. Indeed, from Song of Susannah onwards, portals become almost ubiquitous, with Roland and his gunslingers crossing between worlds with relative ease as they approach the end of their quest. However, this is not entirely as it seems, as can be seen by Roland’s arrival at the Dark Tower itself (2004b: 629–652). Each floor of the Tower is a journey to an earlier point in Roland Deschain’s life, but at its peak, where Roland is inexorably 61

J e n n i f e r H a rwo o d - S m i t h

drawn, is the ultimate portal, which forces Roland back toward the beginning of the series though, interestingly, not the beginning of his quest, but back to the chase across the desert. Roland’s scream as he remembers that this has happened before is a horror that is tinged by hope when something has changed from the last iteration. This places the first line of The Gunslinger, “The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed” (1988: 1), into an entirely new context: Roland is not in the middle of a journey across the desert, but has just emerged from a portal. The poster for the upcoming film, which declares “Last Time Around,” implies it is not an adaptation of the novels, but a continuation from the end of the last book, and once again the portal that starts the quest is forced into the recent past, unseen but implied. This effect helps to embed portals in The Dark Tower’s world-building; they become an intrinsic, necessary part of the subcreation, even necessary to the survival of the subcreation, which rests on Roland’s actions. This brief examination of portals should serve as a starting point for how they function and what questions world-building criticism should raise about them. Portals in fiction serve to rewrite universal laws and culture, and allow authors extraordinary freedom in building new worlds reached by merely crossing a threshold. Whether the quests they launch are magical, science fictional, or supernatural in nature, they are an integral part of storytelling, and are vital to understanding the complexity of the subcreations they inhabit.

References “As You Were” (2010) [television], Haven, Season 1, Episode 9, Syfy Channel, 10 September. Back to the Future (1989) [film] Hollywood: Universal Pictures. Baum, L.F. (1900) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chicago: George M. Hill. Brave (2012) [film] Hollywood: Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar Animation Studios. Bunyan, J. (1678 and 1684) The Pilgrim’s Progress, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carroll, L. (1865) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, London: Macmillan. Carroll, L. (1871) Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, London: Macmillan. “City on the Edge of Forever” (1967) [television] Star Trek, Series 1, Episode 28, Paramount, 6 April. Clute, J. and Grant, J. (1997) The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, London: Orbit. “Disclosure” (2003) [television] Stargate SG-1, Series 6, Episode 17, MGM Television, 22 January. “The Enemy Within” (1997) [television] Stargate SG-1, Series 1, Episode 3, MGM Television, 1 August. “Eye of the Needle” (1995) [television] Star Trek:Voyager, Series 1, Episode 7, Paramount, 20 February. “False Profits” (1996) [television] Star Trek:Voyager, Series 3, Episode 5, Paramount, 2 October. “The Family of Blood” (2007) [television] Doctor Who, Series 3, Episode 9, BBC, 2 June. Farscape:The Peacekeeper Wars (2004) [television] Sci-Fi Channel. Gaiman, N. (1994) [graphic novel] Brief Lives, New York: DC Comics. Gerrold, D. (2001) Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. London: Titan. Haven (2010–2015) [television] Syfy Channel. “I’ll Be Your Mirror” (2016) [television] Once Upon A Time, Series 6, Episode 8, ABC Studios, 13 November. King, S. (1982) “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” in Different Seasons, New York:Viking Press, pp. 3–116. King, S. (1985a) “The Jaunt” in Skeleton Crew, London: Penguin, pp. 232–257. King, S. (1985b) “The Mist” in Skeleton Crew, London: Penguin, pp. 24–154. King, S. (1987a) The Dark Tower 2:The Drawing of the Three, New Hampshire: Grant. King, S. (1987b) Misery, New York:Viking. King, S. (1988) The Dark Tower 1:The Gunslinger, London: Sphere. King, S. (2003) The Dark Tower 5:Wolves of the Calla, New Hampshire: Grant. King, S. (2004a) The Dark Tower 6: Song of Susannah, New Hampshire: Grant. King, S. (2004b) The Dark Tower 7:The Dark Tower, New Hampshire: Grant. Lewis, C.S. (1950) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, London: Geoffrey Bles. Lewis, C.S. (1951) Prince Caspian, London: Geoffrey Bles. 62

P o rta l s

Lewis, C.S. (1952) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, London: Geoffrey Bles. Lewis, C.S. (1955) The Magician’s Nephew, London: The Bodley Head. Lucian of Samosata (1913) A.M. Harmon (trans) A True Story/True Histories. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. “Maternal Instinct” (2000) [television] Stargate SG-1, Series 3, Episode 20, MGM Television, 28 January. The Matrix (1999) [film] Hollywood: Warner Bros. Mendlesohn, F. (2008) Rhetorics of Fantasy, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. “Mirror, Mirror” (1967) [television] Star Trek, Paramount, 6 October. Monsters, Inc. (2001) [film] Hollywood: Walt Disney Pictures/Pixar Animation Studios. Once Upon A Time (2011–present) [television] ABC Studios. “The Pegasus Project” (2006) [television] Stargate SG-1, Series 10, Episode 3, MGM Television, 28 July. “The Price” (1989) [television] Star Trek: The Next Generation, Series 3, Episode 8, Paramount, 13 November. Portal (1997) [computer game] Valve Corporation. Portal 2 (2011) [computer game] Valve Corporation. Resnick, M. (1987) Stalking the Unicorn, New York: Tor. Sliders (1995–1999) [television] Universal Television. Stargate (1994) [film] Hollywood: Roland Emmerich. Stargate Atlantis (2004–2009) [television] MGM Television. Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007) [television] MGM Television. Stargate Universe (2009–2011) [television] MGM Television. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–1999) [television] Paramount. Stranger Things (2016–present) [television] Netflix. “There But for the Grace of God” (1998) [television] Stargate SG-1, Series 1, Episode 20, MGM Television, 20 February. “Thor’s Chariot” (1998) [television] Stargate SG-1, Series 2, Episode 6, MGM Television, 31 July. Tolkien, J.R.R. (1994) The Lord of the Rings, London: Harper Collins. Virgil (2003), D. West, (trans) The Aeneid (Penguin Classics), London: Penguin Classics. Wolf, M.J.P. (2012) Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation. London: Routledge.

63

This page intentionally left blank

Part 2

Form and Structure

This page intentionally left blank

9

World Design Mark J. P. Wolf All stories occur within some kind of setting, which becomes the world of the story and its characters. Storyworlds can be developed to varying degrees, with the minimum development including only the world data necessary to tell the story for which the world exists. Even in such a case, the information we receive about a world will suggest a certain type of world, along with an attitude or feeling toward the world being depicted, one which is particularly crafted to suit the needs of the story. Many imaginary worlds go well beyond the world data needed for the story or stories set in the world, providing a great degree of detail about the world and its locations, inhabitants, cultures, technologies, flora, fauna, and so forth. Some worlds do not even have any stories set in them, like the world of Iblard and the world of the Codex Seraphinianus (1981). In all these cases, the design of the world not only makes it distinct from the Primary World, but gives it its particular identity, with its own unique aesthetic feel and flavor. From a commercial standpoint, world design is also what determines much of what defines a franchise and makes it distinct from other franchises. Practically all imaginary worlds begin with the template of the Primary World, the world we live in, gradually replacing its default assumptions and structures with invented material. This is necessary if the new secondary world is to be recognized as a world, and it also allows us to naturally fill in parts of the world that are neither seen nor described, through assumptions based on Primary World defaults; a gap-filling process that has been referred to by Kendall Walton as the “reality principle” (Walton, 1990) while Marie-Laure Ryan calls it the “principle of minimal departure” (Ryan, 1980), writing: We construe the world of fiction and of counterfactuals as being the closest possible to the reality we know. This means that we will project upon the world of the statement everything we know about the real world, and that we will make only those adjustments which we cannot avoid. (Ryan, 1980: 406) A few changed world defaults is often enough of a starting point to begin the design of a world, when all the consequences of such changes are extrapolated and applied to the world. Even a single, profound difference can generate a very different world; for example, everything in A. K. Dewdney’s Planiverse, even its physics, chemistry, and optics, is different from the Primary World due to its existence in only two dimensions instead of three. Typically, a world is designed as the backdrop for a story, so the design of the world develops out of the needs of the story and its audience. Genre conventions may influence what is available in a world, for example, faster-than-light travel and wormholes in science fiction, or 67

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

magic and dragons in fantasy. Usually, there is also something unique in the world that is not found anywhere else, which makes the imaginary world distinctive. The way all these things are connected together in world infrastructures, and the author’s attitude toward them, are the basic elements of world design, and the start of the design of a specific imaginary world.

Aspects of World Design A world can be described according to its size, scope, shape, and boundaries. The size of the world depends on the number of world data describing it; a world described in a single short story would have very few world data describing it, whereas some worlds are built from the data of hundreds of hours of television shows, dozens of novels and video games, and so on. The scope of the world describes the extent of the space covered by the world itself; a world could be as large as a universe or as tiny as a small town. Note that size and scope are independent of each other; a short story could describe a whole universe, while a large amount of data could be used to describe and build a world no larger than a town. Size and scope combined largely determine the level of detail to which a world is described, and this level of world density will also affect the audience’s experience of the world, and their ability to vicariously imagine themselves in it.The greater the density of world detail, the more immersive the world will be. The shape of the world, along with its boundaries, also determines much of the audience’s experience. A story usually only takes the audience through part of the world, and even multiple stories may not exhaust all there is to see and visit. Maps may extend the world beyond what is seen in the stories, and unless an entire planet is mapped, the map will likely end at such boundaries as oceans, mountains, arctic regions, deserts, or other impassable terrains. For planets, an author will usually prefer to leave some sections unmapped, not only for the purpose of speculation, but also to connect new lands in later installments of a world. If a world is overlaid on the Primary World or some future version of it, then maps of the Primary World are assumed to fill out what remains to be seen, although this assumption is often played with and overturned. The design of the inhabitants of a world tends to be, not surprisingly, those of humans or humanoid beings, to make them relatable to the audience. As worlds like Oz, Arda, and the Star Wars galaxy have shown, one can have a wide range of variations on creatures, robots, and so forth, while still making the characters close enough to humans to be understandable. Sometimes, of course, when difference and a lack of understanding is a part of the point being made by the story, the inhabitants may be quite different from humanity, like the sentient ocean of Stanisław Lem’s planet Solaris, with whom the scientists fail to communicate. Whatever the design of the inhabitants, it should correspond to the design of the world itself in some way; for example, a planet with high gravity would more likely have inhabitants who are short and muscular of stature, rather than very tall and thin, and inhabitants who live underwater would likely propel themselves differently than those who live on dry land. Once the basic elements of the world are set, one can use those parameters to determine the possibilities open to the flora and fauna of a world, which may play an important role in the stories of that world (for example, the role played by sandworms on Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s Dune universe). The natural world, which includes terrain, weather, food, clothing, shelter, and other natural resources, is the basis upon which the foundations of culture can be built, as a world’s inhabitants begin solving individual and societal problems and needs with whatever is available. If the story takes place in a technologically advanced and developed world, then these things can help provide the culture’s early history on which further 68

Wo r l d D e s i g n

developments can build, creating a history of the world in the process. Cultures, languages, names, and philosophy should be developed organically if possible, in order to seem natural and believable, with designs that make sense based on the circumstances, as opposed to wild and fantastic designs that do not appear feasible or seem to serve no purpose.This is especially important for long-running worlds, the earlier works of which may appear more and more dated over time, or whose illogical or poorly designed elements become more noticeable as the quality of world design increases as the world is expanded. Later additions to the Star Trek universe, for example, redesigned and improved the makeup used to define the Klingons, and then explanations had to be given as to why the Klingons seen earlier looked the way they did (it was said to be the result of a virus, which caused the physical changes as well as a change in the Klingons’ temperament and disposition). As cultures are developed, each will inevitably have particular worldviews and philosophies arising from their experience of the world. These may also have served as the starting points of world design, with the world and its cultures designed to embody certain ways of thinking. Worlds will often have multiple cultures within them, and conflict that arises out of clashes between them (see the “Invented Cultures” chapter in this volume). The design of cultures should also influence aspects of how they appear in audiovisual media, with distinctive costumes, architecture, vehicles, technologies, and other concrete details, and the visual design and sound effects accompanying them; yet all of these things should be coordinated so as to fit together in a sensible and plausible whole. If this is done well, sometimes a single piece of the culture—a building, a weapon, a sound effect, or a vehicle—may be recognizable enough to evoke the entire world in the mind of an audience, allowing the world to be easily referenced as well. For example, the sound of a lightsaber hum, a yellow brick road, the U.S.S. Enterprise, and the sword Excalibur all effortlessly evoke the worlds from which they come. Finally, a set of iconic objects, characters, and other world data will aid worlds as they make the transition from one medium to another, connecting the expected world materials even though they appear in slightly different forms. This recognizability is especially important in transmedial worlds, where world data may take on different appearances in different media, while trying to maintain the overall integrity of the world.

World Design across Media Prior to 1900, worlds mostly appeared only in books, so that written description was the main means used to design worlds. Authors were limited by nothing except their imaginations; and only those details that they wished to focus on were elaborated for readers. Difficult design questions could be omitted or given vague descriptions, leaving the visualization to the audience. Fantastic and even impractical or illogical worlds could be described, that would be difficult or ridiculous to visualize. For example, François Rabelais wrote of the outrageous country of Aspharage, located in the giant Pantagruel’s mouth: I passed amongst the rocks, which were his teeth, and never left walking till I got up on one of them; and there I found the pleasantest places in the world, great large tennis-courts, fair galleries, sweet meadows, store of vines, and an infinite number of banqueting summer outhouses in the fields, after the Italian fashion, full of pleasure and delight, where I stayed full four months, and never made better cheer in my life as then. (Rabelais, 1532) 69

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

Description not only allows selective world-building that only gives certain details and not others, but also tells the audience what the characters think and feel when encountering things; an author can describe something as scary or awe-inspiring, without having to come up with a concrete visual design that would evoke the necessary emotions. While the imaginary worlds that appeared before 1900 were mainly literary ones, some of them did feature illustrations, from woodcuts to hand-drawn images, which gave a concrete appearance to what was being described. Such images were typically redundant with the written descriptions or held a place secondary to them, with a few exceptions, like William Wallace Denslow’s illustrations for L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), which were designed along with the text, carefully coordinating the two together on the page. But comics would be the first graphical medium to present imaginary worlds primarily through imagery. (Paintings had sometimes depicted imaginary places, but did not elaborate upon them beyond a single image.) Although most comics are centered on characters and gags, Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905–1914, 1924–1926) contained an enormous amount of world-building, as Nemo ventured further and further into Slumberland over the years. McCay’s painstaking architectural detail, often dynamically changing from panel to panel over the course of a full-page installment, is unlike any other comic strip produced then or since. Comics have been the medium of a number of imaginary worlds from the multilayered DC Comics Universe and Marvel Comics Universe, to the small worlds found in Richard McQuire’s Here (1989 and 2014) or Chris Ware’s Building Stories (2012). Radio presents world design challenges in that everything must be conveyed through sound. Character voices, sound effects, music are used along with written description and narration to convey spaces and events. Some long-running radio soap operas have established not only sets of characters and their relationships, but the imaginary worlds in which they live. In American radio, the most recognizable imaginary place is Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, a fictional Minnesota town that was heard about on A Prairie Home Companion during Keillor’s time hosting the show (1974–1987, 1992–2016). The longest-running radio show in the world, however, is the British show The Archers (1950–present), which is set in the fictional village of Ambridge, itself in the fictional county of Borsetshire. Also similar to literary works due to their dependence on words to convey story information, radio world-building’s use of distinct sound effects and voices means that listeners do not have to imagine what characters or other things sound like, even though they must still visualize them. Film, and later television, gave world-builders the visual means to create photorealistic worlds, while at the same time challenging them to make such worlds as vivid and creatively realized as possible, since books could create anything that could be verbally described. Early film saw the creation of elaborate worlds through the use of large sets combined with miniatures, as in Metropolis (1927) and King Kong (1933), and adapted worlds from other media, as did MGM’s The Wizard of Oz (1939). From its earliest beginnings, film animation was a good venue for imaginary worlds, since it was usually not based on live-action referents, and it was also a way to bring movement into the world of comics, as the early films of Winsor McCay demonstrate, like his Little Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). Live-action filmmaking became better suited for depicting imaginary worlds as special effects technology developed, particularly after the invention of the Linwood-Dunn optical printer in 1944, and then later with the growing development of digital effects techniques, and especially computer animation, from the mid-1970s onward. Today, computer animation has allowed entire film-based worlds to be made, from the cities like Coruscant in the Star Wars films, to the jungle world of Pandora in Avatar (2009) and its sequels, to the fantasy landscapes of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings films directed by Peter Jackson. 70

Wo r l d D e s i g n

Video games gave audiences on-screen virtual worlds that could be interacted with through a controller, and a player-character or avatar that represented the player on-screen. Interactivity made these on-screen worlds different than those of other screen media; worlds were now places that players could explore for themselves, vicariously entering the world.The geography of these worlds, especially those depicted with three-dimensional graphics seen from a first-person perspective, are usually navigable ones, allowing the player to move about and investigate the locations seen from multiple angles and at close range.Thus, environments must be planned and created in three dimensions, rather than simply be designed to be seen at a few predesignated camera angles. Environments must be detailed enough to stand up to a player’s scrutiny, especially now that photorealistic details are a typical expectation of tripleA, big-budget games. Of course, the world’s locations are still selectively created; just as film and television sets are often façades lacking actual interiors, many video game locations are little more than empty shells with limited interactivity and access. For example, in cities like those of Bioshock Infinite (2013), Remember Me (2013), or the Grand Theft Auto series, only a few of the buildings present can actually be entered and have interiors, while the majority are empty shells lacking interior detail. As long as a few building can be entered, the illusion of a complete city can be upheld, especially if the player is uncertain which buildings can be entered, or if inaccessible buildings can be unlocked later in the game. The ability to explore and navigate video game worlds is itself a feature that attracts many players, and the vast sizes of some game worlds is often mentioned in the marketing of a game to ensure that players will have enough to explore and will not soon tire of the world (Morris & Hartas, 2004). The new mass media that became popular and widespread during the 20th century did not only provide new venues for imaginary worlds, they also allowed worlds to appear in multiple media, becoming transmedial worlds. By appearing in multiple media, imaginary worlds could be more like the Primary World, which was also viewed through world news and information appearing in multiple media. It would also mean a greater reliance on world design, since transmedial worlds would be seen and heard. Authors could still create worlds within books, but transmedial worlds would inevitably change the nature of world-building from a solitary activity to one requiring collaboration between many people. Starting with the transmedial worlds like those of Baum and Burroughs, imaginary worlds became big business and more fan-oriented, as authors started to listen to fan suggestions as they continued designing and building their worlds (Freeman, 2016).Today, these worlds are among the largest and most recognizable worlds; some can even be identified by individual iconic images or sounds. The extremely collaborative nature of these worlds also means that world design is spread among dozens of designers; thus, those who own such a world as intellectual property must work to insure that there is an overall logic to the design and design process, lest the world’s unique design and feel be degraded, inconsistent, or lost.

Invention, Completeness, and Consistency As I have argued elsewhere (Wolf, 2012), worlds can be evaluated according to the degree of invention, completeness, and consistency in a given world, and all three are also an important part of world design. Invention is what makes a world different from the Primary World, and also what gives it its uniqueness; perhaps more than anything else, invention is what attracts attention to a new world when it appears, and also plays a large role in continuing an audience’s interest in it. Completeness (or, rather, the illusion of completeness) is the degree to which a world is designed to cover all the necessary areas that make a world feasible; it allows audience members to at least attempt an answer to any question they might have regarding 71

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

the world. Consistency is the extent to which the elements within a world design agree with each other without contradiction, so that everything about a world and its design is logically and aesthetically pleasing. All three of these criteria should be considered by a world designer who wants to make worlds that are interesting, believable, and unique, and able to support ongoing additions of story material. As Lubomír Doležel has pointed out, incompleteness remains “a necessary and universal feature” of imaginary worlds (Doložel, 1998: 169). The question then becomes, how much of a world has to be designed and created? There is the amount of the world that is actually designed and built, and the amount that is suggested, implied, or alluded to, without being fully constructed.Whether it is the images and sounds depicting a cinematic world, a texturemapped three-dimensional environment from a video game, or verbal descriptions given in a novel, the design of an imaginary world must contain enough detail to evoke enough of the world to allow the audience a vicarious experience of it, and hint at places and events beyond what is depicted so as to give an impression of the further reaches of the world that lay outside the particular story at hand. Gaps will inevitably remain, but good, thoughtful world design will give the audience the tools needed to speculate as to how those gaps may be filled. Though at one level “world design” can refer to the construction of a world’s infrastructures (map, timeline, genealogy charts, etc.), on a more practical level it refers to such things as terrain, architecture, technology, vehicles, clothing, food and drink, tools and weapons, customs and cultures, language, and other areas, each of which must be integrated in a plausible way with the others. Thus, world design is a very multidisciplinary activity, which in audiovisual media at least has become a highly collaborative activity requiring a large number of people, each with their own area of specialization, working under the guidance of some creative authority who tries to ensure the overall consistency and believability of the world being designed. As many popular imaginary worlds have demonstrated, the experience of a well-designed imaginary world is something that does not necessarily even have to include a narrative; the world itself can be the reason for the audience’s attention and time spent with it. World design and world-building is an art in itself, and one that continues to grow as evermore elaborate worlds are constructed.

References Dewdney, A. K. (1984), The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World, New York, New York: Springer. Doležel, Lubomír (1998), Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds, Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Freeman, Matthew (2016), Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth-Century Transmedia Story Worlds, London and New York: Routledge. Herbert, Frank (1965), Dune, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Chilton Books. Lem, Stanisław (1962), Solaris, Warsaw, Poland: Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej. McQuire, Richard (2014), Here, New York, New York: Pantheon Graphic Novels, Penguin Random House. Morris, Dave, and Leo Hartas (2004), The Art of Game Worlds, New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Rabelais, François (1532), Pantagruel, “Chapter XXXII. How Pantagruel with his tongue covered a whole army, and what the author saw in his mouth,” translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty and Peter Antony Motteux, available online at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Pantagruel/ Chapter_XXXII. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1980), “Fiction, Non-Factuals and the Principle of Minimal Departure,” Poetics 8, page 406. Serafini, Luigi (1981), Codex Seraphinianus, Rome, Italy: Franco Maria Ricci. 72

Wo r l d D e s i g n

Walton, Kendall (1990), Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of Representational Arts, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press. Ware, Chris (2012), Building Stories, New York, New York: Pantheon Graphic Novels, Penguin Random House. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York, New York: Routledge.

73

10

Ontological Rules Marie-Laure Ryan Ontology, defined by Webster’s Dictionary as the philosophical study of “the nature of being and of the kind of things that have existence,” provides a useful approach to the classification and differentiation of imaginary worlds. In a possible worlds perspective, imaginary worlds can be situated at variable distances from the world we regard as actual or primary; for instance, the world of a realistic novel such as Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (2010) stands closer to the actual world than the world of a fantasy such as The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) because its description requires fewer modifications from the assumed description of reality than the description of the world of The Lord of the Rings. We can build the storyworld of Freedom by adding a few individuals to the inventory of the real world, while leaving everything else unchanged (physical laws, natural species, history, geography), but we can only build the world of The Lord of the Rings by adding species (orcs, elves, hobbits), changing natural laws, and creating a brand new geography. Ontological rules specify what can and cannot exist, what is and isn’t possible in a particular type of storyworld, thereby determining its distance, or conditions of accessibility, from the Primary World in which we live. When a number of texts share the same ontological rules, we can speak of genre. Imaginary worlds, and the ontological rules that describe them, can be classified on various levels of abstraction. Aristotle provides a useful starting point by distinguishing the task of the historian, which is to represent what is, from the task of the poet, which is to represent what could be according to possibility and probability (Poetics, 9.2). The domain of the possible, in turn, can be conceived in two ways: in a narrow sense, the possible is what could happen in the Primary World, while in a wide sense, it encompasses every type of world that differs from the Primary World. If we split the possible into “what could happen in the Primary World, given the proper circumstance” and “what can be imagined but cannot happen in the Primary World,” we obtain a three-way typology (Maître, 1983, who adds a category of hesitation between 2 and 3 inspired by Todorov):

Alethic value (= modalities of truth) 1. True/false (= nonfiction) 2. Possible (= realistic fiction, science fiction) 3. Impossible (= fantastic genres)

This rule specifies conditions of truth with respect to the Primary World. However, if we shift perspective from the Primary World to the storyworld, if in other words we immerse ourselves in the storyworld, then the textual assertions become automatically true in the storyworld by virtue of the performative power of fiction, a power that enables fictional texts to 74

O n t o l o g i c a l Ru l e s

create imaginary objects and worlds by simply referring to them. There cannot, consequently, be a divergence between what the text says about the world it represents and the represented world. In the case of nonfiction, by contrast, we must distinguish the world referred to by the text (i.e., the actual world) from the world described by the text; when the text is true these two worlds coincide; when the text contains falsehoods, these two worlds diverge. Nonfiction obeys very strict ontological conditions, since for the text to be accepted as true, all the rules that define the Primary World must also define the storyworld. The world of fictional texts, by contrast, can stand at various distances from the Primary World; its description requires, consequently, a wider variety of ontological rules. The main difficulty in postulating rules that measure ontological distance resides in cultural and individual divergences concerning what is possible and what is not in the Primary World; for instance, the entertainment screen of Icelandic Airlines states, probably tongue-in-cheek, that about 50% of people in Iceland believe in elves. While I am skeptical of this claim, if taken literally (but isn’t belief a matter of degree?), we should consider the possibility of it being true. Will the people who believe in elves consider stories dealing with these creatures to be possible? Conversely, should Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1611) be considered impossible on the ground that witches have disappeared from recent ontologies? And just because religious faith was more widespread and more literal than now, did people in the Middle Ages regard hagiographic stories about saints performing miracles and ribald stories about cheating wives as equally possible in the real world? I would rather suggest that medieval people attributed these two kinds of stories to different ontological domains within reality, the sacred and the profane (Pavel, 1986), one of which is no longer eliciting strong belief in a large part of the population of Western c­ ivilizations. In my formulation of rules, I take as standard a minimalist ontology based on scientific observation that excludes empirically non-verified phenomena such as the paranormal and the occult. I assume that people who do believe in elves, in flying objects of alien origin (UFOs), or in communication with the dead will recognize that novels or films that deal with these phenomena differ ontologically from strictly realistic texts such as Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. In other words, even users who personally adhere to a broader ontology may invoke the culturally dominant “scientific” ontology as a standard when making judgments of genre. Alternatively, a distinction could be made between what everybody believes (i.e., dogs exist), what some people believe (i.e., UFOs exist), and what no mentally sane person believes (unicorns exist). The corresponding genres would then be realism, the paranormal, and the fantastic (Traill, 1991). As for the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, their ontological impact depends on how the opening passage is interpreted: do the witches exist objectively in the world of Macbeth, are they a figment of a character’s imagination, or are they purely allegorical figures? Only the first interpretation is compatible with a fantastic classification. If we cannot decide between the three interpretations, the play remains in limbo between the possible and the impossible. I propose to account for the ontological variety of imaginary worlds by distinguishing a number of cognitively important semantic domains, and by dividing them according to various degrees of departure from the implicit standard of the Primary World. This taxonomy draws on Ryan (1991) but uses a different formulation of rules. The resulting system should not be taken as definitive nor comprehensive: since new types of imaginary worlds are continually being created, it takes an ever-expanding catalog of rules to describe them, and to draw finer and finer generic distinctions. Inventory of Individuals 1. Same 75

M a r i e - L au r e Rya n

2. Augmented 3. Different The first option means that the storyworld is limited to historical individuals. This does not mean that the work is history, since the individual properties and biography of these individuals could be deliberately altered. For instance, a work of fiction could show Hitler winning the Second World War without introducing a single invented character. The second option is the most common in realistic novels such as Freedom. It introduces some imaginary characters into the storyworld, usually as protagonists, but real-world characters exist in the background and form targets of reference. By a principle of solidarity, if only one real-world individual is introduced in a fiction, one must assume that, unless otherwise specified or implied, the entire inventory of the real world is also part of its ontological background. It would take an extensive rewriting of history and personal biography for a novel to include Hillary Clinton but to explicitly exclude Bill Clinton. In the third option, no real-world individual is mentioned, and the cast of characters is entirely original to the storyworld. This situation occurs in most fantastic worlds, but also in some worlds that incorporate aspects of everyday reality, such as Jane Austen’s novels: despite the identifiable geographical and historical setting (the latter not explicitly specified but conventionally assumed to correspond to the lifetime of the author), no real-world individual is mentioned. We cannot say that Napoleon exists in Pride and Prejudice (1813) though he does in War and Peace (1869). When an inventory obeys 1 or 2, a subrule comes into effect:

Properties of Common Individuals 1. Same,Verified 2. Possible 3. Different

When option 1 holds, and there are no invented characters, the text can be regarded as history. Option 2 is the trademark of fictionalized biographies of historical individuals. Unlike authors of historical works, novelists can attribute to historical characters speech acts, private thoughts, emotions, and reasons for acting that are neither verified nor contradicted by documents. Historical fiction should fill in the gaps in our knowledge of historical figures in a believable way, motivating the reader to think: this could be true in the Primary World, in addition to being true in the storyworld. Option 3 is found in any fiction that stages an interaction between fictional and historical characters. It is particularly dominant in a genre that may be called historical fabulation, such as The Three Musketeers (1844) by Alexandre Dumas, or in counterfactual history, such as Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America (2004), where Charles Lindbergh is elected President of the United States during World War II and initiates humiliating measures against the Jewish population. Imaginary worlds can also be distinguished from the real world in matters of biology and physics. I propose the following rules:

Kinds of Natural Species 1. Same 2. Augmented 3. (Different?)

Natural Laws 1. Same 76

O n t o l o g i c a l Ru l e s

2. Augmented (or: can be broken by magic) 3. (Different?) These two rules are the principal factor in the distinction of fantastic from realistic storyworlds. Rule 2 of “Natural Species” introduces supernatural and invented creatures such as fairies, ghosts, Nazgul, the undead, elves, dwarves, hobbits, orcs, dragons, vampires, and zombies into fictional worlds, where they interact with natural species such as humans, horses, and snakes. (But if the snakes have magical abilities, they are no longer a natural species.) It is at least theoretically possible to create a fictional world whose inventory of species presents no overlap with that of the real world (option 3), but in practice this is hardly ever done, because readers tend to relate emotionally to the species they know, especially to humans. Even The Lord of the Rings, whose main protagonists are hobbits, includes a race of men (and, in fact, hobbits are a subspecies of men, characterized by their small size, but without magical abilities). A remote planet could admittedly contain an entirely different set of species (cf., Pandora in the film Avatar [2009]), but narratively interesting situations are typically created when the inhabitants of such remote planets come into contact with the denizens of Earth. Since species not found on earth are usually associated with magical properties, the two sets of rules normally imply each other. Fairies can turn pumpkins into carriages, wizards can cast spells, and witches know how to manufacture magic potions. If imaginary species present supernatural abilities, this means that natural laws can be broken.Yet the rules governing natural species do not make the rules of “natural law” entirely superfluous because one can imagine a world that breaks natural laws without introducing additional species: for instance, in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915), a supernatural event affects an ordinary individual; in most time-travel stories, humans may move back and forth in history without encountering new species. (I take it that time-travel breaks natural laws even though Einsteinian relativity theory suggests that it may be possible for particles.) Conversely, could a world that contains different species entirely respect the laws of nature? This is conceivable, but narratively unproductive. What would be the point of introducing new species if they could not do something different? Option 3, totally different natural laws, seems cognitively improbable, because readers would be unable to rely on their life experience and knowledge of the Primary World to infer causal relations between events. Without causal relations there cannot be a coherent story.

Technology 1. Same 2. More Advanced 3. Absent

This is the feature that distinguishes science fiction from realism on one hand, and from the fantastic on the other. Insofar as science fiction explores the social and environmental consequences of developing advanced technologies, its relevance encompasses both the actual world, where it could happen, and the storyworld, where it does happen as a matter of (fictional) fact. In standard science fiction, natural laws are observed and there are no additional species. But storyworlds can combine some of the attributes of the fantastic with those of science fiction. The world (or universe) of Star Wars blends, for instance, traditional science fictional features such as advanced spaceships and smart robots with new species, such as the Wookiee Chewbacca, or domestic animals resembling dinosaurs and hippopotamuses. It also presents fairy tale elements such as knights (Jedis) and princesses. The new kinds of species could, however, be attributed to the fact that the Star Wars universe contains many planets, 77

M a r i e - L au r e Rya n

representing different climatic environments in which different life forms did evolve. If one accepts this explanation, the world of Star Wars is more science fictional than fantastic, though it lacks the predictive (“this could happen”) dimension of the most sophisticated worlds of science fiction. Option 3, absent technology, can be used to describe edenic storyworlds, such as the worlds of Baroque pastoral romances. For more refinement within the worlds of science fiction (and possibly also within fantastic worlds) we can apply a set of cosmological rules:

Cosmology 1. One world 2. A universe with many celestial objects (planets, stars) 3. Parallel universes

Option 1, represented in most realistic texts, does not exclude the sun, the moon, planets, and stars from the storyworld (after all, the characters of a realistic novel may dream while looking at the moon or read about space exploration); it rather means that the narrative action is physically confined to one world. While science fiction may present the same restriction, option 2 is much more distinctive of the genre, though not exclusive to it: we find stories of travel to the moon (Wolf, 2012) long before the technological conditions of the trip received any consideration. In type 2 cosmologies, celestial objects are unique, and space travel leads to ever-different worlds. Option 3 dramatizes a cosmology that is gaining traction in theoretical physics and popular science, according to which the sum of what exists consists not only of one universe with its myriads of galaxies, stars, and planets contained in a unified space-time, but of multiple, parallel universes existing in their own space-time. The birth of these universes can be attributed to the formation of black holes and wormholes, or to what is known as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. This cosmology inspires stories in which individuals exist in multiple parallel worlds, and where cross-world travel enables characters to meet their counterparts, a situation particularly rich in possible dramatic developments (Ryan, 2006). Another ontological domain relevant to generic distinctions is the temporal location of the action. Its variations can be captured by the following rule:

Time 1. Historical 2. Future 3. Mythical/Timeless

The first option locates stories in a specific temporal setting, recognizable for the reader through references to real-world individuals and events, or, when none is mentioned, through the kinds of objects and technologies that surround the characters. This does not mean that the past of the imaginary world must be narrowly faithful to the actual past: just as a world can introduce imaginary characters in a historical setting, it can present a counterfactual version of the past, as in alternative history fiction. Option 2 is a distinctive feature of science fiction, as well as of utopias and dystopias that do not make use of advanced technology, such as George Orwell’s 1984 (released in 1949). Mythical time, or timelessness, the temporal setting of medieval fantasy and fairy tales, is often signaled by expressions such as “once upon a time,” “in the time when animals could speak,” or even the Star Wars mantra, “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” While the mention of kings and queens, knights and castles, and swords 78

O n t o l o g i c a l Ru l e s

instead of guns may suggest a medieval setting in fairy tales, The Lord of the Rings, or Game of Thrones, this setting is de-realized by the presence of supernatural elements. Genres are not only determined by temporal but also by spatial criteria:

Space / Geography 1. Same 2. Augmented 3. Different

Option 1 locates stories in an actual geographic setting.When imaginary characters are introduced, real-world geography must often be expanded to accommodate their whereabouts: for instance, the Sherlock Holmes stories encompass the geography of the real world, including Baker Street in London, but they add the address 221 (which did not exist at the time of Conan Doyle’s writing) as the residence of the famous detective. In this case the addition is minimal, but in the Harry Potter novels, most of the action takes place in the augmented part of world geography. Radically different geographies occur in two cases: (1) when the setting is fully invented, as in The Lord of the Rings; (2) when there are no place names, or none has reference in the real world, though the setting as a whole can be fairly ordinary (Kafka’s novels). In an overwhelming number of texts, encompassing both realistic and fantastic ones, the geometric configuration of space corresponds to our perception of real world space, but if we want to account for strange worlds, such as Edwin Abbott’s Flatland (which describes societies existing in two-dimensional and one-dimensional spaces), we must add this rule:

Number of Spatial Dimensions 1. Same (=3) 2. Fewer 3. (More ?)

Option 3 is questionable, because even though mathematics and geometry can describe objects of more than three dimensions, which opens the possibility of a science fiction story taking place in such a space, the human mind is limited to visualizing objects in three dimensions. How, then, would readers imagine such worlds? The most remote of fictional worlds (so remote that their “worldness” can be called into question) are those that present contradictions. Their description requires the following rule:

Logic 1. Respected 2. Occasionally Violated 3. Systematically Violated

With option 1, the storyworld respects the two fundamental laws of logic: non-contradiction (not p and –p) and excluded middle (either p or –p). The rule of non-contradiction is occasionally violated in avant-garde texts, especially in French New Novels. We read, for instance, in Alain Robbe-Grillet’s In the Labyrinth (1960), “outside it is raining,” and a few lines below, “outside the sun is shining” (1965:141), but these two statements are part of the same description and no time passes between them that could explain the change in weather. According to logicians, when a single contradiction enters a system of propositions, anything can be inferred, and it becomes impossible to imagine a world. I believe, however, that this position is too 79

M a r i e - L au r e Rya n

strong to describe the reader’s experience of postmodern texts. While they do not r­ epresent a coherent world, these texts make a number of non-contradicted assertions, which readers can use as materials to construct partial world versions. In one version of Robbe-Grillet’s text, it is raining at a certain moment, in another the sun is shining in the same moment, but no version will account for the text as a whole. It would take option 3 for the imagination to give up the attempt to construct a world, and to resign itself to the fact that there is nothing but words. This option can be implemented in several ways: through systematic contradiction, as in this translation of a French non-sense poem: “a young old man, sitting on a wooden stone, was reading a newspaper folded in his pocket in the light of a street lamp that had been turned off ”; through incoherent content, as in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953): “Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Punch and Wattman of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time with extension from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown” (Beckett, 1954: 141; the sentence goes on for two pages); and through the use of an incomprehensible language, as in Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” (1871): “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe / All mimsy were the borogroves / And the mome raths outgrabe” (Carroll, 1975: 130). While certain combinations of ontological rules have become canonical, thereby defining culturally recognized genres (summarized in Table 10.1) and creating expectations (we do not anticipate finding computers in fairy tales), nothing prevents storyworlds from implementing original combinations. As already noted, a breaking of physical laws usually comes hand in hand with the presence of supernatural creatures, but in the genre of magic realism, or in Kafka’s stories, physically impossible events, such as transformation or levitation, affect ordinary people. Fantastic elements are usually incompatible with an inventory that includes real-world people or a geography that includes real-world places, but in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516) we find both supernatural creatures (a hippogriff) and historical characters and institutions (Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire), both elements of Greek mythology (participants in the Trojan war) and Biblical figures (the prophet Elijah), both real-world locations (Paris) and imaginary ones (the sorceress Alcina’s magic island), and both travel through Europe and travel to the moon in an ontological cocktail that defies established genres. Contemporary Table 10.1  An ontological description of genres. A=Alethic value; B=Inventory of individuals; C=Properties of common individuals; D=Kinds of natural species; E=Natural laws; F=Technology; G=Cosmology; H=Time; I=Space/Geography; J=Spatial dimensions; K=Logic. Numbers refer to values described in text. *Values are specified for Robbe-Grillet’s In the Labyrinth.

Nonfiction Historical fiction Realistic fiction Fantastic Fantastic realism Science fiction Pastoral romance Storyworlds with local contradictions* Generalized nonsense

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

1 2 2 3 3 2 3 3

1 1,2 2,3 3 3 2,3 3 3

1 1,2,3 1,2 n/a n/a 2,3 n/a n/a

1 1 1 2 1 1,2 1 1

1 1 1 2 2 1,2 1 ?

1 1 1 1,3 1 2 3 1

1 1 1 1,2 1 2,3 1 1

1 1 1 3 1 2 3 3

1 1 1,2 3 1,2 2,3 3 3

1 1 1 1 1 1,2,3 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2

3

1,2,3

?

1,2

?

?

?

?

?

?

3

80

O n t o l o g i c a l Ru l e s

culture has been intensely involved in the creation of daring ontological combinations; a case in point is the novel (2009) and film (2016) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which hybridizes two types of worlds normally located far away from each other. Strict ontological rules are not the only determinants of genre. For instance, within the large group of realistic storyworlds, further distinctions can be made on the basis of thematic content, such as romance, mystery, or thrillers; on the basis of probability (“escapist” storyworlds containing hair-raising events vs. storyworlds focused on the ordinary); and on the basis of emotional impact (tragic, comic). Within the broad domain of the supernatural, Tzvetan Todorov proposes an epistemic distinction between a subgenre that he calls the fantastic, where there is a hesitation between a natural and a supernatural explanation of events, and the marvelous, where the supernatural is an accepted part of the real. Though ontological rules are only one of the criteria that distinguish genres, they play a major role in determining what types of texts we like. Just as we choose vacation destinations on the basis of what we expect to find in them (landscapes? wildlife? culture? opportunities for physical activities?), we choose the worlds in which we transport ourselves in imagination in a large part on the basis of the ontological rules that predict what kinds of entities we will encounter, and what kinds of experience these worlds have to offer.

References Aristotle (1954[1952]) Poetics, trans. and intro. Malcolm Heath, New York: Penguin Books. Beckett, S. (1954[1952]) En attendant/Waiting for Godot. Bilingual edition translated by the author, New York: Grove Press. Carroll, L. (1975[1916]) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, New York: Rand McNally. Maître, D. (1983) Literature and Possible Worlds, Middlesex Polytechnic Press. Pavel, T. (1986) Fictional Worlds, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Robbe-Grillet, A. (1965) Two Novels by Robbe-Grillet: Jealousy and In the Labyrinth, trans. Richard Howard, New York: Crown Press. Ryan, M.-L. (1991) Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. Ryan, M.-L. (2006) “From Parallel Universes to Possible Worlds: Ontological Pluralism in Physics, Narratology and Narrative,” Poetics Today 24.7, pp. 633–674. Todorov, T. (1975[1970]) The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Traill, N. (1991) “Fictional Worlds of the Fantastic,” Style 25, pp.196–210. Wolf, M. J. P. (2012) Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York: Routledge.

81

11

World Completeness Benjamin J. Robertson Completeness, or the illusion of completeness, in the present definition, refers not to a given or static condition of an imaginary world in which that world’s every property or occupant is fully accounted for a priori, whether actually or ideally. Rather, it refers to an emergent phenomenon arising out of the interactions amongst the objects that make up that world. Here “emergent” can be understood in its common usage—“to come into view after being concealed” or “to come into existence”—as well as in a more technical sense, which refers to the properties of a system that obtain through the “bottom-up” interactions of small components over time rather than being set a priori in a “top-down” fashion (see Johnson, 2004). These objects may be described in the textual fictions set in that world, but also gain coherence by way of those fictions’ paratexts and other ancillary materials as well as by way of generic and other intertexts with which these fictions might engage or to which they might refer, through allusion, generic convention, etc. (on paratexts see Genette & Maclean, 1991, and Gray, 2010; on intertextuality see Allen, 2011). This coherence obtains through the labor of readers, viewers, or players who piece together information from these various sources and speculate about the world in question in response to gaps in the descriptions of that world. This definition thus understands imaginary worlds to be necessarily incomplete for the fact that the processes by which they tend toward completion can never themselves be completed. Mark J. P. Wolf provides the starting point for this definition when he writes that completeness “refers to the degree to which the world contains explanations and details covering all the various aspects of its characters’ experiences, as well as background details which together suggest a feasible, practical world” (Wolf, 2012: 38). The usefulness of this definition of completeness—namely as a tool for the study of imaginary worlds—will become clear after I summarize some previous accounts of the concept and explain both their shortcomings and utility in the present context. The definition of completeness offered here stands somewhat at odds with the history of the concept, in which “completeness” has mainly referred to the question of whether one can account for all of the properties of a real or fictional object (or the world that contains that object). Completeness, and related concepts soundness and consistency, derives from formal logic and metalogic and has been of interest to scholars working in the fields of possible and fictional worlds since at least the 1970s (see the “World Consistency” chapter in this volume). In formal logic, the completeness of a formal system with respect to a particular property depends upon whether one can derive every formula having that property from the system itself. In the context of possible worlds theory, and moving us much closer to a discussion of completeness useful for a theory of imaginary worlds, Marie-Laure Ryan writes, “Insofar as they owe their existence to an act of the mind, the entities found exclusively in possible 82

Wo r l d C o m p l e t e n e s s

worlds differ in ontological status from the objects of the actual world” (Ryan, 1991: 20). In other words, the objects we read about, hear about, or see in novels, films, video games, and other narrative media do not possess the same manner of being as do, for example, the material books, films, and video game cartridges that convey to us descriptions of these objects. The latter exist in a material sense for the reader, viewer, or player; the former do not. This difference leads Ryan to ask whether the objects present in possible worlds can be said to be complete. She continues by framing formal logic’s definition of completeness in terms of her investigation: “According to logicians, an object x is logically complete if for every property p, the proposition ‘x has p’ is either true or false” (p. 20). For example, the material book that conveys to me descriptions of Middle-earth does or does not have the property whiteness, does or does not have the property heaviness, does or does not have the property roundness. This material book possesses or does not possess every conceivable property in fact, such that a person who interacts with the book can answer every question about those properties with either a “yes” or a “no” (even if no single person will actually ask about every conceivable property a material book might possess). By contrast, a book described in a material copy of The Lord of the Rings (The Red Book of Westmarch, for example) cannot (perhaps) be complete in the same manner. No one can know the answer to all of the questions one might ask about this fictional book’s properties. In addition to Ryan and scholars of possible worlds, scholars of fictional worlds, such as Thomas Pavel and Lubomír Doležel, have also taken up the question of completeness. Such scholars rely on a notion of completeness very close to that which Ryan describes, namely one based on the characteristics of objects described in fiction and the worlds in which these objects exist. Because these thinkers start from the definition offered by formal logic they tend to argue against completeness. Their positions are worth considering here. Pavel notes that because fictional worlds are of various sizes, “they manage to be rich or poor, more or less comprehensive” (Pavel, 1986: 105). No matter the comprehensiveness of a fictional world, however, it will always remain incomplete. In fact, Pavel writes, “For several writers, incompleteness constitutes a major distinctive feature of fictional worlds” (p. 107). He then offers formal logic’s definition of completeness to frame a question of whether we can know, for example, if this or that character in a fictional world has a cousin or if another truly has four children. Such questions remain unanswerable not only in fact but in principle, for Pavel; as such, the world of which they are asked remains incomplete. The completeness of the actual world of the reader, in contrast, affords answers in principle to nearly all questions. In those cases where no answers are possible even in principle, as in the realm of subatomic physics, such indeterminancy “seems to obey definite constraints” (p. 107). The indeterminancy of fiction, which obeys no such constraints, suggests that not only are such worlds incomplete quantitatively (we cannot know all of the properties of all of the objects therein), but also qualitatively (we cannot fully know the physics according to which these objects accrue their properties). Doležel understands that, because humans construct them, fictional worlds must be incomplete. According to Doležel, gaps are a necessary consequence of “texture”—the specific words a writer puts on the page by which she offers information about the world being represented. Importantly, at certain points in a text there must be “zero texture,” where the writer offers no description or other information about the world. This gap is part and parcel of the incompleteness of the fictional world. Drawing upon the reader response theory of Wolfgang Iser, Doležel argues, “When the reader reads and processes the fictional text, he or she reconstructs the fictional world constructed by the author” and, simply put, fills in the gap in the writer’s texture (Doležel, 1998: 170). In so doing, “the Iserian reader reconstructs the 83

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

fictional world guided by his or her life experiences, that is, by his or her communion with complete objects and worlds,” namely the one in which this reader is reading, the actual world (p. 171). Interestingly, Doležel goes beyond his claims about the limits of texture in arguing against completeness. In a footnote, he writes that the “consequences of a complete fictional world would be frightening” (p. 267). He cites Terence Parsons as evidence: “If a piece of fiction accidentally turned out to be a complete and completely accurate account of the entire (past, present and future) history of the universe, then all characters created therein would be identical with real objects” (p. 184). Whether because of the limitations of human construction or because of an existentialist horror, fictional worlds must always remain incomplete. Pavel and Doležel focus on worlds insofar as they are constructed in writing, but their general observations about the necessary incompleteness of any fictional world also apply to those worlds represented in audiovisual media such as film and video games. Although such media offer the impression of completeness, insofar as viewers or players experience them through more sensory channels than they do literature, they nonetheless remain incomplete. In Pavel’s terms, we are no more likely to be able to answer questions about a character’s relatives in a film than we are in a novel. In Doležel’s terms, we must fill in the texture of a visual world in a manner similar to the way we must fill in that for a literary world. For example, no film will ever show a viewer the whole of a house, a city, or a planet; the viewer is left to fill in these absences for herself. Moreover, films and video games can, in some instances, present the viewer or player with an even greater sense of incompleteness than can a work of literature precisely because of the types of data they provide. Alfonso Cuarón’s film Gravity (2013), for example, implies the vastness of space in a manner difficult for any written work to achieve. Of course the film cannot show the viewer all of space, but for this reason it is able to convey a sense that its representations must always remain incomplete. The video game No Man’s Sky (2016) allows players to potentially explore 18 quintillion worlds, each of which is algorithmically generated as the player plays (alone or in an online mode that coordinates the efforts of individuals into an atlas of the game space). Although each of these planets exists potentially, they will never be generated by the game in total as there are more than can be counted by all humans living on Earth now, much less those playing the game. In short, films such as Gravity and video games such as No Man’s Sky, if somewhat differently than literary fictions, also demonstrate incompleteness along the lines that Pavel and Doležel describe. The present definition agrees that incompleteness seems to be a necessary dimension of any world described by texts and also agrees that there can be no full account of all of the properties of all (or any) objects in such worlds. However, it reframes this discussion by insisting that we must think about objects in worlds in a manner altogether different than we think about objects in stories or texts (even if the former always come to us embedded in the latter). Therefore, when we consider objects that exist in imaginary worlds, completeness, as a concept appropriate to this field, cannot be based upon the potential or actual enumeration of a world’s properties (as in Pavel’s account). Likewise, it cannot rest solely upon the assumptions of the reader about how her own world operates (as in Doležel’s account). In short, our understandings of objects in imaginary worlds cannot be limited to the textual descriptions and implications nor to our experiences with those texts to the exclusion of all other potential resources. Our considerations must also account for intertextual and paratextual sources in order to allow completeness—which an isolated text cannot produce on its own—to emerge. To better understand the manner in which a focus on narratives and texts limits our understanding of completeness, we can examine what Roland Barthes calls “the reality effect.” In his essay of that name, Barthes considers what, for the structural analysis of fiction, had long 84

Wo r l d C o m p l e t e n e s s

been considered superfluous: small details that do not relate to the more abstract concerns of this sort of analysis. He writes: These details are scandalous (from the point of view of structure), or, even more disturbingly, they seem to be allied with a kind of narrative luxury, profligate to the extent of throwing up ‘useless’ details and increasing the cost of narrative ­information. (Barthes, 1982: 11) Precisely because these details are insignificant for narrative structure, they signify the real (not a real or referential object in and of itself, but the category called reality). Although Barthes himself would not use these terms, such concrete details offer a sort of completeness, but only for the narrative itself. Barthes considers these details only insofar as they do or do not fit within a given structure and not insofar as they offer a means by which to understand a world (which extends beyond that structure). Although no imaginary world can be fully separated from the fictions that introduce it to the reader, the present definition understands the details of a world to be never merely details lending reality to a story, but rather intersections of manifold relationships amongst objects and subjects that extend beyond that story and into the world in which that story is set.To take a simple example: a T-shirt worn by a character in a novel, casually mentioned, need not be significant with regard to the narrative in question. However, if this T-shirt exists in a naturalistic fiction, one that seeks to represent the world of the reader in as accurate a manner as possible, then its presence indicates, perhaps, a capitalist mode of production in which T-shirts are mass produced, signify participation in an event or loyalty to a brand or identity, indicate a leisurely lifestyle, etc. The relationships of production such a T-shirt implies may not be important for the story being told, but they are of utmost importance with regard to the world being built and the potential completeness thereof. Even more importantly, when a T-shirt appears in a work of fantasy in which no such mode of production exists, such as Steph Swainston’s The Year of Our War (2004), the reader cannot rely on her knowledge of her own world to explain it. She must therefore puzzle over its existence and engage in a process that produces the world’s completeness as part of her reading practice by taking into account, if she can, this fantasy’s relationships with other fantasies, interviews with the author, fan speculation, etc. In other words, the completeness of Swainston’s Fourlands, as a world, cannot be contemplated only within the confines of her novels about that world. Even if intertextual and paratextual analysis cannot produce completeness finally, it nonetheless must be involved in a consideration of the world in question. If understandings of completeness rooted in formal logic and theories of narrative do not offer a comprehensive theory of the concept for imaginary worlds scholarship, they nonetheless provide important components of such a theory. Both Pavel and Doležel reject the possibility of completeness, as just discussed, as does the present definition. Moreover, Pavel’s rejection of completeness leads him to claim that incompleteness may not (only) be an accidental feature of a fictional world, but may in fact be enacted. Such might especially be the case in modernist and postmodernist fictions (by, for example, Borges, Pynchon, or Acker) that thematize the gaps inherent to human knowledge practices. For Pavel, therefore, even if incompleteness is a universal and necessary feature of fictional worlds, it will always be conditioned by the particular historical circumstances in which those worlds are constructed: “Cultures and periods enjoying a stable world view will tend to seek minimal incompleteness” and those cultures and periods undergoing transition and conflict tending to “maximize the incompleteness of fictional worlds” (Pavel, 1986: 108–109). If we understand that the literary genres most clearly associated with imaginary worlds—science fiction, fantasy, and 85

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

horror—begin in reaction to the Enlightenment idealization of the rational and the secular and Enlightenment demonization of superstition and dogma, we can subsequently understand the imaginary worlds in which these genres take place to be a manner of grappling with the question of incompleteness itself. For example, Tolkien justifies his and other fairy-stories in terms of the belief they afford readers, a belief that is lost with the advent of modernity and becomes all too apparent in the midst of the wars of the first half of the 20th century (see Tolkien, 1964). For Tolkien, the secondary world of Arda, which contains Middle-earth, produced belief (or, as Tolkien put it, “secondary belief ”), a complete and total knowledge that had been under assault from sciences that insisted upon a skeptical approach to the world and evidence for claims based in the material rather than the ideal. Tolkien therefore shows a desire for completeness, even if he cannot finally produce it. By contrast, more contemporary fantasies such as Swainston’s The Year of Our War or China Mieville’s The Scar (2002) build worlds in order to question such desires and to thwart them in more obvious ways. These fantasies, written in the wake of the incredulity toward metanarratives (Lyotard, 1984) and the impossibility of totalizing contemporary culture (Jameson, 1991) that characterize postmodernity, are not simply or naturally incomplete because they are texts written by humans, but produce, enact, or represent incompleteness in order to therefore thematize it. Such texts— and innumerable others such as Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000), Felix Gilman’s The Half-Made World (2010), Jeff Vandermeer’s City of Saints and Madmen (2001), and even Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)—seem to say that no amount of imagination or further information can save humanity from the crises it faces in the actual world. Although Doležel’s claims about a reader’s reliance on her experience of her own world to fill in gaps in a fictional world do not account for how that reader might make sense of an imaginary world whose backstory is so very different from her own, the reader nonetheless plays an important role in the present definition. After all, no experience of the actual world could possibly allow a reader to understand how magic works in fantasy or how vampires exist in horror, unless that experience itself comes in the form of having read other generic texts. In that case, the reader would know that magic comes from the gods and that vampires exist because of a curse. In short, these phenomena, impossible to explain in any other way, have been explained by previous generic texts. For example, the characters in Mira Grant’s Feed (2010) understand that the zombies they encounter result from several scientific experiments, but their methods of dealing with these zombies derive from the zombie sub-genre of horror (to the extent that numerous children, even girls, are named “George” in honor of George Romero, who taught the world to survive). Feed, and other generic horror narratives such as Glenn Duncan’s The Last Werewolf (2011), thus thematizes the manner in which readers come to understand one imaginary world by virtue of having already understood another imaginary world that exists in an intertextual relationship with that world. Along similar lines, the world of The Matrix (1999) cannot be fully explained by the characters in the films because so much knowledge of the past has been lost for them. However, as viewers of the films, we can watch the paratextual Animatrix (2003) in order to understand how this world came to be the way it is. Likewise, we can play the video game Enter the Matrix (2003) to fill in absent details in the film (how Niobe, for example, saves Morpheus when he is thrown from a moving truck in The Matrix: Reloaded [2003]). In each case, the reader must consume and coordinate materials exterior to the text in question in order to fill in the textural gap in that text. This process can be even more complex, as Wolf notes in his discussion of the planet of Tatooine, which serves as a major setting in the Star Wars saga. As a planet entirely of a desert waste land, Tatooine does not, at first glance, suggest an environment hospitable to life (human or otherwise). However, viewers might piece together information from the films, 86

Wo r l d C o m p l e t e n e s s

from other generic texts to which the Star Wars saga might relate (such as Frank Herbert’s Dune [1965]), and from ancillary/paratextual materials from the Star Wars expanded universe (such as novels, video and role-playing games, and television shows) to come to a rough (if non-definitive) understanding of how such an ecosystem might operate. Thus, the completeness of the world (both Tatooine specifically and Lucas’s Star Wars galaxy generally) emerges as a product or consequence of a process involving numerous actors and objects, with the reader taking a central role in this process. This process can lead to both statements about the world in question (fan theories, academic debate) as well as fictions that expand a given imaginary world (or cause one imaginary world to intersect with another), even if in a non-canonical way (see the “Fandom” and “Canonicity” chapters in this volume). Before turning to a final word about the usefulness and limitations of completeness as a concept in the study of imaginary worlds, I wish to introduce one further point of discussion, namely that of the immersive fantasy. In Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008), Farah Mendlesohn writes: The immersive fantasy is a fantasy set in a world built so that it functions on all levels as a complete world. In order to do this, the world must act as if it is impervious to external influence; this immunity is most essential in its relationship with the reader. The immersive fantasy must take no quarter: it must assume that the reader is as much a part of the world as are those being read about. (Mendlesohn, 2008: 58) The immersive fantasy stands in contrast to the portal-quest fantasy, the rhetoric of which involves a worldly narrator or character (such as Gandalf, Dumbledore, or Obi-wan Kenobi) who speaks authoritatively about the nature of the world to the reader and her analog (the character on the quest who has never left home before; for example, Frodo, Harry Potter, or Luke Skywalker). The reader, lacking knowledge of this world, must take the narrator/ guide at her word. Thus, the reader may never question the world or know anything about it beyond what she is told. In the present context, this would mean that the reader can know of the objects or events the narrator describes, but would find it difficult to discover or intuit, for herself, further information about their relationships to each other or the underlying logic that governs these relationships. In immersive fantasy, by contrast, the narrator relates objects and events to the reader as if the reader is already familiar with them and the logics that govern their relationships to one another. What the reader does not know she might discover (ideally, at any rate) because she is positioned by the text as someone who makes the same assumptions about the world that the narrator does and the characters in the world do. Although, in truth, the reader can never actually make these assumptions, the rhetoric of the immersive fantasy implies a complete world through which the reader might move, as opposed to one she might only have described to her piecemeal, from beyond a barrier she might not cross (see the “Portals” chapter in this volume). Mendlesohn notes that immersion is not characteristic of only fantasy, but also of realist fiction, which also assumes the reader’s familiarity with the world presented in the text. Thus, this concept might apply to any text that assumes the reader’s knowledge of its world and presents to her the challenge of piecing together its backstory, the logic and physics that govern what happens within it. Importantly, we must note that no narrative can simply be immersive. Just as no portal-quest can tell the reader everything she needs to know (she must discover some things for herself), no immersive fiction can avoid all description or texture. Such fictions must offer some clues for the reader to put together. The narrator of the aforementioned The Year of Our War, a character from the text writing in the first person, often describes his world to the reader. However, 87

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

because he rarely offers more than literal descriptions of objects or events, readers are left to discover, indirectly very often, bits of information about the history of the Fourlands and, more importantly, come to understand the manner of thinking—the assumptions—according to which the several races who inhabit the world operate. Further study of the nature of the immersive fantasy will no doubt yield further insight into the manner in which texts produce completeness in relation to their paratexts and intertexts and by way of the labor of the reader. With all of this in mind, the present definition of completeness offers greater utility for scholars of imaginary worlds than do those definitions found in other disciplines, even if all of these definitions remain compatible with one another. The strength of Wolf ’s discussion of completeness, upon which the present definition is based, is that Wolf does not demand that every property of every object (mentioned or implied) be determined or determinable tout court, but rather that, on the balance, questions about a given world’s overall constitution be answerable given the willingness of a reader, viewer, or player to produce answers through their labor. However, Wolf also notes what for us is a complication for completeness, one that extends beyond the impossibility of answering every question for every object or the fact that, as a process, completeness cannot be completed. Wolf demonstrates that the more an author adds details to a world (the more she invents; see the “Subcreation” chapter in this volume), the more complete the world will be; but such invention often comes at the cost of consistency, as the established order of the world will be interrupted as these details and the narratives through which they are conveyed to an audience accrue. Sometimes, a pursuit of completeness (telling all of the stories possible in a given world and offering all of the details of that world through those stories) will lead to massive inconsistencies requiring a “retcon” to eliminate narrative and other contradictions (see the “Reboots and Retroactive Continuity” chapter in this volume). This problem seems especially common in superhero comics from major publishers (such as Marvel and DC) and in other large franchises (such as the Dragonlance novels and the related Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings), in which multiple creators simultaneously produce separate but related stories involving the same characters and events. Because completeness and consistency are mutually constitutive, because they rely on each other for their existences and because this reliance sees one increase as the other decreases, and because completeness itself is a dynamic process rather than a static condition, in the end, like Pavel and Doležel, we must once again understand that no fictional world is ever complete finally. Such completeness can only exist ideally, in the future, as something always to be accomplished.

References Allen, G. (2011) Intertextuality 2nd ed., New York: Routledge. Barthes, R. (1982) “The Reality Effect,” In T. Todorov (ed), French Literary Theory Today: A Reader, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11–17. Doležel, L. (1998) Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Genette, G. & Maclean, M. (1991) “Introduction to the Paratext,” New Literary History, 22(2), pp. 261–272. Gray, J.A. (2010) Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts, New York: New York University Press. Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism, or,The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham: Duke University Press. Johnson, S. (2004) Emergence:The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software, New York: Scribner. Lyotard, J.-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mendlesohn, F. (2008) Rhetorics of Fantasy, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

88

Wo r l d C o m p l e t e n e s s

Parsons, T. (1980) Nonexistent Objects, New Haven:Yale University Press. Pavel, T. (1986) Fictional Worlds, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press. Ryan, M.-L. (1991) Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1964) Tree and Leaf, London: Allen & Unwin. Wolf, M. J. P. (2012) Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York: Routledge.

89

12

World Consistency Rodrigo Lessa and João Araújo One of the main topics one has to take into account in the analysis or building of imaginary worlds is that of consistency, which is generally understood as “the degree to which world details are plausible, feasible, and without contradictions” (Wolf, 2012: 43). Not by chance, ever since Leibniz’s pioneer considerations on the notion of possible worlds, the issue of consistency has been central to the understanding of both the ontological make-up and the internal organization of such worlds. This is illustrated by the fact that one of the main concepts of Leibnizian philosophy is that of compossibility, which concerns the logical premise that for a set of entities to be able to coexist in the same world, they must not be mutually contradictory (Leibniz, 1989: 661–662); that is, they must be possible in conjunction (compossible). Conversely, for any world to be possible, the universe of objects populating it must be internally free of contradictions, which also means each of these objects must follow a given set of implicit rules governing the overall macrostructure of the world to which it belongs. Of importance not only to Leibnizian metaphysics and the modal logic theories that derive from it, the notion of world consistency is also crucial in aesthetics, which is noticeable from Tolkien’s (1988) considerations that conferring the internal consistency of reality to secondary worlds is one of the roles of art, to Wolf ’s assertion that “consistency is necessary for a world to be taken seriously” (2012: 43). Hence, when it comes to imaginary worlds, it is not surprising that consistency is something both authors and fans of reasonably realistic imaginative fiction usually strive for. This is demonstrated by the huge bibles and collaborative wikis that often pop up around the worlds that tend to emerge from works of imaginative fiction such as the Doctor Who and Oz franchises, as well as by the efforts fans frequently put in advancing theories that are consistent with the settings, characters, backgrounds, and events presented in their favorite works of fiction, whether such theories are themselves meant to explain away inconsistencies or just to deal with mysteries (yet) unsolved in the works themselves. On that note, it is remarkable that even when it comes to fan fiction, some writers try not to go against the canon—dealing, for instance, with events that could have happened during gaps in the storylines, going out of their way not to contradict any details of the works upon which their own stories are based. It is this need that the distinct elements of an imaginary world be mutually consistent that led many fans of the TV series Lost (2004–2010) to wonder why there were polar bears in the tropical island where the passengers of flight Oceanic 815 got stranded after their plane crashed, a fact later made consistent by the information that the island had once been used by a mysterious research project called the Dharma Initiative for a number of experiments, some of which involved those animals. Similarly, in the world of The Man in the High Castle (2015–present), the fact that Times Square is taken over by Nazi iconography while the 90

Wo r l d C o n s i s t e n c y

streets of San Francisco are full of signs written in Japanese pictograms, is consistent with the information that in the alternate world the main characters of the series live in, the Axis won the Second World War, and Japan and Germany divided the territory of the United States between themselves after peace was achieved. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that the internal consistency of an imaginary world does not depend singularly on the compossibility of its various elements, but also on the internal consistency of each of them. A place that inexplicably changes its features or a character that acts in a way that does not seem plausible often lead to complaints of inconsistency, despite not always involving blatant contradictions and impossible entities. Many of the viewers of Game of Thrones (2011–­present), for instance, found Cersei Lannister’s abuse by her brother Jaime in episode 3 of season 4 outrageous not only because of the unnecessarily graphic nature of its depiction, but also because it didn’t affect Cersei’s psychology or her relationship to her brother in any way, and was considered especially gratuitous and insulting toward women given how little impact it had in the character’s behavior afterward. Conversely, information that explains away strange or otherwise mysterious behaviors of a character throughout a work—behaviors that might otherwise lead to a feeling of inconsistency—tends to be cherished by its most loyal consumers. In the Harry Potter franchise, for example, the revelation that Severus Snape actually did all sort of dubious acts because he loved Harry’s mother Lily and promised Hogwarts’s director Dumbledore to keep the protagonist safe no matter the cost, gave Snape’s character an extra level of consistency, since it explained his strange attitude toward Harry from the very beginning of the first book. However, despite the efforts of many authors and fans to avoid or explain away inconsistencies, irreducibly contradictory fictional worlds abound in any medium, whether they’re secondary worlds not close to the one we live in or fictionalized versions of cities and regions of the world we inhabit. Generally called “impossible worlds” in fiction theory (Pavel, 1986; Doležel, 1988; Ryan, 1991; Eco, 1989), a term also inherited from the modal logic concepts derived from Leibniz, sometimes these impossible worlds are the product of poor authorial management of the world or lack of attention to detail. Often, though, imaginary worlds are intentionally designed to house inconsistencies, whether through impossible objects or an incompossible set of entities. Occasionally, this is meant to accentuate the absurdity of a fictional work, mainly for comedic purposes. For instance, in Comedy Central’s animated series South Park (1997–present), the character named Kenny dies almost every episode up to the fifth season, and reappears alive in the following installments with no explanation whatsoever, in a metalinguistic engagement of the series with classic episodic television’s tendency toward resetting the status quo of the fictional world week after week. But comedy and metalanguage are not the sole reasons why imaginary worlds might be purposely absurd and inconsistent, and those reasons are as varied as are the works of imaginative fiction. Such is the case that there are even works whose inconsistencies are meant to engage us with mind-bending metaphysical theories, like Jorge Luis Borges’s Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1997; originally published in 1940). In Borges’s tale, it is said that in the land of Tlön one usually finds an object they’re looking for, which means archeologists can actually change the past if they so much as believe they can find an ancient object in a given place, and that a lost pencil might be found any number of times by any number of people if the first (or second, or third…) one to find it does not announce that fact to whomever might also be looking for it. Even though these secondary objects conform to the expectations of those who find them, the fact that such objects (called hrönir in the tale) are indeed able to change the past or the future attests to the contradictory nature of Borges’s world. Though Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is noticeably comedic and 91

Ro d r i g o L e s s a a n d J o ã o Ar a ú j o

satiric in nature, it is clear that Borges is also trying to explore some logical consequences of the ­adherence to a rigorously idealistic metaphysics, which goes to show the elasticity of the intentional uses of inconsistencies in the design of imaginary worlds. Another notion that both previous examples help us advance is that a work of imaginative fiction can be consistent in the very way it explores its inconsistencies, even though the inconsistencies in South Park and Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius stem from different causes. In Comedy Central’s animated series, the inconsistencies regarding Kenny’s deaths appear in the form of repeated contradictions in the sequence of story events, given a dead character does not generally reappear alive with no explanation; while in Borges’s tale the very rules that make up the world harbor them, since those rules contradict the logical principle of identity. Yet, as noted before, it is worth observing that both examples are somewhat consistent in their aforementioned inconsistencies. In the case of South Park, Kenny’s death was expected to mark the conclusion of almost every episode up to the fifth season, in a way that some hard-core fans of the show complained online when this ceased to happen, since at that point, the end of Kenny’s regular deaths became inconsistent with the expectations the series itself built after several seasons. In the case of Borges’s work, when the hrönir are first mentioned, their absurdity is consistent with the way Tlön is described up to that point, with its languages based exclusively on verbs or monosyllabic adjectives, or its metaphysical philosophies seeking not to explore the nature of reality, but to astonish. Thus, a case can be made that works of imaginative fiction engage with yet another layer of consistency, one that has to do not with the internal avoidance of contradictions in the world itself, but with conformity to expectations laid out by a genre, a franchise, or even the very work through which the world emerges. This is obviously noticeable in works that, in spite of their internally contradictory worlds, tune those contradictions in coherent ways when it comes to tone, genre, and atmosphere, as it is the case with animated audiovisual productions that go from the first cartoons starring Disney’s Mickey Mouse to Cartoon Network’s hit Adventure Time (2010–present). More classically organized works that avoid internal contradictions are also expected to be consistent in this fashion, conforming with expectations we might have for their genres, franchises, or particular worlds. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that in the fourth of his Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (1994), Umberto Eco remarks that if we are reading what we suppose is a delicate, romantic story in which a character is traveling in a carriage, we will probably be baffled if we are told that upon reaching his destination, the traveler noticed no horses were pulling it. Though this event might not contradict anything read in the story up to that point, it might challenge our expectations in terms of genre, which also guide how we as readers reconstruct fictional worlds, including imaginary ones. We don’t, for instance, have any reason to believe the laws of electricity and combustion as we know them are any different in Arda, but if a modern car were to appear in one of The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) books or films, it would certainly upset most of us. This is more due to the fact that a modern car would be inconsistent with what we expect of Tolkien’s (and similar high fantasy authors’) work than with the lack of consistency of a car in itself or of compossibility between a car and other entities found in Arda. Except perhaps for some modern and postmodern examples, fans and creators of imaginary worlds generally strive for a level of conformity of those worlds—and also of the very way they are presented—to some expectations regarding the work’s genre, mode of narration, tone, franchise, and other parameters that do not constrain the world directly, but the work in which it is built; we generally expect, for example, stories that start with “Once upon a time” to depict worlds akin to those found in fairy tales. 92

Wo r l d C o n s i s t e n c y

The Final Fantasy video game franchise, owned by the company Square Enix, offers a c­ urious example of this. Albeit most installments of the franchise take place in distinct imaginary worlds, a number of elements are common to most of them, even if some of these elements did not appear for the first time in the original title, but in a subsequent one. Among these common tropes are birds of mount called Chocobos, which are the size of ostriches and look like baby chicks; the summoning of gods and godlike entities as a form of magic; the common use of airships; a mix of modern and archaic weaponry, technologies, and social constructs; characters named Cid, Wedge, and Biggs; a naming of places after elements of our own world’s mythologies; and a recurring plant-like enemy called Marlboro. Fans usually expect to find these world-building elements in any imaginary world built in one of the installments of the franchise, and at least some of them have to be kept for an installment to still be recognized as a Final Fantasy game, despite the fact that they only keep the world consistent with other ones found throughout the franchise, and have little to no impact on each world’s internal consistency. Therefore, when thinking of an imaginary world’s levels of consistency, whether one intends to write, analyze, or otherwise evaluate the work through which such a world is built, it is important to keep in mind that consistency works in at least three dimensions: one regarding singular entities and elements, such as characters and how they develop throughout the work; one regarding the compossibility of world elements, and their capability of working together without blatant contradictions; and another one regarding the world’s conformity to expectations that stem from its parent work’s mode of narration, tone, genre, or even franchise, and such expectations might even regard predictable ways of managing intentional internal contradictions. Of course, some particularities may complicate the situation for the author or analyst even further, like the length of a work or its possible transmedial extensions, and the following part of this chapter is dedicated to the examination of some of these complications. While other chapters in this book may also discuss these topics, we chose to elaborate on them in the light of the concept of consistency and how we can further understand it.

Some Complicating Factors It is well established that the bigger the storyworld—and the lengthier the narratives—the easier it is to fall short regarding internal consistency in works that strive for it. In simple terms, a two-hour movie is less likely to have unintentional inconsistencies than a 200-­episode TV series. Of course, this does not mean that the quality of any given fictional work may be assessed considering this fact alone. The extent of a narrative only makes it harder for authors and critics to evaluate the recurring inconsistencies—and conversely, more pleasant for fans to dig into the work, since they are then able to canvass 200 episodes rather than a two-hour film. As Wolf writes, “The likelihood of inconsistencies occurring increases as a world grows in size and complexity, but it is also important to note where inconsistencies occur when they do, to determine how damaging to credibility they will be” (2012: 43). Let’s take as examples the James Bond movies. While they span across several decades with numerous male actors of varying ages interpreting the 007 role in a fictional world allegedly very close to our own, it is broadly accepted that the noticeable inconsistencies in time and age do not affect fruition. Although the movies are always set contemporary to the time of their launch (insinuating the passing of time), the actors’ ages fluctuate considerably, but not in a linear way. For example, when the 1967 film You Only Live Twice debuted, its lead actor Sean Connery was 36 years old. Nevertheless, two years later, when On Her Majesty’s Secret Service came out, George Lazenby was a 29-year-old performer playing the same role. And in 93

Ro d r i g o L e s s a a n d J o ã o Ar a ú j o

1971, Sean Connery, then 40, reassumed the character in Diamonds Are Forever. Why do such fluctuations in the character’s age (and, even more puzzling, his physical appearance) not seem to bother anyone, then, not even hard-core fans? This question leads us to another example: that of 2015’s huge flop, Jupiter Ascending (2015). Albeit posing a complex—and even superficially interesting—imaginary world, both specialized critics and regular audiences left the theaters largely unsatisfied with how incongruent the world presented in the movie actually was.Why are we so lenient in dismissing 007’s many inconsistencies over decades of movies and, at the same time, are uncomfortable with the idea of Mila Kunis character’s Jupiter being the proposed rightful owner of Earth just because she is genetically identical to the dead matriarch of an intergalactic royal empire? In order to understand that, we need to be aware of when and where inconsistencies occur. First, when it comes to the Bond universe, those of us familiar with the numerous sources of information about the movie series are made well aware that different production teams lead each project, and informed by the press about the casting choices, always accompanied by media buzz around it; so, we don’t really care about the passing of time as much as we do about who plays the spy next. Hence, one could say the inconsistencies occurring in 007 movies are acceptable when you realize they are the result of a specific production context rather than of a slip in continuity or of creative choices made by an author for specific mythological reasons. Furthermore, a second way one could explain away these inconsistencies is by positing that every time a new actor is picked, a new fictional world emerges, a new canon rises, and the series is rebooted, or at least retconned so the audience pretends to believe the same actor has been making every film from the get go. But a third (and even clearer) reason one could point out for the fans’ forgiveness of these discrepancies is that they are, in a way, “consistently inconsistent” throughout the movies, something the audiences are willing to look past either by considering the production context or by retconning, given they are predictable inconsistencies in the way the franchise is organized. In point of fact, there are even fan theories that posit that “007, James Bond” is a codename given to different spies over the years, which would allegedly explain why each generation has a different actor playing the main role (see more at http://fantheories.wikia. com/James_Bond), in spite of the fact that numerous actors embodied the spy between films in which Sean Connery played James Bond. More than how one explains them, though, what matters about those blatant inconsistencies is that they are predictable and manageable, and appear in a consistent way throughout the franchise. In that regard, it is remarkable that what happens in the Bond movies is very similar to what we see in serial animated cartoons or comics that stay on air or get published for long, continuous periods of time, such as South Park or The Simpsons (1989–present) and pretty much every superhero comics: this is a type of inconsistency that somehow stems from constraints imposed upon the work itself, and we are thus more accepting of how they affect the world. In Jupiter Ascending, there are plenty of inconsistencies that keep the audience asking themselves about how seriously the movie wants to be taken: after a long while on an alien planet, the protagonist Jupiter suddenly needs a spacesuit to breathe in, and there is no apparent reason why she wouldn’t need it earlier; Channing Tatum’s character Caine has gravitational surfing boots that are not removed from him even when he is tossed in an alien prison cell; Sean Bean’s character Stinger explains that Jupiter is royal-blooded because of the way bees (which are designed to recognize royalty in that imaginary world) react to her, only to cast doubt about her royal background minutes later, which might leave audiences wondering what the bees were actually designed for and why else would bees act strangely around Jupiter if not for her royal blood. Even harder to believe is a scene in which Caine tries to explain 94

Wo r l d C o n s i s t e n c y

why nobody noticed the massive destruction of Chicago’s buildings and streets after an alien confrontation took place in the city. Apparently, the aliens are capable of rebuilding everything by the end of the day and of erasing the minds “of some humans,” which begs the question if it would ever be conceivable that a significant destruction in one of America’s major cities could possibly be kept hidden for even minutes. Contrary to the ones we pointed out in the Bond franchise, these inconsistencies are the direct result of creative choices and lack of attention to details that end up building a storyworld on weak foundations that are clearly intended to be solid, which in turn make these inconsistencies obvious to most of the movie’s audience. As mentioned earlier, in order to be internally consistent, any given world must be plausible, feasible, and internally free of contradictions. It must be sustained, on its own basis, in terms of compossibility and believability. Of course, however, not all consistency is internal, and we cannot take audience negotiations out of the equation. As the cases of South Park, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, and James Bond movies demonstrate, we constantly negotiate what we find acceptable and what otherwise hampers our immersion in a given storyworld. Although these notions of negotiated and “consistent” inconsistencies are much more (inter)personal than objective, since they deal with cognitive and emotional dimensions, they also help us understand the various factors considered in the process of negotiating immersion in seemingly incompossible or otherwise internally inconsistent storyworlds, or at least those whose inconsistencies are still somehow predictable. Regardless of the size of the work, what matters the most in those cases, we believe, are the self-imposed—or at least self-evident—constraints in the creation and presentation of the world to the audience, which is why we have been arguing in favor of a threedimensional notion of consistency, one that also takes into account constraints imposed upon the work or group of works, and not only the imaginary world being portrayed. Moreover, this leads to the next issue to be discussed, the different levels of consistency that may appear in narratives that are spread over different media platforms, something commonly referred to as transmedia storytelling. In light of the ideas advanced by Jenkins (2006), Mittell (2015), and Lessa (2013), we understand a transmedial extension as a piece of information that is located in a media platform that is different than that of the main text, which in its turn is commonly referred to as “mothership.” Observing the contemporary creation of transmedia texts, we can divide the extensions into two simple types, which require different approaches regarding consistency. The first is intended to be a canonical expansion of the main text’s storyworld, which means it needs to play by the same rules and follow the same directions seen in the main work. If the world mechanics or background details are set in a certain way, the canonical transmedial extensions cannot rupture these logics, or they might render an entire imaginary world inconsistent. The other type of transmedial extension is not intended to be canonical, which means it may break the rules previously established by the main text or even make no obvious sense in the relation to it. In spite of the fact that only the first kind of transmedial extension described seems to take consistency into consideration as a key factor, this impression can be misleading, since the very difference between both types of extensions can be explained in terms of their approaches to consistency. As Harvey puts it, “Central to transmedia storytelling is consistency—perhaps of scenario, of plot, of character—expressed through narrative and iconography. What differentiates varieties of transmedia storytelling from one another is the extent to which such consistency is managed” (2014: 279). In terms of canonical expansions, a good example is the Star Wars franchise, which has been expanding its storyworld for decades through several movies, companion books, film 95

Ro d r i g o L e s s a a n d J o ã o Ar a ú j o

­ ovelizations, TV series, animations, and games, in a well-coordinated strategy that seems n very consistent and plausible for most of the audience: there is even an official database, called the Star Wars Holocron, dedicated to cataloging and hierarchically categorizing all the components of this fictional world. Hard-core fans will certainly find some inconsistencies, as pointed out by Wolf (2012), but that rarely will affect how the imaginary world is largely perceived. Therefore, the overall point is that once expanded, Star Wars chooses to keep its canonical imaginary transmedia world in a (mostly) rigorously compossible manner, with every piece relating to the events, mythology, and chronology of an already existing universe. Moreover, another good example of canonical transmediation can be found in the transmedial apparatus build upon the highly acclaimed movie District 9 (2009). Bringing forth fictional elements from the imaginary world to our actual reality through public signs and billboards emulating the segregational “humans only” motif seen in the movie, all the transmedial works related to the film were able to present to the audience some of the movie’s mythology, rules, and overall tone even before it premiered, in a way that gave viewers access to a reasonably consistent idea of the imaginary world before watching the film, and allowed them to judge the film based on that previously shared information. Of course, since it is difficult enough to maintain consistency in a large storyworld within a single medium, whether it involves movies with virtually infinite sequels, pages of endless volumes of romance novels, or just countless episodes of a long-running TV series with no planned ending, a storyworld that is spread over multiple media, languages, formats, and platforms may prove even more challenging. This is especially true when each property is managed by a different team, or when the transmedial universe grows in a spontaneous or unpredictable manner; a case in point being the imaginary world created in the works of H. P. Lovecraft, whose alien gods were later appropriated not only by other authors in noncanonical works, but also by a successful role-playing game franchise Lovecraft couldn’t possibly have foreseen. Despite the fact that some of these posterior works were completely inconsistent with Lovecraft’s original tales and depictions of his invented cities of Arkham or Insmouth in terms of tone, atmosphere, and structure, most tried to remain faithful to the author’s ancient mad deities, certainly the main components of his world of eternal, godlike powers and fleeting human characters who ended up mad by the end of every tale. Hence, it can be argued that even though they are noncanonical and might even contradict the author’s works in other aspects, these transmedial extensions of Lovecraft’s tales can still be judged in terms of whether they keep the internal consistency of the writer’s pantheon of Ancient Old Ones. Still, it is worth noting that this is not usually the case with noncanonical transmedial extensions. Ranging from alternate imaginary world histories to crossover fan fiction (which can sometimes be linked to the mothership through shared world components, characters, or even a common iconography), non-canonical transmedial extensions have no place in the main storylines. Instead, what they present are alternate, different imaginary worlds whose internal levels of consistency frequently need to be judged in their own terms, despite cases such as Lovecraft’s, in which the extensions themselves commit to avoid contradicting some specific aspects of the mothership’s imaginary world while still disregarding others. In conclusion, we would argue that consistency shouldn’t be considered only in terms strictly connected to a world’s internal configuration when it comes to imaginative fiction; rather, when dealing with the issue of world consistency, authors and critics should generally take into account the length of the work, its eventual transmedial extensions, and various other constraints that limit the work or franchise in which an imaginary world is born. This is not something that should be done out of benevolence, but because it is exactly what 96

Wo r l d C o n s i s t e n c y

a­udiences normally do when they negotiate their engagement with a work and assess the believability of a secondary world. Still, it is worth noting that this doesn’t mean the internal consistency of a world doesn’t matter. As we have shown in our exploration of concepts such as character consistency and compossibility, through examples ranging from Harry Potter to Star Wars, works that want their world’s internal machinations to appear believable generally have to deal with these issues in some way. Nevertheless, consistency is more than that, and as a three-dimensional matter, its study may benefit from a perspective that doesn’t ignore the work’s poetic, aesthetic, and even production or reception constraints.

References Borges, J. L. (1997), Ficciones. Madrid: Alianza. Doležel, L. (1988), “Mimesis and possible worlds,” Poetics Today, 9(3), pp. 475–495. Eco, U. (1989), Lector in fabula: la cooperazione interpretativa nei testi narrativi. Milan: Bompiani. Eco, U. (1994), Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. Boston: Harvard University Press. Harvey, C. B. (2014), A Taxonomy of Transmedia Storytelling. In M.L. Ryan & J.N. Thon (Eds.), Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology, pp. 278–294. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Jenkins, H. (2006), Convergence Culture:Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press. Leibniz, G. (1989), Philosophical Papers and Letters. 2nd edition. Dordrecht: D Reidel. Lessa, R. (2013), Ficção seriada televisiva e narrativa transmídia: uma análise do mundo ficcional multiplataforma de True Blood. Dissertation (Masters in Contemporary Communications and Culture), School of Communication, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador. Mittell, J. (2015), Complex TV:The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: NYU Press. Pavel, T. (1986), Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ryan, M. L. (1991), Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Indiana: University Bloomington & Indiana Press. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1988), Tree and Leaf: Including the Poem Mythopoeia. London: Unwin. Wolf, M. J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation. New York: Routledge.

97

13

Geography and Maps Gerard Hynes While imaginary worlds may be experienced through many means—narrative, gameplay, ­visual art—the simulation of physical geography still forms an essential element to most worldbuilding. The cartographic analysis of imaginary worlds may be fit into the larger context of the “spatial turn” the humanities and social sciences have undergone in the post-war period (see Tally, 2013: 11–17). In this way, imaginary worlds can potentially make a substantial contribution to geocriticism, the literary analysis of geographical space and its attendant discourses. Maps are not essential to world-building. Even in fantasy, a genre synonymous with fictional maps, only 30–40% of books contain one or more maps (Ekman, 2013: 22). The physical setting of imaginary worlds may be conveyed through biology, ecology, and travel, but, when present, maps play as essential a role as any of these.The University of Chicago’s monumental History of Cartography (1987) defines maps very broadly as “graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world” (Harley and Woodward, 1987: xvi). Recreating the physical world with scaled-down, mathematical precision is not a defining quality of maps, however central it may appear. Instead, maps are always drawn with a number of specific purposes, cultural, political, and metaphysical, which determine what information is worth including and how it is presented. P. D. A. Harvey describes medieval mappa mundi in these terms: Indeed, the vast majority of medieval world maps are scarcely maps at all. They are diagrams—diagrams of the world—and are best understood as an open framework where all kinds of information might be placed in the relevant spatial position, not unlike a chronicle or narrative in which information would be arranged chronologically. [...] the map was a vehicle for conveying every kind of information—­ zoological, anthropological, moral, theological, historical. (Harvey, 1987: 19) Maps do more than just visualize spatial relationships, they may also demarcate and concretize the historical, linguistic, economic, and cultural relationships of an imaginary world. Maps are always inherently selective; the quixotic attempt to create a 1:1 scale map has been satirized by Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges, and Neil Gaiman.This selectivity applies not just to what content is included but to how it is represented. “A single map is but one of an indefinitely large number of maps that might be produced for the same situation or from the same data” (Monmonier, 1996: 2). Even while being selective, maps also have a strong unifying tendency, allowing creators to bring disparate fictional locations together into worlds and connect separated worlds into 98

Geography and Maps

larger wholes: “like a painting constructed in linear perspective, [maps] imply a single ideal reader or onlooker eager to see and know the world depicted” (Padrón, 2007: 281). In the Japanese versions of the first two Super Mario Bros. games (1985, 1986), the player experiences eight “worlds” in thirty-two stages. Despite being officially set in the Mushroom Kingdom, there is, however, no accessible game world map to connect these worlds into a diegetic universe. From Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988), a world map connecting levels provides a visible topography and creates the experience of an overarching world. Super Mario World (1990) likewise makes use of a world map to generate the world of Dinosaur Land around the discrete levels composing it. Maps may also ironically comment upon the world described in accompanying, usually textual, media. Both the maps in Gulliver’s Travels and Juan Benet’s map of Región are inconsistent with the textual description, satirizing attempts at conclusive cartographical and spatial knowledge (Padrón, 2007: 281–282). Cartography may even unintentionally undermine the immersiveness of the imaginary world it is intended to support. The autonomy of George R. R. Martin’s Westeros may be lessened if audiences realize that the southern half of the continent is Ireland turned upside-down, while Robin Hobb’s Six Duchies is a similarly flipped Alaska. Some imaginary worlds exist only as maps. Artists such as Wim Delvoye and Adrian Leskiw have produced imaginary world maps as standalone art. As such, their world-building is almost entirely cartographic. Delvoye’s maps of the countries Rhuuwydho, Ekgurie, Ualle, Bolf, and others were collected in a catalogue, Atlas, in 1999. The nation of Breda, the Treaty States of Aultica, and the provinces of Brampton and Cardin exist only as maps and in Leskiw’s brief commentaries on them (Leskiw, 2016). By redrawing the maps to reflect the infrastructural changes Breda underwent from 1979 to 2040, Leskiw gives his cartographic world a sense of chronological depth without recourse to narrative, exposition, or timelines. Cartography does not, however, have to be expressed visually.Verbal cartography is a crucial world-building component in text-based adventure games such as Zork (1979) but may also be present in other media where characters discuss and explain the landscape. There are Primary World analogues in medieval land terriers, boundary clauses, and itineraries that offered written descriptions where their modern counterparts would rely on maps (Harvey, 1987: 7–8). There is nonetheless a qualitative difference between the audience experience of verbal and visual maps. For some worlds, engagement with their maps is an essential element of interacting with the world. In video game worlds, the use, or even creation, of maps may be essential to gameplay. Travel around the enormous world of Skyrim (2011) is made more manageable in that the world map allows transportation to previously explored regions. In Dragon Age Inquisition (2014), scouting operations carried out through the map on the war table open up new locations to be explored in person. Despite Diana Wynne Jones’ warning, “If you take this Tour, you are going to have to visit every single place on this Map, whether it is marked or not. This is a Rule” ( Jones, 2004: 3), maps often extend the imaginary world beyond the portion directly experienced by the audience or player. By hinting at unexplored areas, maps encourage speculation; by codifying the geography, they encourage consistency. In this manner, maps both restrict narratives and generate them (Wolf, 2012: 157).

Imaginary Cartography There have been few systematic examinations of the relationship between cartography and imaginary worlds, and most have focused specifically on fantasy worlds. J. B. Post’s Atlas of 99

Gerard Hynes

Fantasy (1973; rev. ed. 1979) collects more than one hundred fictional, mythological, moral, and didactic maps, making a distinction between geographic speculation and literary fabrication, but inconsistently accepts some overlaid worlds, such as the world of Sherlock Holmes, while rejecting others, such as Hardy’s Wessex (see Post, 1979, 33: vii). Pierre Jourde’s Géographies imaginaire du quelques inventeur de mondes au XXe siècle: Gracq, Borges, Michaux, Tolkien (1991) includes readings of natural and constructed spaces, and their cartographic representations, in his analysis of selected 20th-century world-builders. Rob Kitchin and James Kneale, in “Science Fiction or Future Fact? Exploring Imaginative Geographies of the New Millennium” (2001), examine the worlds of cyberfiction as cognitive spaces where the geographic possibilities and challenges of postmodern urbanism may be explored. This is expanded in their collection, Lost in Space: Geographies of Science Fiction (2002), whose contributors discuss the production and discourse of geographic knowledge in a number of science fiction texts. Myles Balfe’s “Incredible Geographies? Orientalism and Genre Fantasy” (2004) contends that imaginative geographies are not limited only by the author’s imagination but are always socially embedded and draw upon pre-existing cultural discourses. This leads Balfe to condemn genre fantasy in general for encoding orientalist prejudices into imaginary cartographies. Meanwhile, Deirdre Baker argues in “What We Found on Our Journey through Fantasy Land” (2006) that sameness of geography between imaginary worlds indicates commonalities of metaphysics and politics on the part of creators rather than merely shared cartographical conventions. Ricardo Padrón, in “Mapping Imaginary Worlds” (2007), surveys maps of Dante’s Hell, fictional islands, and fantasy worlds, as well as cartographic visual art. He suggests that maps of imaginary worlds affect audiences due to their similarities to Primary World maps and that mundane maps may be equally powerful at triggering imaginative speculation. Mark J. P. Wolf ’s Building Imaginary Worlds (2012) deals with maps in the context of world structures such as chronologies, languages, mythologies, and genealogies. He points out the essential functions maps perform: filling in gaps not covered in the narrative; giving a sense of the spatial and topographical relations between places; expressing remoteness, inaccessibility, and isolation (or their opposites); and allowing the descriptions of travel to be ellipsized by conveying distances directly (Wolf, 2012: 156–157). He notes how maps, on the one hand, support consistency from one book to another, while at the same time, by including unvisited locations, encourage speculation and imagination. Wolf also highlights the differences in geographical conventions in different genres, pointing to the countervailing tendencies in fantasy and science fiction, whereby the former juxtaposes multiple types of terrain in a relatively small area while the latter often features entire planets with one dominant terrain and culture (Wolf, 2012: 158). Stefan Ekman’s Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings (2013) surveys previous scholarship on imaginary cartography before providing a statistical analysis of the number and conventions of maps in fantasy literature. He makes an important distinction between maps as paratexts, interpretative apparatus around a text, or as docemes, artifacts from the imaginary world itself, and examines fantasy geographies in terms of borders, the nature-culture divide, and the relationship between ruler and realm. Whereas most criticism of imaginary cartography has focused on modern examples, the mapping of imaginary worlds has a much longer history. The Garden of Eden (though the imaginary status of this location has changed with time) has been physically mapped since the 5th century (Scafi, 2013: 24–35). Dante’s Commedia (c. 1321), which can itself be seen as a commentary on the cognitive mapping of mythical, spiritual, and political realities (see Brown, 2005: 737–738), is also an early example of a literary work inspiring fictional cartographies. The 15th-century maps of Dante’s Inferno by Antonio Manetti and Sandro Botticelli 100

Geography and Maps

could be considered some of the earliest audience-generated maps developed from the verbal descriptions in an existing text (Padrón, 2007: 261). The maps that accompanied the early editions of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) were more playful about their subject’s imaginative status.The map in the first edition was a relatively simple woodcut by an unknown artist, while the 1518 edition featured a more detailed map by Ambrosius Holbein. Both were oblique views of the island with little geographical context. Utopia was accompanied by other paratexts—a sample of the Utopian alphabet, verses in the Utopian language, and letters by More and Peter Giles—all attesting to the island’s empirical existence.Yet the foreground of the 1518 map features the narrator Raphael Hythloday, addressing a figure who is presumably More, thus reminding audiences that they are receiving the description of the island through two filters, one a teller of traveler’s tales (Padrón, 2007: 269). The potential for maps and other paratexts to incite playful or ironic belief in audiences was more fully developed by the new romances of the late 19th century. Their predecessors, Jules Verne’s Voyages extraordinaire (1863–1905), were surrounded by maps, charts, footnotes, and full-page illustrations. These were followed by such examples as the map of Kukuanaland in H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and the rough chart of Maple-White Land in Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912), both claiming to be artifacts from within the story-world (see Saler, 2012: 62–82). Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) is an important example of a new romance with an intimate relationship to its cartographical paratext, the map serving as both the origin of the world as well as the driver of the narrative. It may be helpful to compare Stevenson’s use of maps with that of his contemporary L. Frank Baum.Whether the map is created before the narrative, as with Stevenson, or afterward, as with Baum, makes a considerable difference to the consistency of the secondary world. Stevenson recommended composing the map and making the narrative fit it: It is one thing to draw a map at random, set a scale in one corner of it at a venture, and write up a story to the measurements. It is quite another to have to examine a whole book, make an inventory of all the allusions contained in it, and with a pair of compasses, painfully design a map to suit the data. (Stevenson, 1919: 128) Stevenson had personal experience of the difficulty of making a map fit a finished text, having sent the map to his publisher along with the proofs but hearing it was lost in the post.Though Stevenson composed a replacement, he lamented “somehow it was never Treasure Island to me” (Stevenson, 1919: 129). Baum, by contrast, had published seven Oz books before he provided the first official maps of Oz in Tik-Tok of Oz (1914). The maps appeared on the endpapers, with the first map presenting Oz alone and the second, crucially, locating Oz and its surrounding deserts in a larger continent. The inconsistencies between the map and the geographical details in the published books were counterbalanced by the interconnectedness it gave the world (Riley, 1997: 186–187). As Michael O. Riley puts it: The map of Oz he had drawn, while eliminating the flexibility he had utilized in the earlier books to fit the country to his stories, had the effect of causing him to treat Oz in a more consistent manner. There are no major changes or reinterpretations of that fairyland in The Lost Princess, but there are several refinements. (Riley, 1997: 208–209) 101

Gerard Hynes

Baum’s second Oz map is not just a paratext to an individual narrative but a means of bringing together a series of constructed worlds, already existing across media as diverse as stage musicals and comic strips. In this regard, it can be seen as the culmination of Baum’s tendency to connect his created worlds (Riley, 1997: 187) but also as an important milestone in transmedial world-building. Tellingly, the first map of Oz had been first seen by the public on a slide in Baum’s multimedia extravaganza The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908) (Riley, 1997: 150). Baum points ahead to the contemporary use of maps to bring together worlds that had been constructed piecemeal in different media. The growth of transmedial world-building, especially in large franchises such as Star Trek and Star Wars, has resulted in a significant increase in the number of maps per imaginary universe—with maps in novels, video games, visual companions, and other tie-in materials—but with each individual map having less canonical weight and being open to constant modification by new material. This cartographic uncertainty may, however, serve as motivation for fan-created maps and atlases. J. R. R. Tolkien, whose “The West of Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age” is perhaps the most famous imaginary world map, provides another comparison. Each of three main works set in his world, Arda, was accompanied by maps. The maps featured in The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), and The Silmarillion (1977) were all created before the texts were finalized, Tolkien agreeing with Stevenson that an author can never make a consistent map of a completed story (Carpenter, 1995: 177). Since the publication of The Lord of the Rings, however, maps of Middle-earth by a number of artists have appeared in calendars, in posters, in atlases, and as standalone items. Panning shots across small-scale maps of Middleearth were essential to establishing geographical context in the Peter Jackson film adaptations (2001–2003). The launch of the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online (2007–present), required the creation of dozens of new maps, both of regions unmapped in the books and of new regions invented for the game-world. By the early 2000s, audiences may in fact be more likely to have seen a map of Arda than to have engaged with it in its original textual embodiment.

Authorship and Canonicity The cartography of imaginary worlds raises important questions about authorship and levels of canonicity. Maps may be produced by the originator of the imaginary world, an illustrator (with greater or lesser authorial input), or the fan community. Each of these will have a different canonical status. Maps may become elaborated as they pass through the hands of different creators. J. R. R. Tolkien’s original sketch maps of Middle-earth were developed by his son Christopher Tolkien into the canonical versions found in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion (Carpenter, 1995: 247). Subsequently, however, maps of Middle-earth have been produced by Pauline Baynes, “M. Blackburn,” Richard Caldwell, Barbara Strachey, Shelley Shapiro, James Cook, and John Howe (see Wolf, 2012: 362 n. 16), with the fullest developments being by Karen Wynn Fonstad in her Atlas of Middle-earth (1981; rev. ed. 2002). Fonstad’s work has more detail than any of Tolkien’s originals but, being based closely upon the descriptions in the text, does not necessarily challenge the original cartography. The map artists for a world will change depending on media and may even change in the same media as a series progresses. George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (1996– present) featured maps by James Sinclair until he was replaced by Jeffrey L. Ward for A Dance with Dragons (2011). The HBO adaptation (2011–present) features an animated map by the 102

Geography and Maps

design studio Elastic, with a focus on different locations in each episode. While these maps do not alter the underlying geographical detail, each change affects audience experiences of the world to a greater or lesser degree. Fan-made maps, such as the EQ Atlas for EverQuest (1999–present), have no official canonical status, even when they are accurate to the world as it appears in official media, but may be accepted as canonical by other fans. Tie-in materials also complicate matters. The map of the Firefly universe included in the Serenity Role Playing Game (2005) is the most detailed available but makes no claims to be definitive. Its canonical status is thus on the same level as other officially licenced artworks. With video game worlds, particularly those of MMOs, the landscape itself, not just its cartography, is constantly open to change by updates. There is both the ability and incentive to add new continents, such as Northrend and Pandaria in World of Warcraft (2004–present), and to create new spaces for players to explore and allow for new scripted game events. As such, the cartography must always be considered contingent and open to change. Where maps are collaborative works between originator and authorized illustrator, such as in George R. R. Martin and Jonathan Roberts’ The Lands of Ice and Fire (2012), the inventions of the artist may be raised to canonical status and become part of the geography of the world. The maps in the 1871 Hetzel edition of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870) are especially interesting in this regard as they were attributed directly to Verne— despite being elaborations by either Alphonse de Neuville or Édouard Riou on Verne’s original sketch maps—thus transgressing the usual 19th-century distinction between author and illustrator and giving the maps an extra canonical authority (Harpold, 2005: 20). This raises intriguing questions about the boundaries between texts and their paratextual, cartographic accompaniments.

Paratexts versus Artifacts It makes a considerable difference whether maps of secondary worlds are presented as artifacts from those worlds or as Primary World constructs intended to assist audience immersion (Ekman, 2013: 20–22). As a paratext, a map’s function is to clarify spatial and geographic relationships for the audience; as an artifact, it must do this and also give an impression of the culture and worldview that produced it. The same spatial information may be provided in either a paratext or an artifact: the galaxy map in Jason Fry and Daniel Wallace’s Star Wars:The Essential Atlas (2009) is a paratext; the galaxy map consulted by Obi-Wan Kenobi in Attack of the Clones (2002) is an artifact. Coined by Gerard Genette, the term “paratext” refers to those texts that form a threshold around every published text—from author name and title to cover art, blurbs, epigraphs, and notes—and that mediate the text to the reader (Genette, 1997: 1–4). In the case of imaginary worlds, paratexts are those elements that mediate the world to the audience but do not form part of the diegetic world itself. For example, the title credits of a film may clarify the nature of the world for the audience but they do not exist for the characters themselves. It may not be immediately clear whether a given map is a paratext or an artifact. The maps that accompany texts are usually not part of the narrative and are normally located outside the text. Paratextual maps appear on the endpapers of novels, the menu screens of video games, and the opening credits of films. They serve to assert the reality of the secondary world while translating its geographical knowledge into terms comprehensible to the audience. A paratextual map may suggest through its art style and geographical biases that it is an artifact but only becomes one when directly attributed to a secondary world source. 103

Gerard Hynes

As artifacts, maps must convey the extent to which the cartographic assumptions of the secondary world differ from those of the Primary World. One simple way to demonstrate the cultural differences of the secondary world is the orientation of maps. North has become the default direction for the top of maps, but there is no intrinsic reason why it should be. Medieval maps were often east-orientated (hence the term) and focused upon Jerusalem (Harvey, 1987: 19), and there are Primary World examples of west-orientated and southorientated maps, such as Willem Blaeu’s 1635 map of New Netherland and New England, or Muhammad al-Idrisi’s 1154 world map, the Tabula Rogeriana. These possibilities are, however, reflected in very few imaginary world maps. One exception is Thrór’s Map in The Hobbit, which, with its east-orientation and invented script, is more subcreative than most imaginary maps (see Ekman, 2013: 42). Ekman, limiting himself to maps of fantasy worlds, estimates that less than 4% of those maps are orientated to a direction other than north (Ekman, 2013: 26). This demonstrates the difficulty of overcoming certain Primary World defaults, no matter how simple and effective such a change would be for demonstrating the unique culture of the imagined world. Similarly, most maps that depict medievalist or pre-modern worlds still use modern cartographical conventions and fonts, sometimes mixed with medieval or pseudo-medieval details (Ekman, 2013: 41). While this reflects both the cartographical knowledge of the individual map maker and their concessions to the cartographic literacy of the audience, it creates a tension between the map as paratext and as artifact. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is unusually inventive in registering the disc’s unique geography through the use of the two main directions of Hubward and Rimward, along with the minor directions Turnwise and Widdershins (Pratchett, 1995: 20n). Rather than exploit the potential incongruity of a flat world using the Primary World cardinal directions, Pratchett created a cartographic vocabulary, and attendant worldview, native to his own world.

Water Margins The edges of maps may be as suggestive as their privileged central point, or indeed any of their content. John Clute uses the term “water margin” to label the unmapped and undescribed regions that encompass a secondary world and separate its known geography from other unknown worlds. They “surround a central Land or reality, and fade indefinitely into the distance, beyond the edges of any Map. Fantasies set in Secondary Worlds are commonly supplied with maps whose edges are not Borderlands but Water Margins” (Clute, 1997: 997). Clute’s term derives from The Water Margin (Suikoden) (1973–1974), a Japanese television adaptation of the 14th-century Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan, which features outlaws operating on the undefined borderlands around the central empire. It also, however, suggests the Ancient Greek Oceanus, the circumfluent ocean that surrounds the known world. Ekman describes it as such: “The surrounding water is where the world ends, where even the possibility of knowledge ends. It frames the known world, establishing that what is on the map is all there is” (Ekman, 2013: 26). Water margins do not, however, have to consist of water. They may describe any endless or impassable barrier, often desert or mountains. Further, water margins do not necessarily remain impassable and may be breached in later works in a series, as they are in Baum’s Oz books and C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956). Most maps of terrestrial secondary worlds are, however, not surrounded by water margins; less than 25% of fantasy worlds are (Ekman, 2013: 26). Even in the largely aquatic world of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea, part of Hogen Land extends beyond the edge of the map, locating the archipelago world in a larger context. The presence of land on the edge of a map 104

Geography and Maps

implies not just the existence of further, undescribed land beyond the map’s margins but also its accessibility. Galactic maps, on the other hand, effectively always have water margins, given the empty space between planets and galaxies. Blank spaces simultaneously deny the importance of the unmapped region while highlighting the limited knowledge of the fictional cartographers. They also invite speculation and raise the possibility of future knowledge on the part of the audience.

Maps and Temporality Every map is written in a particular tense. A modern map of Ancient Greece is written in the past tense; a map of a planned motorway is in the future tense. Most maps are in the present tense and retain this internal tense even as the map ages (Wood, 1992: 112, 126).This is no different for maps of imaginary worlds. Past maps—Beleriand in the First Age, Alderaan before its destruction— both provide historical background for the ongoing secondary world narrative and manifest the historical depth of the secondary world. Even maps composed ostensibly in the present tense encode time, through the presence of place names in different languages, ruins and abandoned settlements, and reference to the age of sites. Maps also have a duration, the span of time they cover. The title of Tolkien’s map, “The West of Middle-earth at the End of the Third Age,” implies change from the first two ages. Worlds existing in visual media can display the passing of time through direct changes to the map. In the opening credits of HBO’s Game of Thrones, the map serves to familiarize viewers with the geographical locations that will feature in each episode and remind them of their spatial relations, but it also tracks the temporal progression of the universe, with Winterfall appearing burnt on the map and later flying the banners of house Bolton. This allows for a constantly updating representation of the political fortunes of the Seven Kingdoms. Similarly, the opening credits of Amazon’s adaptation of The Man in the High Castle (2015) juxtapose arrows representing Nazi troop movements across the United States with the finalized map of the division of the country into the Greater Nazi Reich, Japanese Pacific States, and Neutral Zone. This recapitulates the conquest of the U.S. and establishes the alternative historical world of the series. Temporality points to one area where new technologies have scope to greatly increase the richness and immersiveness of secondary world maps. GIS (geographic information systems) have the potential to contribute to both the practice and study of world-building, offering “real-time” depictions of geographical developments in imaginary worlds as well as tracking audience interaction with such worlds. The 2005 Corrupted Blood pandemic in World of Warcraft (2004–present), whereby a glitch caused a highly contagious hit point-draining spell to escape from its intended location, has already been used by epidemiologists to analyse the dissemination of infectious pathogens (see Balicer, 2007).Virtual worlds are being constantly redesigned by their creators according to data analysis of player interactions in different spaces (see Castranova et al., 2008). One of the oldest tools for world-building, cartography continues to be an essential element in the 21st century.

References Baker, D. F. (2006) “What we Found on Our Journey through Fantasy Land,” Children’s Literature in Education 37: 237–51. Balfe, M. (2004) “Incredible Geographies? Orientalism and Genre Fantasy,” Social and Cultural Geography 5.1: 75–89.

105

Gerard Hynes

Balicer, R. D. (2007) “Modelling Infectious Diseases Dissemination Through Online Role-Playing Games,” Epidemiology 18.2: 260–61. Brown, B. (2005) “The Dark Wood of Postmodernity (Space, Faith, Allegory),” PMLA 120.3: 734–50. Carpenter, H. (ed) (1995) The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien, London: HarperCollins. Castranova, E.; M. W. Bell; R. Cornell; J. J. Cummings; M. Falk; T. Ross; S. B. Robbins; and A. Field (2008) “Synthetic Worlds as Experimental Instruments,” in B. Perron and M. J. P.Wolf (eds), The Video Game Theory Reader 2, New York: Routledge, pp 273–294. Clute, J. (1997) “Water Margins,” in J. Clute and J. Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, London: Orbit, p. 997. Ekman, S. (2013) Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Fonstad, K. W. (2002) The Atlas of Middle-earth, rev. ed., New York: Houghton Mifflin. Genette, G. (1997) Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. J.E. Lewin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harley, J. B. and D. Woodward (eds) (1987) The History of Cartography: Volume One, Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harpold, T. Mar. (2005) “Verne’s Cartographies,” Science Fiction Studies 32.1: 18–42. Harvey, P. D. A. (1991) Medieval Maps, London: The British Library. Jones, D. W. (2004) The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, London: Gollancz. Jourde, P. (1991) Géographies imaginaire du quelques inventeur de mondes au XXe siècle: Gracq, Borges, Michaux, Tolkien, Paris: José Corti. Kitchin, R. and J. Kneale (2001) “Science Fiction or Future Fact? Exploring Imaginative Geographies of the New Millennium,” Progress in Human Geography 25.1: 19–35. Kitchin, R. and J. Kneale (eds) (2002) Lost in Space: Geographies of Science Fiction, London: Continuum. Leskiw, A. (2016) The Map Realm: The Fictional Road Maps of Adrian Leskiw, available at http://wwwpersonal.umich.edu/~aleskiw/maps/breda.htm. More, T. (2002) Utopia, rev. ed., G. M. Logan and R. M. Adams (eds), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Monmonier, M. (1996) How to Lie With Maps, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Padrón, R. (2007) “Mapping Imaginary Worlds” in J. R. Akerman and R. W. Karrow Jr. (eds), Maps: Finding Our Place in the World, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, pp 255–87. Post, J. B. (1979) An Atlas of Fantasy, rev. ed., New York: Ballantine Books. Pratchett, T. (1985) The Colour of Magic, London: Corgi. Riley, M. O. (1997) Oz and Beyond: The Fantasy World of L. Frank Baum, Lawrence, KS: The University Press of Kansas. Scafi, A. (2013) Maps of Paradise, London: The British Library. Saler, M. (2012) As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality, Oxford: OUP. Stevenson, R. L. (1919) “My First Book: Treasure Island” in Essays in the Art of Writing, London: Chatto and Windus, pp 111–34. Tally, R. (2013) Spatiality, New York: Routledge. Turchi, P. (2014) Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press. Wolf, M. J. P. (2012) Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York: Routledge. Wood, D. (1992) The Power of Maps, New York: The Guilford Press.

106

14

History and Timelines Benjamin J. Robertson Although we may think about the histories of imaginary worlds independently of the timelines that sometimes convey these histories to us, the timelines themselves cannot be understood independently of these histories. As such, this entry does not treat “history” and “timelines” as separate issues, but rather in terms of their intersection. Importantly, while timelines are neither necessary nor sufficient to describe and/or communicate an imaginary world’s history, their use and development by both official/canonical creators and fans suggests the degree to which they assist with such description and communication. Timelines convey to readers a sense of the facticity of an imaginary world, the brute events that novels, films, video games, and other media take up and convey as and through narratives to readers, viewers, and players. They suggest that there is more to a world than this or that story, that beyond the human meaning such narratives offer and participate in, there is something like an objective reality. In short, timelines might simply be understood as pointing to a set of events from a world’s past upon which the very possibility of narrative in that world is based. Nonetheless, the relationships amongst the “facts” of imaginary worlds and narratives set in these worlds are quite complex, requiring that we not only understand how history operates in imaginary worlds. We must also understand the history of the timeline as well as the ways in which history, as conveyed through timelines as the raw material of narrative, is founded on certain notions of thought established in modernity. Such thought in part determines the form that imaginary world narratives take.This chapter will first discuss how imaginary worlds make use of history and how timelines support this use but also raise significant and difficult questions about such history. It then moves to a discussion of the emergence and development of the timeline as a historiographic tool for visualizing and organizing time since antiquity. The history of the timeline suggests the manner in which historical thought involves narration, but also the facts that stand behind narration, a relationship imported into imaginary worlds that subsequently conditions the ways in which they develop. The chapter concludes with brief discussions of chronologies and timelines from several imaginary worlds, both those offered in official/ canonical materials and those developed by fans. For imaginary worlds, history, very simply put, might be: (1) a thematic concern (insofar as these worlds might question the history of the Primary World or its manner of historical thought); (2) a structuring principle (insofar as these worlds are organized according to causality in which the past in some manner determines or conditions the present of a given narrative); and/or (3) a good deal of the “content” of fictions set in these worlds (insofar as past events might be recounted in the present plot and/or insofar as current conflicts become past events in the course of a narrative; see the “Backstory” chapter in this volume). As worlds develop—through the efforts of creators or of fans, or by way of the expansion of a franchise 107

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe—timelines become useful, perhaps even necessary, devices for the organization of events that take place in the world. Those worlds that include timelines as part of their canon, such as Tolkien’s Arda, tend to favor clear chains of causality and coherent narratives based on characters’ and readers’ capacity to know the world in question. Those worlds that eschew timelines, such as China Miéville’s Bas-Lag and Brandon Sanderson’s Final Empire, tend to thematize their fundamental strangeness and the impossibility of grasping history in a total (or even partial) manner. In such cases, and even in cases where official timelines exist, fans may step in to develop their own timelines as a means to better understand an imaginary world and the narratives set within it. Just as maps organize an imaginary world spatially and genealogies organize relationships amongst a world’s characters, timelines, according to Mark J. P. Wolf, organize and order the events of an imaginary world’s past and present, its history, and the plots of the current narratives set within it. Wolf writes: Timelines and chronologies connect events together temporally, unifying them in a history.They can be used to chart the cause-and-effect relationships between events, explain and clarify their motivations and maintain consistency, and give local events a context within larger movements of historical events. Timelines tie backstory into a story’s current events and help an audience to fill in gaps, such as characters’ ages or travel times, or their participation in events described in broader scale. Timelines also allow simultaneous strands of action, narratives, or other causal chains to be compared alongside each other, providing both synchronic and diachronic contexts for events. (Wolf, 2012: 165) Thus, timelines provide general information about worlds to an audience interested in the depth of these worlds in terms of completeness or consistency (even where these events do not bear on specific narratives), while also providing an audience with a tool whereby plot points and strands can be subsumed into a larger context. Although world history, which is to say this “larger context,” might come to the reader by other means (through plot, through dialogue, through other paratexts such as the sourcebook), the timeline, when present, provides an elegant solution to the problem of history’s vastness and the difficulties of coordinating events on timescales beyond that of the individual human being (upon whom so many imaginary world narratives focus). However, even as timelines make such timescales seemingly manageable, they also point to the inhumanity of geological, cosmological, and mythological time by often creating what John Clute and John Grant call a “time abyss” (Clute & Grant, 1999: 946–947). These scales stand in contrast to historical and personal timescales and, as in the case of the timelines provided by Olaf Stapledon in Last and First Men (1930), serve less to allow an audience to bridge the gap between now and then so much as force that audience to confront that gap’s “unbridgibility.” Thus, even as timelines serve as a means to knowledge, they also dramatize the impossibility of total knowledge. Keeping this complexity in mind, it becomes clear that, whatever apparently simple functions they serve with respect to the histories of imaginary worlds, timelines in fact raise at least as many questions as they answer. Beyond the issue of the time abyss, we might ask many questions of timelines: In the context of imaginary worlds, who compiles them? Why should we trust these compilers? Why represent these events and not others? What happened in the “space” between one event and another? Does history simply function in a linear fashion, with one thing leading directly to another? In fact, do timelines represent a sort of Whig 108

H i s t o ry a n d T i m e l i n e s

history, by which the past is understood merely in terms of how it directly and necessarily produced the present? Timelines’ functions, both practical and epistemological, are irreducibly complex. To pursue but one such complexity a bit further: as Wolf suggests, timelines work to create the larger context in which imaginary world narratives are set. In so doing, they in part create the world itself and therefore serve a practical function. They also, however, provide that world with a “truthful” and “factual” foundation and thus serve an epistemological function. Thus, they both create a context and justify that context, and any future text set within it, at once. Furthermore, even as they add to world completeness and seek to organize it into world consistency, they (as stated above) also demonstrate that the world is never quite complete.They also threaten consistency by placing a tremendous burden on any future narratives set within the world to conform to the “facts” of history. That is, the timeline itself conveys a sense, as part of its epistemological function, that such and such an event—that is, the plot of this narrative—did not just happen (as in a “just so” story), but manifested out of the past conditions of a world. These established facts always run the risk of conflicting with or constraining the world’s further historical development. Such conflict does not occur in the Primary World, in which individual actors create history from the bottom up, so to speak, but becomes a problem for worlds developed in a top-down fashion by individual creators (or, worse, by multiple creators working somewhat independently of one another). Finally, given that the facts of a world make possible any number of future events, the timeline, and the gaps therein, raises, for the skeptical reader, a question: Why this narrative rather than that one? What claim to importance does it possess, given the long history of the world a timeline might visualize? Again, Olaf Stapledon’s timelines in Last and First Men, representing billions of years, prove instructive here as they call into question the importance of what we might call human history, the width of which is but atoms thick (or even less) when cosmological time is represented in inches. When we encounter a timeline, in other words, we not only encounter a great deal of narrative compression, as detail is lost even as it is implied by the gaps in the chronology, we also encounter choice (on the part of the compiler who created the timeline) and constraint (in terms of how these events, by becoming facts, dictate the world in question). That timelines raise such concerns should not be surprising, given their manner of emergence in relation to the ways in which history, as a discipline, understood the passage of time and the cultural, political, social, economic, and aesthetic transformations such passage involves. The timeline, and its related forms, the annals and the chronicle, emerge as historiographic tools according to developing understandings of how time works, how it might be visualized, and how the events it “contains” might be organized in relation to one another. Importantly, as these tools became “naturalized” so too did the understandings of history and time out of which they emerged. In Cartographies of Time:A History of the Timeline (2010), Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton make clear that “time” and “lines” seem to go hand in hand: In representations of time, lines appear virtually everywhere, in texts and images and devices. Sometimes, as in the timelines found in history textbooks, the presence of the line couldn’t be more obvious. But in other instances, it is more subtle. On an analog clock, for example, the hour and minute hands trace lines through space; though these lines are circular, they are lines nonetheless. (Rosenberg and Grafton, 2010: 10) Indeed, media theorists such as Vilém Flusser (2011a, 2011b) and Marshall McLuhan (2011) connect linearity and historical thought when they argue that Western forms of writing and 109

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

print, both of which organize information in terms of lines, make historical thinking possible. I shall return to the influence of the timeline on historical thought momentarily. For now, we must note that the line, whether explicit and obvious or implicit and nearly invisible, has long presented itself as a means for organizing time spatially. Rosenberg and Grafton argue, in fact, that the timeline is not so much an impoverished form of historical accounting, one practiced by an unskilled or even primitive historian, but rather offers “powerful, graphically dense ways of describing and interpreting the past” (2010: 12–13).They trace forms related to the timeline back to at least 264/3 B.C., the production date of the Parian Marble, a Greek chronology of major events of the previous thousand or so years. By the Renaissance, the chronology became, along with geography, a source of “unquestionable information, which introduced order to the apparent chaos of events” (Rosenberg and Grafton, 2010: 17). As such, we might add, the line (whether manifest or implicit) became naturalized as a symbol of time and its forward movement. (Note that, as Rosenberg and Grafton would remind us, actual timelines involve actual lines. Many imaginary world “timelines” are, in fact, annals or chronicles, strictly speaking.) So naturalized (or, better, reified) did the relationship between time and lines become that champions of subsequent forms of historiography—what came to be known as the “history proper,” which not only respected the chronology of events but also fit them into a meaningful, narrativized structure—saw earlier forms as nothing but narratives in the offing, albeit impoverished narratives at best. Hayden White describes the relationship between chronological sequence and the fully developed history: In order for an account of events, even of past events or of past real events, to count as a proper history, it is not enough that it display all of the features of narrativity. In addition, the account must manifest a proper concern for the judicious handling of evidence, and it must honor the chronological order of the original occurrence of the events which it treats as a baseline not to be transgressed in the classification of any given event as either a cause or an effect. But by common consent, it is not enough that an historical account deal in real, rather than imaginary events; and it is not enough that the account represents events in its order of discourse according to the chronological sequence in which they originally occurred. The events must be not only registered within the chronological framework of their original occurrence but narrated as well, that is to say, revealed as possessing a structure, an order of meaning, that they do not possess as mere sequence. (White, 1990: 4–5, my emphasis) Thus, the annals form—which offers a list of years and the important events of each with no commentary on those events or a sense of a beginning or an end to the “tale” they tell— cannot be a history proper, even if it offers the raw materials of which proper history is built. Likewise, the chronicle—which offers more narrativity by way of a proper subject and a proper center of action, according to White—fails for the fact that it remains too slavishly devoted to presenting events in the exact order in which they occurred, like the annals form, and because, unlike the proper narrative, it offers no conclusion by which the meaning of the structural whole becomes apparent. Chronicles don’t end; they simply trail off. It, thus, becomes clear that sequence remained necessary to history proper, but only in a factual sense. In fact, the history proper need not narrate events in the order in which they took place so long as it respects the cause-and-effect relationships this order involves. That is, the meaning of history is not to be found in order itself, but in the narrating of the events. The order itself is reduced to raw material. 110

H i s t o ry a n d T i m e l i n e s

However, as White points out, to understand the annals or chronicle forms as simply the raw materials for—or failed attempts at—narrative is to miss the specific qualities of these forms of historiography. As an example of the annals form, White offers a section of the Annals of St. Gall, which covers the years 709–734 A.D. in Gaul (a region of what is now a good part of Western Europe). According to the Annals, most years saw nothing of importance happen. Other years offer seemingly, to the modern reader, random events: the death of a duke or priest, bad or good crops, invasions, and the fact that “Charles fought against the Saracens at Poitiers on Saturday” (White, 1990: 7). White notes that the list of events which the Annals comprises “immediately locates us in a culture hovering on the brink of dissolution, a society of radical scarcity, a world of human groups threatened by death, devastation, flood, and famine” (1990: 7). These events, each as seemingly incomprehensible (from the standpoint of narrative) as the rest, are not so much enacted by a human subject as they simply occur; they are done to these human groups as if by nature or God (even when they involve other human groups). The mindset that recorded these events was not simply narrating one thing rather than another, or badly narrating a proper history. For White, this mindset was fundamentally different than the one that produces the “history proper” due to the fact that it does not involve subjectivity of the modern sort, a self (or group) distinct from the world, a self-possessing agency and autonomy, a self that acts against (in several senses) its environment. Such modern subjectivity takes objectivity as the totality of facts of which it makes meaning, just as the modern historian takes the events placed on the timeline as the raw materials for the narratives (and meanings) it constructs. The relationship between brute fact (offered by the timeline) and narrative (offered by the history proper and naturalized as meaningful by historical thinking) is reproduced in the timelines offered by imaginary worlds, which more often than not appear after the narrative proper ends but nonetheless serve as “proof ” for those narratives. Just as historiography becomes increasingly dominated by narrative and the tropes thereof according to White (2000), narrative becomes increasingly reliant on historical thinking to ground itself in reality. (Lubomír Doležel [2010] claims, in opposition to White, that, while there may be similarities between history as a discipline and the construction of fictional worlds, the two practices are fundamentally different.) However, historical thought, even as it was becoming powerful and ubiquitous, does not tell the whole story, so to speak. John Clute argues that fantastika— which includes genres such as fantasy and science fiction, both of which are clearly associated imaginary worlds—emerges in the middle of the 18th century in response to not only the historical transformations taking place at the time, but in response to historical thought itself. He notes that, around 1750: the engines of change represented by the scientific and industrial revolutions begin palpably to increase the speed of history until it races. The planet begins to shake in the storm; change burns the soles of the residents; things alter so fast that we in the matured West are no longer able to sort our lives, which begin to haunt us. (2011: 24) Georg Lukács (1983) notes that the historical novel emerges at this point and demonstrates that the people of the past are fundamentally different in their understandings of the world than are people of the present. Similarly, fantastika emerges as a means to narrate the difference of the world with itself. That is, fantastika demonstrates that there is always more to the world than the increasingly rational, scientific, secular, and historical accounts of it suggest. This “more” can never be captured by means of mimetic, realist, or naturalistic fictions, all of 111

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

which are indebted to newly emerging forms of thought such as history. Only estranged and estranging forms, such as fantastika, were able to do so. However, these very forms eventually found themselves making use of the tools developed by historical thought as a means to grant the worlds they create a sense of reality. The timeline (or, rather, chronology, since it does not actually make use of lines) found in Appendix B to The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien, 1994: 452–472), is perhaps the most famous example of this technology in the history of imaginary worlds. Along with materials (such as genealogies) that make up the rest of the appendices, this so-called “Tale of Years” connects the events of the trilogy to the past (or at least to select events of the past) and also, precisely by not narrating all of these events, stands as a set of facts that grant reality to the larger, imaginary world of Middle-earth. Each event narrated in The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King was preceded by other events, which in turn were preceded by still other events, back into the First Age (not included in this chronology likely because the timescales at which it existed make little sense to historical thought and the subjects thereof and, by remaining mythical, it grants even further reality to later events by virtue of contrast). Each event thus stands in relation to each other event in terms of time; for example, Aragorn finds the sapling of the white tree 3,017 years after Isildur planted the first seedling of that tree in Minas Anor. Thus, the past provides ground for the present, but also becomes factualized as the past of the present. This past could not be simply understood as “once upon a time,” irremediably distant from the present narrative as are fairy tales from day-to-day life. Rather, the timeline shows it to have taken place at a specific, punctual moment, as a historical (rather than mythical) event.The facticity that this timeline grants to Tolkien’s world stands somewhat at odds with his justification for the secondary worlds in which fairy stories are set. These worlds, he claims, by virtue of their separation from the Primary World, on the one hand, and their completeness, on the other, afford readers the possibility of belief (Tolkien, 1964: 36–37), something Clute states Tolkien and other fantasists found in short supply after World War One revealed the horrors of the modern world to them (2011: 25). However, it seems that Tolkien and other creators, however much they wanted to escape the rational world through belief, found the best way to do so involved making use of and thereby repurposing the very tools— history, science, and rational accounts of time—that destroyed belief to begin with. By contrast, the timelines Olaf Stapledon offers in Last and First Men do not seek to grant reality to an imaginary world wholly separate from the Primary World, but rather serve to connect the past and present history of Earth to the far future of the universe in order to both bring into relief the destructive course upon which the 20th century has set itself as well as demonstrate the final insignificance of this destructiveness.The first of these timelines, labeled Time Scale 1, extends from the birth of Christ through the year 4000 (that is, the period roughly 2,000 years before Last and First Men was published until about 2,000 years after that publication). Mainly, this timeline, set at an historical scale, highlights the history of conflict over this period and draws attention to the American domination of the second half of the 20th century and beyond. Time Scale 2 begins in the Paleolithic Era, 200,000 years before the 20th century, and ends 200,000 years after that century. A note tells the reader that its scale, which we might call geological, is “one hundred times greater than the preceding scale” and that it is “doubtless extremely inaccurate” (Stapledon, 2008: 99). Whatever its accuracy, it nonetheless already suggests how extremely small and insignificant human history becomes when considered in the larger context of the geological history of the planet. Time Scales 3 and 4 each increases the scale of the prior one by one-hundredfold; Time Scale 5 increases the scale from Time Scale 4 by a factor of 10,000. Each further demonstrates that human history, as we understand that history from within it, is insignificant well before, but also well 112

H i s t o ry a n d T i m e l i n e s

beyond, cosmological timescales. At the same time, however, it demonstrates the continuity and causality of history as one species of human (the “First Men” to which the reader belongs) develops into other species, each of which creates new forms of civilization before falling into decline and decadence. Although Stapledon’s timelines, like Tolkien’s, serve as the facts upon which Last and First Men’s narrative is based, they also show the uselessness or meaninglessness of such facts, which are invariably chosen by finite human beings in terms of concerns that remain forever local when taken in the context of the universe itself. In other words, timelines are a tool of historical thought as well as the means by which such thought can be called into question as limited to present points of view and ways of knowing. Both Tolkien and Stapledon’s timelines organize their respective worlds, if in different ways and to different effect. However, some worlds, by virtue of the way they are described and constructed—and in part because they do not offer official timelines (and/or maps or other such tools) or only offer timelines apart from the medium that conveys the narrative itself— refuse such organization. In fact, they thematize the degree to which imaginary worlds (and perhaps the Primary World) resist our attempts to know them. Examples of such worlds include those of the so-called “Cthulhu Mythos” (created by H. P. Lovecraft and developed by numerous others; see Lovecraft, 1998, for a non-comprehensive but entertaining selection, and Joshi, 2015, for a critical account of the mythos), China Miéville’s (2001, 2004, 2005) Bas-Lag, and Brandon Sanderson’s (2007, 2008a, 2008b) Final Empire. The narratives set in each of these worlds dramatize the difficulties, if not impossibilities, of understanding history in neat and orderly ways (especially when such history includes the impossible causality of magic and the supernatural). Nonetheless, timelines for each of these worlds exist online, sometimes compiled by individuals and groups not officially related to the worlds (in the case of the Cthulhu Mythos and Bas-Lag) and sometimes hosted by the author’s official website (as in the case of the Final Empire). These timelines demonstrate at least two things. First, imaginary worlds may be created by individual authors or groups of authors, but they are also maintained by a larger fan community that researches and orders the worlds of their own accord. In other words, imaginary worlds do not exist solely as narratives or the facts behind the narratives offered by official sources, but also as part of a process that relates one to the other through various, diverse channels. Second, the order suggested by the timeline/narrative relationship (that the facts of the former provide the raw materials of the latter), when reversed (so that the narrative provides the facts that populate the timeline), calls attention to the fact that facts and narrative rarely—if ever—exist independently of one another.Timelines operate in a number of ways in imaginary worlds and must be considered as important objects for the study thereof. However, they rarely, if ever, provide any conclusive answers about the histories of these worlds without raising even more puzzles that readers, viewers, and players will need to solve.

References Clute, J. (2011) Pardon this intrusion: fantastika in the world storm, Essex: Beccon Publications. Clute, J. & Grant, J. (1999) The encyclopedia of fantasy, New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. Doležel, L. (2010) Possible worlds of fiction and history: the postmodern stage, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Flusser,V. (2011a) Does writing have a future?, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Flusser,V. (2011b) Into the universe of technical images, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Joshi, S. T. (2015) The rise, fall, and rise of the Cthulhu mythos, New York: Hippocampus Press. Lovecraft, H. P. (1998) Tales of the Cthulhu mythos, New York: Ballantine Publishing Group. Lukács, G. (1983) The historical novel, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 113

B e n j a m i n J . Ro b e rt s o n

McLuhan, M. (2011) The Gutenberg galaxy:The making of typographic man, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Mieville, C. (2001) Perdido street station, New York: Del Rey. Mieville, C. (2004) The scar, New York: Ballantine Books. Mieville, C. (2005) Iron council, New York: Del Rey/Ballantine Books. Rosenberg, D. & Grafton, A. (2010) Cartographies of time: A history of the timeline, New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Sanderson, B. (2007) Mistborn:The final empire, New York: Tor. Sanderson, B. (2008a) The hero of ages, New York: Tor. Sanderson, B. (2008b) The well of ascension, New York: Tor. Stapledon, O. (2008) Last and first men, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1964) Tree and leaf, London: Allen & Unwin. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1994) The return of the king, New York: Ballantine. White, H. (1990) The content of the form: Narrative discourse and historical representation, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. White, H. (2000) Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012), Building imaginary worlds:The theory and history of subcreation, New York: Routledge.

114

15

Mythology Lily Alexander Every metaphor is a little myth, as Vico famously stated, implying that a metaphor (potentially) turns “into a myth” (Vico, Verene, 1981). This dictum echoes in the idea that (mythological) symbols unfold into stories, while stories can fold back into symbols (Lotman, 2001). Each imaginary world is an “imaginative universal” (Vico), a symbolic system (Cassirer, 1929/1970) and a “universe of the mind” (Lotman), inseparable from its own mythology. A distinctive system of mythic tales inevitably shapes a unique fictional world, while this world’s life in time is ensured by the dramatic action unfolding within, in other words, through storytelling. The mythology of an imaginary world reveals itself dynamically only through action, a story about change. Both mythology and imaginary world establishes itself and unfolds “narratively” (Wolf, 2012; Alexander, 2013). An imaginary world needs its myths to come alive, while any original mythology always generates a world of its own. This interdependency means that mythology—consequentially—creates imaginary worlds, which need tales to exist and reach the minds of recipients (the ritual participants, readers, and audiences). World myths and folktales continue playing an active role in global popular culture. Due to contemporary storytelling media, readers and audiences around the world learn about characters and events of Greek, Celtic, Slavic, Scandinavian, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese foundational mythologies (to name a few). Collections of mythic tales have always represented an effective dynamic order. Mythology can be discussed as an “operational system” of culture. Mythology is usually defined as an assembly of traditional tales of a tribe or a nation, which serves as a basis for its worldview, and is revered as an anthology of sacred texts (see for example: Propp 1928/1968, 1984; Campbell 1968, 1990, 2011; Freeman 2012).Thus, mythology emerges as a multifaceted syncretic unity, which would later give birth to the three separate domains: the knowledge about the world (science, philosophy); belief systems (religion); and narrative (art). Typical situations surrounding the origin, essence, and prospects of human communities have become the recurrent themes across storytelling traditions. Foundational mythologies will continue serving as the building blocks for emerging narrative systems (Jenkins,Alexander, 2014). Old mythic tales still participate in the production of culture, contributing not only story characters and events but with influential patterns, such as mythemes and mythologemes— the mythological leitmotifs, able to form new and fascinating creative fusions. A mytheme is a dominant and recurrent theme in myths, or a type of mythic leitmotif. A mythologeme is a dynamic logical unit—part of narrative grammar/semantics as a structural whole; it contains some form of action or change that is vital to the meaning of the story. For example, a leitmotif of twin brothers, closely associated with the mythology of the powerful heroes-demiurges (Jung, 1964; Meletinsky, 2000), is a mytheme, while their bond and/or rivalry, leading to conflict and story development, is a mythologeme. Other mythemes 115

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

and mythologemes encompass the transformation of chaos into cosmos (establishing of ­cosmic order) and, subsequently, of the amorphous ocean water masses (chaos) into the fertile and cultivated lands (i.e., order). The key mythic patterns also include the parables focusing on the obstacles and boundaries in creating society, through the mythological framing of various forms of prohibition and taboo. With the rise of statehood, the mythologeme of chaos versus order becomes an ideological foundation for conceptualizing the opposition “us” (the kinship-related tribal alliance) versus “the Other”—the conquerors, or the “infidels,” those praying to the “wrong” gods. Rooted in early religions, such as animism, animatism, fetishism, totemism, the ancestor belief, and polytheism, and reinforcing their worldviews, the mythological consciousness is blended with these forms of faith as their sacramental framework. For example, totemism added to the core mythemes of culture the sacred stories of kinship between the animal or plant “families” and the socio-familial groups of humans. These early types of religions also represent the mental modalities that possess the innate ritual-semantic mechanisms of endowing objects with the “living spirits” and linking characters to concepts (Armstrong, 1981). Such “diffusive” modes of thinking imaginatively merge the signifiers with the signified in a “fairytale” fashion. To explain the logic of these connections and fusions, stories about magic inevitably follow. Mythology emerged as a way of contemplating reality, and making the first steps toward conceptualizing it. Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1935/1983) emphasized the “prelogical” mental operations, which determined “sameness” by proximity/similarity, also using the latter in place of causality.This diffusive consciousness gave birth to the metaphoric, poetic, and artistic types of logic. Conversely, Claude Levi-Strauss (1966, 1995) revealed the (rational) apparatus of classification, based on the complex binary system of elementary semantic oppositions.This system, he showed, can describe the entire mythological model of the universe, as perceived by early man. Mythic storytelling is an intellectual endeavor of humankind, developed as a passage between the natural world and the emerging world of ideas. Myth transforms one domain into another, reflecting a poetic thought-process about the world that is more grounded, inventive, and fertile than purely abstract thinking. That is why myth, enhanced by the diffusive consciousness of early man, is so prominent for its metaphorical prowess. Mythologies have the ability of bridging, balancing, and activating the spiritual in the material and vice versa: convert ideas into physical objects or living beings, and empower objects-images, with the potent symbolic meaning. Consciousness as a process, taking a form of a sacred narrative, is an essence of myth. Metamorphosis, or transformation, is the main subject of myth. All mythic stories deal with, and contain, the realms of magic.The magically occurring events connote the positive change that early man desired and thought to facilitate through the scenario of ritual performance (Turner, 1969, 1975). The ritual practices, hence, were conceived as a tool of reinforcing advancement and progress. All myths—containing the transformative events in the past or present—had to be repeatedly reenacted, so such change would be assured again, re-activated, and reestablished.Thus, in the mind of early man, ritual action was needed to make all desired changes permanent and active, so the natural world revolves as it should. The supporting and reenacting myth through ritual ensured the necessary dynamics of meaning-making and establishing vital change; this links mythology to the heart of culture. One of the main miracles, manifest in mythology, is the human species’ spiritual awakening, or the development of our collective self-awareness and self-actualization (Losev, 1985/2003). By focusing on transformative processes, ritual-mythological practices, thought to confirm beneficial collective experiences, effectively establish and transmit them as “culture” to new generations. 116

Mythology

Mythic tales are both “fixed” and “flexible.” Based on strict narrative patterns (invariants, closely linked to the ritual structure), yet supple and pliable (variations), they pivot on vitally important, foundational, or highly consequential events. Myths always exist as multiple versions initiated and later fine-tuned by the generations of ritual practitioners and storytellers (and so do the modern stories of Batman and Superman). Such “configurability” and adaptability make world mythologies an infinitely rich resource for all artistic epochs and endeavors. Harry Potter, the outcome of J. K. Rowling’s close studies of the Greek myth, is a persuasive example, as well as Hayao Miyazaki’s examinations of world folklore, from the Celtic to the Slavic, resulting in the entrancing fictionality of his transcultural animation. In the worlds of Slavic fantastic realism, and its counterpart, Latin American magic realism, mythic symbolism plays a crucial part. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, and Franz Kafka refer to European demonology, Mikhail Bulgakov to early myths of the Israelites in The Master and Margarita (1966), and Victor Pelevin to ancient Chinese mythology in The Sacred Book of the Werewolf (2004). And one can add to this the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Jorge Amadu, who fired up their stories with the “explosive” mythological fusion of European folklore and symbolic rituals of African slaves and South American natives. Mythic plots are usually the root-metaphors of culture, such as the myths of creation (of the world) or the myths of origin (of the tribe/people), explaining how the universe works or how Mother Nature rules (resonating in the origin myths of Tolkien and Lord Dunsany). Both types of foundational myths are associated with the sacral time-space continuum of the primal and wondrous creative beginnings (Frazer, 1890; Propp, 1928/1968, 1946, 1984; Jung, 1964; Levi-Strauss, 1966; Meletinsky, 2000). Creation myths tend to describe the birth of the world as the sacral marriage between the Sky and the Earth, while the mythic origins of the people are found in the procreative ancestral animal figures, to be termed the totem.The mythologemes of fate became significant when the concept of the individual emerged, and when man began to ponder if one has any control over his life path. The mythic goddesses Moirai were believed to oversee the fates of men and women in ancient Greece. Later, the determinism of this predicament was replaced by such cultural forms as the tragedy of fate and its alternative, the tragedy of choice, leaving a human being some decision-making freedom over the future. This opportunity was again questioned by the Existentialists (Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Max Frisch), who in the aftermath of World War II revived the mythologeme of fate in literature, in the context of new historical realities of mass societies, and the diminished power of individual men and women over their destiny. Mythic characters are typically the gods or spirits, rooted in the natural world. Gradually, a range of multifaceted figures is being added to the annals of myth, such as the cultural heroes-demiurges, who may have human, super-human, or semi-divine qualities, as well as the human-animal or animal-spirit combinations. As an alternative to a hero, who facilitates the progress from chaos to order, a trickster figure does the opposite; yet the confusion he creates is temporary, and is a form of positive adjustment. Many mythic beings (particularly, tricksters: the cunning Coyote, the Fox, or the mouse, as in Tom and Jerry, etc.) have zoomorphic features, often in fantastic combinations. Talking animals, and animal-spirits, revealing the fusion of the human and the “beast,” have been a substantial part of world mythologies, encompassing ritual masks and performance, folktales, literary fables, and modern-day cartoons, all subliminally carrying elements of animism. Alongside the divine figures presiding over the world, there emerged the mythic chthonic figures, the underworld beings who represented the earth (soil, ground, rocks, and mountains). Chthonic figures later morphed into the characters 117

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

s­ymbolizing fire, darkness, and death, eventually becoming the evil beings of folklore and popular culture (Freud, 2003; Alexander, 2013a/b). Most mythic figures have fluid characteristics or the dynamic essence: the change of identity (theft of identity or miraculous transformation) is often the crux of the story. Mythic beings may obtain or lose their supernatural qualities, while being hierarchically promoted or demoted in the realms of magic power. Such shifts happen through interactions with the other gods or anthropomorphic nature forces. These dramatic relations—status loss or gain— may include conflicts, battles, deception, as well as gifts, marriage, or the heroic feat. The spectrum of intermediate beings—those between the gods and the mortals—supplies the situations of social imbalance, resulting in endless mythic tales. Many narrative possibilities emerge when the change of status constitutes the drama of a myth. Among the influential mythologemes is the marriage between a mortal and a magical, “totem,” or otherworldly being; this mytheme is rooted in animism, totemism, and the ancestor belief (such films as Vertigo (1958), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965), and Ghost (1990), along with the neomytheme of the romance with a vampire). In the rich, hierarchical universe of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, such romances occur, assuring the readers that true love has no boundaries, as proven by the marriage of Melian (a Maia) and Elu Thingol (an Elf), the marriage of Beren (a Man) and Luthien (an Elf), and the marriage of Aragorn (a Man) and Arwen (an Elf).This paradigm has become transcultural since the era of Greek mythology. In Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, Psyche, who is in love with Cupid, attempts to become a divine entity so she can marry her beloved, who has a standing of a god.To reach her goal, she must solve a set of difficult riddles, demonstrating her super-human acumen. The hero’s visit to the Underworld in The Odyssey highlights that by losing his path in life he becomes (metaphorically-mythically) a “lost soul.” Yet still alive, the hero overcomes endless obstacles on his way home, even rejecting the semigoddess Calypso’s “marriage proposal” that comes with the gift of immortality. Odysseus proves that he was repeatedly able to cross the threshold of death, and return. Conversely, the crossing back to life through the threshold of death—the forbidden room—was something that the wives of the Bluebeard were unable to do (Alexander, 2013a). Among the patterns of mythic storytelling, there is a rich archive of the mythemes and mythologemes of space—the active spatial components of mythic chronotopes, the time-space continua (Bakhtin, 1981, 1965/1984, 1984; Alexander, 2007, 2013a, 2017). Such mythemes manifest a spatial element necessary to a given story; yet as a potent trope, a mythologeme of space can itself activate a related narrative. Generated by the human imagination at the dawn of culture, the mythology of space remains potent in the narrative culture today. Narratively influential chronotopes, rooted in mythology, include those of the Road, the Crossroads, the Home, the Secret Garden, Dungeons, the World’s Edge, etc. A typical mythic pattern represents an identification of the cosmos with a human body, and its upper or lower strata with the different realms of experience. Depending on the habitual natural environment, folktales focus on the spatial realms that they must mythically explain and narratively frame: the ocean, the mountains, or the woods. Other spatial tropes include caves and mazes, the underwater world, the world tree (i.e., the beanstalk rising to the sky, or the tower as axis mundi) and, later, the fertile fields in the era of land cultivation, or the other planets in the era of space exploration. These foundational mythic spatial tropes become the structured semantic environment in which action takes place and relevant characters appear, for example, the deities of waterways, the forest, or other planets, where the gods and aliens reside and rule. One of the key principles of the mythological geography is the hierarchical organization of meaningful spatiality by codes and, particularly, by levels, which begin to symbolize value (high heaven vs. underworld/hell). One of the features of mythological language is the transformation 118

Mythology

of semantic channels and codes, which leads to active metaphorical imagination, as well as informational richness or symbolic superfluity/density. One image or idea is often repeated on different levels and in different resonating ways. In modern neo-mythologies, we recognize the mythologeme of the city (emerging in the image of the capitalist jungle in Romanticism, Critical Realism, and French Naturalism; and the modernist City-myth, as well as the urban maze in film noir and sci-fi dystopias). There are even the near-supernatural realms of particular cities, which come across as the mythic city-entity, a living magical environment, in which strange events and mutations/metamorphoses tend to occur. The writers of modernity, while their portrayals of actual geographic locales are credible, have left us the gifts of cities turning into their own myths: the London of Dickens, the Petersburg of Gogol or Dostoevsky, the Paris of Zola or Hemingway, the Dublin of Joyce, and the Prague of Kafka (soon followed by the narrative mythologies of New York, Los Angeles, Jerusalem, Barcelona, Casablanca, etc.). The chronotope of mythology is associated with the circular conception of time, also linked to the initial sacral time—that of the sacred beginnings (examples include such series as Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future (1985–1990) and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time (1990–2013)). This mythological chronotope was distinctly replaced by the dramatic advent of the l­inear historical temporality, with its breakthrough understanding of the irreversibility of time and, hence, the finality of death.Taking political advantage of the new revelations on the nature of time, the Roman Empire invented the performative billboard-style execution “Death on the Cross.” This new type of capital punishment served as a perpetual vivid reminder, “obey, or else”: you will irreversibly and graphically perish, in shame, and in public. (This proposition stands directly opposite to those constituting the moral conflict in Sophocles’s Antigone and in the episode of Priam’s retrieval of Hector’s body in Homer’s Iliad. Both are based on the divine taboo of leaving a body unburied, hence, desecrated for eternity.) The new narrative forms— tragedy, drama, and, later, crime drama, thriller, and horror—will hinge on the very notion of the “end of time,” particularly that of individual human life. A necessary companion to the practices of building civilization and the notion of progress, the concept of historical time comes to replace that of the mythic circular time in the consciousness of humans. Yet resisting the loss of the precious belief in the afterlife, human cultures make efforts to combine or reconcile the opposite conceptions of time—the mythic/reversible and the historical/linear—in a set of new mythologies. This paradigm shift, as well as the defiance against it, generates multiple religious and cultural myths, including those of major religions, the Renaissance, and the neo-mytheme of time travel in sci-fi, not to mention the reclaimable “many lives” of an avatar in the reversible world of video game narrative. There are many ways of exploring the phenomenon of mythology. This chapter aspires to emphasize its innate quality of dynamics. Contrary to the view that mythologies represent “cultural stasis” (frozen symbols), it can be argued that they are better conceptualized as a system of multi-level and multi-directional dynamic processes. Since the birth of civilization, the “semantic stillness” or static states of mythologies occur when the ideological conditions lead to the inflexible, stagnant interpretations of cultural symbols. Such frozen symbolism of myth exposes the eras that read mythology as a way of supporting the political status quo rather than an innate quality of mythology per se.The conception of time-space-and-action in mythology consists of at least two types. There is the circular and cyclical temporal realm, in which the universe revolves, according to the established order. Yet there is also (actively!) present an alternative realm of time, that of the sacred beginnings, when everything was being born, exists in a state of becoming, the sort of Big Bang of Creation. It is this fruitful “creative time” that is observed, venerated, and reenacted in ritual celebrations. And that sacral time 119

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

is ritually-symbolically, in its image, present even within the ordinary time of the everyday. This link is vividly seen, for example, in the artistic mythology of Marc Chagall, and in such media phenomena involving the witches and wizards next-door in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and Harry Potter. In all of them, a door opens from the ordinary world into the adjoining magical world, in which sacral events of the mythic scale take place. Mythology first emerged to explain the “reality in action”—the world coming into being: how it was created, how stars dance around the sky, how the tribe was born, and what its first heroes achieved, so the future community could understand its roots, learn wisdom, survive, and strive. Highly adept for the process of meaning-making, mythologies “crystalized” (Freidenberg, 1997) symbols out of raw poetic imagery over the course of millennia. We may assume that this happened by means of semantic undercurrents and shifts—through interpretations to revisions, and from versions to narrative adjustments. The acute interest in the story and the involvement of a passionate audience manifest symbolization as the vibrant dynamic process of culture. Individual symbols were also sharpened through interactions, sometimes conflictual, with other symbols: for example, the tales of gods dividing their spheres of influence reflect how different realms of nature correlate. Such juxtapositions of interests spawn many mythic stories. Each era, involved in its own socio-political and economic struggles, had to adjust its symbolic interpretations to the meaning-making needs of their time. Such characters alone— Oedipus, Medea, Odysseus—were a subject of reinterpretation by many storytellers and versions, in ancient Greece, and later in modernity, coming to symbolize (somewhat) different human qualities and struggles, essential for each author’s time. Multiple versions of the stories about Sherlock Holmes, Batman, and Superman, as well as about Alice, Cinderella, and Little Mermaid, highlight this continuous trend. Newly established mythic symbols proceeded to spread through interrelated stories and the imaginary worlds in which they were set.They began to symbolize more than individual phenomena but a reality with multiple realms, gradually forming semantic frameworks (the basis) and networks (continual processes of symbolization by authors). What we call the mythological systems of meaning then came into being, able to describe the growing civilizations and upkeep their cultural functions on a grand scale. Economic and macro-cultural changes, bringing about new types of civilizations and ideologies, required the support of a familiar symbolic framework to signify (give meaning to) or re-signify (change a meaning of) highly operational semantic units, important to their time. The Middle Ages, the Renaissance (which means “rebirth”), the Baroque era, Romanticism, etc. actively employed traditional mythologies of European traditions to redefine and ideologically sharpen their semantic tools, suitable for explaining the entire spectrum of emerging historic phenomena. Mass society followed suit. In the 20th century’s “brave new world,” rising fascism was foreshadowed by the evil monsters in Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Nosferatu (1922), and Metropolis (1927), directed by German expressionist filmmakers, as a warning to their contemporaries. Conversely, the Nazi sympathizer, filmmaker, and myth-maker, Leni Riefenstahl, signified Hitler as a “god” in Triumph of the Will (1935), effectively supporting and spreading his ideas. On the other hand, the dissidents and resistance figures of totalitarian regimes were often glorified by the counterculture as modern-day Icarus or Prometheus figures, hence empowering them by placing them on a cultural pedestal (as in Aldous Huxley’s The Brave New World (1932), as well as the Strugatsky Brothers’ Hard to Be a God (1963), with multiple screen versions and video games, and Roadside Picnic (1971), adapted as Stalker (1979) by Andrei Tarkovsky). 120

Mythology

The ideological signification of political process by means of traditional myths may lead to the reinforcement of a dominant regime. This shows a powerful, yet often controversial, dynamic between mythology and political realities. Shaped at the dawn of culture, mythologies tend to accumulate a qualitative change, periodically re-shaping into neo-mythologies, or the symbolic-narrative systems of a new order, based on cultural paradigm shifts. Traditional mythology reveals a potency to continually spring and branch into many new mythos (mythic systems). Neo-mythology is a cultural system of modernity, which emerges around a new phenomenon of supreme socio-political significance, and is accompanied and supported by the continual stream of thematically linked stories, with a similar meta-conflict (the one mirroring the dangers of reality). Neo-mythology constitutes a novel semantic order, which actively employs the units of old myths, but its emerging ideological framework ensures the integration of topical components: original artistic imagery (via emerging books and media), a catalog of figures from the cultural discourse (recognizable characters), embedded political conflicts (“ripped from the headlines”), open political debates, and often commercial slogans (advertising and the consumer culture agenda). “What is Hecuba to us?” is the question posed by Shakespeare in Hamlet, while the playwright comments on the active role of mythic/fictional figures in the production of culture, as well as in (re)defining its values and political realms. Known as the last Trojan queen and granddaughter of the fertility god, Hecuba, as a devoted mother (of fifty!—including Paris and Cassandra) and a “resistance fighter,” has already served Homer, Euripides, and Shakespeare in actualizing the political agendas of each writer’s era. (The several pacifist, politically relevant versions of Euripides’s The Trojan Women—on-screen, 1963, 1971, 2004, and 2006—follow suit.) The world of the Trojan war—itself an imaginary world, based on obscure legend—had to be independently construed by such myth-making giants as Homer and Euridipes. Ironically, this mythic Symbolic Mother was omitted in the “men’s world” of the 2004 interpretation of The Iliad, the movie Troy (written by David Benioff and directed by Wolfgang Petersen). Conversely, in a self-ironic, yet prominent directorial gesture, Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam (1972) and Hayao Miyazaki in Rorco Rossa (1992) have Humphrey Bogart’s fictional Private Eye visiting, with much regard. Through the active process of mutual absorption between the symbolism of mythology and ever-updating “media culture”—literature, theater, music, film, television, comics, video games—the mythos’ pantheon of traditional gods grows to include new cultural heroes. Emerging fictional figures and their authors-creators—by means of their colorful identities, utterances, and actions—partake in the ever-expanding catalog of symbolic meanings (catchphrases emerging from Star Wars, Star Trek, The X-Files, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm). What is called classical, topical, or even “cool” (trendy, hip) is the (media) narrative in the process of entering the alphabet of culture. New, recognizable characters assume the functions of semantic units and permanent points of reference. Finally, in the era of globalization, cultural fusion occurs between/among multiple mythological traditions. In such a global-scale transnational meaning-making process, the new forms of complex dynamics are unavoidable, since mythic symbols actively interact, influencing each other, adjusting, and producing new meaning and values. For example, Tolkien fused Celtic mythic figures with the symbolism of folklore and 19th-century classical literature in The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955); and Rowling expertly used the patterns of Greek mythology, enhancing them in her Harry Potter series with the motifs of Celtic myth and British Romanticism. The mythemes of German Expressionism—those of the monster-city Metropolis and the evil magi Dr. Caligari—have become the recognizable symbols of the 20th-century political (neo)mythology (Kracauer, 1966). The creative use of world mythic themes in George Lucas’s 121

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

Star Wars and Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek has been widely c­ elebrated by the scholars of ­myth-criticism and media critics alike. Holocaust survivor Stanisłaus Lem’s Solaris (1961), a new sci-fi mythologeme of the thinking (God-like) planet-being, is rooted in at least four narrative traditions: the Jewish-Biblical, Slavic mythology, Russian classical literature, and American media culture, carrying via the narrative roots of its creators the essential meanings of each. The same may be said about the neo-mythologemes of Arthur C. Clark, Ray Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick. One such mytheme, that of the struggle of advanced civilizations as to whether to interfere in other worlds’ courses of history (be aware of unintended consequences!), came from the Strugatsky Brothers’ sci-fi story Hard to Be a God (1964), which encompassed a book, two film versions, and a video game. Yuri Norstein’s enigmatic mythic Little Wolf of the woods, at once scary and protective, emerging from the depth of Slavic folklore and Russia’s key lullaby, accompanies an aspiring artist and 20th-century history in Tale of Tales (1979, named the “best animated film since Disney” by the American guild of animators). A friend and colleague of Norstein’s, the Japanese master of experimental animation, Hayao Miyazaki, throughout his career exuberantly keeps blending his own Asian tradition with the multiple sources of European folklore and global popular culture. In Spirited Away (2001), he admittedly combined (8,000!) spirits and gods from Japanese mythology with many transnational characters of world folklore. Yet, he creatively split the Russian female forest spirit, witch Baba Yaga, into two—the good and evil twins, wisely highlighting that this enigmatic folk character in most tales serves as a hero’s magic helper and is a dark figure in other tales. Intriguingly, Miyazaki’s antagonist No Face in Spirited Away carries some Dostoevskian motifs, since he is “evil” because he is lonely, desperate, and “nobody loves him.” As soon as he is “accepted,” he is tamed and is no longer a villain. Mythology, therefore, is not merely a “mirror to its age,” but a magnetic sphere of (re)signification. It is an active semantic field of empowerment. Within this (magic) realm of endowment, the artist-thinker actively creates new values, sharing their insights and hopes for the path of humanity. They use the building blocks of familiar and cherished mythic symbols to empower and spread their ideas. The above outlines the multiple forms of dynamics and influence, embedded in mythology as an “operational system of culture.” To sum up, there are at least several vital reasons why mythology has maintained a continual cultural influence in narrative history: (1) its innate prowess for imagery, (2) its immanent “riddle” quality or “semantic vibrations,” (3) its meaning-making expertise (i.e. symbolization), (4) its “orderly” systematic nature, (5) its catalytic and modeling capacity, (6) its world-building skills, (7) its “translatability,” hence an ability to bridge cultural gaps, and (8) its communicability/sociability, the propensity for establishing ever-growing social networks with other groups or nations through intelligible (transcultural) storytelling. Mythology contains and activates the forces of poetic expression. Since the entire conceptual-communicative apparatus of early mythic systems relied on images rather than logic, the elaborate languages of art developed to carry out these tasks. Readers and scholars admire the supreme expressiveness of the figurative language embedded within mythic narrative. Our attraction to myth can be explained by the captivating power of its picturing, the astonishing richness of its images, and the intricate weavings of metaphoric levels. We are still in awe of the symbolic imagery of the original mythic tales, and inspired by their artistic prowess. The old myths’ verbal and narrative inventiveness, as well as the dexterity of their imaginings, continue to enlighten authors.The rich, creative potency of mythology is manifest in its ability to inspire new art, generate stories, and stimulate the birth of imaginary worlds. Myth is a riddle of sorts and always contains an enigma. Its enchanting nature stems from its capricious, mighty divine characters; the astonishing wondrous nature of its milieu; and the 122

Mythology

fluctuating uncertainty of its symbolism, which we could call “semantic vibrations.” An array of mazes, miracles, and puzzles is a staple of its narrative environment, in which challenges, problem-solving, and finding answers to the riddles of the gods (to later become Aristotelean anagnorisis, or recognition/revelation) are a vital part. By doing so, characters step from their “ordinary time” into the “sacral time” of Creation. Such a penchant for the “guessing game” also involves the audience, making mythic storytelling “interactive” (with far-reaching consequences for the video game as a cultural form). This openness of the original myth to the Unknown reflects early man’s naïve yet ardent curiosity for the enigmatic big world, yet to be discovered, with all its infinite wonders and marvels. The enigma of the character is one of myth’s key features, which influenced narrative culture per se, ensuring the presence of “mystery types” in many genres. The roads of myth are populated by known and unknown (divine) beings, as well as odd or fantastic figures whose nature is obscure, and whose impact can range from those of the magic helper to the devouring monster. This pulsating meaning-making adjustment process leads to what we can term oscillating symbolism (which, it may be argued, is a feature of true art). Fantastic beings on the roads of myth are principally “undefinable”—to grasp their essence often means to survive. Are the mythic figures Oedipus and Electra “right” or “wrong”? Should they be forgiven? Is Lear a cruel old fool or a deeply suffering soul? Is Hamlet a reluctant hero or a Renaissance man, a humanist who despises the idea of revenge and murder? Is Othello a courageous military leader or a paranoid, possessive husband? Is Raskolnikov a proud young philosopher or a vulgar killer? This alternative to the set or clear meanings behind mythic-fictional images signals the unfinished process of symbolic crystallization. This adds the fascinating dynamics of guessing in narrative art, as an heir to myth, when a symbol is not glued to a face of a fictional character. This “incompleteness of symbolization,” or meaning-making vibration, remains an intellectual puzzle, adding to our cultural experiences the never-ending pleasure of semantic riddles. Along with the process of semantic pulsation, symbolic clarity must also be achieved for communities to have a flawless grasp of their “Ten Commandments” and other sacred rules. This is also necessary for maintaining a civil society. Thus, the dual process of symbolic vibration (defying certainty) and the crystallization of meaning (defying uncertainty) through the layers of the same (mythic) tale has been a major part of the construction of culture. The meaning-making mechanisms generated by the myth’s many versions, adjusted to cultural debates, oscillate along the lines of multi-generational reception and interpretation. For example, the symbolic essence of the lead characters in Oedipus Rex and Phaedra accompanies humankind’s struggle against incest, understood as encompassing both types of taboo— respectively, the biological (mother and son) and the cultural (stepmother and stepson). The mythologemes of matrimony, examining the “rightful” and “wrongful” types of marriage and family structure, have been among the most significant, accompanying the process of the basic kinship unit expanding from a family to society.The mythologemes related to family have led to the types of stories examining the roles of the Symbolic Father and Mother, their rights and obligations to their nearest relations and to the community. The mythemes of the Symbolic Fathers, Sons, and Daughters, focusing on the expected versus unpredictable dichotomies— the compliant/rebellious or cowardly/courageous—have fertilized many plots, such as those about Iphigenia and Antigone. Who is Medea? What is her (social) essence, and, thus, what does she symbolize to a community, society, humankind? Is she a murderess, a monster, an abandoned lover, one with an injured pride, a betrayed wife, a traitorous daughter to her own people, a good parent? The figure of Medea, a disobedient daughter, a loving spouse, but a vindictive “wife scorned” and 123

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

a cruel “devouring” mother, persistently reappeared in the three ages of ancient Greek drama, resonating with the centuries of disequilibrium between the matriarchy and patriarchy. The “nerve” of the story signals the debate on the unresolved conflict between the socio-familial rights of the father and those of the mother.With all present oscillation/pulsation of meaning, the images (mythic/fictional characters) that were a subject of intense cultural discussion have eventually led to the certainty of symbolism, allowing the creation of a cultural system based on a stable semantic order. (Any symbolic organization, of course, had to be periodically challenged and rebalanced by the cycles of social and semantic change.) This methodical fictional model-building and modeling systems by means of mythology connote the persuasive power of storyworlds. Effective and operative imaginary realms have their rationality; all their cogs and parts are tightly organized. When factoring in all levels of the “poetic truth,” mythology is systematic and orderly: behind any fictional world of myth, there is balanced and coherent logic, penetrating all interwoven realms of its narrative universe. All the gods, deities, and spirits oversee allocated segments of reality. Even if their spheres of influences overlap, each is part of the system and subject to its synchronization mechanisms. If the influences collide, the gods’ clashes lead to a story, a mythic tale, meant to explain how two deities deal with their conflicting interests, where the alliances or boundaries reside, and what humans should learn from the parable’s “teaching moments.” Intriguingly, the systematic nature of mythological models of reality is not explicitly revealed to their recipients. Many enigmas remain in mythic narratives. Humans, thus, must look beyond the obvious and approach myth as a (sacred) mystery. Participating in any reenactment of ritual-mythological narratives means to ultimately grasp the world’s concealed, hard to detect (i.e., to be revealed, as in detective fiction), orderly and consequential nature. The embedded symbolic order of mythology tends to reproduce itself. Art imitates life, and reality, in turn, is shaped by the powerful forces of picturing. This mechanism, involving dynamic systems of symbols, termed the modeling system (the Tartu school’s Yuri Lotman and Vyacheslav Ivanov) and model of/for (Geertz, 1993), is vividly present in mythology. Modeling systems not only reflect reality (models of), but reproduce it by means of (ritual) representation in the process of shaping the future (models for); the latter exhibits the power of catalysis, reactivating the inherent symbolic order. Where has this catalytic quality initially come from? A mythic realm is rooted in, and pivots on, its deity.This superior being is the one who either creates his domain or represents it, thus, supporting, maintaining, and guarding it. Hence, a magic realm originates from its supernatural creator-being who “causes” it (later, a god of monotheism does exactly that). One of the reasons for this “catalytic” ability of mythology is hidden in the historical mentality behind ritual magic (a subject of the anthropology of consciousness). The pivotal images depicted in a mythic tale are the (divine) entities, which are being called for, to come into view (or revealing invisible presence), and help. This “petition” for divine assistance and manifestation is a form of a prayer. In myth and ritual, a representation is not merely a semantic act, an icon, deprived of natural substance. The picture of the Sun is viewed as a direct and active link to the Sun-god entity, rather than a sign. Like a dial on the modern phone or clicking on a website address, the ritual representation serves to establish a fast and much-needed connection, necessary for an appeal to support the survival of human communities. In mythic realms, despite their alleged “frozen present,” things interact and change, therefore, generating narratives. Storytelling, beyond other reasons, emerged as an action of ritual magic for reinforcing a desired deity-realm’s being and presence, by re-presenting it. Narrated side by side, mythic tales follow one another, gradually streaming together as a cultural storytelling system. The recent concept of intertextuality was proposed to highlight 124

Mythology

the dialogic and polyphonic relationships (Bakhtin, 1928/1984) among texts and narrative resonances, already in place in myth and storytelling culture. The resulting systemic order must be periodically reestablished, semantically updated and reactivated. This is achieved though ritual performance, which historically gave birth to, and encompasses, film, television, and interactive activities like (video) games. All of them manifest the symbolic empowering through reenactment—a dynamic, narrative modeling system. This quality of mythology facilitates the transformation of a singular tale into a symbolic network. Hence, another reason for mythology’s continuously sturdy place in contemporary art is its fictional world-building skills. Particularly useful is the ability of fictional realms to introduce emerging world-models, based on newly discovered, or yet unknown, laws (scientific hypotheses), without “spelling it all out” or resorting to lengthy essayistic explanations.Via mythopoeia (also mythopoesis or mythmaking through art), the outlined imaginary worlds propose new conceptions of reality. Gently, gradually, subliminally, they show “what ifs,” the realms of make-believe, while suspending the voicing of ideas we are yet unable to discuss. Mythology is adept for representing the emerging reality by means of nonverbal modeling systems. Myth’s transcultural openness and ability to “translate” its symbolic images across cultures and eras continue to empower mythopoeia, proven to remain indispensable for the media and popular entertainment. We can use the treasure chest of world mythology at any given time, and recombine/reconfigure its building blocks in the meaning-making process, be it the fantastical/metaphorical elements in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, or Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirted Away. Active, developing societies need refreshing flows of symbolic images. They depend on the semantic alphabet of mythology, and utilize its catalogs whenever their changing cultural needs require them.World mythology helps in transcultural socialization, expanding the boundaries of what we perceive as “our own” symbolic tribe in the global community.

References Alexander, Lily A. (2007), “Storytelling in Time and Space: Studies in Chronotope and Narrative Logic on Screen,” Journal of Narrative Theory,Vol. 37, No. 1, Winter 2007, 27–64. Alexander, Lily A. (2013a), Fictional Worlds:Traditions in Narrative & The Age of Narrative Culture. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace. Alexander, Lily A. (2013b), Fictional Worlds I:The Symbolic Journey & The Genre System. Expanded, interactive, and illustrated edition. iTunes, iBookstore. Alexander, Lily A. (2017), “Fictional World-Building as Ritual, Drama & Medium” in Mark J. P. Wolf, editor, Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology, New York: Routledge, pp.14–45. Armstrong, Robert P. (1981), The Power of Presence: Consciousness, Myth, and Affective Presence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1928/1984), Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis:The University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1965/1984), Rabelais and His World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Campbell, Joseph (1968), The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 2nd revised edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Campbell, Joseph (1990), Transformations of Myth through Time. New York: Harper Perennial. Campbell, Joseph (2011), Myths to Live by:The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell. Kindle Edition. Cassirer, Ernst (1929/1970), The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. 3 Vol. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Frazer, James George (1890/1996), The Illustrated Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New York: Simon and Schuster. 125

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

Freeman, Philip (2012), O My Gods. A Modern Retelling of Greek and Roman Myths. New York: Simon & Schuster. Freidenberg, Olga (1997), Image and Concept: Mythopoetic Roots of Literature. New York: Routledge. Freud, Sigmund (2003), The Uncanny. London: Penguin. Geertz, Clifford (1993), “Religion as a cultural system.” In: The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, Geertz, Clifford, Fontana Press. Jenkins, Henry and Lily Alexander (2014), “Why Humans Tell the Stories They Do: An Interview with Lily Alexander,” A six-part dialogue and interview series, April 1–15, 2014, available at http://henryjenkins.org/2014/04/why-humans-tell-the-stories-they-do-an-interview-with-lily-alexanderpart-one.html. Jung, Carl, editor, (1964), Man and His Symbols. New York, Doubleday. Kracauer, Siegfried (1966), From Caligari to Hitler. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1966), The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1995), Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture. New York: Schocken. Levy-Bruhl, Lucien (1935/1983), Primitive Mythology: The Mythic World of the Australian and Papuan Natives. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Losev, Alexei (1985/2003), The Dialectics of Myth. London and New York: Routledge. Lotman,Yuri (2001), Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Meletinsky, Eleazar M. (2000), The Poetics of Myth. London-New York, Routledge. Propp,Vladimir (1946), Historical Roots of the Wonder Tale. In Russian. SPB: Leningrad State University. Propp,Vladimir (1928/1968), Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd edition. Austin: University of Texas Press. Propp,Vladimir (1984), Theory and History of Folklore. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Turner,Victor W. (1969), The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Transaction Paperback. Turner,Victor W. (1975), Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Verene, Donald Philipp (1981), Vico’s “New Science”: A Philosophical Commentary. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York: Routledge. Wolf, Mark J. P., editor (2017), Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology, New York: Routledge.

126

16

Philosophy Edward Castronova Imaginary worlds flip the philosophical problem on its head. Normally we spend our time trying to discover what is and then judge whether it accords well with what ought to be. With an imaginary world, we first decide what should be, and then bring it into being. This backwards exercise was a scholar’s toy for many centuries, but of late, due to the ability of technology to fully immediate our sensations, the making of imaginary worlds has become a seriously pragmatic undertaking. In this chapter, I will discuss the implications of imaginary worlds for human philosophical practice. A disclaimer: I will not be discussing particular philosophies in any great detail. Rather, I’ll discuss how the tools of imaginary worlds enable and channel the philosophical drive that exists among our race. What can we say about the future of humanity’s philosophical impulse, now that we are able to make imaginary worlds that people actually inhabit?

The Technology (Once Again) Most essays about virtual worlds, and many of the chapters in this book, spend time on the progress of technology. This matters deeply for philosophical practice, too. It is important to understand the situation of the immediated mind. Immediated means, all of its sensations come to it from a crafted environment.This mind is fully immersed in a synthetic reality. How close we are to this status already, as I write in late 2016! When do my feet touch the grass? How often when I am talking to people am I speaking to their faces? How many of my interests are pursued (my desires satisfied) through direct contact with humans rather than interaction with digital stories and games? The ability to craft experiences for others has expanded dramatically. With existing digital technology, it is possible to keep the minds of billions of people immediated on a 24/7 basis. The technology has been achieved. Only the social structures and content are missing. The social structures are changing, and the content base is growing. Billions of people are now in a position to make films, songs, books, and games. Software continues to advance in sophistication. Interaction designers are becoming ever more adept at crafting worlds in which each player entertains the others, thus harnessing the whole population of the world as a source of entertainment for its inhabitants. There is no limit in sight to these developments. And technology will almost certainly get better. Imaginary worlds were once a hobby for the occasional novelist. Now they represent the future of human experience. Future humans will spend almost all of their time in the imaginary worlds of someone else. The people making those imaginary worlds will have decided that some type of world ought to be, and then they will craft it. In so doing, they will live 127

E dwa r d C a s t ro n o va

out the philosophical problem exactly in reverse. Fun times for philosophy! It is a new (albeit backwards) dawn for pragmatism. While technology is making things more pragmatic, this move, from philosophy to world instead of the other way around, has been an imaginative part of the world-builder’s craft for a long time. Plato’s Republic (380 B.C.) is a type of world-building, where the father of philosophy imagines how a state should be. Similarly, More’s Utopia (1516) directly expresses the author’s philosophical project of a more reasonable way to live. Asimov’s Galaxy, in the Foundation series, has its brilliant scientists and engineers, who hope to use reason and mathematics to preserve civilization through a dark age. Philip K. Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is far less hopeful about science and technology, indeed not particularly hopeful about any possibility; his is an existentialist world. The locale of Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) is a deconstructed Dublin. George R. R. Martin’s Westeros is a nasty place, a world in which fate seems bent on destroying anything held sacred by anybody. World builders also express religious commitments, some more directly than others. C. S. Lewis’s Narnia is a world that expresses the author’s Christianity in an almost tiresomely direct and allegorical way. As history moves along, the philosophical commitments of authors become less and less obvious in the worlds being built. Middle-earth, the creation of J. R. R. Tolkien, reflects his Roman Catholicism in hundreds of indirect ways. “Aragorn” is a modification of “Aragon,” a reference to Catherine of Aragon, according to some Catholics the only true queen of Henry VIII. The Ring was destroyed on March 25, in olden times the Catholic Feast of the Annunciation, that is, the Incarnation of Jesus, which is to say, the moment that God entered our world and destroyed sin; thus the Ring is apparently Sin—in a very indirect way. One hardly sees Catholicism in Gene Wolfe’s post-apocalyptic worlds—in the Book of the Long Sun series there are augurs who make animal sacrifices, suggesting a far-distant future in which religious observance has returned to earlier roots. All of these world-builders turn the task of philosophy on its head, but they do so in the pages of books.Technology is in a position to take up these books as blueprints for new places.

Reverse Pragmatism The early pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, built their school of thought on the hope of using the consequences of a concept to resolve metaphysical disputes about it or related matters. James used the famous example of a man trying to observe a squirrel on a tree trunk.The squirrel keeps moving, though, and stays forever on the other side of the tree; man and rodent are never on the same side. He, the man, then wonders whether it can be said that he went around the squirrel (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism/). A dispute may erupt in his mind, because in one sense he did and in another he did not. If “go around” means, be to the squirrel’s North, then East, then South, then West, then North again, then yes; he did go around the squirrel. If “go around” means facing the squirrel, then being to its right, then behind it, then to its left, then facing it again, he did not. The dispute is resolved by bringing to the fore the practical meaning of different understandings of the concept “go around.” We might call this “forwards pragmatism.” The idea is to take a concept and consider it as a bundle of consequences. The concept of “hate” is not something we set aside once we have defined it in a sentence or two. Rather, whenever we bring the idea of “hate” into our minds, with the purpose of using it somehow, we consider not just the dictionary definition but also everything that will happen if we use “hate” in the way we are considering. Do I “hate” this 128

Philosophy

essay? Yes and no. If “hate” means “I will abandon the writing task and go off and take a nap,” then no, I do not hate it. But if “hate” means “I will despair of its quality and suffer depression as long as it remains in a poor and unfinished condition,” then yes, I do hate it, very much. I could use “love” to describe the same thing. Thus, the apparent difference in the two sentences “I love my essay” and “I hate my essay” is resolved by the fact that, practically speaking, both sentences mean the same thing in terms of consequences. Pragmatism is, thus, almost a way of thinking, an empiricist approach to questions that tries to focus the mind on the effects of thinking. I call it “forwards” here to emphasize the idea that the concept comes to mind first and then consequences are traced from it. Imaginary worlds, I would argue, have now come to present a reverse of the pragmatic way of thinking. They begin by defining what the consequences of a concept will be, and then create the concept as whatever the author intends.To return to the squirrel example, the builder of an imaginary world could create a spatial physics such that all objects were always facing one another.This could be accomplished, for example, by declaring that all objects have an infinite number of faces, and thus all of them are always oriented in every direction. This being the case, then it would be impossible for our philosopher to go around the squirrel in one of the two senses. By design, the concept “go around” could only have meaning with respect to the compass rose. Alternatively, a world-builder could define “go around” as having nothing to do with cardinal direction, simply by removing cardinal directions from his world. It could be, for example, that all objects are always behind all other objects. Imagine, for example, a vast traffic jam, in which cars are lined up behind one another all the way around the globe. Thus the car immediately in front of me is also billions of cars behind me. And my own car is behind itself. In this world, “go around” has no meaning in terms of North, South, East, and West. It does have meaning in terms of orientation: If my car moves ahead of another, I indeed “go around” it. These examples show how reverse pragmatism works: The world-builder defines what may and may not happen in his world, and concepts receive their meaning accordingly. In this way, the craft of creating imaginary worlds is an application of the pragmatic way of thinking, albeit in reverse. This is not to say that all world-builders are pragmatists. On the contrary! A pragmatic philosopher seeks to resolve metaphysical disputes by tracing the consequences of concepts in “the real world.” This reverse process, of building worlds, does not achieve any such goal. Rather, world-building puts any desired meaning, any desired set of consequences, onto concepts. One would think this would appeal not so much to pragmatists as to philosophers with a distinct interest in conceptual purity. A world-builder can make a place where all concepts are completely clear, and all equilateral triangles have exactly 60° angles. The itch being scratched in world-building involves making a place that is exactly as we wish it to be. It perhaps goes without saying that “a world as we wish it to be” does not mean a world with only happy things. Nobody wants that, however much we may say we do.The motives of world-builders are many, but the worlds that are built, as this volume attests, bring all kinds of feelings and moments to bear. We will discuss the drives behind world-building in a moment. The role of pragmatic philosophy in imaginary worlds is to have identified and described a nice way of understanding what world-building is, in philosophical terms.

From Pragmatism to Power Reverse pragmatism, as I have discussed it above, can be viewed through other lenses.Wittgenstein laid heavy emphasis on the idea of language games (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations). 129

E dwa r d C a s t ro n o va

Every statement is a move in a game, an effort to alter how a term is understood. If uttering a word is a shot in a social game, then building a world is the thunder of heavy artillery. Suppose my colleague utters a word and I disagree with the usage. Very well; I utter a different word, or use his word in a different way. We go back and forth. “Let me introduce my husband,” says one. “I am very pleased to meet your partner,” says another. A man, two women, and a dog walk away from a government office carrying a signed sheet of paper. “We are married!” they say (the quadruped merely wags his tail). A man and a woman leave a Roman Catholic church carrying a signed sheet of paper. “We are joined in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony!” they say. Which one is married? Is there a universal notion of “marriage” to which one of these statements applies accurately and the other does not? Or is it merely a matter of power, of which party has more guns? For the language games of real life have their ugly side. The word-enforcement regime envisioned in Orwell’s 1984 (1949) is now an everyday reality. By accepting that language is merely a social game, resolved ultimately by power, we have guaranteed that there will be language tyranny. The alternative view, that we can have long-running and universal rules of proper and improper uses of words, and that we can collectively agree to these rules (and be neutral and unoppressive about it), is now out of fashion. Yet it is the only non-tyrannical way to approach language. If we want to have any hope of language freedom, we must agree beforehand on the rules of the game. That is how all games work. By abandoning the idea that there can be rules to the language game, we have guaranteed a free-for-all in which the strong dominate everyone else. These connections between signs and consequences have been plumbed by many others, indeed the more popular of the last 100 years of philosophers and applied philosophers in a social construction vein: Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, McCluhan, and so forth. They all share the view that there are no absolutes; that what was in the past viewed to be absolute, the rules, were nothing more than the imposition of preferences by the people who happened to be powerful. According to these schools, society has never been anything more than a series of brutal, free-for-all power games. Indeed, brutal, free-for-all power games are all that society can ever be. So be it. Into this free-for-all come technologies of full immediation, like heavy tanks across a battlefield of naked warriors with spears. No mere utterances of words can stand up to the power of current world-building technologies. To build a world is to define everything that can happen between people. Speech, sight, even movement. In virtual worlds, code defines the possible (Lessig, 2000). Mere presence and life in a virtual community depends on how one’s behavior is handled by the system. Take speech, for example. It is quite common for developers to use language filters to identify and remove “offensive” terms. People who use too much “offensive” language can be banned from the world.World-banning is equivalent to a permanent exile, which is to say, being effectively killed.This is execution. “They lifebanned me!” writes the angry forum poster. The “lifeban.” What a delicious euphemism for the death penalty; how surprising that it has not been adopted by some dictator or other. In our current philosophical environment, which admits no absolute limits on what a man may or may not do, no one can complain when those who have power determine what can and cannot be said and done inside virtual worlds. We have no grounds for criticism. This is a game without rules. No holds are barred. As more people become fully immediated, the makers of their worlds will decide absolutely everything about the social world in which they live their lives. There will be two constraints on world-builders. Neither of them is moral, but they will tend to moderate the abuse. One is competition. Making worlds costs money. World-builders with small populations will find their freedoms restricted. The other is the human mind. 130

Philosophy

World-builders will do everything in their considerable power to keep people in their worlds. Indeed, they do so already. What are the ultimate powers of the human mind, to recognize an ongoing ensnarement? How far can people be pushed? Suppose people stay in worlds whenever Pleasure exceeds Pain. Suppose both of these can be measured by numbers. Suppose further that Pain gains revenues for the world-builders. In this model, we would have worldbuilders seeking to put the Pain level as high as possible without losing the customer. The world-builder offers bundles of Pleasure and Pain and hopes to make money with them. Consider some Pleasure/Pain bundles. Suppose right now, virtual worlds offer something like 100/50. Soon technology will offer 200/100. Then 400/200. But what prevents worldbuilders from learning how to fine-tune their offerings to make more money? Then we get bundles like 400/399 … 1 million/999,999 … 300 trillion/300 trillion and 1. The most intense pleasures, coupled with the most intense tortures. How much can a person stand? Will people retain enough willpower to get out? Is there any justification for helping people who become trapped? Not under any of the contemporary philosophies, unfortunately. On the contrary, this situation is the perfect dream from a pragmatist, constructionist point of view. Hurray! Now, not merely language but all conditions of mental existence are to be controlled on the basis of naked power! It is the apogee of the constructionist view of existence. Pragmatism’s handmaiden, utilitarian public policy, will be of no consequence here. Governments will ask people if they are happy. They will say YES! I am insanely happy! I am happy beyond all measure, sitting here in my vibrating lounge chair for the 47th day in a row, wearing my sweaty headset, and living my life as the greatest and sexiest hero my mind can possibly conceive. On net, these people are happy. They will insist that they not be removed. But is this situation GOOD? Certainly not. And yet in the power games of reverse pragmatism, no one will have philosophical grounds for saying so. Naked power will drive everything. Those who rule will decide what to do. Now it may be the case that the result of society’s power games will lead to rule by reasonable, level-headed, nice people. But probably not. Therefore it would be nice to have a philosophical basis for criticizing the virtual world abuses that are sure to come. Fortunately, such a basis can be found in the work of one of the most influential world-builders, J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Moral Heft of Subcreation Tolkien clearly anticipated these problems. He asked himself what he was doing in his worldbuilding and how it stacked up to an external, absolutist standard of good conduct. For he was an adherent of that old way of thinking, that there are rules to life’s game, rules not of our authoring. The power games of our world, in this view, are contained within a separate set of immutable norms. When people are able to agree with one another on the general shape and application of these norms, they can get along peaceably as they fight out those conflicts that the norms permit. Not every move is trumped by a power grab. On the contrary, if everyone agrees that there are rules to the social game, then power can be obtained by making reference to the rules, not merely by shooting your opponents. Tolkien wrote an essay, “On Fairy-Stories” (1939), where he directly addressed the question of whether making virtual worlds is within the rules, and if so, how.

Subcreation To set the context, here is how C. S. Lewis, Tolkien’s contemporary and philosophical ­fellow-traveler, described the origin of the rules of language: “For this was the language 131

E dwa r d C a s t ro n o va

­spoken before the Fall and beyond the Moon and the meanings were not given to the ­syllables by chance, or skill, or long tradition, [or the powerful], but truly inherent in them as the shape of the great Sun is inherent in the little waterdrop. This was Language herself, as she first sprang at Maleldil’s [God’s] bidding out of the molten quicksilver” (Lewis, 1945: Chapter 10, italics added). In his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien discusses at length the nature of fantasy writing in a context where one assumes the prior existence of a grand creator of everything (known by whatever name, God, Maleldil, Iluvatar,YHWH, etc.). He asserts that humans also have creative power, but that their creative works are “subcreations,” creations that exist in and through the greater creation. As such, subcreations carry along all the features of creation. In Tolkien’s particular worldview, orthodox Roman Catholicism, some of the relevant features of creation for our discussion would be: •• •• ••

••

••

••

••

Creation is good. The world and everything in it begins as a good thing. All things and events are ultimately pointed to the good. Therefore all subcreations are inherently good and are necessarily pointed to the good. Creation is fallen.The goodness inherent in creation is not often manifest. It fails.Though everything is ultimately pointed to the good, it is not constantly pointed that way. On the contrary, things are generally in a bad way. Nothing ever appears to be headed toward a good outcome. Therefore subcreations, being the work of human hands, are not perfect. They only remotely approach the sublimities of the great creation. They are frail; asking too many questions, approaching them with too much skepticism, causes them to break. Tolkien did not address this directly, but the frailty he expresses about fantasy worlds must also encompass the possibilities of misuse. As subcreations, fairy-stories can be written in ways that lead people to bad ends. The ultimate goodness toward which everything is tending involves the final destruction of the fallen world and its replacement with a perfect world. In the same way, the ultimate good destination of a human life is achieved only after death. During life the path is one of decay, loss, illness, and finally death. Yet death brings the final and ultimate reward. The path that leads to heaven is a good one, even though it may be unhappy all the way until the end. At the final step, those who have not turned away from God emerge into a Blessed Realm, a place out of space and time, and the reward for arriving there is so great as to redeem any pains suffered on Earth. This assumption about reality allows Tolkien to make a rather shocking assertion, yet one which one finds in Plato as well: The content of imaginary worlds is not wholly imagined. Rather, it is recalled from another plane of existence. Platonic realism asserts that true forms exist. The Catholic Christian tradition agrees and says that heaven, the plane of existence outside the physical world, is loaded to the brim with all the absolutes, including souls. We humans, down here on Earth, have souls that have partaken in that place, that realm that exists out of space and time. We know it, at some level. When we imagine an alternative world, then, we cannot help but bring to mind elements of the Blessed Realm.Thus what we view as world creation is true subcreation: It is not the imagination of entirely new things, but rather the reuse of things that have existed forever.The Realm of the Forms is like a massive asset database, from which all imaginative writers, thinkers, and artists have borrowed. Badness is not a force in itself. Evil is not a thing. Rather, evil is the absence of good. All creatures are good, but those who refuse the good are, in effect, reducing themselves. 132

Philosophy

••

The evil man is not evil per se, he is the empty shell of a man who could have been good. He is a man with weak moral understanding and resolve, and therefore many of his actions are necessarily harmful, offensive, and selfish. Nothingness is the most evil thing of all; nothing is more terrifying than a serial killer. Terrorists kill but they still care about something. Serial killers are colder than the coldest realms of deep space. It follows that no subcreation is bad, nor is any subcreator. Rather, the subcreator is less good than he could be, and his subcreation is similarly below standard. This framing is critical in that it places a burden on subcreators and their worlds, to be as good as they can be. In this final recognition that world-builders can be less than good, we find a precious ability to criticize the worlds of the powerful. If Tolkien is right, then we can apply to world-building our concept of the Good in general. We can have a discussion about the good of the human person and then assess whether Person X in World Y is actually living a good life. We can react to Martin’s Westeros and say that it lacks something important: A way out. Westeros is too sad, we could say, in that it falls too far from the way humans were meant to live. We need not accept that the essence of human social life is a brutal power struggle among selfish people. Rather, through an idea like subcreation, we can say that while life in the 21st century often does look the way Martin depicts it, it is not supposed to look this way. We can ask Martin to build a world with more hope.

These ideas about subcreation also allow us to develop healthy rules for building the technologically advanced worlds that we will come to inhabit. These are rules for healthy immediation and, as such, desperately needed. Instead of computerized world-building continuing as a free-for-all, and accepted as such, we could move toward a struggle in which the inevitable drive to brutality and lawlessness in world-building would be combated by an equally powerful commitment to playing by some rules involving the good of the human person. Finally, lest all this “noble subcreation” be viewed as mere religion, it is to be recalled that Augustine and Aquinas, from whom this worldview is drawn, were not merely religious figures. They were philosophers in their own right, indeed, members of one of the most convincing, universal, and persistent philosophical traditions the world has ever seen. Their views have been generally seen as outmoded since about 1950.Yet they first came into human consciousness in the Greek golden age some 2,500 years ago.Those who attack this position very often use arguments that have appeared many times before, and ultimately faded away. The tradition to which Tolkien contributes is well worthy of serious consideration. And indeed it may be the only basis we have within philosophy for making sound judgments about the crafting of the future imaginary worlds in which we seem destined to live.

References Lessig, Lawrence (2000), “Code Is Law: On Liberty in Cyberspace,” Harvard Magazine, January 1, 2000, available at http://harvardmagazine.com/2000/01/code-is-law-html. Lewis, C. S. (1945), That Hideous Strength, London, England:The Bodley Head Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism/. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1939), “On Fairy-Stories,” given as the Andrew Lang Lecture of 1939.

133

17

Transmediality Lars Konzack Transmediality has become more important in recent years due to easy access to different kinds of media and the lowered costs of media productions. Furthermore, it seems that a transmedial world, or, in marketing terms, an Intellectual Property (IP) domain, has increased sales potential when encountered on several media platforms (Harvey, 2013; Harvey, 2014; Jenkins, Ford, and Green, 2013). To the audience and participants of transmedial worlds, however, there is more to such a world than merely IP. They invest their time in the setting, the characters, and the overall theme of the transmedial world—regardless of media platform. Marsha Kinder was one of the first to acknowledge transmedia, or as she calls it, transmedia intertextuality: What I found was a fairly consistent form of transmedia intertextuality, which ­positions young spectators to recognize, distinguish, and combine different popular genres and their respective iconography that cut across movies, television, comic books, commercials, video games, and toys. (Kinder, 1991, p. 47) In order to fully understand transmediality it would be fruitful to grasp the concept of mediality beforehand. There are two ways to understand the concept of mediality: (1) mediality is the reality that media creates, and (2) mediality is the materiality of media. As one can imagine, the concept of mediality, as regards to transmediality, is highly dependent on what kind of definition has been chosen. If we choose to perceive mediality as the reality that media creates, then transmediality is a media reality transferred between several media outputs. And if we choose to perceive mediality as the materiality of media, then transmediality becomes a discussion of what happens when a media product is adapted to another media platform, and how this content becomes changed by the media. If, then, transmediality is recognized as a media reality, a transmedial imaginary world is the fictional structure or subcreation of this imaginary world, and what ought to be studied, while if transmediality is seen as the materiality of transmedia, then it becomes the media study of adaptions between different media representations. In the field of transmediality, both ways of studying transmediality are possible. The researcher can study a transmedial world as a more or less coherent transmediality in the sense that it conveys a mediated imaginary world or subcreation; or transmediality as an examination of the materiality of media productions and the effects upon the content of shifting modalities within different media representations. 134

Transmediality

Transmedial Adaptations The first adaptation of a story from aural to visual output may, in fact, have been that of cave men telling a story at the campfire about their hunting trips and subsequently painting these adventures on the cave wall. When an ancient vase shows the figure of an event in The Odyssey, when a medieval church is filled with illustrations of Biblical events, and when a tapestry is woven based on the legend of King Arthur and the Quest for the Holy Grail, then an adaptation of spoken or written narrative turned into an image has taken place. Ever since humans created cultural modernity, a symbolic use of space and material culture (Wadley, 2001), transmedial adaptations have been possible. Of course, as human culture progressed from oral culture and cave paintings to new media forms (e.g. theater and writing, and, later, photography, radio, television, and computers) (Briggs and Burke, 2009; Kovarik, 2011), transmedial adaptations have become correspondingly extensive. All media forms can potentially be used to make transmedial adaptations—and when (almost) all available forms of media outlets have been used to portray one story or concept then this is called a 360-degree transmedial adaptation. Mark J. P.Wolf identifies five different forms of adaptation: description, visualization, auralization, interactivation, and deinteractivation (Wolf, 2012). Description is when an audiovisual work is turned into a written description, such as a narrative. Visualization is when a non-­ visual work of art is turned into still or moving imagery. Auralization occurs when written text is read aloud—but also when it is turned into a radio play. In this process, non-verbal sound may be turned from description into sound effects. Interactivation happens when a non-interactive work is turned into an interactive one (e.g., an interactive narrative or a game). Deinteractivation is the reverse of interactivation; that is, an interactive narrative or a game is turned into a non-interactive work. What about the adaptation of comics to film? Of course, auralization is involved, but other than that it is an adaptation from one kind of visualization to another, from still images to moving imagery. Making an adaptation always involves a displacement.The adapted work will lose some qualities of the original, and also gain some new ones. In an adaptation of a novel into a film, the words are lost to visualization and auralization but, in the same process, visualization and auralization add images and sound.This means an adaptation is never quite the same work as the original. In some cases the adaptation is very close to the original (e.g., Much Ado About Nothing (1993)) and in other cases the adaptation is loose and far from the original (e.g., The Sword in the Stone (1963)). Making a successful and faithful adaptation is not just about re-creating a work as close to the original as possible. Being faithful to the original work also involves conveying the sentiment of the original into another artistic product. That is why it becomes important for the maker to achieve familiarity with the media platforms he or she is working with and the differences in how they convey meaning. When the movie The Wizard of Oz (1939) was made, the beginning and the ending, set in our world’s Kansas, were in black and white, while the rest of the movie, set in the Land of Oz, was in technicolor. This idea was not taken from the book or from any theatrical adaptation, but was a technical advantage only possible in the format of film, added aesthetically in order to convey one of the book’s original concepts.The present example shows that the technical features and possibilities of different media platforms may enhance or (if the possibilities at hand are inadequate) limit the adaptation. Henry Jenkins recognizes spreadable transmedia storytelling: A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole. In the ideal form of 135

L a r s Ko n z ac k

t­ ransmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best—so that a story might be introduced in film, expanded through television, novels, and comics: its world might be explored through game play or experienced as an amusement park a­ ttraction. (Jenkins, 2006, pp. 95–96) It should by this point be obvious that it is not an easy task to make a successful and faithful adaptation of an original work. The original work must be reinterpreted and the maker must decide what to remove and what to add to the adaptation. Still, some adaptations are harder than others. It is common in Hollywood to adapt a film from a book, while the other way around, adapting a film into a book, is a less common phenomenon. In order to adapt a book into a movie, the maker has to add visual and aural stimuli based on the written text, while the adaptation from movie to book, novelization, means that the maker of the adaptation has to add coherent textual descriptions of thoughts and feelings, sounds and images. In addition, the dramatic structure typically has to be changed to a literary narrative format. This is difficult because theatrical drama is generally less abstract than literary narrative and, consequently, the adaptation has to increase its abstraction level. Making a movie based on a book, however, decreases the abstraction level, in the sense that it decreases the need for the reader to imagine what things look and sound like. (Though this is not to say that a movie cannot inspire a novel.) This level of abstraction is not just limited to movies and books. A computer role-playing game based on a book series is easier to make if there also happens to be a tabletop roleplaying game book based on the book series. A tabletop role-playing game book is a textual adaptation from a textual narrative. In this particular transmediation, the book series undergoes a denarrativization, and is turned into encyclopedic knowledge about the book series— additionally, interactivation occurs as the game rules are developed. When this effort has been made, it becomes easier to visualize, auralize, and dramatize the tabletop role-playing game into a computer role-playing game because it is a decrease in the level of abstraction, not for the programmer, of course, but from the perspective of the video game player because much of this interpretation has already been done by those adapting the game, leaving less to be interpreted by the player.

Transmedial Worlds A transmedial world is an imaginary world presented on different media platforms. Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca clarify: “Transmedial worlds are abstract content systems from which a repertoire of fictional stories and characters can be actualized or derived across a variety of media forms” (Klastrup and Tosca, 2004, p. 409). Or, as Henry Jenkins would say: “Transmedia storytelling is the art of world making” (Jenkins, 2006, p. 21). A transmedial world can take various forms, such as narratives, games, encyclopedias, maps, and other kinds of representations. Each representation of the imaginary world adds to the transmedial world as a whole. This means that an imaginary world can in principle develop endlessly. It also means that a transmedial world may develop to become so huge and detailed that it requires constant scholarly work and effort to get an overview of and to handle all the different parts of the imaginary world. Examples of grandiose transmedial worlds that have grown to become almost unmanageable are the DC Universe (DCU), the Marvel Universe, and the Star Wars universe. These elaborate transmedial worlds are media franchises and collaborations between multiple 136

Transmediality

g­ enerations of authors and artists working over a prolonged period of time. They become so vast due to not just the work of one or a few world creators but a varied multitude. In order to manage these complex transmedial worlds it has been necessary to make critical distinctions as regards to retroactive continuity, reboots (see the “Reboots and Retroactive Continuity” chapter in this volume) and canonicity (see the “Canonicity” chapter). According to Mark J. P. Wolf, the world of Oz created by L. Frank Baum was the first truly transmedial world (Wolf, 2012). The imaginary world of Oz encompasses everything from literature, stage plays, films, games, and comic books to music, trading cards, toys, and candy. This full-blown exploitation of an IP has worked as inspiration for marketing other transmedial world franchises. But it all comes down to the need for an imaginary world that can function as IP. Designing a transmedial world is a world-building process, as is commonly seen in science fiction and fantasy literature. Matthew J. Costello, for example, presents a step-by-step guide to making a science fiction world in which he begins with theoretical planetology, then continues to sentient creatures, history, religion and magic, culture, and finally science (Costello, 1992). Wolf suggests something similar, namely the following world-building infrastructures: maps, timelines, genealogies, nature, culture, language, mythology, and philosophy (Wolf, 2012). Anyone can world-build according to a list, but to really create an interesting transmedial world, the world-builder has to ask himself or herself the essential question: What do I want to express with this imaginary world that cannot be expressed better in other ways, or sometimes even at all; because at times it’s the only way to express something? Answering this question reduces the complexity of creating the imaginary world. If the world-builder is able to satisfactorily answer this vital question then probably everything else will fall into place naturally, and consequently it will be a lot easier to create and design multiple media productions of the imaginary world such as literature, theatrical performance, film, television series, comics, board games, role-playing games, video games, and merchandise. It is important to grasp the concept that even though we cannot visit imaginary worlds with our bodies they still influence our world; they are, in fact, part of our world. Imaginary worlds, however uncanny and peculiar, are a part of our real world and influence our thoughts and feelings. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges expressed this idea in his famous tale Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940), in which the imaginary country Uqbar in the imaginary world known as Tlön gradually invades the real world in the story. It is hinted at that the conspiracy that created Uqbar and Tlön actively tries to make references to this imaginary world by writing fake encyclopedia passages, and even craft physical artifacts known as hronir, to be embedded in our reality. Meanwhile, the story of Borges has itself been referenced in other cultural works such as the adventure video game Tlön: A Misty Story (1999) and the Marvel Comics series Secret Avengers #9 (2014), thereby becoming a transmedial world. Another example of this intrusion process similarly took place when Dr. Martin Cooper took inspiration from Star Trek to invent the first handheld mobile phone (Cuneo, 2011). Whether or not this counts as a transmedial phenomenon on the same level as selling coffee mugs, T-shirts, and action figures is debatable. But it certainly tells us that transmedial imaginary worlds may have real impact on our real world, a process that may seem literally supernatural if one insists on perceiving them as completely different realities; less so if one can retain awareness of them as merely aspects of a single multifaceted reality. Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca have developed terms specifically created for analyzing transmedial worlds, though they may be used to analyze imaginary worlds in general. These are the three core features called mythos, topos, and ethos (Klastrup and Tosca, 2004; Klastrup and Tosca, 2014). They define these categories as follows: 137

L a r s Ko n z ac k

Mythos—the establishing story, legend, or narration of the world, with the defining struggles. It is the backstory that gives meaning in current situation of the world, and it includes creational myth and legendary characters and gods. Topos—the setting of the world in both space (geography) and time (history). It shows how places have changed and events unfolded. Ethos—the explicit and implicit ethics, or the moral codex of behavior for characters. (Klastrup and Tosca, 2014, p. 297) This analytical framework can be expanded with Colin B. Harvey’s hierarchical taxonomy of transmedia storytelling, in which he presents six categories: (1) intellectual property, (2) directed transmedia storytelling, (3) devolved transmedia storytelling, (4) detached transmedia storytelling, (5) directed transmedia storytelling with user participation, and (6) emergent user-generated transmedia storytelling (Harvey, 2014). Intellectual property is the original work. Directed transmedia storytelling is when the IP holder exercises close control of IP usage of works derived from the original work, while devolved transmedia storytelling refers to much looser control by the IP holder. Detached transmedia storytelling describes works that are inspired by the transmedial imaginary world but are not licensed and not under the direct control of the IP holder. Directed transmedia storytelling with user participation describes content produced by consumers of the franchise that is under restricted license by the IP holder. And the last category, emergent user-generated transmedia storytelling, is diverse content created by fans of the franchise that is not licensed, what is commonly known as fan art and fan fiction. As one can tell from Harvey’s taxonomy, fandom is considered the lowest level in this hierarchy. However, the influence of fans is growing, as they communicate easily with each other via the Internet, and because at the end of the day the fans are the real job creators in this business. If there are no fans of an imaginary world IP, then there is no business. They are the consumers.

Fandom Science fiction and fantasy fandom developed in the early 20th century (Moskowitz, 1974; Reid, 2009). A fan is someone who is into a hobby, such as sports, music, television series, or video games. Fandom, on the other hand, is a social and media structure that uses conventions (cons), fan magazines (fanzines or zines), amateur press associations (APAs), and, today, the Internet to keep in contact with one another, communicate ideas, and for crowdsourcing. Hugo Gernsback did not create science fiction and fantasy fandom, as such, but in 1926 he launched the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories and later Science Wonder Stories (1929), in which he published the addresses of people who wrote extensive commentaries for the letter columns. This contact information was used by fans to organize outside the control of Gernsback (Gunn, 2002; Reid, 2009). Jerry Siegel, who together with Joe Schuster would later create the character Superman (1938), produced probably the first science fiction fanzine, Cosmic Stories, in 1929 (Gardner, 2012). In 1936, the first science fiction convention took place in Philadelphia; the first science fiction amateur press association, FAPA (Fantasy Amateur Press Association), was established in 1937; and the first international science fiction convention was held in 1939 (Moskowitz, 1974). Science fiction and fantasy fandom structure was, eventually, in the late 20th century, co-opted by other fan culture media such as comic books, board games, and role-playing games (Gardner, 2012; Peterson, 2012; Konzack, 2014). 138

Transmediality

Apart from discussing fan culture in an (albeit underground) academic manner, fandom also provided opportunities to publish and debate fan-produced fiction, fan fiction, and fan art. In other words, fandom began making its own transmedial works. Although science fiction fandom is often thought of as a male pursuit, fan fiction, fan art, and cosplay are primarily female-dominated hobbies (Reid, 2009; Busse, 2013). The Star Trek fan community (Trekkers or Trekkies) of the late 1960s popularized fan fiction in their fanzines—notably the first Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia (1967), and the second, ST-Phile (1968). The creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, chose to turn a blind eye to fan fiction and fan art—and soon this fandom flourished (Coppa, 2006). One of the best known commercial successes of fan fiction is Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) by E. L. James. The book was originally written as Twilight fan fiction; later, names were changed and references to vampires removed (Illouz, 2014). The Twilight series and Fifty Shades of Grey have both been adapted for the silver screen. Not all IP holders have had positive attitudes toward fan fiction. Anne Rice, the author of The Vampire Chronicles, has been particularly harsh toward fan fiction writers. She stated in a message on her website to her fans: I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes. (Parish, 2016, p. 110) As a result, fanfiction.net decided in 2010 not to archive entries based on the works of Anne Rice. (Parish, 2016) Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green take the opposite stand, stating: We all should be vigilant over what gets sacrificed, compromised, or co-opted by media companies as part of this process of mainstreaming the activities and the interest of cult audiences. In this context, it matters how media companies understand the value that fans create around their property. (Jenkins, Ford, and Green, 2013, p. 151) The problem is that fan communities can be unpredictable. In 2010, a new fan community rose to fame—the so-called bronies. The term brony comes from a portmanteau of brother and pony. Based on a characteristic pony plastic toy primarily produced by Hasbro for tween girls, the television series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (2010—present) by Lauren Faust suddenly attracted an unexpected fan audience of adolescent boys and even adult men (Johnson, 2013). There had been a My Little Pony television series back in the 1980s, but Lauren Faust’s series was created as a coherent fantasy setting rather than the old series portrayals of the romanticized daily life of tween girls—only with ponies instead of tween girls as characters. What happened was that the bronies made fan fiction and fan art—and bought a lot of brony merchandise. The primary focus changed; it was no longer the pony toy series but the television series—and the toys in this process were reduced to being a supporting prop in brony culture rather than the essential artifact. What this tells us is that transmediality and transmedia storytelling is more than just a Hollywood marketing strategy, it has deep ties within fandom culture and may sometimes even be at odds with the official IP holders. 139

L a r s Ko n z ac k

References Briggs, A., and Burke, P. (2009). A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet, third edition. Cambridge: Polity Press. Busse, K. (2013).“Geek hierarchies, boundary policing, and the gendering of the good fan.” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies,Volume 10, Issue 1, pp. 73–91. Coppa, F. (2006). “A Brief History of Media Fandom” (pp. 41–59), in K. Hellekson, and K. Busse, Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet. Jefferson: McFarland. Costello, M. J. (1992). How to Write Science Fiction. New York: Paragon House. Cuneo, J. (2011). “‘Hello, Computer’: The Interplay of Star Trek and Modern Computing” (pp. 131147), in D. L. Ferro, and E. G. Swedin, Science Fiction and Computing: Essays on Interlinked Domains. Jefferson: McFarland. Gardner, J. (2012). Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century Storytelling. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gunn, J. E. (2002). The Road to Science Fiction: From Wells to Heinlein. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Harvey, C. B. (2013). “Transmedia Storytelling and Audience: Memory and Market” (pp. 115–128), in G. Youngs, Digital World: Connectivity, Creativity and Rights. New York: Routledge. Harvey, C. B. (2014). “A Taxonomy of Transmedia Storytelling” (pp. 278–294), in M.-L. Ryan, and J.-N. Thon, Storyworlds across Media:Towards a Media-Conscious Narratology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Illouz, E. (2014). Hard-Core Romance: Fifty Shades of Grey, Best-Sellers, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, H.; Ford, S.; and Green, J. (2013). Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press. Johnson, D. (2013). “Participation is Magic: Collaboration, Authorial Legitimacy, and the Audience Function” (pp. 135–157), in J. Gray, and D. Johnson, A Companion to Media Authorship. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Kinder, M. (1991). Playing with Power in Movies,Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley: University of California Press. Klastrup, L., and Tosca, S. (2004). Transmedial Worlds: Rethinking Cyberworld Design. International Conference on Cyberworlds (pp. 409–416). Tokyo. Klastrup, L., and Tosca, S. (2014). “Game of Thrones: Transmedial Worlds, Fandom, and Social Gaming” (pp. 295–314), in M.-L. Ryan, and J.-N. Thon, Storyworlds across Media: Towards a Media-Conscious Narratology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Konzack, L. (2014). “The Origins of Geek Culture: Perspectives on a Parallel Intellectual Milieu” (pp. 52–59), in S. L. Bowman, Wyrd Con Companion Book 2014. Costa Mesa: Wyrd Con. Kovarik, B. (2011). Revolutions in Communications: Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital Age. New York: Continuum Books. Moskowitz, S. (1974). The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom. Westport: Hyperion Press. Parish, R. (2016). “In the Author’s Hands: Contesting Authorship and Ownership in Fan Fiction” (pp. 107–117), in A. E. Robillard, and R. Fortune, Authorship Contested: Cultural Challenges to the Authentic, Autonomous Author. New York: Routledge. Peterson, J. (2012). Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventure from Chess to Role-Playing Games. San Diego: Unreason Press. Reid, R. A. (2009). “Fan Studies” (pp. 204–213), in M. Bould, A. M. Butler, A. Roberts, and S.Vint, The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction New York: Routledge. Wadley, L. (2001,October). “What is Cultural Modernity? A General View and a South African Perspective from Rose Cottage Cave,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal,Volume 11, Issue 2, pp. 201–221. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012). Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. New York: Routledge.

140

18

World-Building Tools David Langdon This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me. —Franz Kafka Human beings have long been drawn to imagine worlds beyond the one they perceive around them, for a variety of different purposes. An imaginary, or constructed, world can range from a complex allegory utilized within a rhetorical argument such as Plato’s Atlantis or Thomas More’s Utopia, or they may be little more than a children’s toy. But all imaginary worlds possess one thing in common: all have been definitively created by human, knowable intelligence, utilizing tools that can be described, replicated, and, in turn, studied. It is these tools that will form the focus of this chapter. Critical approaches to imaginary worlds have been many and varied. Mark J. P. Wolf writes in the introduction to Building Imaginary Worlds that the advent of Media Studies as a discipline codified the study of imaginary worlds, building upon the foundations laid by literary theory and philosophy (Wolf, 2012, p. 7). The reasoning for this is that many virtual worlds, as Wolf notes, are examples of transmedia storytelling, “the distribution of stories over and across a variety of media” (Wolf, 2012, p. 9). There have been many different approaches to comprehending imaginary worlds, drawing together many disparate strands from across media. However, few have explored the systems by which imaginary worlds are created. This chapter will explore these world-building tools, and the varying forms of media in which they exist, and explore the advantages and disadvantages of each. It will be demonstrated, through analysis of the forms themselves, that the types of tools used to construct an imaginary world have a major impact on its functionality and impact upon its audience.

Textual Tools In its purest, most basic form, the only thing needed to create a world is a human being possessing at least a little imagination, the more the better. Children can and do routinely create imaginary worlds as a matter of course. In order for a world to be made publicly accessible, however, some means of representation is required, of which the most immediately apparent is the written word. This has been a traditional staple of fictive world construction since (at least) 360 B.C., when Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias were written, outlining the ­fictional island of Atlantis. 141

Dav i d L a n g d o n

The advantages to textual world construction are manifold. Writing allows a creator a vast deal of freedom and scope, with the only limitation on the world’s outlandishness being the reader’s patience. Tolkien’s noted essay on the subject, “On Fairy-Stories,” talks of the power of the textual world-builder, declaiming that: how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faerie is more potent […] The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water.” (Tolkien, 1947, p. 50) This claim is remarkably reminiscent of David Hume’s discussion of the means by which original ideas are formed: he argues, “all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience.” He goes on to provide the example of a golden mountain, a seemingly original and organic idea that Hume argues we arrive at by “only join[ing] two consistent ideas, gold, and mountain, with which we were formerly acquainted” (Hume, 1748, 2007, p. 13). Writing, then, allows for the swift creation and evocation of these original ideas, allowing a textually constructed world to be as original and distinct as possible. However, writing alone cannot specifically be termed a world-building tool, as it serves a myriad of other purposes: shopping lists, council tax bills, and so on. If a ‘toolset’ for textual world construction can be said to exist, then it consists of various methods for assisting a creator to explore as many facets of a world as possible, in order that their world feels real to the perceiver. Atlantis stands as one of the earlier examples of this: though it is a relative footnote, constructed by Plato to demonstrate the superiority of his ideal state, he provides a wealth of apparently pointless information about Atlantis. Among his description is included the history of the island’s peoples, descendants of Poseidon, his son Atlas serving as its first king. Plato even describes the variety of resources available to the residents of Atlantis, including: that metal orichalcum […] and it produced an abundance of wood for builders, and furnished food also for tame and wild animals, […] And, yet, further it bore cultivated fruits, and dry edible fruits, such as we use for food;—all these kinds of food we call vegetables. (Plato, 1849, p. 422) This is then followed by an elaborate, lengthy description of the precise composition of Poseidon’s temple. This focus and attention to detail gives Atlantis the illusion of true existence, an illusion so compelling that many still believe it exists to this day. It is the creation of this same level of detail that is the goal of textual world-building tools, which may be subdivided further into two categories: “guides” and “generators.” If there is a statement that sums up the attitude of guides, it would be Simon Provencher’s “Golden Rule of Worldbuilding,” as expressed on Provencher’s blog, World Builder: “unless specified otherwise, everything inside your world is assumed to behave exactly as it would in the real world” (Provencher, 2012). This “Golden Rule” is similar in tone to the “Reality Principle” expressed by Kendall Walton in his 1990 work Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Art and Marie-Laure Ryan’s “principle of minimal departure” first expressed in 1980 (Ryan, 1980). The aim of guides is to provide world-builders 142

Wo r l d - B u i l d i n g T o o l s

with a degree of understanding of various real-world concepts, in order that they may imbue the worlds they create with a degree of verisimilitude. For example, Mark Rosenfelder is the author of three works: The Language Construction Kit (2010), The Planetary Construction Kit (2010), and The Conlanger’s Lexipedia (2013), which address the creation of fictional languages, fictional planets, and fictional words, respectively.The key to all of these works is encouraging the reader to analyze and appreciate the complexity of world-building.The “basics” section of the Language Construction Kit consists of a detailed breakdown of the various components of speech and language, including a diagram of the human throat accompanied by annotations indicating which sounds are produced by each region. Similarly, the table of contents for the Planetary Construction Kit contains subjects as diverse as “Astronomy and Geology,” “Religion,” “Biology,” and “War” (Rosenfelder, 2010). These guides serve as one variety of textual world-building tool. By presenting readers with these detailed compilations of information, they not only provide novice writers with information to make imaginary worlds feel more realistic and detailed, but, crucially, they also prompt thinking about their worlds in the light of these complex issues. A writer who has given some thought to how the geology, or language, of their world works will in all likelihood find that this process of thought will add depth to the peoples that inhabit it—and will, therefore, be able to create more realistic, deeper characters as a result. Generators, meanwhile, provide randomly generated ideas and elements to supplement or inspire the creation process, echoing the idea-conjunction process mentioned by Hume and Tolkien above. A website named Donjon.bin.sh collects together several such systems: examples include a world map (complete with named towns and castles), characters, and even random events or occurrences.These are generated from a series of different textual fragments that the program places together. There are, of course, inherent limitations with these systems. Guides cannot truly create a world; they can only provide assistance and detail for the process of world-building. Generators, meanwhile, are somewhat limited in scope, being able to produce variations upon a pre-defined theme. It is not possible, for instance, to use the world map generator on Donjon to produce a non-Euclidean world, or create an alternate history for a realistic Earth. Likewise, its random events and character generators only cover the fantasy genre; whilst it is of course possible to program generators of other genres and modes, the amount needed to cover all angles is technically infinite.There is a twofold problem with text as a tool for world-building; paradoxically, it is both too rigid and inflexible, and too prone to mutation and change. Taking Tolkien’s Middle-earth, itself something of a textbook example of a textual world, it becomes possible to demonstrate the problems with textual world-building. Middle-earth is a complex world, crafted with the knowledge of various academic disciplines and personal experiences. Patrick Curry, while discussing attempts to apply academic theories to Middleearth, notes a number of influences ranging from “Anglo-Saxon history [and] medievalism” to “memories of pre-war rural England,” leading him to term it “a complex but ultimately tightly determined and defined place” (Curry, 2004, pp. 7–8). He then goes on, however, to note that “for the sympathetic reader, it is not like that at all […] it is effectively unbounded, in extent or variety” (Curry, 2004, pp. 7–8). For Curry, attempts to map the principles of Marxism or Jungian psychology onto Middle-earth fail precisely because of this “unbounded” nature—the world comes to mean something different to everyone who encounters it. The inability to bring outside influences to a traditionally textually constructed world demonstrates the key problem with text as a tool for constructing imaginary worlds. Traditional text, once produced, is fixed and inviolate; it does not change based on reader input, and the reader cannot engage with the world presented on any level save the imaginary. This means 143

Dav i d L a n g d o n

that traditionally textually constructed worlds cannot function interactively. Chris Crawford’s definition of interactivity is “A cyclic process between two or more active agents in which each agent alternately listens, thinks, and speaks” (Crawford, 2005, p. 29). The inability of traditional text to respond to its reader means it cannot function as an active agent. In Tolkien’s case, as vivid and compelling as the descriptions of Middle-earth may be, the reader can only imagine the world, based upon the descriptions provided, but may not do anything further without recourse to further textual world-building itself; in other words, readers may listen, think, and speak about the world they are presented with, but the world cannot answer them back. In order to have, for example, an interactive experience such as an encounter with a Balrog, or interactive exploration of the halls of Rivendell, with nothing more than Tolkien’s writings at hand, one can only imagine how these interactions might occur, based on the way both experiences are described within the text. For any interaction more concrete, it becomes necessary to indulge in world-building ourselves, such as writing a story in which Rivendell is explored in detail, or a Balrog is fought in an encounter, differing from the example given to us by Tolkien’s text. This may well be a driving force behind the many and varied adaptations of Tolkien’s work, in formats ranging from text to film to video games. This multiplicity of adaptations demonstrates the fundamental incompleteness of a textual world. There will always be paths not explored, events not chronicled, that inspire the creative mind to imagine and reimagine the world over and over again, never arriving at any conclusive picture of it. As Kim Ballard summarizes, “There are as many interpretations of a text as there are people who have read it (or heard it)” (Ballard, 2013, p. 66).This means that a traditionally textually constructed world will naturally be subject to mutation and change when adapted, meaning that it will have a nebulous, indistinct form that cannot support consistent interaction. It is, of course, possible to combine text with computer technology to create a text that does respond to its audience in a manner consistent with Crawford’s definition. It is, for example, possible to create a version of Tolkien’s Middle-earth where the user can indeed fight a Balrog and explore Rivendell without the need to provide the detail for these encounters themselves.The earliest example of this was MUME (Multiple Users in Middle Earth), a textbased multi-user computer game from 1991. Though still based in text, MUME allows users to create representations of themselves, or avatars, which may explore and interact with the world; they may select directions to move in, and actions to take when encountering elements or inhabitants of the world. This means that, unlike in a traditional text-based world, the user has a degree of control over the way the world is experienced. Unlike the reader of The Lord of the Rings, they do not have to encounter first the Shire and thence follow the narrative “road” to the town of Bree; they may elect to explore the world presented to them as they see fit. This ability to explore an imaginary world according to one’s own desires is the first step toward creating imaginary worlds that possess a greater degree of “virtual existence.” By allowing a user to explore an imaginary world according to their own desires, the world itself has a greater illusion of existence. The user’s interaction is answered by the world in the form of logical replies; if we choose to enter a dangerous forest, we may expect to encounter dangers in reply. It becomes possible to draw a consistent map of the world, which others can use reliably, purely by exploring it. Unlike the traditional textually constructed world, the act of drawing a map of an interactive world is not an act of world-building, as it does not involve the use of the imagination, but rather the observational faculties, in this example, sight. The world has become a place with its own publicly recordable existence. It is a world that can be experienced through interaction. It is a “cohesive” world, possessing a degree of verifiable public presence. 144

Wo r l d - B u i l d i n g T o o l s

However, the degree to which an imaginary world functions as “cohesive” still relies ­heavily on the form within which it is incarnated or created, and hence the tool used to construct a given imaginary world can alter its viability as a virtual object. Interactive textual worlds do not possess a physical component, nor do they present the user with anything beyond description. The additional complexity provided by the interactive element may allow for greater nuance in description; it may be possible to describe the differing reactions of various entities in response to player action, for example, or provide a detailed and in-depth portrait of an ancient dungeon, incorporating history and so forth. However, fundamentally all these elements will still only be perceivable through the use of the player’s imagination. It is possible for a world to attain a still greater sense of verisimilitude if a different variety of tool is used to construct it, as will be demonstrated.

Tactile Tools World-building using tactile components or materials is decidedly different to textual worldbuilding. The most obvious distinction to draw is that tactile world-building tools operate in the material world, and are thus bound by physical laws—Borges’s Library of Babel, to give one example, would be impossible to reproduce faithfully using physical world-building tools, as the amount of space and material required (which are infinite) would be impractical. However, this dimension of physicality does confer benefits as well. By adding a physical dimension to an imaginary world, that world gains visual and tactile dimensions, allowing for the creation of worlds that can be directly perceived by the senses as opposed to the imaginative faculties. This, correspondingly, strengthens the potential for interaction. For example, building a train set allows the user to run trains in real-time through the constructed world. Similarly, a Meccano or LEGO model can be changed and customized with relative ease, even some time after its construction—something that can only be achieved in textual worlds by extensive rewrites can be achieved in moments. LEGO construction sets are perhaps one of the more well-known examples of tactile world-building tools. As of 2015, LEGO has become the world’s most powerful brand (Tovey, 2015). The concept behind LEGO is extremely simple. From a variety of different physical parts, users can assemble constructions of varying depth and complexity, from simple houses to detailed replications of real-world structures. A wide variety of LEGO models exist, ranging from simple vehicles and structures to complex recreations of real-life constructions: the Empire State Building, Big Ben, and the Brandenburg Gate are among the various world landmarks available in the LEGO Architecture product range. The great strengths of LEGO are its relative simplicity, and the versatility and utility of the worlds that can be produced with it.The simplicity of the system, evident from its widespread popularity as a child’s toy, means it can be easily combined with more complex concepts, and thus has the potential to produce worlds that can function on multiple levels. Mitchel Resnick and Brian Silverman, designers of (among other tactile construction kits) the LEGO MINDSTORMS sub-brand, state: “When we evaluate the use of our construction kits, we consider diversity of outcomes a measure of success” (Resnick and Silverman, 2005). By this logic, the LEGO brand has been extremely successful; MINDSTORMS has been utilized as a teaching tool for high-level engineering by researchers at the University of Nevada (Wang, LaCombe, and Rogers, 2004), while LEGO modeling itself has also been used within the classroom at various levels. Of particular interest is the use of LEGO Education StoryStarter sets made specifically for the purpose of storytelling, something that purportedly “helps pupils visualise their stories more clearly” (Marsh, 2015). The same article also includes examples of 145

Dav i d L a n g d o n

teachers utilizing the LEGO model as a metaphor for literary analysis. LEGO construction has also been used to teach complex mathematical concepts, with a study asserting that: use of concrete materials such as Lego offer a mathematically rich environment where the powerful idea of ratio is used by students in problem solving […] The student results […] indicated that the activities were rich in opportunities to promote the learning of ratio. (Norton, 2004, p. 420) LEGO has also found usage within the laboratories of MIT to create an “urban observatory”— a scale model of Cambridge, Massachusetts’s Kendall Square, “onto which research scientists project digital data” (Gillies, 2014). What does this multiplicity of uses mean for LEGO’s status as a world-building tool? The key theme to notice here is LEGO’s capability to serve as a means to focus, consolidate, or otherwise express complex concepts or ideas. Therefore, it is possible to view LEGO modeling as a bridge between the imaginative and material worlds—a means to incarnate theoretical constructed worlds and concepts. Its frequent deployment as a method of engagement with a complex subject, such as mathematics, programming, or engineering, demonstrates this, as does the frequent intersection between LEGO and other branded worlds. Sets exist based on properties such as The Lord of the Rings, the Star Wars universe, and others—meaning that these worlds can be “incarnated” in the physical world via the LEGO set. It is worth pointing out that, commonly, the design of the sets is influenced by the movie adaptations of these worlds, meaning that LEGO “is at the heart of a transmedial empire,” as Mark J. P. Wolf has claimed (Wolf, 2014, p. xxii). Re-creating scenes in LEGO format, however, allows the user a greater degree of interactivity than that posed by a filmic adaptation of a textually constructed world. It is possible, for instance, to add blocks from other sets to create unlikely scenarios and combinations—there is nothing to stop an imaginative world-builder from combining characters from Star Wars LEGO sets and The Lord of the Rings sets, for example, opening both worlds up to unusual conjunctions and combinations, and encouraging the user to experiment with the boundaries of either world. It is important to recognize that this is a process that works both ways—it is possible to build, for example, a house or a castle, and then invent inhabitants for the house or a history for the castle. This is the same principle as utilized by the StoryStarter set mentioned above—the tactile tools of the LEGO set are used as a “springboard” of sorts for a process of textual world-building. Either process allows for LEGO, and similar tactile construction sets, to serve as a way of allowing a traditionally textually constructed world to be opened up for experimentation, interaction, and re-creation, or to provide a jumping off point for further textual world-building, similar in some regards to the function of the textual generators discussed previously. Most interesting is the extension of the brand beyond tactile world-building, and into the newly emergent sphere of world-creation via digital media, incorporating computer games and programs. LEGO has released several such programs that emulate its tactile construction tools in digital form. An application named LEGO X aims to allow users to “create 3D printable models by playfully stacking sensored LEGO bricks” (Rosenfeld, 2015). This allows construction to take place simultaneously in the physical and virtual environments. LEGO has also recently launched the title LEGO Worlds (2015), described as a “rival to popular video game Minecraft” (BBC, 2015), a game that utilizes the arrays of blocks and designs available in physical LEGO sets and applies them to construction in the virtual world. The appeal of 146

Wo r l d - B u i l d i n g T o o l s

this is self-evident; the same principles of interaction and experimentation that drive LEGO ­modeling are in effect, but the restrictions of the physical world are relaxed, allowing for creation to approach the level of imaginative depth of worlds created with textual worldbuilding tools. These programs, however, merely scratch the surface of digital world-building. They serve as mere attempts to translate or map the conventions of LEGO world-building into the digital sphere. There is, however, an entire range of digital world-builder tools that have emerged in parallel with the technological innovations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, something that will be detailed in the next section.

Digital Tools World-building in a digital environment is something of a hybrid of textual and physical world-building. Computers remove the restrictions of the physical universe, allowing for a degree of flexibility similar to textual world-building. Yet digital worlds are all but entirely constructed around user interaction by various degrees. The core of a digitally constructed world is programming code, the means by which a computer is given instructions. Programming code is, of course, used for a good deal of many other things besides world-building—one can write a program that conducts mock therapy, such as Wiezenbaum’s ELIZA (1966), or that runs a nuclear power station. This can make the task of using code to create an entire world somewhat daunting. There are, of course, several engines that are specifically designed to build digital worlds. The problem, however, is that their use requires sophisticated knowledge of computer programming. The job of world-building tools is to impose limitations, to present the user with a scaled-down, easy-tomanipulate version of the code. One of the earliest examples of this is the World Builder software that was released for the Apple Macintosh in 1986. The program allowed the user to manipulate code at various levels to construct text-based worlds (incorporating static images as backdrops) that could be navigated in the manner of early textual adventure games. These were presented as paragraphs of text describing locations and situations, which the player could manipulate by entering commands. For example, 1977’s iconic Zork adventure game begins by presenting the player with the following text: West of House You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here. (Zork, 1977) From this simple beginning, players are able to move about and explore the world by typing “go” followed by a cardinal direction. They are able to interact with objects (such as the above-described mailbox, which can be opened to reveal a leaflet you can then take) by typing “open/take [item],” and they are able, more than anything, to die in various creative ways, by interaction with hostile elements. These adventure games are the most basic example of a digitally constructed world. The later MUDs (multi-user dungeons) presented essentially the same concept, but with the capacity for multiple users to inhabit the same digital world simultaneously. Though the concept of multiple players inhabiting a game world dates back to the mainframe game Spacewar! (1962), MUDs allowed for many users to be present in different areas at the same time, and 147

Dav i d L a n g d o n

supported real-time text communication between players. However, MUDs could not be created by the average unskilled user, since they required exceptional fluency in computer programming. Richard A. Bartle, the inheritor/co-creator of the first MUD, summarizes the problem neatly when he claims: “Deities create virtual worlds; designers are those deities” (Bartle, 2004, p. 247). The advantage of programs like World Builder is that they allow nondeities to create—interfaces are usually designed to be accessible to the novice, and may also come packaged with pre-made titles that can be dissected in the editor. Other, more modern examples of World Builder-type programs include the RPG Maker series of programs, which allow users to create RPG games using a simple-to-use editor. A subspecies of this type of world-building tool is the map editing software that is often included with an existing, created game. These allow players of a given game to play around with a simplified version of the game’s resources and graphical elements, in order to create new worlds within an existing game. Many different games offer this functionality, from real-time strategy (RTS) titles such as Blizzard’s StarCraft (1998), role-playing titles such as Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights (2002), and numerous others, to the recently released (at time of writing) Super Mario Maker (2015), a “level construction kit” (Otero, 2015) that allows players to create their own levels to traverse as the iconic plumber. This is, however, only to scratch the surface of digital world-building tools. For instance, both these types of world-building tools are limited in scope by the fact that the worlds they construct are typically only inhabitable by one user at a time. The nature of the interface means that only a single user, as opposed to a large group, can work on the world at any given time. Exploring further, however, reveals a dizzying wealth of complexity and layerswithin-layers of construction tools.The best way to approach this is via a single case study that incorporates a number of different elements common to modern digital world-building tools, Mojang’s Minecraft (2011, but released in an alpha, or early, build in 2009). Minecraft has, in a relatively short time, become a major cultural phenomenon, not only reaching sales figures of 20 million as of July 2015 (Domeninquez, 2015) but also inspiring an entire genre of Internet entertainment in the form of channels on the video-sharing site YouTube dedicated to uploading footage of user-created worlds, and interactions between players within those worlds. The game’s characteristic style has inspired clothing, accessories, and even a series of LEGO sets. It is important to recognize, however, that though LEGO is an acknowledged influence on Minecraft, it represents something far more complex. Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson define Minecraft as “Lego pieces on steroids” (Goldberg and Larsson, 2013), which is to say, it offers all the functionality of LEGO whilst extending its capabilities considerably. The most obvious similarity is in the design. Unlike most other digital world-building tools, Minecraft does not require the user to negotiate menus and options to create their world, but places the user as an avatar within a randomly generated world. Users are thus able to make alterations and additions to the world as they explore it, by cutting down a tree in one location and using its wood to create a building in another, for example. This allows the game to simulate the dimension of tactility offered by physical world-building tools; while this is not true tactility, rather an audiovisual approximation of the concept, it still ultimately affords a high sense of “cohesion,” as the world can be perceived by users as reacting directly to their input, whilst still retaining the wide flexibility afforded by traditional and interactive textual world-building. This flexibility can be seen in the fact that, while a high-end LEGO set features, at best, a one-foot-square baseplate, the randomly generated spaces of Minecraft are estimated, on the game’s wiki, to cover just over 8 times the surface area of the Earth (Minecraft Wiki), l­iberating 148

Wo r l d - B u i l d i n g T o o l s

the worlds constructed from the constraints of the material world that apply to ­tactile worldbuilding tools. There is also scope for a great many approaches to world-building. “Creative” mode allows the player to place as many blocks of any material wherever they desire, whilst “Survival” mode requires the player to physically acquire resources from the game world, the challenge and strategy inherent in the mode providing a large part of the game’s appeal. The player has the option to include an ecosystem of hostile entities in their created world, some of which can destroy player-created structures, meaning that the act of world-building itself becomes a challenge. This is an example of a hybrid form. Minecraft is both a digital world-building tool and a form of entertainment in its own right. Its appeal stems from many sources, including the blocky visual design, the intuitiveness of its design, and its high level of complexity. Foremost among these advantages, however, is the fact that it can be enjoyed in many ways—as a single player “survival” game, as pure world-building, or as a multiplayer experience that can be either collaborative or competitive. From a single title, a huge variety of differing worlds can be constructed—some that are physical imitations of pre-existing imagined worlds (it would be quite feasible to re-imagine Atlantis, given Plato’s description), and others wholly unique. The game’s combination of the online experience of a MUD or MMOG with the experience of world-building allows for collaborative projects to be undertaken with ease. Minecraft’s utility does not stop with the base game. As with many games, it has proven a popular title for player-authored modifications (or “mods”) to the game’s base content. Mods have introduced a wide variety of extra content to the game, ranging from a sophisticated set of tools for creating railways to the elements used to create nuclear reactors. Mods allow the game to exceed its original design specifications and add almost limitless potential to the variety, scope, and scale of worlds that can be created.

Conclusion This chapter has explored the various varieties of world-building tools that are available to the general public. What has become clear is that there are many different ways to worldbuild, and that the medium a world is built within dramatically affects the function and variety of tools available. The broad scope of both traditional and interactive textual world building, combined with the immutability of text as a medium, means that textual tools are limited to prompts, idea generators, and general guidance. Tactile world-building tools, conversely, can provide new dimensions to imaginary worlds, allowing them to better support an interactive dimension and to attain a public-accessible and objective presence. This, in turn, has allowed these toolsets to gain application within various fields, including education and the sciences. Overall, however, it is digital world-building tools that offer the greatest versatility, and afford the greatest sense of “cohesion” to an imagined world. The worlds they construct boast all the functionality of worlds constructed with tactile tools (with the additional capacity to simulate extra detail, such as weather, ecosystems, etc.), as well as incorporating the broad scope of textually constructed worlds. As such, they provide the greatest flexibility for world construction, and look as though they will continue to increase in popularity in the near future.

References Anderson, Tim, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels, Dave Lebling. (1979) Zork. Video Game. BBC.co.uk. (2015) ‘Lego takes on Minecraft with video game,’ June 2 . Webpage, accessed 09/23/2015. 149

Dav i d L a n g d o n

Ballard, Kim. (2013) Interpreting Texts. New York and London: Routledge. Accessed online on 11/23/2015. Bartle, Richard A. (2004) Designing Virtual Worlds. Berkeley: New Riders Publishing. Crawford, Chris. (2005) Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling. Berkeley: New Riders Publishing. Curry, Patrick. (2004) Defending Middle-Earth. Tolkien: Myth and Modernity. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Accessed as an ebook on 07/07/2015. Dominguez, James. (2015) ‘Minecraft Reaches 20 Million Sales on PC and Mac.’ Sydney Morning Herald, July 3. Website, accessed 09/20/2015. Donjon.bin.sh. (2009–present) Website, accessed 09/19/2015. Goldberg, Daniel, and Linus Larsson.(2013).Trans. Jennifer Hawkins. Minecraft:The Unlikely Tale of Marcus ‘Notch’ Pearsson and the Game that Changed Everything. Seven Stories Press. Gillies, Craille Maguire. (2014) ‘Lego: can this most analogue of toys really be a modern urban planning tool?’ December 18, Guardian.co.uk. Webpage, accessed 09/22/2015. Hume, David. (2007, orig pub 1748) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Marsh, Sarah. (2015) ‘Five Ways Teachers Use Lego Creatively in Class.’ January 13, Guardian.co.uk. Minecraft. (2009) Markus Pearsson. Mojang.Video Game. Minecraft Wiki. ‘The Overworld’. Website, accessed 09/20/2015. Norton, Stephen John. (2004) ‘Using Lego construction to develop ratio understanding.’ Proceedings of MERGA Conference 27, printed by Melbourne University. 414–421. 27. Webpage, accessed 07/04/2015. Otero, Jose. (2015) ‘Super Mario Maker Review.’ IGN.com. September 2. Accessed 09/20/2015. Plato. (1849) Critias, in The Works of Plato,Vol, II. Trans. Henry Davis. London: Henry G Bohn, 43–429. Provencher, Simon. (2012) ‘The Golden Rule of World-Building.’ Worldbuilderblog.com. 11/11/2012. Webpage, accessed 07/04/2015. Resnick, Mitchel, and Brian Silverman. (2005) ‘Some reflections on designing construction kits for kids.’ Proceedings of the 2005 conference on interaction design and children. Webpage, accessed 07/04/2015. Rosenfelder, Mark. (2010, 2012 [ver 2.0]) The Language Construction Kit. Accessed via zompist.com on 09/20/2015. Rosenfield, Karissa. (2015) ‘Augmented Reality App ‘Lego X’ Simplifies 3D Modeling.’ January 28. ArchDaily.com. Webpage, accessed 07/30/2015. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1980) ‘Fiction, non-factuals, and the principle of minimal departure.’ Poetics 9.4, 403–422. Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel (1947) ‘On Fairy-Stories,’ in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, Dorothy Leigh Sayers, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 38–90. Tovey, Alan. (2015) ‘How Lego’s Bricks Have Built a Stronger Brand than Ferrari’s Cars,’ Telegraph. co.uk. February 17. Webpage, accessed online on 09/20/2015. Wang, Eric L., Jeffrey LaCombe, and Chris Rogers. (2004) ‘Using LEGO® Bricks to Conduct Engineering Experiments.’ Proceedings of the ASEE Annual conference and exhibition. Webpage, accessed 07/05/2015. Walton, Kendall L. (1990) Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press. Accessed online on 11/23/2015. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012) Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. New York and London: Routledge. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2014) (editor) LEGO Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon. New York and London: Routledge.

150

Part 3

Types of Worlds

This page intentionally left blank

19

Island Worlds Ian Kinane For as long as human cultures have been imagining and constructing worlds there have been island worlds. Island topographies have occupied a considerable place in the cultural imagination from some of the earliest recorded literature, and they are to be found in discussions of mythology, philosophy, and religion across vastly divergent historical and literary cultures. They are important symbolic landscapes that carry a weight of cultural meaning within the popular imagination. In attempting to define precisely what an island is, however, we find that these divergent meanings often collide. Islands are at once insular and small, as well as vast and unbound; they are cut off from the mainland but occupy an important structural relation to it. Islands imply isolation and oneness, but they are also the symbols of interconnectivity, representative of the continuous geomorphological processes occurring beneath the earth’s surface. They are microcosms and entire worlds, places of refuge as well as suffering, sites of freedom and imprisonment, and landscapes of punishment and redemption. They are neither small nor big, neither one thing nor the other, but represent what Godfrey Baldacchino terms a “nervous duality” (2005, p. 248). Rather than thinking of islands in isolation, an island “confronts us as a juxtaposition and confluence of the understanding of local and global realities, of interior and exterior references of meaning” (Baldacchino, 2005, p. 248). Islands are thus characterised by their interstitiality and the polyvalency of their cultural signification.They have been defined variously in terms of their “boundedness” and as “places of possibility and promise” (Edmond and Smith, 2003, p. 2). They are “laboratory environments” (p. 3) for various social, anthropological, and botanical experiments, and serve “as early warning signals from which we can examine human impacts on a small scale” (Walker and Bellingham, 2011, p. xii). The concept of an island “brings with it at once the notion of solitude and of a founding population” (Beer, 2003, p. 33), as well as serving as an “aesthetic refuge from the confused, congested public realm” (Conrad, 2009, p. 15) and as a place of “healing, inspiration and perspective upon the vulnerability of our own present civilization” (Manwaring, 2008, p. 1). Islands are “reflections on origins” (Loxley, 1990, p. 3), “places of arrival and departure” (Edmond and Smith, 2003, p. 7), and “metaphors for individual lives, with a beginning, middle, and end” (Rainbird, 2007, p. 13). They are an “existential terrain” upon which the individual is “confronted by edges, or by the end” (Conrad, 2009, pp. 7–8). The island metaphor also functions as a “dynamic space of becoming” (Lane, 1995, p. 16), a “place of reflection where one knows oneself as is and would be” (Denning, 2004, p. 100) as one is forced to fend for oneself. Indeed, it is upon the island that the “conditions for a rebirth or genesis are made possible” (Loxley, 1990, p. 3). Islands are “site[s] of double identity” and are “always-already in the process of transforming the particular into something other than its (original, essential) self ” (Bongie, 1998, 153

Ian Kinane

p. 18). Indeed, islands should enable people “to enter into a different state of consciousness” (Manwaring, 2008, p. 9). The appeal of the island image within the cultural imagination “is both fed by and feeds upon the use of the concept of island in reality or metaphor by artists and writers” (Royle, 2001, p. 13).The island image has been rehearsed and reused throughout literary history, and its symbolic function has been informed both by the uniqueness of its physiological characteristics and by the various historical periods across which the trope has been carried—from mythological antiquity to those fictional voyages of discovery, and from European exploration into the Southern Seas to contemporary islomania and the cultural obsession with islands. It is precisely the fluctuation “between the perceived and the projected, between the actual and the imaginary” (Manwaring, 2008, p. 63) that constituted early imaginings of islands as fictive worlds. Islands are “the most glorious map of the imagination” (Manley and Manley, 1970, p. 228) for it is through and with islands that our early fictions began to spatialize our earliest literary-historical mythologies. Island landscapes provide “metaphors that allow us to give shape to a world that would otherwise be formless and meaningless” (Gillis, 2004, p. 1); they are originary topoi upon which narratives of birth and rebirth have been written. John Gillis rightly notes that “any history of islomania must begin with the Odyssey” (2004, p. 5). It is no coincidence that Homer elects to set so much of the action of his Greek epic on the islands of the Ionian Sea, the birthplace of much of the earliest historical Greek myths. Islands are essential to the spatial narrative of The Odyssey, and Odysseus’s journey from one island to another affords the narrative an expansive imaginative geography that often, though not always, overlaps with the material geography of the extant Ionian. Most famous of the islands encountered in The Odyssey, perhaps, is Aeaea, belonging to the sea-witch Circe, and Siren Island, home to the infamous sirens, creatures who in all respects resemble beautiful young women, and who lure passing sailors to their deaths. From their earliest inception, islands were cast as threatening, corrupting places to and from which men were exiled; they were places that impelled action and travail, and that called out to be explored. Most significantly, Circe’s island is reported to be located at the edge of the known world, far beyond the oceans that Homer’s contemporaries had explored. While the islands of The Odyssey represent mythological geographies upon which we can imagine our own conception, they also plot a fictive cartography within the cultural imagination of other islands yet to be discovered. In the era of antiquity, islands were speculative utopias, “no-places” that were rumoured to exist elsewhere that were perceived to be idealized landscapes for the settlement and development of human society. It was, for example, upon the island of Atlantis that Plato elected to set his allegorical vindication of ancient Athens’ military superiority in the Timaeus (circa 360 B.C.). According to Plato, the island-state of Atlantis represented a cultural and social ideal that was bested only by Athens’ great might, and served as a testament to Plato’s ideals for the constitution of a sustaining political and social nation-state. That Atlantis is eventually submerged beneath the ocean toward the end of Plato’s allegory is an important detail in the cultural conception of islands: the cultural mythology that has grown up surrounding Atlantis—the lost city that has yet to be rediscovered—only further underlined the mythic quality of islands as speculative landscapes that emerged from and submerged beneath the sea in a continuing cycle, and that were at once both fictive, imagined landscapes and physical, geological landmasses. The ambiguity as to whether island utopias were real or not further fuelled the human imagination. Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, written considerably later in 1626, is a continuation novel, of sorts, of the Atlantis myth laid down by that compounds the notion that islands are sites for the discovery and nourishment of human ideals. Much like Atlantis, the mythical island of Bensalem is presented as a functioning u ­ topia, a place in which 154

I s l a n d Wo r l d s

the political, social, and economic structures of governance are of great ­benefit to its inhabitants, who coexist peaceably upon a tropical idyll. However, given the limited advances in exploration at this time, there remained much debate as to the validity of these accounts, as very few people traveled beyond their own homeland. Island utopias were always reported to exist in faraway places, “for every culture has tended to assume a location compatible with its own limited knowledge of the world, and to the detriment of any real geographical investigation” (Ford, 1981, p. 17). Early travelers’ accounts of islands were treated with a mixture of awe and suspicion, and though Europeans longed for the promise of these islands, there was no direct evidence to support the (often fabricated) reports of travelers. This shifted somewhat in the intervening years, following the publication of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1321). That Dante envisioned purgatory, the metaphysical gateway between Heaven and the earthly paradise, as a mountainous island floating in the unexplored oceans of the southern hemisphere led many religious pilgrims to conclude that the lost paradise was indeed to be found on an as-of-yet undiscovered island. Coupled with the burgeoning mythology of utopian islands that had sprung up in the wake of Plato’s Atlantis, it is not difficult to imagine the conflation made in the minds of 14th-century religious scholars and devout pilgrims, who desperately sought evidence of the Biblical Eden. Though Julian Ford is correct to note that no unilateral opinion on the location of the earthly paradise exists, he also asserts that “nearly all the myths concur in saying that the original seat of gods and men lay in a land of perpetual sunshine, light, and warmth, and this definitely tallies with the extraordinary assumption expressed by Dante” (Ford, 1981, p. 26). From the 14th century onward, advances in navigation and sailing technologies enabled European explorers to travel further than ever before, which brought them in to contact with previously unreachable oceans. The desire for knowledge of the unknown, to verify the reputed existence of these islands, was coupled with the economic potential of untouched islands, replete with an abundance of raw material wealth. John Gillis has noted that European explorers often “filled their maps with unknown islands, betting that they would surely turn up some day” (2004, p. 55). A flurry of voyage narratives appeared at this time, all of which purported to have discovered lost tropical islands, and that gave credence to the widespread belief in the existence of hitherto imagined islands. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which appeared circa 1357, details the journey of an English knight who, the narrative contends, ventured to several islands in the regions of modern-day India, Persia, and Turkey, and encountered all manner of fantastical inhabitants (Homo sapiens with canine heads, one-legged men, etc.). Though the account—and the personage of Mandeville himself—was fictitious, much of the text’s geographical descriptions remain accurate, thus underlining the difficulties faced by early cultures in disproving inaccuracies in these fictional accounts. Perhaps the most famous imagined island of the early modern imagination is that of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. Published in 1516, More’s account of a fictional island society is told by another travelerfigure, Raphael Hythloday, who has supposedly spent several years on the island of Utopia observing its peoples and customs. Much like Plato’s Atlantis, Utopia is an exemplum of a perfectly realised socio-political model, but one that nevertheless remained elusive. Despite its lack of basis in reality (or perhaps in spite of it), Utopia realised the idea of a humanist paradise that had long been sought for in the early modern imagination, and many Europeans viewed it as an attainable possibility for future living, and as “a way of understanding possible worlds and hence their own world” (Porter and Lukermann, 1976, p. 203). In much the same way that “writers did much to encourage such superb fantasies” (Manley and Manley, 1970, p. 118) about islands, so too were islands “being discovered all over the world and were exciting the readers of diaries, letters and reports from early mariners” (1970, 155

Ian Kinane

p. 229). While a certain ambiguity as to their authenticity persisted, the discovery of the Pacific region by European explorers in the 16th century gave much credence to the view that a tropical Arcadian garden-island was to be found, and that would prove to be the elusive pairidaeza of Eden. Indeed, as Gillis noted, “each tropical island encountered seemed at first to fit the description of paradise” (2004, p. 70) that had been laid down in earlier writings. Ingrid Daemmrich has also asserted that “the last earthly paradise locations to be discovered were the Pacific Islands” (1997, p. 11), which may, in part, account for the cultural mania for islands, and for the many voyages of exploration into the Pacific that were to shortly follow. In addition to the paradise myth, a concurrent secular mythology grew out of these discoveries, which asserted that islands were, by their often natural abundance of plants and vegetable matter, bucolic idylls for the restitution of jaded urban(e) societies of the continent. This secular mythology is linked to the “‘long’ modernity of the capitalist world-system, implicated in the discourses of material exploitation and colonization that originated in the fifteenth century and developed throughout the Enlightenment” (Deckard, 2010, p. 2). There was, at the time, a growing feeling of nostalgia that coincided with the growth of early modern industrial nations in the global north, and the tropical haven provided by seemingly untouched and remote islands was believed to be restorative in its “vision of perfect bliss” (Daemmrich, 1997, p. 205) and reminiscent of a prelapsarian time prior to modern society. This secular mythology was another motivating factor in European exploration, but it later evolved into a new myth, “justifying imperial discourse and praxis” (Deckard, 2010, p. 2). These newly discovered islands became colonial outcrops and literal gardens for the mining of natural resources and the (re)production of the colonizing culture. Islands, thus, have repeatedly been employed as settings for narratives of “management, control, and a simplified replication of the Old World” (Lane, 1995, p. 2). Jill Casid has asserted that the “most influential imperial gardens of the eighteenth century were the island gardens of narrative fiction, particularly Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe” (2003, p. 283). Following the publication of Defoe’s most influential novel in 1719, islands became synonymous with tales of castaway-adventurers; they were seen as colonial metaphors, landscapes for the reproduction of colonial culture, and spaces of conquest, upon which imperial narratives were staged and British expansionism justified. Crusoe’s self-reliant individualism posited him as an ideal cipher for the colonial mandate, as his will to conquer and possess his island became emblematic of Britain’s wider colonial projects. The Robinson Crusoe story has become universally synonymous with popular cultural understandings of shipwrecked islander narratives, and the myth of Crusoe himself has become “inexorably bound up with that imagined island” (Downie, 1996, pp. 13–14). Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who was marooned in 1704 on the island of Más A Tierra off the coast of Chile, in the Pacific, is believed to be the real-life inspiration for Defoe’s castaway-hero. But the fact that Defoe elects to strand his Crusoe on an unnamed (fictional) island off the coast of modern Venezuela, in the Caribbean, further added to the obfuscated mythology surrounding islands, and the impossibility faced in authenticating castaways’ accounts. As Elizabeth DeLoughrey has noted, “Defoe’s conflation of a Pacific island (Más a Tierra) with a Caribbean one (Tobago) led to a confused geographical setting for Robinson Crusoe” (2010, p. 11). Defoe’s novel, then, and the imagined world of Crusoe’s island, became “the fictional elaboration of a non-­fictional adventure,” wherein “fiction has achieved the substance of history” and “invention has become event” (Smith, 1996, pp. 62–63). Islands were no longer imagined topoi made real for the global north through historical discovery; rather, the symbolic power of the trope had, with Crusoe’s island, transcended its own speculative nature and had solidified itself as an essential feature of Western (broadly, European) political, economic, and cultural thought. 156

I s l a n d Wo r l d s

Más  a Tierra was later renamed “Robinson Crusoe Island,” thus underlining the supremacy within the cultural imagination of mythological islands. Defoe’s novel soon took on an atemporal, ahistorical quality (Stimpson, 1996, p. 299), as several hundred incarnations of Crusoe and his island appeared in its wake. Jonathan Swift’s 1726 novel, Gulliver’s Travels, appeared not too long after Defoe’s, and is perhaps the most well-known of its contemporaries—not least of all for its deliberate satirizing of the accounts of pseudo-travelers such as John Mandeville. Swift’s protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, tells of his journeys across many far-flung and fantastical island cultures—from the island country of Lilliput, home to a race of tiny people, to Glubbdubdrib, where he apparently converses with the spirits of long-dead historical figures, and to the floating island of Laputa. Indeed, the conceit of the floating or transitory island was an important symbol for the new discoveries and exchanges in cultural influences that were taking place at this time. Islands have been ubiquitously present in the later-modern literary and cultural imagination as floating signifiers, collective sites of meaning that signify not just the plight of the individual castaway-figure marooned in isolation, but wider social and historical issues that have come to characterize the post-Enlightenment period. Indeed, the metaphoric floating island itself becomes a floating signifier linking “the metaphoricity of floating or travelling islands with the translatability of culture” (Stephanides and Bassnett, 2008, p. 8). The global West’s fascination for and obsession with desert islands, or “islomania,” reached its apex from the mid-18th century until approximately the mid-to-late 19th century, during which time some of the most enduring works of Robinsonade fiction (or desert island stories in the tradition of Robinson Crusoe) were written. In 1812, Johann David Wyss marooned his family Robinson upon an unnamed tropical desert island in the East Indies, in the hugely popular work The Swiss Family Robinson. Wyss’s island idyll—which the characters christen “New Switzerland”—is not only a pseudo-colonial site for the reproduction of the colonizer’s culture (and, indeed, his family), but, as Wyss infers through the vast array of animals and plants that populate it (ranging from wolves to onagers, and from fir trees to an entirely fictitious root of sugar cane), it is a geographical and biotic impossibility.Thus, the more detail Wyss applies to authenticating his story, the more the fictitiousness of his island topos is underlined. In the story, the Robinson family (an unambiguous nod to their literary predecessor) is shipwrecked on the island, and the narrative revolves around the patriarch William’s attempts to instruct his young children (all boys) in the ways of providing and fending for themselves. The same is true of the triumvirate of British schoolboys shipwrecked on an imaginary Pacific island in R. M. Ballantyne’s 1858 work of juvenile fiction, The Coral Island. However, Ralph, Jack, and Peterkin are left without parental guidance, and as such are free to undertake whatever manner of adventure they wish. Ballantyne’s tale is a morally didactic one, and the island serves as a space upon which nascent muscular Christian practices are nurtured and imperial ideology is successfully inculcated within the young. This sense of unrestrained freedom is important, as it not only affords the (presumably juvenile, male) reader an opportunity to follow the exploits of his literary counterpart and to learn the “correct” codes of masculine behavior, but it is also “the first and essential prerequisite for personal Bildung” (Kontje, 1993, p. 4). The 19th-century island becomes a site of bildungsroman, whereupon the castaway develops a righteous self-dependence and matures through interaction with the physical landscape. The German term “Robinsonalter” thus came to be used to signify the point at which a young boy on the verge of puberty “discovers himself on the island of responsible life” (James, 1996, p. 2). Similarly, Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island (1874) may be conceived as a coming-of-age story of Ballantyne’s schoolboys: it follows a group of grown men who have been shipwrecked, once again, somewhere on a fictionalized Pacific 157

Ian Kinane

island, and who apply the skills of the endeavouring engineer Cyrus Smith to colonize the land, making fire, building bricks, and a rudimentary telegraph system.Verne’s all-male island colony reinforces contemporary homosocial norms, and underlines the productive economy of earlier muscular Christian ideals. The eponymous “mystery” of the island—the revelation that the paternal Captain Nemo has been watching over and sanctifying the castaways’ actions from the time of their arrival—only consolidates the popular appeal of this and other boys’ adventure novels as loosely coded imperial narratives. Indeed, so successful was this form that many well-regarded writers of the period turned their hands to creating islands, such as the fictitious Treasure Island of Robert Louis Stevenson’s titular 1883 novel, Noble’s Isle in H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), and Neverland in J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1904). Given the popular weight of these authors, and the longevity of their fictional islands within the cultural imagination, it is not without consideration that John Gillis asserts that islomania is a “central feature of Western culture,” and that the West “not only thinks about islands, but thinks with them” (2004, p. 1). Due, in part, to the sheer saturation of the Robinsonade genre for most of the 19th century, there was a dearth of fictional and imaginary islands within mainstream culture for the first half of the 20th century, with the notable exceptions of Neverland in J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in 1904, the unnamed island in H. DeVere Stapoole’s The Blue Lagoon (1908), the island of Caspak in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Land That Time Forgot (1918), and Skull Island in the monster movie King Kong (1933). It was not until the advent of the Second World War that islands became politically important features in the global polis once again. Some of the fiercest battles of World War II took place in the Pacific theater, and many island countries (particularly Palau in Western Micronesia and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands) became strategically important sites that were occupied by Allied forces, in order to impede further incursions into the Pacific by Japan’s imperial army. As such, islands re-entered the cultural imagination as radically altered sites of meaning: whereas prior to the mid-20th century they had, broadly, been viewed as utopian idylls, paradisiacal gardens, and sites of plenitude and freedom, islands were now seen as dystopian symbols of loss and destruction, upon which individual lives and the course of history were irrevocably changed. Much of the cultural output of this period reflected these shifts: Aldous Huxley’s 1962 novel, Island, for example, charts the final days and decline of the fictional Polynesian utopia of Pala, as the military leaders of a neighboring country attempt to assail the island and covet its lucrative oil assets. Indeed, Huxley’s island is a testing-ground for the exploration of such modernist themes as overpopulation and the exhaustible limits of democracy, two particularly salient issues in global politics at the time of his writing. Most famous of the post-war dystopian islands, perhaps, is that of the unnamed Pacific island in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954). Inspired by The Coral Island, Golding’s island plays host to a cultural and sociological experimentation of sorts, during which a troop of young British schoolboys descend from civilized, well-educated children into primitive, murderous savages in the absence of parental control or authority. Unlike the responsible freedom and the potential bildung of the protagonists in Ballantyne’s tale, however, Golding makes it clear that his island topos is symbolically representative of humankind’s essential capacity for both good and evil, and that it is a testing-ground for exploring the limits of human interaction beyond traditionally repressive socio-political structures. While the advent of new media and film technologies has allowed for the replication of traditional island imagery in new forms, films such as the 1958 musical South Pacific and popular mainstream television series such as Gilligan’s Island (1964–1967) and Fantasy Island (1977–1984) nevertheless display a tension between staging islands as ahistorical, atemporal 158

I s l a n d Wo r l d s

tropical utopias and re-presenting the vast cultural, historical, and ecological global shifts that have occurred since the Second World War, such as the testing of nuclear weapons on many Pacific islands. More contemporarily, the island trope has been employed as a cautionary symbol for the cultural and ecological effects of globalization and political capitalism: films such as Jurassic Park (1993) and The Beach (2000) highlight variously the exploitative economics of harnessing island ecologies for post-globalized tourist practices and underline (in the extreme) the adverse consequences of commercializing islands. It is now upon islands that contemporary societies “learn lessons for applications to mainland habitats, and attempt to reverse the unfortunate trend of environmental damage” (Walker and Bellingham, 2011, p. xii). Television programs such as Survivor (2000–present), however, continue in many ways to undermine this move toward ecological mindfulness, merely reinforcing the economizing of small island communities for the staging of North American neo-colonial narratives; while the submergence and emergence of the island across time and space in the popular serial drama Lost (2004–2010) can be seen as the logical progression of this global ecological exploitation, as well as a metaphor underlining the ultimate potential for the island signifier to collapse under the weight of its own culturally polyvalent meaning. Islands have also been utilized to great effect in computer games, as interactive topoi through which spatial construction and navigation is practiced. The traditional bounded nature of islands in games such as The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), Myst (1993), Yoshi’s Island (1995), Riven (1997), Tropico (2001), Just Cause II (2010), Dead Island (2011), and Far Cry III (2012) has provided developers with a certain narrative logic, which allows them to contain their interactive worlds within a specific and (usually) isolated location. What is needed even more contemporarily, however, is a meta-discourse on the epistemological nature of islands in the 21st century, encompassing various interdisciplinary fields of study, and incorporating a discussion on the ways in which we talk about, utilize, and construct islands for and within a shared cultural imagination. Critics and scholars need to move beyond Robinson Crusoe and his lofty individualism, and to address more contemporary literary and filmic island worlds, teasing out the archipelagic connections between these fictional island topoi. In a time of increased social isolation, mirroring the decline of traditional tribal and communal social structures, it is not without resonance that we read Thurston Clarke’s words: “we love islands because they are the only geographic feature that echoes our isolation and individuality” (Clarke, 2001, p. 328). It is through these archipelagic connections, re-positioning islands within our social and cultural imaginary frame, that we might begin to reclaim a sense of how islands function communally, and beyond the micro-world of the isolated castaway.

References Baldacchino, G. (2005) “Islands: Objects of Representation,” Geografiska Annaler, 87 (4) pp. 247–51. Beer, G. (2003) “Island Bounds,” in R. Edmond and V. Smith (eds) Islands in History and Representation, London: Routledge, pp. 32–42. Bongie, C. (1998) Islands and Exiles: The Creole Identities of Post/Colonial Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Casid, J. (2003) “Inhuming Empire: Islands as Colonial Nurseries and Graves,” in F. A. Nussbaum (ed.) The Global Eighteenth Century. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 279–95. Clarke, T. (2001) Searching for Crusoe: A Journey Among the Last Real Islands. London: Little, Brown & Company. Conrad, P. (2009) Islands: A Trip Through Time and Space. London: Thames & Hudson. Daemmrich, I. (1997) Enigmatic Bliss:The Paradise Motif in Literature. New York: Peter Lang. Deckard, S. (2010) Paradise Discourse, Imperialism, and Globalisation: Exploiting Eden. London: Routledge. 159

Ian Kinane

Dening, G. (2004) Beach Crossings: Voyaging Across Time, Cultures, and Self. Philadelphia: The University of Philadelphia. DeLoughrey, E. (2010) Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literature. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Downie, A. (1996) “Robinson Crusoe’s Eighteenth-Century Contexts,” in L. Spaas and B. Stimpson (eds.) Robinson Crusoe: Myths and Metamorphosis. Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd., pp. 13–27. Edmond, R. and V. Smith, Eds. (2003) Islands in History and Representation. London: Routledge. Ford, J. (1981) The Story of Paradise. Aylesburg: Hazel Watson & Viney Ltd. Gillis, J. R. (2004) Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination Created the Atlantic World. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Kontje, T. (1993) The German Bildungsroman: History of a National Genre. Columbia: Camden House. Lane, D. F. (1995) The Island as a Site of Resistance: An Examination of Caribbean and New Zealand Texts. New York: Peter Lang. Loxley, D. (1990) Problematic Shores:The Literature of Islands. Hampshire: The Macmillan Press. James, Louis. (1996) “Unwrapping Crusoe: Retrospective and Prospective Views”, in L. Spaas and B. Stimpson (eds.) Robinson Crusoe: Myths and Metamorphosis. Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd., pp. 1–9. Manley S. and R. Manley (1970) Islands:Their Lives, Legends, and Lore. London: Chilton Book Company. Manwaring, K. (2008) Lost Islands: Inventing Avalon, Destroying Eden. Loughborough: Heart of Albion Press. Porter, P. and F. E. Lukermann (1976) “The Geography of Utopia,” in D. Lowenthal and M.J. Bowden (eds.) Geographies of the Mind: Essays in Historical Geosophy in Honor of John Kirkhead Wright. New York: Oxford University Press. Rainbird, P. (2007) The Archaeology of Islands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rolye, S. A. (2001) A Geography of Islands: Small Island Insularity. London: Routledge. Smith,V. (1996) “Crusoe in the South Seas: Beachcombers, Missionaries, and the Myth of the Castaway,” in L. Spaas and B. Stimpson (eds.) Robinson Crusoe: Myths and Metamorphosis. Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd., pp. 62–78. Stephanides, S. and S. Bassnett (2008) “Islands, Literature, and Cultural Translatability,” Transtext(e)s, Transcultures: Online Journal of Global Cultural Studies: Poetry and Insularity, pp. 5–21. Stimpson, B. (1996) “‘Insulaire que tu es. Île–’:Valéry, the Robinson Crusoe of the Mind,” in L. Spaas and B. Stimpson (eds.) Robinson Crusoe: Myths and Metamorphosis. Hampshire: Macmillan Press Ltd., pp. 294–315. Walker, L. and P. Bellingham (2011) Island Environments in a Changing World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

160

20

Underground Worlds Peter Fitting In its earliest forms, descriptions of an underground world were prompted by the existence of caves and grottoes. The underworld held a strong fascination for older traditional cultures, in terms of the afterlife, for instance (the Realm of the Dead, Hades, etc., from Orpheus to Dante’s Inferno); and in myth and folklore as the home of various creatures (benign and threatening), including elves and fairies, dwarfs and trolls, and even giants and dragons. But in terms of depictions of inhabited imaginary worlds beyond those of simple cave dwellers, there are few examples before the 18th century. Then, in the space of twenty years, three different approaches to the imagination of the subterranean world appeared. In 1720, Tyssot de Patot published his La Vie, les Aventures et le Voyage de Groenland du Réverend Père Cordelier Pierre de Mésange. Avec une relation bien circonstanciée de l’origine, de l’histoire, des moeurs et du Paradis des Habitans du Pole Arctique, which depicts people living in underground cities near the North Pole. In 1721, the anonymous Relation D’Un Voyage Du Pole Arctique Au Pole Antarctique Par Le Centre Du Monde, Avec la Description de ce périlleux passage, & des choses merveilleuses & étonnantes qu’on a découvertes sous le Pole Antarctique recounts a passage through the Earth and introduces the idea of the “Holes in the Poles.” Finally, in 1741, Ludwig Holberg published Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum, Novam Telluris theoriem ac Historiam Quintae Monarchiae adhuc nobis incognita exhibens, which was immediately translated into a number of European languages (The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground, with a new theory of the Earth and the History of the previously unknown Fifth Kingdom) and which introduced the idea of the Hollow Earth.

Subterranean Passages One of the earliest proponents of hollows and cavities within the Earth was the Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher, who poured his encyclopedic knowledge into a variety of treatises, including the Mundus Subterraneus (1665), which was intended to serve as a refutation of alchemy as well as a general overview of the new sciences, with particular attention to the workings of the elements of the Earth. Kircher did not actually propose a hollow Earth, but rather one composed of the four elements in “an intricate system of intercommunicating cavities” beneath the planetary crust, the most important of which was a subterranean channel of water, running “through the earth from the north pole to the south” (Collier, 1934, p. 372). This notion can be seen then in the Relation D’Un Voyage Du Pole Arctique Au Pole Antarctique Par Le Centre Du Monde in which the narrator is caught in a whirlpool near the North Pole and rushed through the Earth to emerge at the South Pole. There is no description of the inner world since the crew spends their time huddled inside their ship, but there is a lengthy description of the strange fauna and flora of Antarctica. The whirlpool becomes a 161

Peter Fitting

familiar entrance to the inner Earth as can be seen in Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelstrom” (1841) as well as in his The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) with its abrupt ending and the strong hints of an opening into an underground world at the South Pole. Poe’s only novel inspired a number of sequels, including Jules Verne’s An Antarctic Mystery (Le Sphinx des glaces, 1897, although there is no underground) as well as Rudy Rucker’s Hollow Earth (2006). The notion of openings at the poles is important in both fiction and in esoteric writing, and was visually epitomized in archaic maps, as in Poe’s own note at the end of a later edition of his story “MS. found in a Bottle”: The “MS. found in a Bottle,” was originally published in 1831, and it was not until many years afterward that I became acquainted with the maps of Mercator, in which the ocean is represented as rushing, by four mouths into the (northern) Polar Gulf, to be absorbed into the bowels of the earth; the pole itself being represented by a black rock, towering to a prodigious height. (Poe, 1938, p. 126) (In Poe’s story “The Unparalleled Adventure of one Hans Pfall,” there is another reference as the hero passes over the North Pole in a balloon and glimpses what seems to be an opening.)

Cavern Worlds The second and most familiar type of underground world is that set in cavities beneath the Earth’s crust and follows from myths and legends about the obscure dwelling places of strange creatures.There are numerous examples of other peoples and races living in caves and caverns as well as humans who have somehow taken refuge there. Frequently, these inhabited caverns are set at the as-yet unexplored poles, as in Tyssot de Patot’s Voyage de Groenland (1720), which shows people living in underground cities in an immense cavern beneath the North Pole.The “Austral” lands at the South Pole are also the setting for numerous imaginary voyages in the 18th and 19th centuries, as in Robert Paltock’s The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1750), where the hero travels to the kingdom of Doorpt Swangeanti located in the darkness of the polar regions inhabited by the flying Glumms and Gawreys. It is worth noting here that Paltock’s novel is just one of many works that have been misidentified as a subterranean world, a misidentification that often follows from the character’s passage to a hidden land through some sort of subterranean passage, as is the case with Voltaire’s Candide (1759), for instance, in his travel to the land of El Dorado. There is a similar subterranean passage in Paltock’s work in which the hero, while exploring the exterior of the seemingly impenetrable rock on which he is stranded, is sucked into a underground channel, exiting weeks later on a lake in the center of the island. But this inaccessible island surrounded by unscalable cliffs is open to the sky and one day he is visited by a flying woman who he eventually marries. But after seven children their idyll is interrupted by the arrival of other flying people who take him to their kingdom (Doorpt Swangeanti). More marginal underground worlds would include Charles de Fieux Mouhy’s Lamékis ou les voyages extraordinaires d’un Egyptien dans la terre intérieure; avec la découverte de l’Isle des Sylphides (1735–1738) where the interior world of the title is in fact a deep system of caves into which the hero is lowered in a basket and where he encounters and battles the worm men. Moreover, the first part of this sprawling fantastic novel includes some scenes set in the catacombs beneath a temple in Egypt. 162

U n d e r g ro u n d Wo r l d s

There are of course many explorations of an underworld without intelligent life, as in Jules Verne’s celebrated Voyage au centre de la terre (1864). There, Lidenbrock and Axel descend into an immense cavern (“capable of containing an ocean”) via an extinct volcano in Iceland and are later expelled from a volcano in Sicily, which returns us to the cavities and channels of Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus. (Interestingly enough, in later editions of the novel, Verne added a glimpse of a giant prehistoric man and his flock deep within the earth.) The notion of the descent through caves and tunnels deep into the bowels of the earth is well represented in the 1959 film version of Verne’s novel, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and there is a whole category of accounts of explorations of caves and even drilling expeditions that occasionally result in the discovery of some intelligent subterranean race, while in popular cinema this leads to monsters or uninhabited caverns. Similar to Verne’s novel (in the context of the “lost world” genre, like the Arthur Conan Doyle novel of that name [1912], which served as the model for numerous films), the Russian paleontologist Vladimir Obruchev’s Plutonia (1915) is set in an underground area north of Alaska of rivers, lakes, volcanoes, and strange vegetation, a world that has its own sun and is inhabited by monstrous animals and primitive people. As the characters venture deeper into the underground area, they encounter the animal and plant life of previous geological periods, all the way to dinosaurs and other Jurassic species. One of the best known examples of a race of intelligent beings living underground is that of the vril-ya of Edward Bulwer Lytton’s The Coming Race (1871), which describes the narrator’s discovery of a race of near supermen who fled the great Deluge and took refuge beneath the Earth’s crust millennia earlier. But, of course, there are entire sub-genres of adventure stories that include people living in caves (as in the prehistoric novel, epitomized in Jean Auel’s “Earth’s Children” novels); or like the Africans set adrift in Tyssot’s Voyage de Groenland, there are continuing narratives of people fleeing underground, beginning with novels dealing with the survivors of the destruction of the mythical lands of Atlantis or Mu, or even lost world novels like H. Rider Haggard’s She (1887), which is set beneath an extinct volcano in North Africa. A more modern example of this is the Gene Autry serial The Phantom Empire (1935). In this entertaining six-hour science fiction Western, the inhabitants of Murania are descendants of the lost tribe of Mu, who were forced underground in the “First Ice Age” 100,000 years ago, and who now live in a fantastically advanced city (visually reminiscent of the futuristic city of the film Metropolis [1927]) 25,000 feet below the surface.

The Hollow Earth The most unusual and complex iteration of the world underground is that of the Hollow Earth. Probably the earliest manifestation of this idea is Ludvig Holberg’s The Journey of Niels Klim (1741), which recounts the adventures of Niels Klim after his fall through the Earth’s crust into the center of the Earth where a solitary planet moves around a subterranean sun. The first utopian part of his adventures is set on the planet Nazar, which is inhabited by various species of intelligent and mobile trees. Later, Klim is banished to the “firmament,” the underside of the Earth’s crust, to which he is carried by a giant bird. The crust is inhabited by various strange creatures, including primitive humans. Klim eventually returns to Earth when he falls into a hole. Thus, Holberg’s novel presents both types of the Hollow Earth—an inhabited inner crust as well as a planet floating in the inner void at the center of the Earth. There is no agreement about where Holberg got the idea of the Hollow Earth. There was certainly speculation about the composition of the Earth, as in Athanasius Kircher’s 163

Peter Fitting

Mundus Subterraneus or in Thomas Burnet’s The Sacred Theory of the Earth (1691), while some have seen the origins of the hypothesis of a Hollow Earth in Edmund Halley’s “A Theory of the Magnetic Variations,” a paper read to the Royal Society in 1691. Halley hypothesized that the motion of the magnetic poles could be explained by positing a Hollow Earth in which several concentric globes were turning coaxially. But the popularization of the idea comes more than a century later, with John Cleves Symmes Jr’s 1818 “Circular No. 1,” in which he declared that “the earth is hollow, and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees.” Symmes’s ideas, however absurd they may seem today, have had an enormous influence and are referred to in the writing of both Poe and Verne, for instance, and were championed throughout the 19th century by an eccentric band of devotees. But even before Symmes’s work, there were novels set in the Hollow Earth (most certainly inspired by Holberg). The first of these is a fascinating and almost completely unknown work: the anonymous A Voyage to the World in the Center of the Earth giving an Account of the Manners, Customs, Laws, Government and Religion of the Inhabitants, their Persons and Habits described with several other Particulars. In which is introduced the History of an Inhabitant of the Air, written by himself, with some Account of the planetary Worlds (1755). Like Klim, the narrator falls through a hole while exploring the crater of Mount Vesuvius and lands on an inhabited planet in the center of the earth. Unlike Holberg’s world, however, there is no inner sun. Instead, the inner world is illuminated in a doubly fanciful manner, since the inner planet is “enlightened by the concave Part of your World, which is entirely cover’d with Jewels of different Sorts and immense Sizes. . . .” These jewels reflect light onto the inner world, but this reflected light comes not from an inner sun, or from light streaming through holes in the Earth’s crust, but from that inner planet itself. Another Hollow Earth utopia is Giovanni Giacomo Casanova’s Icosaméron, ou Histoire d’Edouard et d’Elisabeth qui passèrent quatre vingts ans chez les Mégamicres habitans aborigènes du Protocosme dans l’intérieur de notre globe (1788), a sprawling, 1,700-page novel that describes the adventures of a brother and sister (the Edouard and Elisabeth of the title) who join an arctic exploration expedition. After their ship is caught in the Maelstrom, they are saved when they are knocked into a lead chest that then sinks to the center of the Earth, passing through water, air, and fire, landing finally in a river on what they come to realize is the inner crust of the Earth with a sun floating in the center of the inner void. (The novel begins with a lengthy exegesis of Genesis to defend the idea that there are people living inside the Earth.) In Adam Seaborn’s Symzonia (1820, often mistakenly described as having been written by Symmes himself), the inner world is reached by sailing over the edge (or the “verge” as he calls it) at the South Pole, onto the concave inner surface of the Earth where the explorers discover an internal continent (which, in honor of Symmes, they name Symzonia). Here, the inner world is lit not by an internal sun but by the sun shining through the openings at the poles. Like Symzonia, Jacques Collin de Plancy’s Voyage au centre de la terre (1821) is an attempt to explain and defend the existence of an interior world.This relatively unknown work (more fantastic adventure than utopia) begins with an explicit reference to Symmes, and includes apparent borrowings from Holberg’s Niels Klim and from the geological theories of Edmund Halley and Cotton Mather. The novel begins after a fishing expedition is stranded on the island of Spitzberg and in their wanderings, they are violently sucked into the underworld by a whirlwind. Mary Lane’s utopian society of women (Mizora, 1890) is also set in the “inner world.” As with so many of the works under consideration, the novel begins with a shipwreck in the “Northern Seas” where the heroine is rescued by “Esquimaux.” After she sets off alone to sail south, she is caught in a whirlpool, and after hours in a “semi-stupor, born of exhaustion 164

U n d e r g ro u n d Wo r l d s

and terror,” she finds herself in a beautiful, “enchanted country” in the interior of the Earth. Although the author explicitly refers to the society as set inside a “hollow sphere, bounded North and South by impassable oceans,” the setting is of little importance and there is little description of the subterranean world as a whole. There are, however, some rather vague descriptions of the illumination of the inner world. Six months of the year, the primary source of daylight is the sun, shining through the opening at the pole while, during the winter months, light is provided by the Aurora Borealis. Continuing into the 20th century, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote seven novels set inside the Earth, beginning with At the Earth’s Core (1922), which tells of the narrator and a friend and a remarkable excavating machine. Burrowing some 500 miles into the Earth’s crust, they emerge into the unknown interior world of Pellucidar situated on the internal surface of the Earth (as in Symzonia). Pellucidar is inhabited by prehistoric creatures and dominated by a race of intelligent flying reptiles who enslave and prey on the stone-age humans. Like Burroughs’s Martian novels, the setting is the occasion for some fabulous adventures with some vague scientific justification and little interest in depicting an alternative or more advanced society. (The novel does herald a new method of exploring and penetrating the underworld—one that has resurfaced in some recent popular films, for example, Rodney McDonald’s Deep Core [2000].)

Fiction Versus Non-fiction Of course, in presenting imaginary underground worlds, I have restricted myself to fictional works, when in fact there are any number of works that argue for the existence of the Hollow Earth, beginning with John Cleves Symmes Jr.’s 1818 “Circular No. 1.” Walter Kafton-Minkel’s Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 years of dragons, dwarfs, the dead, lost races & UFOs from inside the earth (1989) describes in detail many of these writers and their systems. As Kafton-Minkel’s book makes clear, however much imagination the various theories of underground worlds display, they are not meant to be seen as imaginary worlds, but as revealed truth, as in the case of Cyrus Teed (The Cellular Cosmogony, or the Earth in a Concave Sphere, 1898) who declared himself the Second Coming of Christ. And, as a quick search on the Internet will show, there continue to be those who argue for the reality of the Hollow Earth. (See, for instance, the online catalog of Health Research Books: http://www.healthresearchbooks.com.) Willis George Emerson’s The Smoky God Or A Voyage to the Inner World (1908) is another example of a book written by someone who believes in the Hollow Earth. It begins with a preface in which the author wonders “whether it is possible that the world’s geography is incomplete, and that the startling narrative . . . is predicated upon demonstrable facts.” Indeed, the novel is larded with footnotes to accounts of polar explorers and sailors, as well as to books of mythology and anthropology—but there is no reference to Symmes or to any other book dealing with the Hollow Earth, although the author mentions some recent geographical speculation that there might be “a land inside the earth.” Repeating some of Casanova’s arguments about God situating Eden within the Earth, he writes that “the world was created by the Great Architect of the Universe, so that man might dwell upon its inside surface, which has ever since been the habitation of the chosen.” The novel begins with a fishing trip along the coast of Franz Josef Land in search of a land of legend “more beautiful than any that mortal man had ever known . . . inhabited by the Chosen.” After a terrible storm, they find themselves on a calm sea under a smoky red sun. In fact, they have sailed over the verge into the inner world, where they encounter an electric boat filled with happy twelve-foot tall men who take them to the city of Jehu, and later they are taken on an electric monorail to the 165

Peter Fitting

capital city, Eden. There is only a brief description of the giants’ society: this is not a utopia, but the description of paradise. It is also interesting to find again the notion of the inner Earth as the original site of the Garden of Eden, a point which is emphasized here by the discovery that “the language of the people of the Inner World is much like the Sanskrit.” The other type of Hollow Earth text described by Kafton-Minkel is what might be called the esoteric or occult, beginning with accounts in which the descent is an allegory of a spiritual journey as in John Uri Lloyd’s novel Etidorpha (1895).The hero is led by a cavern dweller through a cave in Kentucky, but this long subterranean journey becomes an inner journey of the spirit. There are also more explicit visions of secret underground societies, a tradition that dates back at least to Madame Blavatsky (Isis Unveiled: A Master-Key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology, 1877), and the Theosophists. These are accounts of the secret “masters of the world” located in a hidden Tibetan valley, Shambhala (the Shangri-La of Frank Capra’s 1937 film version of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon [1933]); or in the underground world of Agharti, also located beneath Tibet. More local versions of these hidden masters (who are often from outer space) can be found in the various legends centered around Mt. Shasta or in the so-called “Shaver Mystery” stories popularized by Ray Palmer in the pages of Amazing Stories in the 1940s. All of these occult systems are described at length in Kafton-Minkel, as are the strange links between Hollow Earth schemes and the Nazis (described as well in Joscelyn Godwin’s Arktos:The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival [1993]). And of course, connected to the holes in the poles are the ongoing debates about what Richard Byrd may or may not have seen when he flew over the South Pole in 1928. But these conspiracy theories and esoteric philosophies take us away from the realm of explicitly fictional constructions of an underground world.

Built Worlds Versus Found Worlds Thus far, the inner worlds under consideration, whether located in caves or in some Hollow Earth, were for the most part “natural,” with only minimal human intervention or technological development. In Tyssot de Patot’s Voyage de Groenland, while the caves are not very deep (the cave dwellers go out to hunt, for instance), there are actual cities and the caverns have been hollowed out over time. And in Paltock’s Peter Wilkins we read that the cave dwellers “were forced to inhabit the Rocks, from an utter Incapacity of providing Shelter elsewhere, having no Tool that would either cut down Timber for an Habitation, or dig up the Earth for a Fence, or Materials to make one: But they had a Liquor that would dissolve the Rock itself into Habitations.” The most advanced cave dwellings are to be found in The Coming Race, where there are “lamp lit roads” for example, as well as buildings, books, and “automata” and even flying machines. But all the technologies and machineries of the Vril-ya reside in their mental domination over nature rather than in technology per se, in the electrical properties of Vril, which “is capable of being raised and disciplined into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate or inanimate.” As for an actual constructed underground world, an early example is found in H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) in which the Time Traveler goes into the future (to the year 802,701) to discover that the class divisions of his time have led to a gradual division of the human race into two types, the effete descendants of the ruling class, the Eloi, and their servants, the brutish Morlocks who live beneath the surface where they mind the machines (and who feed on the Eloi in a perverse reversal of the class struggle). (There are several film versions [1960, 2002] that give a limited view of the dark machine domain of the Morlocks.) Although situated beneath the surface, the Morlocks’ dark realm is not truly an underground world, 166

U n d e r g ro u n d Wo r l d s

resembling rather the crypts and catacombs of so many novels, like the hidden city beneath the Egyptian temples of Fieux de Mouhy’s Lamékis. And there are the underground rituals to be found in Jean Terrasson’s Sethos: histoire ou vie, tirée des monumens anecdotes de l’ancienne Egypte, traduite d’un manuscrit grec (1767), which for some time was considered a source for Masonic rituals and ideas, although it is now agreed that Terrasson took the rituals of the Freemasons, already popular in the France of his day, and projected them backward into his imaginary Egyptian mystery cult. This type of underground setting for cults and strange rituals continues to the present as in Stephen Baxter’s repurposing of the Roman catacombs in his novel Coalescent (2003). The most obvious constructed underground world is that of the bomb shelter and the larger theme of humanity’s flight underground after a nuclear war. A good example of this is Harlan Ellison’s story cycle “A Boy and His Dog” and L. Q. Jones’s film version (1975) where the hero and his dog roam a post-holocaust wasteland before discovering “Downunder,” a society located in a large underground vault with an artificial biosphere, complete with forests and underground cities. Philip K. Dick’s The Penultimate Truth (1964) is set in a future where the bulk of humanity lives in large underground shelters, believing that World War III is still raging above their heads, although in reality the war ended years before. Unable to exist in the atmosphere created by robot war, vast “ant tanks” are constructed underground to save the diminishing human population while the government remains on the surface. When the war does eventually end, the elite decide to keep the wealth of the Earth for themselves.They live in immense villas on private parks, in a newly green and almost deserted Earth while most of the population remains underground in miserable conditions, believing that the war is continuing above ground. And the robots that they build to fight the war are used by the elite on the surface as personal servants. There is a similar flight underground in The Matrix films where the humans, realizing that they were losing the war with the Machines, began the construction of an underground city (Zion) to preserve the human race. The idea of fleeing to an underground world after a holocaust can be found in a number of young adult novels as well, including Suzanne Martel’s Quatre Montréalais en l’an 3000 (The City Under Ground, 1963), Helen Mary Hoover’s This Time of Darkness (1980), and more recently Jeanne DuPrau’s The City of Ember (2003), all of which portray societies set underground that were established to escape a post-holocaust Earth.

Conclusion The imagination of underground worlds differs from most of the other types of imaginary worlds described in this book, first of all because in most cases, there, worlds are found rather than built, whether it is a Hollow Earth world discovered by a visitor from the surface (Holberg, Casanova, Symzonia, etc.), or a cave world to which people have fled (like BulwerLytton’s Vril-ya or the inhabitants of Murania in The Phantom Empire). There are some 20thcentury exceptions following from the idea of the fallout shelter, although one could also include E. M. Forster’s dystopian short story “The Machine Stops” (1909). In Forster’s fearful response to a rapidly developing modern world, people no longer live on the surface of the Earth but underground in cells, with all bodily and spiritual needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine, separated from each other, connected only via the mechanical threads of the Machine. But as this latter example suggests, a second difference between the underground world and other types of imagined worlds lies in the fact that the former are almost always settings rather than the purpose or subject of the fiction. It is irrelevant that Forster’s world is underground; 167

Peter Fitting

the story calls attention to the isolation and stultification of humans in a world given over to technology, and the hero’s trip to the surface is a rebellious return to a natural, real world. These worlds are not so much interesting in themselves, but as backgrounds—for utopias and/ or social satire (as in Klim’s adventures in the underworld), or as in E. R. Burroughs—a place whose mystery and unfamiliarity allows for a series of fantastic adventures. The difference between an imaginary world that is merely the setting for something else and those worlds whose description is an end in itself can be seen by contrasting the Mars of the John Carter novels with the terraforming of Mars in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy (1993–1996), which is described in careful detail and might be said to be the subject of the three novels (as much as is the gradual emergence of alternative societies). The need to turn to science fiction to find an example of human agency in an imaginary world points to the third difference between the underground and other types of imaginary worlds discussed in this volume, namely the lack of attention paid to the practical physical details of the world. This situation is well expressed by Wells’s Time Traveler in The Time Machine, when he pleads ignorance about the mechanical workings of the future world: “And here I must admit that I learned very little of drains and bells and modes of conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my time in this real future.”While attention is paid to the social and political in some of the utopias set underground, we learn little of the practical side of things in these subterranean worlds. As this brief survey has shown, even though the idea of life inside the earth is generally considered to be no more scientifically plausible than life on the moon, it still flourishes in fiction and film, and in conspiracy and occult theories. Robin Cook’s novel, Abduction (2000), for instance, expands on the acknowledged gap between the Earth’s crust and the Earth’s mantle (known as the “Mohorovicic discontinuity”) to imagine that an advanced human civilization took refuge there millions of years ago to avoid the sterilizing effects of a prolonged meteor shower. Even less concerned with plausibility, James Rollins’s Subterranean (1999) describes a vast underground civilization beneath the continent of Antarctica—a continent that, however remote and unfriendly, can hardly be described as uncharted or unexplored. Rudy Rucker’s Hollow Earth (2006) is a pastiche based on Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym in which Reynolds and the young Edgar go to the South Pole to search for Symmes’s opening.What follows is a fantastic and rowdy voyage through the inner world that makes no attempt at plausibility, while emphasizing the burlesque and the morbid.

References Collier, Katharine Brownell, Cosmogonies of Our Fathers: Some Theories of the Seventeenth and the Eighteenth Centuries, New York: Columbia University Press, 1934. Kafton-Minkel,Walter, Subterranean Worlds: 100,000  Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost Races & UFOs from inside the Earth, Port Townsend, Washington: Loompanics Unlimited, 1989. Poe, Edgar Allan, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, New York: Modern Library, 1938.

168

21

Planets Jennifer Harwood-Smith The creation of planets is perhaps the most literal form of world-building that takes place in fiction. They are physical embodiments of Mark J. P. Wolf ’s assertion that worlds “often exist to support the stories set in them” and have stories embedded in them (2012: 29). Typically seen in science fiction, but also common in fantasy, planets can be some of the most successful and some of the biggest failures in world-building. The reason for this is the real-world complexity of planets. Earth alone has five different environments, called biomes, divided between aquatic, forests, deserts, grasslands, and tundra. Each of these has different subtypes based on where on the planet it is located; the forests of Scandinavia are significantly different from the forests of the Amazon in terms of flora, fauna, and weather patterns. This complexity extends beyond Earth, though knowledge of other planets is limited by technology; in the 1968 collection Farewell, Fantastic Venus! (Aldiss and Harrison 1971), each story in the collection posits a completely different version of Venus, some of which speculated that it was simply a hotter version of Earth. All of them proved to be completely incorrect; however, the collection should not be considered a failure, as it did attempt to imagine different but still probable versions of V   enus. This chapter will examine a number of planets to try to identify the elements of successful and unsuccessful planet-building, and attempt to understand why some world-builders are more successful than others in their attempts at imagining other worlds. The first question in planet-building should focus on complexity; with the exception of planets in extreme circumstances, it must be presumed that a planet of sufficient mass should have different climates and biomes.This presumption makes certain science fiction texts, such as the Star Wars film series (1977–present), appear lazy and incomplete. Star Wars has three worlds that appear to have a single biome: the desert planet of Tattoine in A New Hope (1977), The Phantom Menace (1999), and The Attack of the Clones (2002); the ice planet of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back (1980); and the forest moon of Endor in The Return of the Jedi (1983). It is their identification as planet-wide ecologies that raises disbelief; had the series referred to these as the desert, ice, and forest regions of Tattoine, Hoth, and Endor, these planets would be somewhat more believable. And while Tattoine has two suns, it is difficult to believe that even the polar regions are Sahara-like deserts, though they could be Antarctic deserts. Complexity, then, will help to create planets that are believable to the audience. Three fine examples of single biome planets are Gethen, also called Winter, in Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Anarres in Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974), and Arrakis in Frank Herbert’s Dune series (1965–2016). In the former, Le Guin crafts a world going through a massive ice age, such that all areas of the planet are in a permanent state of winter. Frederic Jameson (1975) suggests Le Guin uses: 169

J e n n i f e r H a rwo o d - S m i t h

a principle of systematic exclusion, a kind of surgical excision of empirical reality, something like a process of ontological attenuation in which the sheer teeming multiplicity of what exists, of what we call reality, is deliberately thinned and weeded out through an operation of radical abstraction and simplification which we will henceforth term world-reduction. (1975: 223) This “world-reduction” could be understood not only for the function of focusing the reader on the intriguing gender dynamics of Gethen, inhabited by a race of androgynes, but also for the sheer practical purpose of describing an alien world without devoting the entire novel to it. Jameson describes Le Guin’s non-inclusion of animals and insects on Gethen as a method of world-reduction, and simultaneously historical world-building, as it implies there is no natural life on Gethen and the inhabitants are a forgotten colony or experiment (1975: 223–224). Thus, world-reduction, while reducing the amount of information that needs to be included in the text, does not necessarily reduce the complexity of the world. Similarly, Anarres in The Dispossessed is a largely barren moon, which the Anarresti work hard to make liveable. However, the barrenness of Anarres is understood by the inhabitants: In the previous geological era the Dust had been an immense forest of holums, the ubiquitous, dominant plant genus of Anarres. The current climate was hotter and drier. Millennia of drought had killed the trees and dried the soil to a fine grey dust that now rose up on every wind, forming hills as pure of line and barren as any sand dune. (Le Guin, 1974: 59) Unlike Tattoine, Anarres is understandably barren. However, the Anarresti are working against it:“[The Anarresti] saw what they had done.There was a mist of green, very faint, on the pallid curves and terraces of the desert. On the dead land lay, very lightly, a veil of life” (67). These notions of natural geological change and terraforming add to Anarres’s complexity; it is more than a simple desert, it is a history. Herbert’s Dune series is arguably one of the most complex ecologies in science fiction. At first presented as a barren desert, it is home to the Spice Melange, a substance that allows prescience, long life, and, crucially, space travel. The Melange is connected to the sandworms of Arrakis, terrifying creatures that sense movement on the sands of Arrakis and devour anyone unlucky enough to be caught in their path. In the first novel, Dune (1965), the planetologist Liet Kynes is attempting to restore plant life to Arrakis; however, by Children of Dune (1976), it is revealed there is a symbiotic relationship between sandworms, Melange, water, and the desert. Specifically, sandtrout—juvenile sandworms—excrete fungus that interacts with water to create pre-spice masses, which then explode and turn into Spice Melange. Sandtrout also serve to isolate bodies of water to help create deserts, as sandworms are killed by water. Between Children of Dune (1976) and God-Emperor of Dune (1981), the sandtrout are drawn out of the planet surface by Leto II, to become part of his quasi-sandworm body, which transforms Arrakis into a pastoral paradise. Upon his death in a river, the sandtrout are released, and Arrakis is once again on the path to becoming a great desert. This complicated relationship between different elements of the planet is world-building of the highest order; Arrakis’s state, whether as a desert with plentiful Melange, or as Leto II’s lush paradise where Melange is rare and immensely valuable, has an intergalactic effect on space travel and politi170

Planets

cal power. Unlike Tattoine, Arrakis’s ecological history is as important as the people living on it, if not more. Like Star Wars, Star Trek (1966–present) is known for its visual planet-building, with The Original Series (1966–1969) famous for monochrome planets appearing next to The Enterprise. However, as the recent remastering of the series shows, this is perhaps indicative of technology rather than intent; the bizarrely coloured planets of the series have been replaced with opulent oceans, clouds, and landmasses. However, the series can be confusing in terms of planets, particularly in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), in which the planet Ceti Alpha V is mistaken for the destroyed Ceti Alpha VI. As planets are traditionally numbered outwards from the sun, the destruction of the sixth planet should not affect the numbering of the fifth. In addition, the mysterious “explosion” of Ceti Alpha VI, while effective for turning Ceti Alpha V into a barren wasteland, is inexplicable to the audience. This is a prime example of narrative overwhelming world-building, as Khan’s thirst for revenge only makes sense in light of the horror of living on Ceti Alpha V. This sacrifice of world-building in favor of story is relatively common in Star Trek: in the pilot of Star Trek:Voyager, “Caretaker” (1995), the planet Ocampa is a desert planet.The explanation given is that the titular Caretaker had accidentally destroyed the planet’s ability to create clouds by scanning it; while this does create the circumstances for the premise of the series, it is a bizarre explanation, apparently purely for the sake of creating a barren planet in need of protection. However, Star Trek is apparently somewhat aware of the complexity of planets, as in the Genesis planet in Star Trek III:The Search for Spock (1984). Genesis is a planet of overwhelming complexity, with multiple biomes existing in small areas. The speed with which it is created and ultimately collapses upon itself is not only a judgment against scientific hubris, as an unstable substance was used to create it, but also a healthy respect for the natural history of planets. Genesis is an impossible planet: thus, while planets should be at least somewhat complex in Star Trek, building them is deemed impossible. In Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1978–2005), planet-building is not only possible, but so popular that an industry based on it bankrupts the galaxy. As I discussed in “Destroying Arcadia: The Construction and Deconstruction of Earth in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” in Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology (2017), the purpose of this literal world-building functions to destabilize and question concepts of supposedly natural landscapes. Arthur Dent’s preconceived notions about the universe, which are already altered by his experiences since the destruction of Earth, are completely shattered by the revelation that Earth itself is a construction (Adams, 2003: 21–83). However, this uncertainty about the naturalness of landscape extends far beyond Earth, as it is impossible to know which planets in the series were built by the Magratheans, and which formed naturally. Planets, then, lack the history inherent in Anarres and Arrakis; Slartibartfast’s pride in creating and winning awards for fjords further reinforces this lack of history; while Earth is a computer with a six-billion-year program, it can be rebuilt to any point in its history. Geological history then becomes meaningless in the face of the relative ease of planet-building. The existence of the alternate Earths seen in Mostly Harmless (1992), from NowWhat to the final Earth Arthur visits before they are all destroyed, further destabilizes the solidity of planets. In the Hitchhiker’s subcreation, the very ground under their feet is inherently unreliable. Perhaps one of the most interesting attempts at planetary world-building in recent years is Pandora in James Cameron’s Avatar (2009). Despite a simplistic plot that closely resembles Pocahontas (1995) and the preposterously named mineral “unobtanium,” Pandora is a richly imagined subcreation, with the ability of all species to connect with each other and the planet a fascinating experiment in alternate evolution. Pandora is a moon quite literally packed with life, much of it dangerous in some way to humans, with even the air toxic to them. 171

J e n n i f e r H a rwo o d - S m i t h

Far from the beautiful if static matte paintings of Star Trek, and the alien worlds of Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007), which largely resemble the woods near Vancouver, Canada, Pandora is a fully imagined other world, whose laws differ so far from Earth’s that islands can float in the sky. However, Pandora is still rather anthropocentric; the native Na’vi look like large blue humans with odd ears, and the animals are all similar to real world creatures such as wolves or birds, albeit on a much larger scale. Pitch Black (2000), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), and Riddick (2013) are all films that explore planetary world-building, but while their sentient inhabitants are all similar to humans—which could be presumed to be the result of a massive colonization effort from Earth—their landscapes and non-sentient inhabitants are far more interesting. In Pitch Black, the planet on which the crew and passengers of the Hunter-Gratzner are stranded is another desert world; however, this one has three suns of varying intensity and experiences darkness only once every twenty-two years. However, Pitch Black, as well as its sequels, does operate against what could be called sensible world-building.The creatures in Pitch Black only emerge in darkness; for a species that evolved on a planet of near constant light, this seems unlikely, though it does hint perhaps at a significant subterranean ecosystem not explored in the series. More extreme is the prison planet Crematoria in The Chronicles of Riddick, which at night reaches the extreme temperature of -295ºF (-182ºC)—an impossibly low temperature since absolute zero is -273 ºF—and in daylight rises to 702ºF (372ºC), almost literally setting the surface on fire, and immolating anyone unlucky enough to go out in daylight. This bizarre planet is an ideal prison, and gives Riddick and his companions the opportunity to “outrun the sunrise,” moving in the survivable space between night and day. However, it is Riddick that returns to investigating alternate ecosystems; once stranded on a barren region of an uninhabited planet, Riddick discovers two predatory species. The first is a pack of dog-like creatures that can apparently be tamed. The second is a race of creatures that appear to be a cross between a scorpion and a velociraptor; like the creatures of Pitch Black, they are limited in their movements, requiring heavy rain for the majority to become active and become a threat. While somewhat unlikely in its execution, the Riddick series at least attempts to connect biological evolution with planetary conditions, and makes an attempt at demonstrating truly unique alien life. From these examples, it can be determined that successful planetary world-building requires complexity, some reasonable attention to scientific details, and, perhaps most importantly, time and effort spent on understanding how an alien world will affect its inhabitants. However, planets in world-building need not only take place on other worlds; reimagining Earth is as much planet world-building as designing alien worlds. Perhaps one of the best known examples is Planet of the Apes (1968); the film’s title and the opening crash of the astronauts serve to fool both the viewer and Charlton Heston’s George Taylor that he has landed on another world. Human cities are long gone, replaced by the apes’ primitive structures, so there is none of the typical signifiers of Earth present. The result of this is that the final vision of the half-buried Statue of Liberty is shocking to both Taylor and the viewer, and the entire film must be reevaluated and reexamined in this new framework. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), shows how the landscape of Earth changed, with the death of most of humanity and the natural landscapes of Earth reclaiming the cities. A similar effect can be seen in Futurama’s “The Late Philip J. Fry” (2010), in which Fry, Bender, and the Professor find themselves in a time machine that can only travel into the future. They move through various future versions of New New York, beginning with a salute to Planet of the Apes, in which humans, apes, birds, cows, and slug-like creatures all destroyed their own societies in the same way, depicted by multiple half-buried Statues of 172

Planets

Liberty lined up in a row. This is followed by an ice age landscape, a return to medieval landscapes and buildings, an oceanic landscape with giant carnivorous shrimp, another medieval landscape ruled by giraffes, a Wellsian future society terrorized by “Dumlocks,” a Terminator (1984)-inspired landscape filled with human skulls, a pastoral idyll with scantily clad genius female scientists, and finally a barren, lifeless surface scorched bare by the expanding sun. From this and Planet of the Apes, planet-building on Earth will always have a chronological aspect; time travel texts that remain on Earth must invariably engage with Deep Time, with changes not only in vegetation and buildings, but also in mountains, rivers, and even tectonic plates. Planets are most often linked with science fiction world-building, but they can also be present in fantasy texts. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s Death Gate Cycle (1990–1995) describes a series of worlds made out of a fractured Earth, none of which is self-sufficient. Chelestra, the world of water, intended for general habitation, consists of islands that float in a never-ending sea of breathable water; Arianus is the world of air, intended to act as a massive manufacturing plant; Pryan is the world of fire, a massive shell surrounding four small suns, intended as the power plant for all worlds; Abarrach is the world of stone, intended as a source of minerals; finally, the Labyrinth is intended as a prison planet for a race of superhumans known as the Patryn. The sundering of Earth into these worlds was intended to protect the elves, humans, and dwarves from the ostensibly negative influence of the Patryn. However, these worlds are all dependent on each other; without energy from Pryan, Abarrach is toxic, Chelestra freezes, and Arianus cannot pump water to the upper islands. Pryan falls because the superhuman Sartan from Abarrach use necromancy to unwittingly kill the Sartan in other worlds, causing the power plants of Pryan to become unmanned. This deconstruction of Earth, an attempt to make a whole into its parts and still force it to work, is a commentary on the arrogance of the Sartans; they believe they can, by force of magic, create a better version of the universe, one that only they can rule magnanimously.This fracturing opens the door to the serpents of Chelestra, powerful magical creatures who seek to encourage war. However, ultimately the Death Gate Cycle is a text about the need for natural balances and working together as the dragons of Pryan also come into being and seek to encourage peace.The exact physical relationship of these worlds to each other is never clear: they could exist at different points on the same orbit Earth once held, or in different dimensions.The nonsensical appearance of these worlds would be out of place in science fiction, but fantasy has the freedom to recreate scientific laws, as can be seen in perhaps the most unique fantasy planet ever created: the Discworld (1983–2015). Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is a flat disc, lying on the back of four elephants, who in turn stand on the back of the Great A’Tuin, a giant space turtle. The reason this world can exist is because it is run by magic; however, Pratchett’s 1981 novel Strata, published two years before The Colour of Magic (1983), shows the possibility of a science fictional Discworld, an inside joke by the creators of the universe, similar to Slartibartfast’s signature in a glacier in Norway. The Discworld of the novel series is, by comparison, a magical world, but it does have certain laws that help it to make some sense. Even from The Colour of Magic (1985), Pratchett introduces the Counterweight Continent, which has the same mass as the rest of the landmasses put together; this helps explain the map of Discworld, in which almost all the land is clustered to one side of the Disc, with a relatively small continent on the other side somehow creating a balance. The Disc also has its own sun and moon orbiting it, and, as can be seen in The Light Fantastic (1986) by the panic when it appears to be flying straight into a red star, the inhabitants are used to a moving field of stars, as long as they do not get too close. In fact, the refusal of the Omnians in Small Gods (1992) to believe in 173

J e n n i f e r H a rwo o d - S m i t h

the Great A’Tuin is seen by the rest of the Disc as the height of ignorance; for the people of Discworld, it makes perfect sense that they are flying through space on four elephants and a turtle. It is fitting that the eight planets that circle the red star are revealed to be eight Discworld eggs; they are fantastic and impossible worlds that emerge from normal planets. This can be seen as almost a premonition of how the Discworld would function as a reflection of the Primary World: Ankh-Morpork could be equated with an early industrial age London; Fourecks in The Last Continent (1998), with its plethora of deadly creatures, is clearly an analogue of Australia; finally, The Truth (2000), Snuff (2011), and Raising Steam (2013) show the emergence of Discworld’s culture from medievalism/Renaissance level to true industrialization. In the final novel, The Shepherd’s Crown (2015), the coming of the railways to the Ramtop mountains and their surroundings is not only a sign of industrialization, but also the end of a certain age of magic; in this new land of iron, the elves, a staple of the Ramtops, will be driven away for good. This interaction with the Primary World finds its height in the The Science of Discworld (1999–2014) series, in which the wizards create “Roundworld,” a bizarre planet that simply drifts through space without the aid of a turtle. Working with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, Pratchett used Roundworld to help explain the scientific history of Earth’s formation and development. So not only does the Primary World shape the Discworld, but the Discworld can demonstrate the nature of the Primary World in an entertaining manner. There are many other fantasy planets, such as Le Guin’s Earthsea; however, the Death Gate Cycle and Discworld both serve to demonstrate a particular requirement of such planets: while they need not be possible in the Primary World, or, indeed, in science fictional subcreations, they should still make sense in their own way, and have the consistency Wolf identifies as a core element of world-building (2012: 43). This is why Pratchett could claim the Discworld runs on Narrativium; as his narratives do, generally, make sense, the Discworld does too.This is shy of the requirement in science fiction in which the world must make sense on some level of scientific thinking. Two exceptions to this are Hitchhiker’s and Futurama; however, they are mitigated by also being comedy texts and needing to follow a second requirement: making the audience laugh. Thus, the 2005 Hitchhiker’s film is able to feature square, donut, and ringshaped planets in the Magrathean showrooms, and Futurama can reference H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) alongside Planet of the Apes. So what defines a successful approach to planets and planet design? While world-reduction, as seen in Le Guin, can be helpful, the popularity of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series (1993–1996), which charts the colonization and terraforming of Mars over two centuries in detail, implies a readership who wants to engage with more detailed planet-building.The best course, it seems, should be one of research, particularly when attempting to describe Earth in a different epoch. Wolf ’s differentiation between world-building and storytelling suggests the best planetary world-building is not necessarily seen in the text (2012: 29). To overload the reader with too much detail about a world would render the text dry and flat; Le Guin tells the reader about the desertification of Anarres because the protagonist, Shevek, is conscripted to help reverse the process. In Dune, the nature of Arrakis is politically important, and so its inclusion in the text is necessary. However, in Avatar, an explanation of the evolution of the interconnected consciousness on Pandora would disrupt the flow of the narrative of the film. Such world-building, in novels at least, is often contained in Appendices or other supplementary material, such as maps. Ultimately though, the success of planets in fiction, and the audience’s willingness to believe in them, depends on the consistency of the planets’ laws and their applications.

174

Planets

References Adams, D. (1992), Mostly Harmless, London: William Heinemann. Adams, D. (2003), The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:The Original Radio Scripts, G. Perkins, ed, London: Pan Macmillan. Aldiss, B.W. and Harrison, H., eds (1971) Farewell, Fantastic Venus!, London: Grafton. Avatar (2009) [film] Hollywood: James Cameron. “Caretaker” (1995) [television] Star Trek:Voyager, Series 1, Episodes 1–2, Paramount, 16 January. The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) [film] Hollywood: Universal Pictures. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) [film] Hollywood: 20th Century Fox. Harwood-Smith, J. (2017) “Destroying Arcadia: The Construction and Deconstruction of Earth in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” in M. J. P. Wolf, ed, Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology, London: Routledge. Herbert, F. (1965) Dune, Philadelphia: Chilton Company. Herbert, F. (1976) Children of Dune, New York: Putnam. Herbert, F. (1981) God-Emperor of Dune, New York: Putnam. Jameson, F. (1975) World-Reduction in Le Guin: The Emergence of Utopian Narrative. Science Fiction Studies, [online] Volume 2(3), pp. 221-230. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4238971 [Accessed 30 Aug. 2016]. “The Late Philip J. Fry” (2010) [television] Futurama, Series 7, Episode 7, 20th Century Fox Television, 29 July. Le Guin, U.K. (1969) The Left Hand of Darkness, New York: Ace Books. Le Guin, U.K. (1974) The Dispossessed, New York: Harper & Row. Pitch Black (2000) [film] Hollywood: Polygram Filmed Entertainment. Planet of the Apes (1968) [film] Hollywood: 20th Century Fox. Pocahontas (1995) [film] Hollywood: Walt Disney Pictures. Pratchett, T. (1981) Strata, New York: St. Martin’s Press. Pratchett, T. (1983) The Colour of Magic, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe. Pratchett, T. (1986) The Light Fantatstic, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe. Pratchett, T. (1992) Small Gods, London:Victor Gollancz. Pratchett, T. (1998) The Last Continent, London: Doubleday. Pratchett, T. (2000) The Truth, London: Doubleday. Pratchett, T. (2011) Snuff, London: Doubleday. Pratchett, T. (2013) Raising Steam, London: Doubleday. Pratchett, T. (2015) The Shepherd’s Crown, London: Doubleday Children’s. Pratchett, T., Stewart, S., and Cohen, J. (1999) The Science of Discworld, New York: Random House. Pratchett, T., Stewart, S., and Cohen, J. (2002) The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, New York: Random House. Pratchett, T., Stewart, S., and Cohen, J. (2005) The Science of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch, New York: Random House. Pratchett, T., Stewart, S., and Cohen, J. (2013) The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day, New York: Random House. Riddick (2013) [film] Hollywood: Universal Pictures. Robinson, K.S. (1993) Red Mars, New York: Random House. Robinson, K.S. (1994) Green Mars, New York: Random House. Robinson, K.S. (1996) Blue Mars, New York: Random House. Stargate SG-1 (1997–2007) [television] MGM Television. Star Trek (1966–1969) [television] Paramount. Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan (1982) [film] Hollywood: Paramount. Star Trek III:The Search for Spock (1984) [film] Hollywood: Paramount. Star Wars Episode 1:The Phantom Menace (1999) [film] Hollywood: Lucasfilm. Star Wars Episode 2:The Attack of the Clones (2002) [film] Hollywood: Lucasfilm. Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope (1977) [film] Hollywood: Lucasfilm. Star Wars Episode 5:The Empire Strikes Back (1980) [film] Hollywood: Lucasfilm. Star Wars Episode 6:The Return of the Jedi (1983) [film] Hollywood: Lucasfilm. Terminator (1984) [film] Hollywood: Orion Pictures. Weis, M. and Hickman, T. (1990a) The Death Gate Cycle 1: Dragon Wing, New York: Bantam.

175

J e n n i f e r H a rwo o d - S m i t h

Weis, M. and Hickman, T. (1990b) The Death Gate Cycle 2: Elven Star, New York: Bantam. Weis, M. and Hickman, T. (1991) The Death Gate Cycle 3: Fire Sea, New York: Bantam. Weis, M. and Hickman, T. (1992) The Death Gate Cycle 5:The Hand of Chaos, New York: Bantam. Weis, M. and Hickman, T. (1993a) The Death Gate Cycle 4: Serpent Mage, New York: Bantam. Weis, M. and Hickman, T. (1993b) The Death Gate Cycle 6: Into the Labyrinth, New York: Bantam. Weis, M. and Hickman, T. (1994) The Death Gate Cycle 7:The Seventh Gate, New York: Bantam. Wells, H.G. (1895) The Time Machine, London: William Heinemann. Wolf, M.J.P. (2012) Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation, London: Routledge.

176

22

Utopias and Dystopias Peter Sands Utopias and dystopias are always imaginary worlds, for they do not exist anywhere in ­actuality. But they are not merely expressions of perfection or horror, in spite of common usage (Sargent, 1994, p. 6). They are imagined alternatives to the author’s present, either presenting a positive or negative commentary on society. One of the most commonly accepted definitions of utopia is that it is “a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally located in time and space” (Sargent, 1994, p. 9). In other words, a utopia is an imaginary world presented in narrative form and located in a when or a where in relation to the reader. Another definition more specific to fiction is that “a literary utopia is a fairly detailed description of an imaginary community, society, or world—a ‘fiction’ that encourages readers to experience vicariously a culture that represents a prescriptive, normative alternative to their own culture” (Roemer, 1981, p. 3). Utopias can describe either a different and better way of being in the world (utopia or eutopia) or a worse world extrapolated from consequences of the poor choices being made in the author’s time (dystopia). But they are not necessarily reflections of ideals or perfection; utopias are as flawed as any other human creation, no matter the level of detail they involve or the likelihood that their prescriptions and proscriptions might actually come to be. Even those utopias that spawned actual social movements or attempts to put into practice the author’s vision, such as the 19th-century utopian communities called phalanxes after the plans of Charles Fourier, or the Bellamy Clubs that arose around the United States after the publication of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888), were as flawed as any other engineered human society. What really distinguishes the utopia and dystopia from other forms of utopianism or “social dreaming” (Sargent, 1994, p. 1) is that utopia and dystopia come to us as stories; they are “in the first place a piece of fiction” or imaginary world that reflects on the author’s own society or world (Kumar, 1991, p. 20). Society—government, politics, regulation, ideology, all the activities and concepts that characterize people living in community—is the heart of the utopian enterprise. As Ernst Bloch showed in his magisterial study of all forms of utopia, Principle of Hope (1986), utopianism includes various forms of intensely personal dreams, but the utopia—the written, detailed, imagined alternative to the present—is necessarily about society rather than the individual, and exists on a continuum from those personal, abstract dreams to the concrete public and political action in the world (Bloch, 1986: 3–18; Levitas, 1990: 1; Levitas, 2003: 3). Utopianism encompasses the dreams and daydreams of the individual as well as the formal, fictionalized dream of the complete alternative; it expresses a longing or desire for an alternative. But utopias and dystopias are a particular, narrative expression of that longing or desire. As Darko Suvin wrote, utopias are “a discourse about a particular historically alternative and better 177

Peter Sands

community” that is isolated either in space or time and presents an “anatomy” of society to fully outline the alternative (Suvin, 1988, pp. 39–40). The sections that follow selectively survey utopias and dystopia, including some of their sub-genres, and concentrating mostly on English-language literary utopias. It is not possible to be comprehensive. Even dating the genre from the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), the list of utopias is so extensive as to preclude full discussion: by 1988, Lyman Tower Sargent, the field’s preeminent bibliographer, listed around 3,200 titles in his British and American Utopian Literature, 1516–1985. Since then, his list has expanded and become searchable online, including English-language texts from around the world (Sargent, 2016). Many scholars would argue as well for the inclusion of works from before More named the genre. Doing this is beyond the scope of this chapter.

Utopias Forms of utopia appear in nearly every epoch of literary history, if one extends the definition to religious works about Heaven and Hell or Edenic spaces, folk fantasies about lands of plenty such as Cockaigne, or stories of nonexistent cities such as Atlantis, which Plato wrote about in Timaeus and Critias. Others point to representations of ideal cities and states, such as Plato wrote about in The Republic and The Laws. Some scholars do not necessarily consider those earlier works to be utopias, but only expressions of utopianism. Krishan Kumar, for example, and others reserve “utopia” for works that come after and are generically influenced by Utopia (1516), a work by Thomas More, an English lawyer and Lord High Chancellor of England from 1529 to 1532. It was written in Latin and translated into English only after More’s death. Utopia gives the genre its name and its most significant generic features: travel to another place; a dialogue between traveler and resident about the features of the other place; implied and sometimes direct comparison to the traveler’s home country, which is also the country of the reading audience. It also gives the lie to the notion that utopia = perfect, as its alternative to More’s Tudor England includes slavery, capital punishment, and a significant divide between social and economic classes, among other features not likely to appeal to today’s readers. Utopian fiction has been particularly important in the literary history of the United States, itself a country born from the imagination of another, possible world, and in which more science fiction and utopian literature appeared than in other countries, particularly during the genre’s heyday in the 19th century (Clareson, 1985, p. 103ff ). The first American utopia is generally acknowledged to be John Cleves Symmes’s Symzonia (1820), a hollowearth tale that is one of the sources for Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). The first known utopia by a woman writer in the United States is Mary Griffith’s Three Hundred Years Hence (1836), a story of the evolution of the U.S. from the Revolutionary period into the future, which includes much commentary on public health issues, transportation, industry and agriculture, and the crucial role of public education in bringing about gender and class equality. Toward the middle of the 19th century, a great deal of utopian fiction appeared, alongside hundreds of utopian social experiments. And the last decades of the 19th century saw a great flowering of utopias and utopianism in the U.S., with an uptick in the number of communitarian living experiments and about one new novel a year up to 1888. Between 1886 and 1896, there were over one hundred new utopian works, according to Jean Pfaelzer (1983, p. 114). This is often represented through studies of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) and its sequel Equality (1897); Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852)—loosely based on his experiences living in a 178

U t o p i a s a n d Dy s t o p i a s

commune at Brook Farm in Massachusetts; William Dean Howells’s A Traveler from Altruria (1894); and the frequently appearing short fiction in the popular press and literary journals. By the early 20th century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman was well into both her utopian short fiction and a trilogy of utopian novels, Moving the Mountain (1911), Herland (1915), and With Her in Ourland (1916). The first is an imagined future United States characterized by gender equality, the second is a gynotopia or imagined world populated only by women, and the third moves the action from the gynotopia to the United States and Europe, then back to Herland, to explicitly contrast the peaceful women’s world of Herland with Gilman’s lived reality. Around the same time, Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1908) explores socialist revolution. A significant body of non-U.S. utopias appears as well from the 19th through the 20th century, including works by H. G. Wells such as A Modern Utopia (1905) and The Shape of Things to Come (1933); William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890), a response to Bellamy; as well as others.

Feminist and Ecotopian Fictions Two important subgenres of utopia are feminist utopias and ecotopias, coming into prominence in the genre at roughly the same time in the 1960s and 1970s, and often having overlapping themes regarding gender and class equality, the relationship of humans to the rest of the natural world, and social organizations presented as alternatives to masculinist modes characterized by relationships of dominance and aggression. Feminist utopias imagine alternative worlds characterized by gender and class equality— often brought about by improvements to and rationalization of education and economic systems. Some feminist utopias explore or extrapolate the consequence of the separation of men and women into completely separate spheres. Such female-centered utopias are sometimes called gynotopias; male equivalents, much more rare, such as the Jack London story “The Strange Experience of a Misogynist” (1897), are called androtopias. Particularly in the 19th century, feminist or women’s utopias often concerned themselves with domestic spheres and concerns, but it is important to note that these texts raised important social issues through engagement with domesticity. Early U.S. examples of feminist utopias include Griffiths’s Three Hundred Years Hence and Gilman’s Herland.The earliest example of a utopia written in English by a woman is The Description of a New World, Called The BlazingWorld (1666), by the English writer Margaret Cavendish. Another early English women’s utopia, particularly concerned with the domestic sphere, is Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford (1853). More recognizably feminist themes appear in the short fiction collected by Carol Farley Kessler in Daring to Dream: Utopian Fiction by United States Women Before 1950 (1995). Some gynotopias overlap with hollow-earth utopias, locating their worlds within the planet as did Jules Verne in A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), such as Mary Bradley Lane’s Mizora: A Prophecy (1890), which depicts a society of voluptuous, educated women living without men in the center of the earth and reproducing through their superior knowledge of chemistry. In the 20th century, feminism added to the domestic sphere more explicit engagement with other topics and spheres that make the period’s feminist utopias much more politically engaged. Representative examples that range across ecological, postapocalyptic, and gendered themes include Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time (1976), Johanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), Sheri S. Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country (1988), Susy McKee Charnas’s Walk to the End of the World (1974) and Motherlines (1978), and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). A useful, cross-cultural survey of examples of the genre is Frances 179

Peter Sands

Bartkowski’s Feminist Utopias (1989), which analyzes works by writers from the United States, Canada, and France. The ecotopia arises at the same time as the contemporary feminist utopia and often carries overlapping themes. The sub-genre is concerned with the imagination of an alternative in light of the so-called Anthropocene—the geological epoch most characterized by human influence on the world. The genre takes its name from Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (1975) and its sequel Ecotopia Emerging (1981), which depict a secessionist, ecologically minded state in the Pacific Northwest. Other significant works of ecological utopianism include Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge (1990), which, along with The Gold Coast (1988) and The Wild Shore (1984), imagines three alternative futures, ecological, postapocalyptic, and corporate, for Orange County, California; and his trilogy set among the policy and science worlds in Washington, D.C.: Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005), and Sixty Days and Counting (2007). Robinson’s ecological interests are also on display in his Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), and Blue Mars (1996), as well as 2312 (2012), which imagine the terraforming and constitutional problems of colonizing Mars, and then take the action a few hundred years into the future to explore the consequences of a destroyed Terran ecosystem and a civilization that has largely moved out into and terraformed the rest of the solar system. Robinson’s impressive utopian output also includes Aurora (2015), which concerns a “generation ship” or starship intended to support several generations of life en route to another planetary system, a common trope in science fiction that has also appeared in more conventional nonfiction works of science such as the ecologist Garrett Hardin’s Exploring New Ethics for Survival:The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle (1972). Ecological science fiction and utopian fiction frequently veer into the dystopian as well, particularly in the genre of postapocalyptic fiction. Recent examples are Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), which depicts a post-nuclear wasteland devoid of most plant and animal life; Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014), exploring a world changed by a global pandemic, and the attendant effects on human society and the planet itself; and Finnish writer Johanna Sinisalo’s The Blood of Angels (2014), which imagines an alternate future world devoid of humans following the worldwide collapse of the bee populations so important to food production.

Dystopias While utopias present a positive alternative to the present, dystopias are their obverse, presenting an alternative that is noticeably worse than the present. Some scholars refer to them as negative utopias or anti-utopias. The word dystopia dates to 1747, according to Lyman Tower Sargent (2010, p. 4). But it does not describe a recognizable literary genre until the late 19th century. Since that time, dystopia has overtaken utopia as the more popular expression of utopianism. That is, the production of dystopias far outpaces the production of utopias throughout the 20th century and well into the 21st. Examples abound, particularly in young adult fiction and Hollywood film. Many attribute this development to the shocks of the 20th century: economic upheavals, the horrors of World Wars I and II, the long standoff of the Cold War, the disillusionment of the Vietnam era, the rise of ecological consciousness, and the battles for gender and civil rights. If utopias present positive alternatives to the author’s lived experience or historical present, dystopias can be thought of as warning cries: continue on this path or make these choices and here are the horrible alternatives. With the rise of a global science fiction publishing industry, and the increasing industrialization and technologization of the developed world, significant utopian and dystopian works appeared in both English-language and non-Anglophone 180

U t o p i a s a n d Dy s t o p i a s

l­iteratures, most notably Evgeny Zamiatin’s We (1920) and Karel Čapek’s R. U. R. (1920), a play about a dystopian future conflict between humans and robots. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) are among the most commonly used examples of dystopian literature; the first taking place in 2540 and extrapolating negative consequences of eugenic technologies, psychological control of populations, and world governments; the second depicting a totalitarian surveillance society that emphasizes groupthink and criminalizes individuality. One of the most popular contemporary forms of the dystopia is the postapocalyptic dystopia, some of which have already been discussed. These are dystopias that take place after a natural or man-made disaster, such as catastrophic climate change or nuclear war. On television, the zombie series The Walking Dead (2010–present) is a good example of a postapocalyptic dystopia—a landscape littered with the detritus of modern society, and a few survivors struggling to stay alive amid hordes of zombies created through man’s interference with nature. Most zombie narratives are forms of dystopia, using the figure of the zombie to critique contemporary society. But zombie narratives are not the only form of the postapocalyptic dystopia. An early example is Ignatius Donnelly’s Caesar’s Column (1890), a novel the Progressive politician and writer wrote in response to Bellamy. In his vision of a future New York City, a Swiss sheep farmer from a colony in Uganda arrives in New York to attempt direct sales of the colony’s wool without the costly intervention of middlemen. He does not succeed, but does fall in with a conspiracy to create a worldwide uprising of labor against the monied Oligarchy that rules throughout the developed world. This conspiracy, the Brotherhood of Destruction, unleashes a terrible revolution that overthrows all civilization, creates a war of all against all, and reveals the baser and undisciplined instincts of the majority of the world’s people as cities fall and descend in riots, cannibalism, and fire. Gabriel, the Ugandan colonist, escapes with his new bride (a lateral descendant of George Washington), one of the chief conspirators (who had been working the conspiracy in order to free his unjustly imprisoned father), and a few others to the colony in Africa, where they create a pocket utopia in the final section of the novel, replicating a version of the originary narrative of the United States while at the same time walling themselves in and arming themselves against the outside world. Earlier dystopian fiction in other countries often ended with conflagrations consuming civilization, such as the English works After London (1885) and A Crystal Age (1887) (Clareson, 1985, p. 103); in some cases a cyclic theory of history is implied or elucidated, as in Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Liebowitz (1959), which recounts the efforts of a far-future monastery to understand the mysteries of a shopping list from our own time, long after a nuclear war has devastated the earth, or in Russell Hoban’s innovative and influential Riddley Walker (1980), which explores the linguistic and civilizational renewal of England after a similar war. Other examples abound, with H. G. Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come (1933) in many ways setting the parameters of such collapse-and-rebound narratives. Wells’s novel, made into the film Things to Come (1936, directed by William Cameron Menzies), explores the collapse and rebirth over and over of the Western world from 1936 to 2106, positing the eventual development of a technocratic world government that will lead humanity to the stars in due time. Other postapocalyptic dystopias are less hopeful. Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things (1987) documents the corruption and decay of a New York City-like imaginary world, ending in cannibalism and scenes of urban blight, crime, and decay, as the city collapses under the weight of an irrational consumer culture and the influences of various death cults and an authoritarian government. In Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), also made into a popular film (2009, directed by John Hilcoat), a nuclear event has turned the world into a 181

Peter Sands

wasteland devoid of plant and animal life, inhabited by the violent, cannibalistic, degraded remnants of humanity. It ends on an ambiguous note when the young boy who has been traveling the road with his father is taken in by a family—who intend either to raise or eat him—after his father dies. The less hopeful postapocalyptic narratives generally end in complete disaster, with violent remnants of humanity battling others to stay alive, or, less frequently, in last-person stories. An excellent example of the latter is Marlen Haushofer’s Die Wand (1963), recently republished in English as The Wall (1990) and also turned into a feature film of the same name (2012, directed by Julian Pölsler). Haushofer’s Cold War-era narrative recounts three years in the life of an unnamed woman who is apparently the last survivor of a mysterious event that has left her isolated in the Alps behind an invisible wall, with the rest of humanity dead and gone, and takes an elegiac tone for what-might-havebeen for the world.

Conclusion Utopias and dystopias are an expression of a fundamental human tendency toward imagining alternatives. Levitas writes that “construction of imaginary worlds, free from the difficulties that beset us in reality, takes place in one form or another in many cultures” (1990, p. 1). The utopia and the dystopia—the formal written exploration of the positive or negative alternative to already-existing society—is always a fundamentally imaginary world. While utopianism encompasses the daydream about being elsewhere and doing something else, in terms of its literary expression it is a fully realized and imagined world that is different from and in conversation with the author’s own world. More’s Utopia is not so much about an actual island that an actual traveler visited as it is about his Tudor England; 1984 is not so much about an actual future predicted by George Orwell as it is about his warning of the consequences of fascism and totalitarianism in human society. The worlds they imagined are fully developed, in that details of daily life, political structures, and social relationships form the heart of the books, creating a verisimilitude of an actually existing world. The scholarship of utopian studies is dense and far-ranging, crossing into political theory, sociology, literary criticism, history, and other disciplines. Sargent’s Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction (2010) and Krishan Kumar’s similar volume, Utopianism (1991b), are excellent introductions to the concepts and terms, with pointers to reference materials. Readers looking for a more scholarly introduction might consult another of Kumar’s works, Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times (1991a), as well as two significant books by the British sociologist Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (1990) and Utopia as Method (2013). In those two works, Levitas expounds upon and interprets the German scholar Ernst Bloch’s magisterial contribution to the study of utopias, The Principle of Hope (1954). Although it is an older work, few can match the comprehensiveness of Utopian Thought in the Western World (1979) by Fritzie Manuel and Frank P. Manuel. Its language is more approachable than Bloch’s, and its coverage of the various forms of utopia and utopianism is so wide that nearly any student of the genre will find rewards inside. A more recent work exploring the relationship between utopia and sociology is Levitas’s Utopia as Method (2013). Finally, for influential studies of utopia and dystopia that introduce the terms “critical utopia” and “critical dystopia,” see Tom Moylan, Demand the Impossible (1986), and Rafaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan, Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination (2003). A critical utopia is one that has a significant metatext about the nature of utopia and utopianizing in addition to the main narrative; a critical dystopia is a dystopia that leaves open the possibility of a return to hope, a return to utopia. 182

U t o p i a s a n d Dy s t o p i a s

References Baccolini, R. & Moylan, T. (2003), Dystopias and Histories. In Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination (Eds, Baccolini, R. & Moylan, T.) Routledge, New York, pp. 1–12. Bartkowski, F. (1989), Feminist Utopias. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE. Bloch, E. (1986), The Principle of Hope. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Clareson,T. (1985), Some Kind of Paradise:The Emergence of American Science Fiction. Praeger, Westport, CT. Kessler, C.F. (Ed.) (1995), Daring to Dream: Utopian Fiction by United States Women Before 1950. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, NY. Kumar, K. (1991a), Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times. Blackwell, New York. Kumar, K. (1991b), Utopianism. Concepts in Social Thought, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Levitas, R. (1990), The Concept of Utopia. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Levitas, R. (2003),“Introduction:The Elusive Idea of Utopia.” History of the Human Sciences 16.1, pp. 1–10. Levitas, R. (2013), Utopia as Method:The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. Palgrave, New York. Manuel, F.E. & Manuel, F.P. (1979), Utopian Thought in the Western World. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Moylan, T. (1986), Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. Methuen, New York. Pfaelzer, J. (1983), “A State of One’s Own: Feminism as Ideology in American Utopias 1880–1915.” Extrapolation, 24.4, pp. 311–328. Roemer, K. (1981), Defining America as Utopia. In America as Utopia, Burt Franklin, New York, pp. 1–15. Sargent, L. (1988), British and American Utopian Literature, 1516–1985: An Annotated Chronological Bibliography. Garland Publishing, NY. Sargent, L. (1994), “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited.” Utopian Studies, 5, pp. 1–37. Sargent, L. (2016),“Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography from 1516 to the Present.” State College, PA. Penn State Libraries Open Publishing, available at http://openpublishing.psu.edu/ utopia/. Sargent, L. (2010), Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, New York. Suvin, D. (1988), Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction. Kent State University Press, Ohio.

183

23

Uchronias, Alternate Histories, and Counterfactuals George Carstocea Uchronias (also known as alternate histories, alternative histories, or allohistories) are works of fiction that emerge from the difference between an established narrative timeline and a “what-if ” scenario: if a given event is assumed to have gone differently, then the change in that event has repercussions for the flow of time beyond the point of divergence. The term, a neologism formed through a parallel with the much more common “utopia,” highlights this narrative trope’s concern with the flow of time: just as a utopia presents itself as “no-place” while commenting on the possibilities of existing places and spaces, a uchronia reimagines and comments on causality and the temporal unfolding of events within a particular rendering of the world. In the structural view of world-building, counterfactual thinking crystallizes into what we might call the allohistorical conceit (hereafter AC), a recurring storytelling and world-building trope with wide-ranging implications for the entirety of the imagined world. History and historiography, literary and media theory, positivist science, and cultural philosophy have all examined alternate histories according to their respective toolkits. The common thread that unites these avenues of research is misleadingly simple: alternate histories hinge upon a point of divergence from an established narrative and world design. Yet, considered from the perspective of world-building, this simple conceit has wide-ranging implications. Even mass-market alternate histories vary widely in scope and intent: they may focus primarily on military, technological, cultural, or even biological paths not taken; they may see their alternate pathway as entirely plausible, unlikely, or even impossible; they may want to engage in an ideological or scientific polemic, or simply explore the imaginative possibilities offered by the conceit or merge them with extant generic storytelling patterns. Other criteria bring up their own sets of questions: historical rigor, narrative form, genre and culture, medium specificity, and patterns of industrial production and consumption show that the AC can be put to a wide variety of practical uses. To paraphrase John Muir, when we try to pick up the point of divergence by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the (alternate) Universe. Furthermore, the AC opens up the same kinds of structural possibilities whether the diverging timeline emerges in contrast to historical reality or an established fictional timeline; indeed, some alternate histories engage with established historical and fictional formations simultaneously. In the following pages, I map and exemplify allohistorical practices and the various contextual nexuses that inform their production and reception: (1) historical rigor and the

184

U c h ro n i a s , A lt e r n at e H i s t o r i e s , a n d C o u n t e r f a c t ua l s

c­ omplications of contemporary historiography; (2) scientific discourse and the narrativization of mathematical abstractions in the wider culture; (3) industrial practices, culture, and genre; and (4) medium specificity and the affordances of new media. This taxonomy is in no way exhaustive, nor is it meant to be definitive, yet it reveals the overlapping structures that determine the meanings, styles, and practical applications of the AC.

History/Fact/Counterfact Some historians abhor the speculation inherent in alternate history, seeing it as an idle distraction at best, and dangerous speculation at worst—too relativizing to carry the burden of historical truth. Their reticence is rooted in the proliferation of popular works that simplify historical causality, yet try to maintain a claim to speculative rigor and therefore relevance to the actual flow of history. This claim to rigor circumscribes the scope of works that form the basis of the genre for historians, and it narrows down the criteria by which we might judge a work of allohistorical fiction to the evidentiary standards of historical scholarship. Martin Bunzl states this quite directly, and perhaps slightly tautologically, in his essay “Counterfactual History: A User’s Guide”: counterfactual reasoning comes in two varieties—good and bad. The bad reasoning is bad because it has no grounding; it is merely an act of imagination, and unconstrained imagination at that. The good reasoning is good because it can be grounded. (Bunzl, 2004, p. 845) Bunzl’s criterion, plausibility, is often the self-assigned value criterion in traditional military, diplomatic, and political allohistory. Such allohistories are indeed widespread: Livy’s speculation regarding the possibility that Alexander may have decided to expand Westward into Roman lands instead of going East shows that counterfactuals have been part and parcel of historical writing for millennia. Allohistorical premises also formed the basis of some experimental works by 18th- and 19th-century writers, including Alain-René Lesage, Louis-Napoléon Geoffroy-Château, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Theodor Herzl (Schmunk, 2016). However, the AC came to widespread prominence in the 20th century, as the marketplace for speculative fiction reached maturity. Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (1953), a Civil War Southern victory novel, was preceded by Winston Churchill’s If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg (1930), a double-alternate in which he recounts actual history from the perspective of an alternate-history writer in a world in which the South had won the Civil War; these are but two of hundreds of publications on the topic, each with its own perspective and causal mechanics. Contemporary works such as those that form Peter G. Tsouras’s immensely detailed corpus of military allohistory aestheticize the minute details of warfare, with hundreds of pages describing the minutia of military maneuvers and diplomatic finagling. Scholarly historians as well as amateur aficionados and politicians have explored alternatives to official historical narratives: Niall Ferguson’s collection Virtual History (1999), for example, defends the practice in a ninety-page introduction that doubles as a history of counterfactual thinking, followed by nine uchronias authored by academic historians; Geoffrey Hawthorn’s Plausible Worlds (1991), on the other hand, shows that counterfactual thinking has always been part and parcel of the historian’s toolkit, as an implied component of any causal claim—even those made by historians who would bristle at counterfactual thinking. 185

George Carstocea

On the other hand, postmodern historiography distrusts the broad epistemological claims made by previous generations of historians and reframes history as discourse, always engaged in a complex intertextual interplay that links official history to notions of hegemony, statehood, citizenship, cultural identity, race and gender, and so forth. History is, from a postmodern perspective, the discursive locus of active struggles over the stories we tell about ourselves. As such, alternate histories always speak to the power struggles of the present and the ways in which we imagine the future. Gavriel Rosenfeld brings these latent polemical tensions to the surface in his essay “Why Do We Ask ‘What If?’” (2002), focusing not on the plausibility of various historical alternatives, but rather their “ability to shed light upon the evolution of historical memory” (Rosenfeld, p. 93). He focuses on three popular scenarios: Nazi victory in World War II, Confederate victory in the Civil War, and alternate outcomes of the American Revolutionary War. Nazi victory allohistories, in his view, also form an overarching metahistory of 20th-century American cultural trends. Before American involvement in WWII, such stories were primarily calls for intervention. After the Allied victory and during the early Cold War, they waned in popularity, as Soviets became the cultural villains du jour. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, as Germany went through a cultural crisis of its own negotiating its Nazi past, they turned into triumphalistic vindications of American intervention, attempting to preserve the memory of the Holocaust. By the 1970s, as the Nazi threat lost its immediacy, they turned into reflexive, self-critical commentaries on the American issues of the day—the Vietnam war, the Civil Rights movement, the Watergate scandal, and the looming escalation of the Cold War. Finally, in the 1990s, as the Soviet Union collapsed and American ideology was once more presumed victorious, Nazi allohistories turned triumphalist once more (Rosenfeld, 2002, pp. 96–98).

Science/Fiction/Story Just as our everyday, pragmatic understanding of history takes shape through patterns of discourse, breakthrough scientific discoveries have implications for our conceptualization of reality, filtering down into the disputed territory of cultural representation. Two such discoveries emerged over the course of the 20th century, providing fertile conceptual ground for allohistorical speculation: (1) the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics, which implies that all possible alternative outcomes of quantum-level events actually do occur in parallel universes, and (2) the idea of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, popularized as “the butterfly effect” in chaos theory (Gleick, 1988, pp. 9–33). Their timing maps well onto the dispersion of the allohistorical trope in the wider culture. Rosenfeld gathers wideranging evidence that alternate histories grew in popularity as part and parcel of the science fiction boom of the 1960s, boosted by cultural and structural factors—the emergence and subsequent market dominance of consumer electronics, the growth of postmodern understandings of ideology, and, of course, the aforementioned impact of chaos theory (Rosenfeld, 2002, p. 92). Although these two ideas are not mutually exclusive, they imply separate avenues for worldbuilding, which may or may not coexist in the same world. The MWI is often narrativized into the trope of alternate dimensions, sometimes rendered as a multiverse, a collection of coexisting bubble universes. Although the current scientific understanding of MWI postulates that these alternate dimensions do not interact with each other, fiction writers have often taken it as license to explore the clashes and dynamics between parallel worlds. Drawing on the philosophical work of Ruth Ronen (1994), Matt Hills distinguishes three possible modalities for MWI storylines: “modal realism,” “moderate realism,” and “anti-realism” (Hills, 2009). 186

U c h ro n i a s , A lt e r n at e H i s t o r i e s , a n d C o u n t e r f a c t ua l s

The first modality takes the MWI literally, positing that the set of measurable circumstances in our real world is just one of an infinite number of configurations. Moderate realists, on the other hand, “view alternative worlds […] as abstract, hypothetical scenarios within our actual world” (Hills, 2009, p. 433). Put simply, alternate worlds exist only through the exercise of the imagination rather than as ontological fact, but their speculative impact may well teach us something about our real world. Finally, “anti-realists” believe not only that the alternate worlds hypothesis is ontologically baseless, but also that the real world is too complex for exercises in many-worlds speculation to have any explanatory power. The discovery of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, on the other hand, suggests that major consequences can come from a minute divergence. In popular culture, this abstract discovery of chaos theory has most often been simplified into the “butterfly effect” thought experiment: weather systems are deterministic, yet unpredictable because extremely small inputs can greatly alter the subsequent flow of such a system. As such, a butterfly’s wing flap can produce turbulence that might over time propagate and grow into a hurricane on the opposite side of the planet. Allohistorical conceits therefore often begin from infinitesimal changes in the established timeline, seeing the butterfly effect as a speculative carte blanche.

Industry/Culture/Genre Alternate dimensions and complex structures of causality also had a major impact on the industrial practices of the comic book, television, and gaming industries, providing a ready avenue for diversification in major world-building franchises. Crossovers between different imaginary worlds, alternate timelines for existing fantasies, and time-travel and dimensiontravel mechanics have been borrowed as conceptual affordances that allow for the branding, intermedia dispersion, and marketplace differentiation of mass-market fantastic and science fictional worlds. The fictional worlds of both Marvel and DC Comics are split into myriad alternate timelines and dimensions as part of their respective “multiverses,” allowing the corporate parents to create crossovers (thereby exposing the audience of one subset of their world to the premises of another, in the hope of encouraging readership), alternate timelines, and time-travel stories that modify existing continuities. For example, Marvel 1602, a limited series written by Neil Gaiman, imagines the familiar Marvel characters emerging in the Elizabethan era rather than the 20th century. Science fictional universes often delve deeply into the paradoxes and conflicts that emerge from interdimensional and trans-temporal travel. Star Trek (1966–1969), for example, explores both the positive and negative valences of the AC throughout its TV incarnations, and its corpus could easily stand as a catalog of allohistorical possibilities, often commenting on the cultural context at the time of their production. Perhaps the most heralded episode of the original series, “The City on the Edge of Forever” (1967) features the ship’s doctor accidentally changing history by saving a woman from a car crash after he is stranded in the 1930s. His crewmates have to reverse the timeline and let the woman die, even though the captain falls in love with her: if she doesn’t die, she will lead a pacifist movement, discouraging the U.S. from WWII intervention and paving the way for Nazi Germany to develop nuclear weapons before the Allies. Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001), an odyssey that follows the eponymous ship stranded across the galaxy as it tries to make its way back to Earth, tackles both the positive and negative valences of attempting to change history. In the two-parter “Year of Hell” (1997), the Voyager crew is stranded in a sector of space where an alien leader on a time ship has already spent centuries trying to restore his home empire to its former glory through temporal incursions. He is obsessed with reviving his wife, who died in the battle over a small colony, 187

George Carstocea

and his desperation repeatedly brings people into and out of existence with every temporal incursion. In the show’s finale, on the other hand, a grizzled version of Voyager’s captain, who got her crew home after twenty-odd years, changes the timeline in order to bring the crew home quicker, against all the rules she’s sworn to protect. The same narrative dynamics and concerns have formed the primary focus of entire franchises. Quantum Leap (1989–1993), for example, has its protagonist take over the body of a different historical character in every episode, his mission to “set things right that once went wrong, always hoping his next leap will be the leap home.” Sliders (1995–2000) follows a group of scientists who similarly move between alternate dimensions, observing and influencing alternate paths of development, and trying to make their way home. The longrunning BBC cult favorite Doctor Who (1963–1989, 1996, 2005–present) explores humanistic and political concerns through the perspective of its protagonist, a humanoid alien from an extinct species of time travelers (the Time Lords), who pilots a whimsical spacetime-ship, with only one limitation: he cannot travel across the timeline of his own life. The ACs at the core of these shows seem to be more of a declaration of creative freedom than a univalent plot or structural determinant. Their premises even encourage tonal variety: campy and ironic at times, tragic or melodramatic at others, interested in serious ideological or historical speculation, or simply using the premise as a license for fantastic exploration, they are endlessly renewable cultural texts, containers for all the ramifications of genre storytelling. The speculative freedoms of the AC, however, make it difficult to provide a classically satisfying ending without closing the speculative bubble. As such, many alternate timelines are enclosed in a frame story that subsequently returns the reader to the previously established continuity. Isaac Asimov, in his novel The End of Eternity (1955), imagines a world in which humans living in a non-temporal realm called Eternity have managed to shape history so as to avoid conflict and bloodshed. The protagonist realizes that the absence of struggle caused humanity to remain complacent and never explore the universe, which will eventually lead to their demise, and takes it upon himself to destroy Eternity. Stephen King’s novel 11/22/63 (2011), a contemporary uchronia adapted for television by Hulu, envisions time as stubborn and unwilling to change: King’s protagonist travels into the past to prevent the JFK assassination, and the world seems to conspire against him. Even when he finally saves Kennedy, he comes back to the present to find it plunged into endless nuclear winter, forcing him to restore the timeline. Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1980) hinges on the in-world existence of a text long presumed to have been lost: the second book of Aristotle’s Poetics. Taking place in the 13th century, the novel pitches medieval dogmaticism against the early seeds of enlightenment: Eco imagines the Poetics as a defense of laughter and playful imagination, which is destroyed alongside numerous other treatises by an obsessively dour blind monk who despises laughter and considers it nigh-blasphemy. Eco’s imaginative conceit allows him to stage erudite and historically plausible theological conversations between his protagonists, only to return the world to its original course by the end of the book: this alternate past, like many others, never gets to have a future.

Technology/Affordances/Structure By the 1990s, a diversified mediascape, tightly connected to the discourses and practices of globalization, offered up new affordances that empowered the creators and consumers of allohistory.The quick growth of the home video marketplace in the 1980s and 1990s emboldened both creators and fans: the former to add more complex formal and structural patterning to their works, designing them for repeated viewings over time; the latter to engage in i­n-depth 188

U c h ro n i a s , A lt e r n at e H i s t o r i e s , a n d C o u n t e r f a c t ua l s

interpretive work in fanzines and online bulletin boards and, over time, social media and wiki structures. Such fandoms habitually produce non-canonical allohistories that modify their source universes and recombine their components to produce new meanings, often at odds with the intent and desire of the original creators. Computer gaming offloaded the cognitive overhead of table-top strategy games onto the machine, allowing game designers to model in-game abstractions of the real world at a more complex and granular level. Without having to stop at every turn and add up complex scores, gamers can focus on the flow of the game while learning the background mechanics through immersion and experimentation. Strategy games foreground the gaming mechanics—mathematical models that approximate structural patterns of geopolitical, technological, cultural, and economic development. Sid Meier’s Civilization series exemplifies this trend most emblematically, but similar gameplay mechanics have emerged throughout real-time and turn-based strategy games, whether they are rooted in a real historical context (as in Rome: Total War (2004) or Crusader Kings (2004)) or displaced into generic or fictional contexts, in which case they comment on the real world through allegory and structural parallelism (as in Master of Orion (1993), Command & Conquer (1995), and StarCraft (1998)). Civilization (1991) is implicitly rooted in an AC, allowing the player to endlessly replay and reconfigure alternate historical outcomes. Throughout the six versions of Civilization released between 1991 and 2016, the player chooses one of tens of preset civilizations (or hundreds, including user-generated expansions) and shepherds its development across historical eras, vying for superiority against a customizable number of rival civilizations operated by other human players, artificial intelligence agents, or a combination of both. The game encourages variegated paths of development, offering different victory conditions focused on divergent game mechanics—culture, military domination, science, etc.—and ancillary mechanisms that shepherd the player along the timeline. These complex game mechanics model the interconnected dynamics of historical causality, and in effect teach the player how to view world-building structurally. In Civilization, everything matters: geographical diversity, the characteristics of the chosen civilization, population and buildings, resources and military layouts, scientific research, trade patterns, social policies and ideological choices, religious and cultural growth, diplomacy with other nations and citystates, and the personalities of AI players and the even more complex ones of human players, spies, and ambassadors. These balanced game mechanics complicate causality and encourage varied styles of gameplay, offering incentives for specialization as well as disadvantages in the case of overspecialization. A practically infinite combination of paths can lead the player to one of the five victory conditions: military domination, diplomatic leadership, cultural ascendancy, scientific knowledge, and the sum total of gameplay points at a set turn threshold. In effect, every play-through allows the player to actualize a particular alternate pathway for history, making Civilization a sandbox for alternate histories. Mass-market 3-D graphics processing units became widely available in the late 1990s, and the technology improved rapidly in the 2000s. With the widespread adoption of powerful GPUs came a corresponding boom in game-design software and application programming interfaces that enable game designers to create complex, immersive worlds. First-person immersive storytelling, which had been a goal of game designers since the 1970s and underpinned the mechanics of successful games like Wolfenstein 3D (1992), DOOM (1993), or Myst (1993), stood to benefit from these new software and hardware affordances.The increase in processing power, coupled with the growth of the industry and its target audience, allowed game designers to create more complex stylized worlds, using higher-resolution surface textures, lighting schemes, and world geometry to create an impression of near-photorealistic immersion. 189

George Carstocea

The Bioshock series, for example, gained a cult following over the course of the aughts, in no small part due to its allohistorical conceit and its embedding in every aspect of an immersive world design. BioShock’s point of divergence takes place in the 1940s, when a large number of scientists and leaders of industry remove themselves from society at large and establish a utopian city named Rapture on the ocean floor, following libertarian and objectivist precepts for social organization. In the two decades between the point of divergence and the beginning of the game, the city has degenerated into dystopia, a violent, derelict reminder of its founders’ objectivist hubris. Its once-gleaming undersea towers, gardens, and tunnels have fallen into disrepair. The player fills in the background narrative through exploration, through observation, and by listening to abandoned audio journals scattered throughout Rapture. In narrative terms, BioShock (2007) is a second-order ideological parable, a mirror-image polemic against Ayn Rand’s novel-cum-objectivist treatise Atlas Shrugged (1957). Whereas Atlas Shrugged imagines the world collapsing under the heft of regulatory institutions when business elites decide to “strike” against the government, BioShock reverses the valence of this conceit: the elites’ safe haven collapses under the heft of their unchecked egotism and hedonism.Without the tempering influence of a governmental safety net and strong business regulation, Rapture becomes stratified along class lines at breakneck speed. Its scientists are indeed more productive in the absence of strict oversight, but the ethic of the marketplace displaces any sense of social responsibility.Technology proceeds along an alternate developmental timeline, focused on genetic engineering. Rapture’s founder, Andrew Ryan, refuses to intervene when the villainous, power-hungry Frank Fontaine monopolizes the genetic engineering market with his plasmids, genetic elixirs that endow their users with superhuman abilities. A genetic advantage arms race ensues, and a large part of the population mutates into Splicers, violently insane plasmid addicts with weaponized bodies. Fontaine—as much of a Randian as Ryan—wants absolute power, and he manipulates Rapture’s lower classes into starting a civil war that leads to Rapture’s destruction. The point of divergence is not only a plot premise, but rather a blueprint that influences Rapture’s design on every scale. The ideological, social, and technological consequences that are apparent even in the brief summary above determine the city’s cohesive look and feel. Imposing structures of art deco chrome, glass, and neon rise high from the ocean floor, echoing the New York City landmarks that quickly became symbols of capitalist and industrial authority in the years following the Great Depression: the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Rockefeller Center. Rapture’s visual culture combines early-tomid-century American commercial styles with the incipient modernism of art deco, patterning every aspect of the world: advertising from flyers to marquees, functional objects from transistor radios to major-scale hydraulic mechanisms, and aesthetic embellishments that cover the gamut from monumental sculptures to intimate interiors. Rapture is enclosed in metalreinforced glass domes and tunnels, which results in an industrial-hydraulic restyling of its historical design inspirations. The player’s experience of Rapture, however, denies and challenges Ryan’s intended aesthetic of authoritarian grandeur. In addition to the physical dereliction of the space and the ideological failures that allow Splicers to emerge and make civil war inevitable, the lighting scheme heavily references Hollywood noir stylistics. A soft aquamarine haze filters down from the surface through Rapture’s glass enclosures, mixing with warmer, dim lighting from the light fixtures that are still standing and creating a chiaroscuro effect that keeps the player permanently on edge, constantly expecting the next threat to emerge from the shadows. This visual style, which filtered into Hollywood from the German Expressionist films of the Weimar Republic, has historically been associated with subjective, expressive s­torytelling; 190

U c h ro n i a s , A lt e r n at e H i s t o r i e s , a n d C o u n t e r f a c t ua l s

extreme mental states; suspense filmmaking; and the totalizing impact of industrialized, urban modernity on the multitudes who are left behind in a competitive, capital-driven, and machine-driven environment. BioShock’s dystopia draws heavily from this lineage; for example, its all-powerful machines that subject human bodies to their own whims, as well as the manipulation of the lower classes by powerful, mystical leaders, have direct homologues in Fritz Lang’s German Expressionist ur-text Metropolis (1927). The soundtrack, composed primarily of upbeat, idealistic blues and jazz standards from the first half of the 20th century, underlines the contrast between this world’s aspirations and its descent into madness. Rapture is therefore not just a world, it’s an argument, drawing inspiration from a long tradition of progressive ideological parables and allegories, and pointed directly at Ayn Rand’s own objectivist fables. This once-gleaming metropolis, a capitalist pharaoh’s pyramid, attempted to elide the responsibilities of building a cohesive social structure that tempers the more violent trends of unchecked development; as such, it paid the ultimate price. It’s no surprise that, after a sequel set in Rapture, the third game, BioShock Infinite (2013), tackled the ideological implications of a version of American exceptionalism rooted in pseudo-Christian Evangelical morality and a white supremacist, militarist power structure that took hold in a fictional flying steampunk city named Columbia. BioShock’s worlds are salvos in a cultural and ideological war between the libertarian dogma of self-sufficiency and unencumbered freedom of association, and a worldview that prizes social cohesion and the protection of the individuals that are left behind in a world that always seems on the brink of decaying into Hobbesian nightmare: the war of all against all. Alternate histories are multivalent, and the trope bears iteration through various versions of official and unofficial history, as well as the histories of fictional worlds (which themselves often have an argument to make, through metaphor and allegory, about the real world). Across this continuum, between reality and fiction, they offer imaginative possibilities that can flexibly assign agency and causality to dynamic relationships, and polemically mirror the structural elements of the real world: history and memory, ideology and economics, science and culture.

References Asimov, Isaac, (1955), The End of Eternity, Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Hawthorn, Geoffrey, (1991), Plausible Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Hills, Matt, (2009), “Time, Possible Worlds, and Counterfactuals,” in Mark Bould (editor), The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, London, England: Routledge, pp. 433–441. Bunzl, Martin, (2004), “Counterfactual History: A User’s Guide,” American History Review, 109(3), pp. 845–858. Eco, Umberto, (1980), The Name of the Rose, San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Ferguson, Niall, (1999), Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, New York: Basic Books. Gleick, James, (1988), Chaos: Making a New Science, New York:Viking Penguin. King, Stephen, (2011), 11/22/63, New York: Scribner. Ronen, Ruth, (1994), Possible Worlds in Literary Theory, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Rosenfeld, Gavriel, (2002), “Why Do We Ask ‘What If?’ Reflections on the Function of Alternate History,” History and Theory, 41(4), pp. 90–103. Schmunk, Robert B. (2016), Oldest Alternate Histories, bibliography compiled as part of the allohistory resource site Uchronia.net. Retrieved from http://www.uchronia.net/bib.cgi/oldest.html. Singles, K., (2013), Alternate History: Playing with Contingency and Necessity, Germany: De Gruyter. Warf, B., (2002), “The Way it Wasn’t: Alternative Histories, Contingent Geographies,” in R. Kitchin and J. Kneale, (editors), Lost in Space: Geographies of Science Fiction, London and New York: Continuum.

191

24

Virtual Worlds Mark J. P. W   olf The term “virtual” is used in optics to describe the image that is formed when light rays appear to diverge from a single point, but do not actually emanate from that point; hence, the image differs from a “real image,” which can be projected onto a screen (whereas a virtual image cannot). Influenced by Henri Bergson, philosopher Gilles Deleuze suggested that “virtual” is not the opposite of “real,” but is opposed to “actual;” the virtual has an existence, but it is not that of a material existence (Deleuze, 2002: 112–116). A reflection in a mirror is virtual but not actual, since it has all the appearance of something material, without being so. Extending this idea in 1938, avant-garde theater director and essayist Antonin Artaud described the nature of the theater as “la réalité virtuelle,” and in English, the term “virtual reality” appeared in The Judas Mandala (1982), a novel by Damien Broderick. The term was popularized during the 1980s when used by Jaron Lanier, whose company, VPL Research, produced head-mounted displays and data gloves, the first virtual reality (VR) equipment to be commercially available. Since then, the notion of “virtual worlds,” experienced through such technology, has grown in popular culture in science fiction novels and films. Thus, virtual worlds differ from other imaginary worlds because one can see them, but not enter into them.

The Ontological Status of Virtual Worlds Virtual objects and worlds occupy a curious ontological status that is somewhere located between the actual and the imaginary. Unlike things that are purely in one’s imagination, a virtual object is something that is visible that appears to be material, but is illusory, either because it is not material, or because the material objects used to portray the world do so only under a pretense of being something they are actually not. The materials used to convey the presence of virtual worlds bring about the world visually, giving it a presence (and in the case of video games like MMORPGs, a persistent presence) without giving it a physical presence in which objects are the very things they appear to represent. Since virtual worlds can be seen, they need not be visualized by an audience, though they will still require imagination since there will remain many gaps in the world data to be filled in by the viewer. Thus, a virtual world is always reliant on materials outside of itself for its presentation without being actually made of those materials; for example, one could own and hold the prop lightsaber used by Luke Skywalker in the films, but one still would not have an actual, functioning lightsaber from the diegetic world of Star Wars.

192

V i rt ua l Wo r l d s

Early Virtual Worlds The earliest example of travel to a virtual world is the dreaming that occurs during sleep; and it is still the most vivid form of virtual world experience, sometimes leaving the dreamer a very strong impression that what was experienced was real, at least during the dream. Mirror images also presented a virtual space (which Alice enters in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)), and the theater stage, a space set aside by mutual consent of the audience and performers, represented other places and entire worlds, like that of Nephelokokkygia (Cloudcuckooland) from Aristophanes’s The Birds (414 B.C.) or Prospero’s Island from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611). Painted images saw the refinement of techniques that created illusory spaces in quattrocentro perspective-based painting, particularly trompe-l’oeil techniques used to extend actual three-dimensional spaces. And during the latter half of the 1800s, photography and stereoscope viewers further improved the illusion of a three-dimensional space, while museum dioramas created theatrical vignettes with painted backdrops that extended real spaces into the curved walls that surrounded them. Like the theatrical stage, other spaces and material objects could be used as miniature standins to represent much larger worlds; dollhouses, model train sets, and playsets, for example, all represented miniature versions of imaginary places, in the imaginations of both children who played with them as well as the adult collectors and hobbyists who built them. Similarly, movie sets could also be grouped along with theater sets, differing in the fact that the former were further virtualized by being filmed and mediated for audiences. Unlike the stage, the virtual worlds represented by dollhouses, model train sets, toy soldiers and their landscapes, board games, and playsets all allowed users to interact within the world, through the use of a surrogate character, usually represented by a doll or a miniature figurine representing a person, or perhaps an animal or a vehicle. This additional feature also required an additional pretense, since living beings in these worlds were represented by objects, rather than by other living beings, as was the case on the theatrical stage. But the tradeoff is considered worthwhile due to the participatory nature that is present in such worlds, and audience participation would be a great part of the impetus behind the development of video games and other digital virtual worlds.

Digital Virtual Worlds While virtual images and mirror images depend on the divergence of light rays, computer imaging allows users to generate images of virtual objects and scenes that have no material referents.The first computer to use a graphical display was the Whirlwind I, designed and built from 1947 to 1951 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the U. S. Navy. It ran projectile trajectory simulations, with simple graphics made of lines and points, but it was enough to imply events taking place in real time in a virtual space seen onscreen. Computer graphics developed throughout the 1950s, and, in 1962, MIT computer science students completed Spacewar!, one of the first graphical mainframe computer games. Video games became one of the main uses for interactive, onscreen imaginary worlds. Players controlled spaceships or other types of avatars to interact within the world. These worlds would grow in size and complexity, with the first graphically three-dimensional game worlds appearing in 1974, in Steve Colley’s Maze War and Jim Bowery’s Spasim (short for Space Simulator), the latter of which could support up to 32 online players at once. Online worlds would become used for both gaming and communication, especially after the development in 1978 of multi-user dimensions (or dungeons), known as MUDs, in which players 193

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

could ­communicate with each other via text. Finally, in 1986, Lucasfilm’s Habitat program was MUD with a graphical user interface, and became one of the first large-scale online communities. Throughout the 1980s and especially the 1990s, the largest virtual worlds of video games would be continent-sized and host hundreds of thousands of avatars, each controlled by a human subscriber. These games, known as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), would also be persistent online worlds, which meant that they continued to exist and run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, some continuing for decades. Such continuing existence gave these worlds an even greater sense of being like a real place, and other non-game worlds like Second Life (2003) also would appear as places for virtual communities to form. Other technologies also allowed users to interact in virtual worlds, and control their experiences there. Lanier’s VPL sold a “data glove” that controlled a computer-generated hand within the virtual space. Since then, a number of other hand-controlled devices have appeared, and other forms of input, such as those used in motion-capture, silhouette-tracking, and gesture-recognition technology, have allowed the control and manipulation of characters in virtual worlds. Motion-capture technology is used particularly by the makers of film and video games who wish to give computer-animated figures life-like movement without having to animate everything by hand. Other technologies, like touch-screens and voice recognition software, allow other forms of interaction with objects and characters seen onscreen. Developments in software are changing virtual worlds as well, especially agents (or “bots,” short for “robots”) run by artificial intelligence (AI). Some of these include mobs, groups of which roam about killing player-characters whom they come across, until they run into ones who can kill them; merchants programmed for trade with player-characters; bots that can fix things for players, teleport them, or train them; and other AI-controlled functions determining attitudes of bots and managing character relationships (Castronova, 2005: 93–94). In large, online worlds, however, most interaction is between player-characters controlled by human beings, resulting in social and economic behaviors.

Social and Economic Aspects of Virtual Worlds Since the rise of MUDs, virtual worlds have become social worlds, where users can gather virtually regardless of their actual geographical locations. The persistent nature of MMORPGs has led some players to remain online for several hours every day, and, for some, online virtual worlds have become a main source of social interaction. For example, in World of Warcraft (2004), players join guilds, raid groups, and other groups, and go on quests together, while in the space trading game EVE Online (2003) players control characters who join corporations (which can have hundreds of members, all hierarchically arranged under a CEO), and corporations work together in alliances competing against other alliances. According to “Eve Who,” an online directory for EVE Online, as of late 2016 there were 9,126,204 Characters, 359,520 Corporations, and 3,052 Alliances (https://evewho.com/corp/). Not all online virtual worlds are games; Second Life (2003) is an online virtual world in which participants are not given goals or objectives. Players can use a built-in three-dimensional modeling tool and build their own virtual objects and buildings, and can develop their own plots of virtual land, as well as visit the constructions made by others. The world is more than simply a social setting or one just for play: there are conferences held in Second Life, some global in scope; business meetings are held there; and it has also been used to bring students together in a kind of virtual classroom, and Linden Labs, the makers of Second Life, has offered 194

V i rt ua l Wo r l d s

free software for classroom use. One author, Megan Conklin, has even found over one hundred uses for Second Life in the college classroom (Conklin, 2007). Virtual worlds offer users a safe place for communication, allowing them to craft an online identity freely regardless of who they are. Users often can choose the race, gender, and overall design of their avatars, sometimes down to the hairstyles, clothing, and facial appearance of their online alter egos. While this can lead to the deception of others, it also allows users to experience a different identity that may lead to a greater understanding of others. Many users, however, have virtual-world identities that are not far removed from their real-world ones. Thus, it happens that many people who become friends in virtual worlds build real friendships and may even get to know one another in person, face-to-face. In Second Life, and in other virtual worlds, avatars can date, get engaged, and get married, and some of these relationships also carry over to actual marriages in real life.Weddings have become a big business in Second Life; for example, a bridal show held there attracted 40 vendors and over 800 attendees (“Virtual world, real emotions,” 2008). In Second Life, and elsewhere, users can build virtual objects, and these are regularly bought and sold, both in virtual stores within the virtual worlds, or on websites like eBay. The buying and selling of virtual items has led to the appearance of entire virtual economies, which one can find in Second Life and MMORPGs, including Runescape (2001), Entropia Universe (2003), World of Warcraft, and EVE Online, some in the millions of dollars. In many cases, in-world currencies can be exchanged for real-world currencies, making virtual items a very profitable venture for some. Jon Jacobs, a player in Entropia Universe, for example, bought a virtual resort, Club Neverdie, for USD $100,000, and after owning it for a few years, sold off sections of the location for a total sale of USD $635,000, making a profit of over half a million dollars in the process (Gibson, 2014). The economic opportunities found in virtual worlds have even led to the practice known as “gold farming,” which is now illegal in some virtual worlds. Especially in the 1990s and 2000s, gold farming provided full-time employment for workers in developing countries, who would spend hours leveling up characters and then selling them to wealthy players who paid real-world currency for the virtual characters rather than spending their own time to advance them to a high level. Many MMORPGs have now banned gold farming, and do not allow characters to be bought and sold. The construction, sale, and purchase of virtual items, however, remains a lucrative market. Even outside of online virtual worlds, one can find people making money from the construction of virtual items and virtual world locations. For example, Daz Productions, Inc. (also known as DAZ 3D) is a software company that specializes in the sale of three-dimensional computer-generated models, offering a free program, DAZ Studio, and selling others, such as Bryce and Carrara, for 3D graphics and modeling. The Daz website features a shop where designers can sell their virtual items and models, including some that are entire locations and digital scenes that can be used in computer animation. Other websites, like DigitalxModels .com, also sell virtual models online for artists and animators.

Virtual Worlds in Fiction While technologically based virtual worlds, like those described above, only reproduce the sights and sounds of a world, the notion of a virtual world has a long history in fiction, where it is more technologically advanced, to the point of creating worlds indistinguishable from lived reality. This history extends back at least as far as E. M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” (1909), in which humanity lives underground, with each person hooked up to 195

M a r k J . P. Wo l f

a machine that provides all bodily needs and connects all users together ­electronically, so that they can continually share and discuss ideas. As the title implies, the system is doomed to failure. Another early short story imaging VR equipment is Stanley G. Weinbaum’s “Pygmalion’s Spectacles” (1935), in which an electrical set of goggles takes the main character, Dan, to the world of Paracosma, which he can see, hear, smell, and touch. Virtual reality devices (some of which send signals directly into the user’s cortex) and their counterpart (false, implanted memories, which retroactively create a virtual world in the recipient’s experiences) were often employed in the works of author Philip K. Dick, as in his short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966) and his novel A Maze of Death (1970), both of which end with the twist that what the main character (and the reader) was perceiving as real turns out to be the product of a simulation.The confusion between the real world and a virtual world would be used often enough to become a trope in science fiction. In Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994), and other Star Trek series that followed, the Holodeck would become the perfect virtual reality device, which used holographic imaging devices and intricately shaped force fields to generate what appears to be another reality around one or more users, which can be directly perceived without the need for a headmounted display. Inevitably, something almost always goes wrong with the Holodeck, trapping users inside of it with the safety settings turned off or not working, making threats to their lives very real. Other episodes, like “Ship in a Bottle” (1993), play with the confusion caused by indistinct boundaries between the real and the artificial. Movies and television have also employed the tropes of virtual worlds becoming confused with the actual world. David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999) features “game pods” that are attached directly to players’ spinal cords, providing an experience that simulates all their senses, while at the same time complicating what is reality and what is not. The Wachowski Brothers’ movie The Matrix (1999) likewise featured a spinal-based virtual world connection that provides all the user’s sensations, this time for a more sinister purpose outside of gaming; machines have taken over the world and have imprisoned most of humanity unknowingly in a simulation of the world in the late 20th century.Television programs occasionally use similar plot devices; the episode of Person of Interest (2011–2016) titled “6,741” (2016) turns out to all be an electrochemical simulation that takes place completely in the character’s mind, though viewers are led to believe that it is real, until the very ending. The episode’s title is revealed to indicate the number of simulations that have occurred, with the one we see being just the most recent one—a technological version of the “it was all a dream” trope found earlier in fiction. In the early 20th century and before, it was still common to try to provide a realistic explanation of how a story’s main character went to a fantasy world and returned, and dreaming was a common justification used. Alice’s trips to Wonderland and through the looking-glass were both attributed to dreams, as was Little Nemo’s trips to Slumberland. The Dreamlands of H. P. Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle set of stories is an alternate dimension entered by dreaming, and multiple people can appear in the same dream story. Apart from actually dreaming, the virtual worlds of dreams are also entered by characters and shared by them either through supernatural means (as in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)), through technological means (as in Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)), or even just as a magical realist convention (as in Akira Kurasawa’s Dreams (1990)). This has the advantage of not having to explain how the virtual world was created—it is someone’s dream—while, at the same time, the dreams are often controlled and shared by multiple participants other than the dreamer, similar to technological virtual worlds. Likewise, since the events of the virtual world are not actual, the dramatic stakes of events occurring there are 196

V i rt ua l Wo r l d s

raised by the rule that if you die in your dream, you die in reality. Thus, dangers faced in a dream are as dangerous as real-world dangers, only the dreamstate allows them to be far more fantastic and operate by additional ontological rules that complicate situations. Inception even introduces multiple levels of dreamstates, nested within one another, requiring characters to be woken up multiple times to emerge safely from the dream world. Likewise, injuries sustained in the dreamworld remain when the person wakes up. Neo is bleeding when he is disconnected from the Matrix; Tina and Nancy emerge from their nightmares with Freddy Krueger with slashes and burn marks, respectively; and in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time universe, characters injured in a shared dreamworld known as Tel’aran’rhiod emerge back into the real world with their injuries, and do not wake up at all if they die there. The virtual worlds of fiction, regardless of their justification for existence, provide an imaginative release from the seemingly ironclad ontological rules and limitations of the real world, while also providing new and creative dangers and nemeses. In some ways, the virtual worlds of fiction (some of which could be termed “virtual virtual worlds”) help to drive the development of virtual worlds in the real world, bringing them slowly ever-closer to what authors have imagined. And virtual worlds in general explore the possibilities inherent in visualized imaginary worlds, and, in so doing, help us to visualize and work toward the futures possible in the real world.

References Artaud, Antonin (1938), The Theatre and Its Double, translated by Mary Caroline Richards, New York, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958. Carroll, Lewis (1871), Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, London, England: Macmillan Publishers. Castronova, Edward (2005), Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, Chicago, Illinois, and London,England: The University of Chicago Press. Conklin, Megan S. (2007),“101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom,” available at http://uksl. pbworks.com/f/101Uses4SecondLife.pdf. Deleuze, Gilles (2002), “The Actual and the Virtual” in Dialogues II, revised edition, translated by Eliot Ross Albert, New York and Chichester: Columbia University Press, pp. 112–116. Dick, Philip K. (1966, April), “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, pp. 407–427. Dick, Philip K. (1970), A Maze of Death, New York, New York: Doubleday Publishing. Forster, E. M. (1909, November), “The Machine Stops” in The Oxford and Cambridge Review. Gibson, Nathan (2014), “10 of the Most Expensive Virtual Items in Video Games,” TheRichest.com, November 15, 2014, available at http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/ most-popular/10-of-the-most-expensive-virtual-items-in-video-games/. Jordan, Robert (1990), The Eye of the World, New York, New York: Tor Books. “Virtual World, Real Emotions: Relationships in Second Life,” CNN, 11:54 a.m. EST, Mon December 15, 2008, available at http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/12/12/second.life.relationship.irpt/ index.html?_s=PM:LIVING. Weinbaum, Stanley G. (1935) “Pygmalion’s Spectacles,” available at http://www.gutenberg.org/ files/22893/22893-h/22893-h.htm.

197

25

Interactive and Participatory Worlds Matthew Freeman Interactive and participatory worlds are in many defining ways products of a wider ­culture and technological landscape that, as Henry Jenkins puts it, “absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways” (1992: 55). This chapter explores some of the pertinent issues surrounding interactive and participatory worlds, both in and outside of the wider context of media convergence and participatory culture. I detail the defining characteristics of a range of participatory worlds, exploring their cultural, creative, and interactive components. To do so, the chapter outlines the social and historical contexts by which audiences began to interact with imaginary worlds during the 19th and early 20th centuries, before moving on to examine the dynamics of participatory worlds in the age of digital convergence. Finally, the chapter offers some new perspectives on participatory and interactive worlds by considering the complex underlying rationales that can underpin why audiences choose to participate in imaginary worlds across media.

Contextualizing Interactive and Participatory Worlds The practice of producing and engaging with imaginary worlds that are interactive or participatory in nature can be understood in a number of ways. It can also be traced and conceptualized according to a range of contexts and perspectives. Mark J. P.Wolf acknowledges an innate correlation between imaginary worlds and the participatory behaviors of audiences, noting that “the experiencing of imaginary worlds has always required the active participation of the audience, whose imaginations are called upon to fill gaps and complete the world gestalten needed to bring the world to life” (2012: 138). Famously, Henry Jenkins defined participatory culture as “culture in which fans and other consumers are invited to actively participate in the creation and circulation of new content” (2006: 331). According to Jenkins, participatory culture is characterized by particular ideals such as a “strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others,” where “members believe that their contributions matter” and where “members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created)” (2012). Jenkins, moreover, theorized the relationships between participatory culture and media convergence as to some extent intertwined developments of the contemporary landscape. Media convergence, itself “the coming together of things that were previously separate” (Meikle and Young, 2012: 2), has come to dominate contemporary understandings of the models through 198

I n t e r a c t i v e a n d Pa rt i c ipat o ry Wo r l d s

which culture is produced and consumed across platforms. Entire media industries, along with their technologies and practices, have become increasingly aligned, branded, participatory, and networked. As Henry Jenkins writes, “media convergence makes the flow of content across multiple media inevitable” (2003). Convergence has accelerated the ways in which imaginary worlds are developed as media-traversing participatory spaces. It is in this way that concepts of media convergence, participatory culture, and transmediality have become key to exploring the interactivity and participation of imaginary worlds. Mark J. P. Wolf shows that “imaginary worlds are not only transmedial and transnarrative, but transauthorial as well” (2012: 269). That is to say that imaginary worlds often traverse multiple media platforms as well as authors in the process of building a rich canvas of fictional characters, spaces, places, religions, myths, politics, etc. World-making, then, itself the art of transmedia storytelling, argues Jenkins, is “the process of designing a fictional universe that will sustain … development, one that is sufficiently detailed to enable many different stories to emerge but coherent enough so that each story feels like it fits with the others” (2006: 335). In other words, transmediality has become a means of understanding the flow of content and imaginary worlds across multiple media, with this “circulation of media content—across different media systems, competing media economies, and national borders—depend[ing] heavily on consumers’ active participation” (Jenkins, 2006: 3). Though convergence, as Stein notes, “recognizes the expanse of audience authorship,” this participation of audiences is most notably—though not always—an affordance of digital media specifically rather than a general characteristic of transmediality itself (2013: 405). Interactivity is a property of technology, while participation is a property of culture. Jenkins (2009) insists that the performance of audiences is often a key outcome of transmedia storytelling, describing “the ability of transmedia extensions to lead to fan produced performances that can become part of the transmedia narrative itself.” Scolari, Bertetti, and Freeman (2014: 3) suggest that there are different levels of participation and performance ranging from the consumer of a single media form to the “prosumer” who expands the imaginary world by producing new content, typically via interactive digital media forms such as websites and online platforms including YouTube. Jenkins emphasizes that transmediality, new technologies, and convergence have indeed all worked to make this kind of performance possible, empowering audiences by giving them the “right to participate” (2006: 23).

The Past That users have the right to participate may be true, but participatory and interactive worlds are by no means specific to the digital age. Steve Coulson, creative director of Campfire—a Toronto-based company specializing in participatory storytelling—argues that media-based participation can be stripped to a few basic characteristics, most of which predate contemporary convergences: At a very simple level, you can say participation is playing a game, or doing ­something interactive on a screen. But at its most simplistic level, participation may be in what order to consume media, or when to consume them, and how fast to consume them. (Hassler-Forest, 2016: 685b) And of course participatory practices of playing games predate media.Wolf argues that “interactive worlds can be traced back to children’s play and games of pretend,” looking particularly at the table-top imaginary worlds of the 19th century (2012: 138). For Wolf, interactive 199

M at t h e w F r e e m a n

imaginary worlds such as dollhouses, model train sets, board games, and playsets all afforded participation and interactivity “either in role-playing situations or through the use of toys, like dolls and toy soldiers used as avatars through which children can vicariously enter the tabletop worlds they created” (2012: 138). Such table-top forms of interactive worlds were quickly followed by the technologically based imaginary worlds of the early 20th century, driven in part by wider transformations in industry. For as Wolf also observes, “with the mass production of dollhouses in the nineteenth century and rise of model railroading in the early twentieth century, children’s play gained more world-building tools” (2012: 138). By the turn of the 20th century, for example, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) was extending its world across multiple media and inviting consumers to interact with its narrative adventures. That tale’s magical Land of Oz was crossing novels, posters, theater, newspaper comic strips, and cinema by around 1910, inviting audiences to interact with the world. With regard to the Land of Oz, competitions became a strategy for building the world as an interactive space—competitions that were woven into the stories of a comic strip series called Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz, published in 1904. Its author, L. Frank Baum, used competitions as a means of exploiting his fictional characters and inviting participation—working to point audiences toward Oz merchandise, which in doing so led to new fictional settings being added to the world. Consider “What Did the Woggle-Bug Say?”—a popular competition used in the Queer Visitors comic strips and which built a weekly contest around the Woggle-Bug character in the first seventeen editions. Throughout the course of each comic, the Woggle-Bug was posed a question from his fellow Oz comrades, though his answer was not revealed to readers. At the end of each story, readers were then asked “What did the Woggle-Bug say?” and were invited to submit their guesses to the newspaper in the hope of winning items of Oz merchandise and cash prizes. But these responses did more than promote merchandise; they also dictated the storytelling direction of upcoming comic strips, as the often highly creative and imaginative ideas of readers came to influence and inspire Baum to explore further untapped terrains of the already expanding Land of Oz world. Such a case of competitions and storytelling aligning shows how early 20th-century newspaper comic strips came to exemplify features of participatory and interactive worldbuilding, while the competitions published inside those newspapers also provide us with an historical example of how “fan produced performances … invited by the creator … become part of the transmedia narrative itself ” at this time (Jenkins, 2009). Moreover, the miniature table-top imaginary worlds of the 19th century—from dollhouses to toy soldiers—alongside the literary case of Oz in the early 20th century demonstrate that audience explorations of imaginary worlds pre-date the contemporary era of convergence and participatory culture. Similarly, both Will Brooker (2002) and Jonathan Gray (2010) have shown how toys can expand or reshape a participatory transmedia world, and in the 1930s cases such as Tarzan can be seen to have adopted strategies of merchandising to enable the stories and world to extend and expand through participation. By the mid-1930s, Tarzan’s creator Edgar Rice Burroughs had issued a total of twenty-six companies with a license to manufacture Tarzan merchandise (Porges, 1975: 489–492). Items made in the likeness of Tarzan or branded items that the character used in the context of the world included Tarzan bread, Tarzan knives, Tarzan belts, Tarzan household kitchen utensils, and Tarzan ornamental bows and arrows, to name just a few (Vernon, 2008: 34–35). This merchandise, carefully inserted into the fictional milieu of the stories—which themselves were expansions of the world published elsewhere—was an intertextual cornerstone of the fictional world that impacted on how the narrative actually 200

I n t e r a c t i v e a n d Pa rt i c ipat o ry Wo r l d s

unfolded across media. (Entire plots in the Tarzan comic strip, for example, were dictated by Burroughs’s merchandising deals (Freeman, 2016).) And in so doing, it was the ­merchandise— functioning as artifacts within the world itself and as a physical, extractable item from that world—that contributed as much to the process of building the Tarzan world as any of the media forms in which its stories unfolded. This focus on games and merchandise has suggested the ways in which media products were developed so as to connect imaginary worlds together, as processes of promotion and commodification.

The Present In the past, in fact, interactive and participatory worlds were largely underpinned by widescale industrial and technological developments, notably in mass communication, new printing technologies, and merchandising, all of which afforded audiences to more easily engage with the media creations that they loved. Understanding how participatory worlds existed under a different logic besides the digital participatory model of contemporary media convergences also means acknowledging factors of promotion, with participation offered as a kind of marketing strategy (Freeman, 2016). It is this same notion of participation-as-promotion that has come to characterize any number of interactive and participatory worlds in the digital era, too. In the age of convergence culture, the job of continuing to expand the Land of Oz across media, for example, rests most emphatically in the hands of marketing teams and digital agencies. One website called findyourwaytooz.com, created by Disney and UNIT9 and devised as an official promotional website for Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), allowed audiences to walk around the fictional spaces seen throughout the narrative of that film.The website made use of digital convergence by blending 3D animation, video, audio, and gameplay to take audiences on an “interactive journey through a Kansas circus, which leads you to the Land of Oz after you are swept up by a massive storm” (UNIT9, 2013). Transmedia websites such as findyourwaytooz.com are typically prized for their ability to blend the affordances of multiple media forms to create, in that instance, at least, “a fun, immersive experience that users can form a strong connection with” (UNIT9, 2013). Steve Coulson, despite his earlier characterization of participatory worlds based on traits of play, order, and speed of consumption, similarly notes that the on-demand nature of digital media is key to understanding the allure of many contemporary interactive and participatory worlds (Hassler-Forest, 2016b). For Coulson, on-demand affords audiences to “choose when, where, and what comes to [them] and in which format, and certainly digitization is therefore a big part of the on-demand revolution” (Hassler-Forest, 2016: 685b). In the digital industry, too—at least in the U.S. and the U.K.—participatory transmedia worlds based on the modern on-demand nature of digital convergences have themselves come to be perceived as a new form of storytelling or narrative engagement. Conducttr, for example, a London-based transmedia content producer, works to generate the building of participatory worlds via forms such as alternate reality games (ARG) or location-based games (Pratten, 2012). Conducttr works on the assumption that a story allowing audiences to roam the world and discover the story for themselves by questioning, unlocking, solving, visiting, and generally exploring all the platforms made available by the creators is a richer, more dynamic and engaging story. Yet a model of participatory transmedia worlds based on this logic of convergence culture faces notable challenges. One challenge concerns the question mark over how to produce (or rather co-produce) such participatory transmedia worlds outside of ARG or promotion-based strategies. Jonathan Gray, for instance, explores the benches that were erected in anticipation 201

M at t h e w F r e e m a n

of the film District 9 (2009), and the ways they contributed to narrative exposition and shaped emotional reactions to the film as key sites of participatory world-building: All that can happen before you even know there is a movie. Now when you are told that there is a movie, and that these benches are part of it, they have given you an experience of that world.You have set foot in it and had an experience in it. (Gray, 2010b) Like many of today’s participatory worlds based in film and television, at least, much of this interactive and participatory content occupies the status of promotion or publicity. Brian Clark notes that most of the transmedia projects based in the U.S. and U.K. today are funded through promotional and marketing funds (2011). Clark goes on to note that the creatives involved in such so-called marketing materials continue to make a forceful argument that their work should be understood as “content” and not simply as “promotion,” with economic and labor relations issues at stake in the dispute between the two terms. A second challenge concerning a contemporary model of participatory transmedial worlds concerns a question mark over why, or when, audiences choose to participate in worlds. Indeed, what exactly is the relationship between what Michael Saler calls “geographies of the imagination” (2012: 4) and the audiences who actually engage with them? Christy Dena introduces an emerging form of participatory culture, “one that is not a modification or elaboration of a primary producer’s content,” but instead one that is based on a theory of “tiering” audiences in ARGs, “targeting different players with different content” (2008: 2). Just as Dena explores aspects of player-created tiers to assess shifts in participatory ARGs, Charlotte Taylor-Ashfield shows how authorship standards across film, television, and comics industries can impact on how audiences engage with interactive and participatory worlds, and what they do with those worlds (2016). Importantly, Taylor-Ashfield points to the ways in which fans of Captain Marvel attached themselves closely to the work of author Kelly Sue DeConnick, which resulted in containing transmedial migration and participation rather than cultivating its spread, thus effectively regulating the participation of audiences (2016).

The Future? Moreover, amidst the influx of content, brands, narratives, and indeed worlds across multiple platforms that have flourished with the rise of media convergence, it is not enough to assume that the creation of a single and coherent imaginary world is necessarily enough to explain the specificities of and reasons for why audiences choose (or in some cases, choose not) to cross multiple media and to participate in the world. Hassler-Forest (2016a: 3) argues that there is a fundamental contradiction between industrial understandings of a fictional transmedial world—which emphasize the “straightforward assembly” of “creative production”—and “fan culture perspectives” that highlight expansiveness and the creative deferment of narrative closure. Further to this, do all audiences really engage in participatory transmedia activities? Are worlds, in and of themselves, powerful enough to encourage fans to follow fictions across an array of texts? And is the creation of an interconnected world capable of igniting sustained participation from all corners of a given fan base? If not, then which fans do opt to engage in participatory practices, under what circumstances, and for what reasons? Given the multifaceted and seemingly endless combination of ways that mark the actions of today’s media audiences, perhaps it is time to move beyond characterizing the behaviors of participatory audiences simply according to more industrially defined concepts of sto202

I n t e r a c t i v e a n d Pa rt i c ipat o ry Wo r l d s

rytelling, world-building, brand, or character. Rather, it is crucial to analyze the behaviors and motivations of a participatory media-crossing audience according to a much more fluid, paratextual, and value-laden participatory ethos. At a moment when the media industries are producing so much content, across so many platforms, each with so many varying extensions, it is now time to re-think critical assumptions that it is simply a narrative, a world, or even a character that is being engaged with across platforms, and instead to analyze the more specific and messy rationales for why audiences participate in worlds across media. Moving toward a fan studies perspectives and, in particular, building on Matt Hills’ work into how transmedia fandoms operate as unique “communities of practice” (2015), consider how fans of the aforementioned Captain Marvel engaged in participatory and interactive practices only when the participatory behaviors in question encapsulated a layered ethos based on an anti-commercial gift economy—that is, participatory fan productions that are circulated freely with no financial gain for contributors, all the while held up by an underlying sense of reciprocity between fans (Hellekson, 2009). Media industries have frequently interpreted the ideal form of fan participation as “continuous consumption” and financial support of a franchise (Scott, 2012: 43), which for a corporation such as Disney—who owns Marvel Comics—would be enacted by fans through collecting trivia, merchandise, and indeed comic books themselves. Even prior to the first issue of the Captain Marvel comic book being published, writer DeConnick was also using “fannish” platforms including Tumblr and Pinterest to circulate less commercial forms such as fan-art, crafts, and cosplay of the character. This meant that prior to any official texts being published, DeConnick—positioned by many fans as the “auteur” of this fandom (Taylor-Ashfield, 2016)—was acknowledging transformative works as not only a valid way to participate within the fan community, but also legitimizing this interactive, freely circulated material as valuable participatory extensions of the Captain Marvel imaginary world. DeConnick even participated in this fan world herself, selling T-shirts through WeLoveFine and donating her profit to The Girls Leadership Institute—a charity whose goal to “help foster and give voice to the heroines of tomorrow” aligns closely with the gift economy values of the Captain Marvel fan community (TaylorAshfield, 2016). In the case of the participatory motivations of the Captain Marvel fan community, at least, reciprocity, community, anti-commercialism—not to mention an open dialogue between creator and consumer—all directly informed which stories fans chose to engage with and how they chose to participate in the world of those stories. In some sense, then, the fan practices of participating in the imaginary worlds of 21st-century popular culture are, in part, based broadly on the sharing of personal values within, across, and between media—philosophising, not just interacting with, imaginary worlds across multiple platforms. Importantly, this form of world participation based on fan-made crafts, fan-fiction, and fan-art exemplifies the kind of participatory culture first envisaged by Jenkins in Textual Poachers (1992), and then realized more recently in a more socio-political sense in By Any Media Necessary (2016). In the latter book, Jenkins, Shresthova, Gamber-Thompson, KlingerVilenchik, and Zimmerman explore the complexities and the challenges faced by the current youth generation seeking to acquire “the skills necessary for political participation at an age where there is less than complete access to the rights of citizenship” (2016: 7). So far, the academic study of imaginary worlds has not done enough to conceptualize the specificities and peculiarities of how and why audiences choose—or choose not—to interact with, and to participate in, imaginary worlds. As researchers of imaginary worlds, we should pay more attention to such specificities and peculiarities, for the politics of individual participation raise important questions about how and why imaginary worlds continue to be built. 203

M at t h e w F r e e m a n

References Brooker, W. (2002), Using the Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans. London: Bloomsbury. Clark, B. (2011), “Brian Clark on Transmedia Business Models (Part Two).” Retrieved August 30, 2014. http://henryjenkins.org/2011/11/brian_clarke_on_transmedia_bus.html. Dena, C. (2008), “Emerging Participatory Culture Practices: Player-Created Tiers in Alternate Reality Games,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 14(1), 41–57. Freeman, M. (2016), Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth-Century Transmedia Story Worlds. London and New York: Routledge. Gray, J. (2010a), Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press. Gray, J. (2010b), “On Anti-Fans and Paratexts: An Interview with Jonathan Gray (Part Two).” Retrieved June 4, 2016. http://henryjenkins.org/2010/03/on_anti-fans_and_paratexts_an_1.html. Hassler-Forest, D. (2016a), Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics:Transmedia World-Building Beyond Capitalism. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Hassler-Forest, D. (2016b), “Skimmers, Dippers, and Divers: Campfire’s Steve Coulson on Transmedia Marketing and Audience Participation,” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 31(1), 682–692. Hellekson, K. (2009), “A Fannish Field of Value: Online Fan Gift Culture,” Cinema Journal, 48(4), 113–118. Hills, M. (2015), “The Expertise of Digital Fandom as a ‘Community of Practice’: Exploring the Narrative Universe of Doctor Who,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 21(3), 360–374. Jenkins, H. (1992), Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Jenkins, H. (2003), “Transmedia Storytelling.” Retrieved February 4, 2013. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/401760/transmedia-storytelling/ Jenkins, H. (2006), Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, H. (2009),“The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling.” Retrieved February 20, 2012. http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni. html. Jenkins, H. (2012), “Participatory Culture: What Questions Do YOU Have?” Retrieved May 6, 2014. http://henryjenkins.org/2012/08/participatory-culture-what-questions-do-you-have.html Jenkins, H., Shresthova, S., Gamber-Thompson, L., Klinger-Vilenchik, N. & Zimmerman, A. M. (2016), By Any Media Necessary:The New Youth Activism. New York: New York University Press. Johnson, D. (2013), Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. New York: New York University Press. Meikle, G. & Young, S. (2012), Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Porges, I. (1975), Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan. Utah: Brigham Young University Press. Pratten, R. (2012), “Writing & Documenting Open Storyworlds and Participatory Stories.” Retrieved December 1, 2016. http://www.tstoryteller.com/writing-documenting-open-storyworlds-andparticipatory-stories. Saler, M. (2012), As If: Modern Enchantments and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Scolari, C., Bertetti, P., & Freeman, M. (2014), Transmedia Archaeology: Storytelling in the Borderlines of Science Fiction, Comics and Pulp Magazines. Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot. Scott, S. (2012), “Who’s Steering the Mothership?: The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling” in A. Delwiche and J. Jacobs Henderson (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook on Participatory Culture, (pp.43–52). London and New York: Routledge. Stein, L. E. (2013), “#Bowdown to Your New God: Misha Collins and Decentered Authorship in the Digital Age” in J. Gray and D. Johnson (Ed.), A Companion to Media Authorship (pp. 403–425). Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

204

I n t e r a c t i v e a n d Pa rt i c ipat o ry Wo r l d s

Taylor-Ashfield, C. (2016), “#CarolCorps: Interrogating the Utopic Potential of Transmedia Storytelling for Female Superhero Fans.” Paper presented at Console-ing Passions: An International Conference on Television,Video, Audio, New Media and Feminism, University of Notre Dame (June 17). UNIT9 (2013), “Case Study: Find Your Way To Oz.” Retrieved June 14, 2016. http://www.html5rocks. com/en/tutorials/casestudies/oz/. Vernon, A. (2008), On Tarzan. London: The University of Georgia Press. Wolf, M. J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. London and New York: Routledge.

205

This page intentionally left blank

Part 4

Authorship and Reception

This page intentionally left blank

26

Subcreation Lars Konzack On March 8, 1939, J. R. R. Tolkien officially coined the term “subcreation” at his Andrew Lang Lecture, and it was published eight years later in his now-famous essay, “On FairyStories.” By “subcreation” (literally, “creating under”), he means the ability to create a world within God’s Creation. Tolkien was a Catholic and that’s why this concept made sense to him. For this reason, students have asked me if an analyst has to be Catholic or at least Theist in order to use and apply his theory. It probably helps, but it can be exercised whether the analyst believes the world was created by God, by Intelligent Design, or simply by a Big Bang; as long as the analyst accepts the idea of a Primary World and a secondary world. (Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, a Belgian priest, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven, proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, which he called his “hypothesis of the primeval atom” or the “Cosmic Egg.” Pope Pius XII declared, at the November 22, 1951, opening meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, that the Big Bang theory does not conflict with the Catholic concept of creation.) If we take this stand, then it makes sense to perceive a fictional world as a subcreation and the designer of this world as a subcreator. The world of Creation is the Primary World, while the subcreated world (also known as a subcreation) is known as a secondary world (Tolkien, 1975). The secondary world is an imaginary world. A surprising aspect of J. R. R. Tolkien’s theory is that he does not regard fairy tales as specially made for children. In fact, the concept of fairy tales may be harder to grasp and understand for a child than for an adult. This does not mean you cannot make a fairy tale for children, but it will not be possible to use all the skills and knowledge of the subcreator. I imagine that was how J. R. R. Tolkien must have felt when writing the children’s book The Hobbit (1937) compared to his later adult works The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) and the writings that would become The Silmarillion (1977). To better understand J. R. R. Tolkien’s notion of subcreation, we may see how the concept was first introduced: We may put a deadly green upon a man’s face and produce a horror; we may make the rare and terrible blue moon to shine; or we may cause woods to spring with silver leaves and rams to wear fleeces of gold, and put hot fire into the belly of the cold worm. But in such “fantasy,” as it is called, new form is made; Faerie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator. (Tolkien, 1975, p. 28) And later this idea is generalized: “To many, Fantasy, this sub-creative art which plays strange tricks with the world and all that is in it, combining nouns and redistributing adjectives, has 209

L a r s Ko n z ac k

seemed suspect, if not illegitimate. To some it has seemed at least a childish folly, a thing only for peoples or for persons in their youth” (Tolkien, 1975, p. 55). Based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s description of what he means by subcreation, I shall define subcreation as a creation of an imaginary world that in literature can be accomplished by combining nouns and redistributing adjectives; the imaginary world is a secondary world in relation to the Primary World, also known as the real world we live in; and the imaginary world has the inner consistency of reality. Subcreation can be done not only in literature but in various media forms; and consequently the imaginary world may be expressed across media as transmedia storytelling. Following this definition, a subcreator is a person creating an imaginary world, and subcreative art means the art of creating imaginary worlds. J. R. R. Tolkien came up with a strikingly new take on fairy-stories. Rather than focusing on the temporal development of a narrative, and comparing different narrative structures, he outlined a world perspective from which several different narratives can take place and potentially be created. This means the subcreation becomes a storyworld superstructure, generating novel storylines for subcreators. When Tolkien writes, “Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold,” he is talking about the land of makebelieve as a metaphor for fairy tales, but his own fantasy literature has actual maps, timelines, genealogies, nature descriptions, cultures, languages, mythologies, and philosophies to express the imaginary world. The fantasy genre is closer to the ideals of subcreation than fairy tales ever were. Tolkien’s concept of subcreation holds that fairy tales stem from the world of Faerie, and this might actually be the weak spot of Tolkien’s theory. Because while it is obvious that the fantasy and science fiction genres are about creating fictional worlds, it is far from obvious that a fairy tale is based on a coherent world of Faerie. Even though it might be useful as a metaphor to comprehend fairy tales this way, the subcreation of a fairy tale is not nearly as developed and does not have the inner consistency of reality, as in fantasy and science fiction novels. According to Tolkien, an imaginary world or subcreation should not be based on the willing suspension of disbelief, but on “secondary belief ” in the world’s inner consistency of reality. This is because the very moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken. Tolkien rejects the idea of willing suspension of disbelief because a convincing fantasy is built on belief— not in the sense that the reader actually believes in the fantasy as deception, but as a way to understand that any subcreation should be able to explain the motives, actions, and events in the story based on reason and logical causation. Willing suspension of disbelief leads to lazy storytelling: Why was there a dragon? Just accept it.Why was the dragon able to turn into a frog? Just accept it. And why was the frog able to shoot a machine gun? Just accept it. An experienced subcreator has to have a coherent answer to all that is happening within the imaginary world, and, as a consequence, willing suspension of disbelief is regarded as a kind of dumbing-down of the imaginary world. Contrary to such random contingencies, a Tolkienesque fantasy has to be internally intelligible. From this standpoint follows Tolkien’s insistence on rationality when pursuing subcreative art. Tolkien puts it this way: Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until 210

S u b c r e at i o n

they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion. (Tolkien, 1975, p. 56) If Tolkien is correct, then it fully makes sense why children should not be considered the target audience of subcreation because it takes an adult to really appreciate the inner consistency of reality and to realize the deeper meanings and mythological and philosophical reflections of the subcreation. That is not to say that children are not allowed to experience the fantastic, but they will not be able to fully value the work of art.

Literary Criticism In “On Fairy-Stories,” J. R. R. Tokien criticizes a variety of views. He was critical toward Victorian Romanticism, Reductionism, and Formalism, Modernism, and Skepticism. Not all of of these critical points are explicitly targeted, and the casual reader might easily overlook the addressee. Apparently, Tolkien and his works are by some regarded as just another Victorian Romanticism (Garth, 2003; Reilly, 2006), and I do think his authorship began from this angle. But as his writings developed, Victorian Romanticism turned into a prison. He could no longer comprehend his work as irrational and just emotional expressions of childhood dreams. By insisting on reason as the entrance to fantasy, and that fairy-stories aren’t made for children, Tolkien discarded Victorian Romanticism and its denial of rationality. Tolkien accepted the idea that subcreation and fantasy give a way to escape from day-to-day reality. But he perceived the Romantic as an escapist deserter of reality while the reader who enjoys and understands subcreations is a prisoner escaping his imprisonment, and like the escapist from Plato’s cave wants to return to free the other prisoners. With his newfound power in fantasy comes a great responsibility. Tolkien was also against Reductionism and Formalism as a way to grasp fairy tales. Rather than conforming to popular beliefs, he discovered how much information was lost and how this lack of knowledge turned into false statements through generalizations. He did not think reducing heroes or gods to weather phenomena or archetypes helped to give a better understanding of what they were all about. Instead, he wanted rich descriptions that opened up for greater applicability (the capacity of reading texts in a variety of contexts). Also, his criticism of Formalism comes as a soup-metaphor. The Formalist separates the different aspects from the story in order to create some sort of recipe of the fairy tale, separating the bone from the soup. Even if the Formalist succeeds, it does not tell us much about the fairy tale as such. Tolkien writes: “By ‘the soup’ I mean the story as it is served up by its author or teller, and by ‘the bones’ its sources or material—even when (by rare luck) those can be with certainty discovered. But I do not, of course, forbid criticism of the soup as soup” (Tolkien, 1975, p. 26). Before Structuralism had become a popular way to analyze literature, Tolkien had already discovered the foundational problem of Reductionism: that it simply did not allow for synthesis, treating the works unfairly. Of course, knowing the foundational structures of a story may be interesting in itself, but it neither tells about the quality of the work nor the moral of the story. It’s like searching for psychological mentality by taking x-rays of the skeleton, which was close to what phrenologists tried to do, and they failed miserably. Being anti-Reductionist, it is no wonder that Tolkien was anti-Modernist too. This was a provocation in the middle of the 20th century, and seen as reactionary. However, most of what he says has been accepted today. The Modernists have later been criticized for being 211

L a r s Ko n z ac k

reductionist (Fried, 1982). So when Tolkien was criticizing Modernism, he was, in fact, not a reactionary but ahead of his time, or one could say he had his own agenda and from his point of view it was obvious that even though literary Modernists acted very aggressively their methods simply did not work. One might then argue that J. R. R. Tolkien was in fact a Postmodernist; but this is not the case. First of all, Tolkien never said he was, and, second, he was critical toward Skepticism as well. In The Lord of the Rings, Skepticism is represented by Saruman of Many Colours, and, as you might well know, he is presented as a mere sophist. Tolkien calls for reason and belief and that is an antidote to Postmodernist rhetoric. To sum up, J. R. R. Tolkien was anti-Romantic, anti-Reductionist, anti-Formalist, antiModernist, and anti-Skeptic/anti-Postmodernist. This meant that he did not make many friends in the highly politicized academic milieu of the mid-20th century. He was consigned to link up with a few other non-conventional minds in a literary discussion group called The Inklings (Duriez, 2015). Here, Tolkien had the advantage of intellectual exchange in this group of people who were outside mainstream and where different views and beliefs were truly permissible, developing his own Subcreativist agenda of literary criticism, focusing on the concept of subcreation and insisting on reason in order to appreciate and comprehend fantasy fiction and the inner consistency of reality.

J. R. R. Tolkien’s Precursors To better grasp Tolkien’s project, it is important to stress that many of his ideas came from early medieval Anglo-Saxon literature. A great inspiration was the poem Beowulf (circa 8th to 11th century) in which the writer, an unknown monk, tries to empathize with Pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon culture (Tolkien, 1997). The idea was that you could express a sentiment and cultural point of view from another perspective than your own. This was not about creating a utopia, but about using another time and place as a platform to put your own life in perspective, just as you might empathize with another person and his or her point of view. The concept of creating imaginary worlds wasn’t new. What Tolkien offered was a unique poetics with which to value and understand imaginary worlds.There had been descriptions of imaginary worlds as far back as Homer’s Odyssey, written in the 9th century B.C. (Wolf, 2012). The ancient Roman poet Virgil’s approach to imaginary worlds is the epic poem Aeneid (circa 29–19 B.C.), a conscious art mythology created as a sequel to the Odyssey, creating a Roman artificial national mythology (Putnam, 1995). Following in his footsteps, we find the High Medieval Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth who fabricated the chronicle Historia Regum Britanniae (circa 1136) in which Brutus, a descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas from the Aeneid, founded the first settlements of Britain (Lacy & Wilhelm, 2013). In here, we also find one of the earliest stories about King Arthur.The Danish Medieval scholar Saxo Grammaticus also created a chronicle of the Danish Kings, though unlike Geoffrey of Monmouth, he did not feign its origin. In the tradition of Virgil, he created a Danish national mythology in his work Gesta Danorum (circa 1208). Similarly, Tolkien wanted to create an artificial national mythology for the Anglo-Saxons based on his profound knowledge on the subject of AngloSaxon literature and language (Shippey, 2001). This, however, could have been done without creating an imaginary world. The subcreation of the imaginary world Arda (including Middle-earth) was at least partly inspired by the Danish minister, poet, and philologist N. F. S. Grundtvig; the Scottish minister and poet George MacDonald; the English philosopher and journalist G. K. Chesterton; and the Irish author and game designer Lord Dunsany. N. F. S. Grundtvig translated Beowulf and 212

S u b c r e at i o n

Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus into Danish. According to Tom Shippey, Grundtvig created a legendarium for Denmark and insisted on the concept of det levende ord (the living word); it was not enough for the philologist to learn the words and grammar, he had to use them as well (Shippey, 2001). George MacDonald gave the living word a direction by insisting on imagination in fairy tales (MacDonald, 2004). But imagination was only one part of the human mind as Francis Bacon once wrote:“The parts of human learning have reference to the three parts of man’s understanding, which is the seat of learning: history to his memory, poesy to his imagination, and philosophy to his reason” (Bacon, 1893, p. I (1)). It must be added though, Tolkien did not only want imagination, he wanted memory and philosophy as well. What G. K. Chesterton gave Tolkien was criticism of Romanticism as well as criticism of Modernism. He showed that it was a false dichotomy. One did not have to choose between Romantic irrationality and Modernist absurdity.They could both be wrong. It was possible to adopt independent options outside this deceitful dualism (Chesterton, 2014; Milbank, 2009). But most importantly, Lord Dunsany went even further and presented a fantasy world with a pantheon of his own. In it, Tolkien found his inspiration for creating an imaginary world, to develop his subcreation (Carpenter, 2014). Unknown to Tolkien, scientist and Duchess Margaret Cavendish had similar thoughts on the creation of an imaginary world centuries earlier. In the introduction to her work The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World (1666), she explained her considerations about the matter of creating an imaginary world, writing: The end of Reason, is Truth; the end of Fancy, is Fiction: But mistake me not, when I distinguish Fancy from Reason; I mean not as if Fancy were not made by the Rational parts of Matter; but by Reason I understand a rational search and enquiry into the causes of natural effects; and by Fancy a voluntary creation or production of the Mind, both being effects, or rather actions of the rational part of Matter; of which, as that is a more profitable and useful study than this, so it is also more laborious and difficult, and requires sometimes the help of Fancy, to recreate the Mind, and withdraw it from its more serious Contemplations. (Cavendish, 2016, p. 59) As one can see, she, like Tolkien, insists that even though her imaginary world is created as fiction, it has to come from reason. In her work, she has many science fiction elements from 17th-century natural philosophy. She is also very conscious about her subcreation, writing: But lest my Fancy should stray too much, I chose such a Fiction as would be agreeable to the subject I treated of in the former parts; it is a Description of a New World, not such as Lucian’s, or the French man’s World in the Moon; but a World of my own Creating, which I call the Blazing-World: The first part whereof is Romancical, the second Philosophical, and the third is meerly Fancy, or (as I may call it) Fantastical; which if it add any satisfaction to you, I shall account myself a Happy Creatoress […] I have made a World of my own: for which no body, I hope, will blame me, since it is in every ones power to do the like. (Cavendish, 2016, p. 60) Margaret Cavendish had some of the same thoughts as Tolkien came up with, although admittedly Tolkien gave his vision much deeper thought. Inspired by Medieval literature and the ideas of scholars and writers, Tolkien developed his own poetics for imaginary worlds. 213

L a r s Ko n z ac k

J. R. R. Tolkien’s Successors Many fantasy writers would, in the years to come, copy the style and stories of Tolkien’s ­fantasy works; this was not necessarily complimentary to Tolkien. The idea of subcreation is not necessarily about hobbits, orcs, and elves. It is about being creative, as Olaf Stapledon would put it (Stapledon, 1939). When Tolkien subcreated The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the writings of The Silmarillion, he was being creative, conceiving modern epic fantasy. Copying his work is a form of laziness. Subcreation, and the idea of an imaginary world with an inner consistency of reality, is a method that could be used to create any kind of imaginary world. In this sense, Frank Herbert’s Dune series and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series are closer to the ideals of subcreation than something like Terry Brooks’s Sword of Shannara (1977). Apart from science fiction and fantasy fiction, a new literary genre emerged called roleplaying games. In 1974, Ernest Gary Gygax and David Arneson published the rules for Dungeons & Dragons based on subcreation of fantasy fiction. The overall idea of delving into ancient dungeons was closer to the genre of sword-and-sorcery than epic fantasy, but there is no doubt that the role-playing game worked as a tool for subcreation. Role-playing games thrived in the late 20th century, and they all worked with subcreation in different genres and settings. It seemed as if the ludic nature of role-playing games was the perfect match with the ingenuity of subcreation, supporting the inner consistency of reality through game rules. While The Lord of the Rings movies visualized J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy trilogy, the visualization of the idea of subcreation was done most convincingly in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Again, the programmed game rules sustained the inner consistency of reality. But more than that, these games opened up three-dimensional imaginary worlds that the player could discover with his or her player character. These MMORPGs weren’t just showing the surroundings but provided the opportunity to explore whole imaginary worlds (Nitsche, 2008; Taylor, 2009; Tresca, 2011). In his 1940 short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Jorge Luis Borges tells about a lexicon that has been infiltrated by fiction. At the time this was presented as out of this world—an outrage. Today, we are used to presenting imaginary worlds in online lexica. Keeping track of the imaginary worlds of The Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, and various MMORPGs becomes a task in itself. No wonder a lexicon was needed for Middle-earth to get an overview. With the invention of the Internet, lexica have been easier to access than ever before. Now it has become commonplace to have wikis for all major imaginary worlds. It helps with the following of a television series like Game of Thrones (2011–present) or to keep up with the many characters in superhero movies. This way, the very structure of the Internet enhances, facilitates, and supports subcreation literacy; the ability to understand and work with subcreations. This also means that lack of ability to understand and work with subcreations is subcreation blindness. Subcreation literacy is needed when working with transmedial worlds (see the chapter “Transmediality” in this volume), and consequently subcreation works as a poetics for transmedial storytelling. Episodic narratives based on a subcreation open up to several, if not endless, storylines within the imaginary world. That is why episodic narratives, the black sheep of the narrative family, have now become a far more accepted technique in storytelling. Likewise, in an MMORPG, there is an open architecture for numerous quests to follow. Further development of the concept of subcreation is presented by Mark J. P.Wolf. Inspired by fantasy and science fiction literature, he presents an infrastructure for imaginary worlds with maps, timelines, genealogies, nature, culture, language, mythology, and philosophy (Wolf, 2012). Another development is focusing on different levels of subcreation (Konzack, 2006). 214

S u b c r e at i o n

At the philosophical level, the subcreator strategically constructs mythologies, religions, and philosophies of the world. At the epic level, the subcreator tactically has to construct a secondary world with geography and items based on the cultures, mythologies, religions, and philosophies, shaping the world historically. This world mapping should inspire storytelling of epic proportions, giving rise to legends and heroic acts. And finally, at the naïve level, the subcreator operationally builds within his subcreation what seem to be straightforward plots that are effortless to grasp for the explorers of the imaginary world.

References Bacon, F. (1893). The Advancement of Learning, Book II. London: Cassel & Company, Ltd. Carpenter, H. (2014). The Letters of J.R.R.Tolkien. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Cavendish, M. (2016). The Description of a World called The Blazing-World. Ontario: Peterborough, Broadview Press. Chesterton, G. K. (2014). The G. K. Chesterton Collection. London: The Catholic Way Publ. Duriez, C. (2015). The Oxford Inklings: Lewis,Tolkien and Their Circle. Oxford: Lion Books. Fine, G. A. (2002). Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Foster, R. (2001). The Complete Guide to Middle-earth: From the Hobbit Through The Lord of the Rings and Beyond. New York, NY: Ballantine Books. Fried, M. (1982, Sept.). “How Modernism Works: A Response to T. J. Clark,” Critical Inquiry,Vol. 9, No. 1, The Politics of Interpretation, pp. 217–34. Garth, J. (2003). Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Comp. Gygax, G. (1987). Role-Playing Mastery. London: Grafton Books. Konzack, L. (2006). “Subcreation of Secondary Game Worlds” in J. Dionísio, A. R. Fernandes, & P. Gomes, Games 2006: iDiG—International Digital Games Conference: Proceedings (pp. 115–22). Portalegre: APROJE. Lacy, N. J., & Wilhelm, J. J. (2013). The Romance of Arthur: An Anthology of Medieval Texts in Translation, third edition. London: Routledge. MacDonald, G. (2004). “The Fantastic Imagination” in D. Sandner, Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (pp. 64–9). Westport. CT: Praeger Publ. Milbank, A. (2009). Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians. London: T&T Clark. Nitsche, M. (2008). Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds. Cambridge, MA:The MIT Press. Peterson, J. (2012). Playing at the World: A History of Simulating Wars, People, and Fantastic Adventure from Chess to Role-Playing Games. San Diego, CA: Unreason Press. Putnam, M. C. (1995). Virgil’s Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Reilly, R. J. (2006). Romantic Religion. Great Barrington, MA: Lindisfarne Books. Shippey, T. (2001). J. R. R.Tolkien: Author of the Century. London: HarperCollins Publ. Stapledon, O. (1939, Dec.). Escapism in Literature. Scrutiny, pp. 298–308. Taylor,T. L. (2009). Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. Cambridge, MA:The MIT Press. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1975). “On Fairy-Stories” in J. R. R. Tolkien, Tree and Leaf (pp. 11–79). London: Unwin Books. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1997). “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” in C. Tolkien, editor, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (pp. 5–48). London: HarperCollins Publ. Tresca, M. J. (2011). The Evolution of Role-Playing Games. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Comp. Wolf, M. J. P. (2012). Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation. London: Routledge.

215

27

Authorship Jessica Aldred The concept of the author figure seems to provide a kind of organizing principle to the study of imaginary worlds. However, in recent years in particular the question of authorship—and whose voice or voices are privileged in the construction of increasingly dispersed, transmedial imaginary worlds—has become ever more contested. As Mark J.P. Wolf points out: Despite attacks on them and proclamations of their death, the notions of authorship and the author have endured and show no signs of falling out of use. What has changed, however, is the idea of the author as a lone figure producing a work in isolation, for whom influences and potential consequences play no role in the shaping of a work. The notion of authorship has expanded out to include a variety of roles and acknowledged contributions that make a work what it is, while still maintaining the need for attribution … Imaginary worlds are not only transmedial and transnarrative, but transauthorial as well. (Wolf, 2012: 268–269, emphasis mine) As imaginary worlds expand across a growing range of media platforms, each with its own technical, aesthetic, and narrative demands, so too does the potential number of authors involved in their creation increase, giving way to the “transauthorial” nature of imaginary worlds Wolf describes. For example, while novelist J.K. Rowling holds the privileged position of primary creator of the world of Harry Potter, retaining ironclad script approval on cinematic adaptations of her novels and meticulously curating an encyclopedia of characters, places, items, and wizarding lore via her Potter-focused website, Pottermore, Rowling also necessarily welcomes the interventions of the directors, cinematographers, video game programmers, toymakers, and theme park designers who make the cross-platform expansion of the Potter universe possible. With Rowling’s example, which I’ll return to later, in mind, the notion of a distinctive, unified, authorial vision guiding every aspect of an imaginary world becomes even more problematic than it was in the multi-faceted industrial process of cinema, where “auteur” theory originated in the late 1940s—and has since been extensively debated and contested— in relation to the figure of the director. Led by prominent French film critics Andre Bazin and Alexandre Astruc, auteur theory touted the discernible authorial vision of the director (“camera-stylo”), wielding his camera as a gifted writer might wield his pen (see Astruc, 1948). Auteur theory served as a means of both legitimating cinema as an art form at the same time as it legitimated the nascent scholarship that had begun to surround it. However, as Paul McDonald (2013) contends, early 216

Au t h o r s h i p

studies of film authorship and their focus on the director-as-individual agent of p­ roduction ­ultimately obstructed the realities of cinema’s broader industrial, institutional, and market contexts. Furthermore, the objections to “unified” theories of authorship that followed amongst prominent poststructuralist critics, led by Roland Barthes’s famous declaration of the “Death of the Author” and Michel Foucault’s insistence that we investigate the author as a discursive construction or “author function,” were not necessarily any more attentive to questions of industrial and commercial production. As McDonald asserts, “the critical dismissal of authorship in favor of attention to the meanings and politics of texts or discourses blocked attention to the circumstances in which those very texts or discourses were produced and circulated” (McDonald, 2013:147). As Jonathan Gray and Derek Johnson (2013) suggest in “The Problem of Media Authorship,” the aptly titled introduction to their edited volume on the subject, in the age of media convergence in particular, we must remember that authorship is as much about power and the active management of people and meaning as it is about creativity: The author is a node through which discourses of beauty, truth, meaning, and value must travel, while also being a node through which money, power, labor, and control of culture must travel, and while frequently serving as the mediating figure standing between large organizations (such as Lucasfilm or Fox) and the audience. No wonder academics and citizens alike are all endlessly fascinated by authors. And no wonder we all discuss authors so frequently, since arguments about creation, beauty, the audience, production, the industrialization of culture, labor, and flows of meaning and cash will often be couched in terms of authorship. (Gray and Johnson, 2013: 3) With this understanding of media authorship as a typically transauthorial phenomenon that balances these dual imperatives of creativity and control, we can move toward a productive understanding of its ongoing significance to the study of imaginary worlds. In so doing, we must pose and begin to answer a series of key questions, including: Whose interests does the author or “author function” (to borrow Foucault’s crucial phrase) serve? How does the authorship of an imaginary world differ from the authorship of a story? Does the narrative focus of most theories of authorship affect how we conceptualize the authorship of imaginary worlds? What types of spoken and unspoken hierarchies exist between authors of different media forms within a given imaginary world? Or between so-called “above-the-line” and “below-the-line” talent working to create these worlds? Whose authorial voices are privileged within this new, ostensibly “transauthorial” model, and whose are marginalized? What role do audiences play in the negotiation of creativity and meaning within imaginary worlds? As we work to answer these questions, we must also interrogate some of the more problematic resurrections of the unified author figure since Barthes famously proclaimed its death in the 1960s.

Circles of Authorship? Despite—or perhaps because of—the potentially large number of prospective creators involved in the “transauthorial” model of imaginary world-building,Wolf suggests that certain facets of the unifying concept of the author persist and remain useful. For Wolf, authorship can be conceptualized as a series of concentric circles extending out from the world’s originator (or originators), with each circle of delegated authority being 217

Jessica Aldred

further removed from the world’s origination and involving diminishing authorial contributions, from the originator and main author to estates, heirs, and torchbearers; employees and freelancers; the makers of approved, derivative, and ancillary products that are based on a world; and finally to the non-canonical additions of elaborationists and fan productions. (Wolf, 2012: 269) The “circles of authorship” Wolf proposes are strongly linked to the perceived canonicity of the works in question, with those texts “that typically possess the highest degree of canonicity … (coming) from the innermost circles of authorship, which surround the originator and main author of a world” (Wolf, 2012: 271).While authorship alone doesn’t guarantee a work’s place within the canon, Wolf posits a strong correlation between the highest level of canon in an imaginary world and the output of the so-called “main author,” who is viewed as inventing the world, setting its boundaries, and building its infrastructures: “When the world makes its first public appearance, the author’s name becomes associated with it as the source of the world and the authority behind it” (p. 273). Wolf points to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Arda and L. Frank Baum’s Oz as crucial examples of the way “circles of authorship” can structure imaginary worlds. In both cases, clearly defined author-originators create and define exhaustive fictional universes in which their stories are set; biological heirs (Christopher Tolkien) and estate-appointed torchbearers (Ruth Plumy Thompson) become approved to continue or tend these literary narratives within their created worlds; a selection of employees and freelancers are tasked with re-creating and expanding these worlds in the context of other media (most notably in both examples, that of cinema), while the makers of the “approved” ancillary merchandise (dolls, toys, costumes) bring tangible facets of the imaginary world into the lived world of the audience. And finally, in Wolf ’s outermost circle, devoted fans re-work and elaborate on their favorite aspects of these worlds, producing non-canonical extensions and revisions in a range of different media forms. Thus, the long-hypothesized queer relationship between Sam and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings can be explored via slash fiction and animated gifs in “SamFro,” a Tumblr based on the “much-needed shipname for the pairing of Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee,” while online galleries of Wizard of Oz fan art showcase character designs and narrative ­re-imaginings that merge Baum’s world with the aesthetics and tropes of Japanese anime and manga. Certainly J.K. Rowling, as the aforementioned “main author and originator” of the world of Harry Potter, seems to exist at the center of Wolf ’s “circles of authorship.” Rowling’s book series provides the core world-building text to which all other extensions, expansions, and adaptations must adhere, the affordances and limitations of the elaborate world it creates reinforced by her encyclopedic updates regarding various characters, spells, settings, and history via the Pottermore website, as well as supplementary world-building books like Quidditch Through the Ages (2012) and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2001). While her children have yet to achieve the “heir” status of Tolkien’s or the estate-managing status of Baum’s, Rowling hand-picked authorized torchbearers in Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, with whom she collaborated on the play Harry Potter and The Cursed Child (2016), extending the Harry Potter storyline into Potter’s adulthood and the troubled youth of his son, Albus. Rowling’s increasingly hands-on involvement in the development of each subsequent Harry Potter film adaptation didn’t just police the “proper” boundaries of how to represent the world she’d already created; by securing script approval and eventually producer credits on the last two films (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (2010) and Part 2 (2011)), Rowling also 218

Au t h o r s h i p

ensured that they didn’t contradict or “spoil” any future developments in the book series. At the same time, Rowling extended the perception of her authorial control to include the films, granting them privileged access to one of the innermost circles of franchise canon in the process. The multiplicity of acclaimed but ultimately transient directors associated with the film franchise—including Chris Columbus, Alphonso Cuaron, David Yates, and Mike Newell—helped further solidify Rowling’s unifying presence as author. Rowling also provided input and approval to the development of several of the Harry Potter video game extensions—for example, one developer gleefully re-counted Rowling “giving” them a creature named a “Gytrash” that had yet to appear in any of the Potter books, to use in The Chamber of Secrets game. And yet, perhaps due to the long, thorny history of adapting video games from popular novels and films, Rowling’s approval and involvement seem to function at a greater remove in the context of the Potter games, delineating a clear line between her role as “primary” author and the secondary role of the developers as employee-freelancers. While Rowling provided written guidelines outlining the world’s basic operating principles and secrets that couldn’t be given away, as well as feedback on which characters might be best suited for specific game missions, she ultimately demurred on certain major decisions, leaving them in the hands of game developers. As Stephen Totilo recounts in the pre-release lead up to the Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix game: [S]he’s J. K. Rowling. She invented Harry. And yet when the EA team working on the game in London wanted to give players the ability to play wizard games like Gobstones and Exploding Snap, she did more than just say, “OK”. Rowling’s books mentioned the games but didn’t spell out exactly how Harry and friends play them. Roberts and team dreamed something up. “We wrote the rules up for all these games, sent them off to J. K. Rowling, and she went, ‘Yeah, OK, those are the rules’,” he told MTV News during a visit to EA UK’s Guildford, England, studio just outside of London. “It’s kind of cool. We got to make all the rules.” (Totilo, 2007) In this case, instead of strictly enforcing the fictional rules of her imaginary world as she had with the Harry Potter films, Rowling relinquishes the authorship of these rules to game developers, perhaps a savvy rhetorical move and technical strategy given the difficulty of implementing highly detailed rule systems at the level of code. However, since there’s no evidence that the rules Rowling “allows” developers to establish feed back into the broader narrative ecology and world-building of the Potter universe in other media, this gesture ultimately places the games further away from its canonical “center.” Rowling’s insistence on narrative continuity and maintenance also curtails the opportunity to make the games—or the films, for that matter— participate meaningfully in the process of transmedia storytelling, in which, as Henry Jenkins (2007) suggests, “integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience … (and) each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story.” In this instance, Rowling’s “author function” is carefully managed in order to protect the integrity of her imaginary world-as-personal-brand, allowing the game developers as employees-freelancers to bear the brunt of any mediocre reviews and tepid fan reception that followed. (For example, GameSpot bemoaned that “(t)he video game version of Order of the Phoenix captures none of the magic in the Harry Potter books or films”; another reviewer for VideoGamer complained that “(w)hile the core mechanics of Order of the Phoenix are verging on excellent, the game that’s been built around them is basically a 219

Jessica Aldred

series of chores in disguise.”) As Casey O’Donnell (2011) points out, while game development studios bolstered by a larger corporate structure like Electronic Arts can typically weather the disappointing results of any given game, smaller studios can and have been brought down by a single poorly selling movie-licensed game, as have the professional reputations of the individual developers involved in its creation. Rowling’s unifying author function has also become, at times, highly problematic in the context of Harry Potter fans’ efforts at expanding or even simply documenting her welldefined world. For example, in 2007, Rowling filed a lawsuit challenging the publication of an encyclopedia-style book called the Harry Potter Lexicon, based on an immensely popular and exhaustive fan website of the same name, since Rowling herself had plans to publish a similar reference book. Although the defense team faulted Rowling for attempting “to claim a monopoly on the right to publish literary reference guides, and other non-academic research, relating to her own fiction … a right no court has ever recognized,” the court ultimately ruled in her favor, forcing the fan in question to publish an abbreviated and highly amended version. Rowling has also vociferously corrected many of the fan theories that have gained enough traction to reach her notice (including the notion that Ginny must have used a love potion to win Harry’s affections, since Hermoine is Harry’s true soulmate (see Panganiban, 2015), while advancing her own, seemingly fanfic-inspired character backstories (“outing” Professor Dumbledore, for example) in subsequent discussions of the books. Furthermore, many fans were devastated by the 2015 relaunch of Rowling’s Pottermore site, since it removed most of the interactive and role-playing affordances that allowed them to play in and with the magical world of Hogwarts, and replaced this interactivity with more, mostly etymological writing from Rowling herself as well as Buzzfeed-style listicles and “news” about the world of Harry Potter (Ross, 2015); just like that, claimed the Change .org petition submitted to Rowling on behalf of thousands of disappointed fans, “the ‘Little Hogwarts’ they could always escape to, had vanished. And with it all our personal stories, our progress in the magical world have gone” (Pottermore Fans, 2015).  (And with it, it should be noted, also disappeared much of the extensive labor and craftsmanship of the unheralded “below-the-line” programmers and artists who created the site.) As Henry Jenkins (2011) contends, Rowling has shown many signs that she wants to continue to shape and control how fans respond to her work well after she finished writing it.We can see this in the epilogue to the last novel, which seems to pointlessly map out futures for all of her characters, including shaping the “ships” (relationships) between them, in what amounts to spraying her territory. Many fans would have preferred a text which was more open-ended on that level and allows them more freedom to speculate beyond the ending … So, it is abundantly clear that she likes some of her fans more than others and that any effort to facilitate fan interactions also represents an attempt to bring fandom more under her control. ( Jenkins, 2011)

“World-Building” versus “World-Sharing” As Rowling’s example demonstrates, by strongly linking the main author and originator of a world to the most canonical (and thus, the most critically and commercially valued) works within it, the problematically “unifying” and legitimating power of the primary author figure can be reincarnated with a vengeance. Derek Johnson (2013) provides a useful corrective to 220

Au t h o r s h i p

this tendency by reminding us that we must also situate contemporary imaginary worlds in the industrial context that typically produces them, that of media franchising. Thus, rather than examining and conceptualizing transmedial imaginary worlds through the somewhat utopian lens of “world-building”—which more often than not elevates a central creator or author figure as a kind of ‘master builder’ of the world in question—Johnson contends we must consider the more industrially grounded notion of “world-sharing,” wherein the tensions between various creators and production communities with media franchises must be reconciled: Such an understanding would … recognize that media franchising does not end with the building of a world; instead, worlds are continually used and dynamically altered by creative laborers who may or may not have played any role in their genesis. What distinguishes world-building in media franchising from that in “traditional” media works is the degree to which worlds, once built, become shared among creative stakeholders working in and across multiple production sites. Franchising occurs where creative resources are exchanged across contexts of production, where sequels, spin-offs, and tie-ins ask multiple production communities to work in successive or parallel relation to one another.This makes franchising better conceived in the terms of world-sharing than world-building. The world in play in franchised production offers a shared creative context in which many different individuals and communities can draw resources and contribute in kind. ( Johnson, 2013: 109) For Johnson, franchising’s reliance on shared creativity and collaboration puts it at odds with traditional, individual-centric models of authorship. “World-sharing asks us to consider claims and discourses of franchise authorship in terms of social relations,” Johnson asserts (2013: 109), allowing for a more dynamic relationship between the different stakeholders involved in creating a given imaginary world; this is authorship conceived as a constantly evolving and shifting network of creative workers rather than a series of concentric circles delineating greater or lesser creative authority depending on how far from the center you travel. While those working in less ostensibly valued or “prestigious” contexts—which vary according to the franchise in question, though licensed toys and games come to mind—may need to practice a certain amount of deference to more privileged or primary sites of production, there are multiple ways in which these creators can assert their authorial identities in meaningful, if often heavily negotiated, ways. Thus, for example, the outcry over Pottermore’s re-launch doesn’t just trouble the “unity” of Rowling’s authority, which always exists both in cooperation and tension with the various corporate interests she pairs with (in this case, that of the Sony Corporation, which ended its involvement in Pottermore prior to the site’s re-launch). The Pottermore controversy also functioned to shed light on the distinctive creative accomplishments of the previously unrecognized team of the programmers, artists, and authors responsible for the games and role-playing elements of the original site, at the same time as it galvanized fans—whose creative contributions are often deemed the most peripheral and “diminished” mode of franchise productivity—to claim pride and ownership over the magical identities and accomplishments they’d accumulated in Pottermore. As Johnson (2013: 109) suggests, we must always ask: What creative strategies have been developed so as to construct worlds to be shared? How has shared creative use been managed? How have media workers made their own creative identities and production labor meaningful in relation to these shared structures? 221

Jessica Aldred

Fanboy Auteurs, Transmedia Authorship, and Future Challenges Despite the necessary scholarly attention being paid to the complex social and industrial relations that forge the polyglot authorship of most contemporary imaginary worlds, the growing prominence of transmedia storytelling has, in many ways, ensured the ongoing primacy of the unified author function in their commercial and critical reception. According to Henry Jenkins’s influential definition, transmedia storytelling is a process wherein “integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience” (Jenkins, 2006: 95–96). However, as Jenkins acknowledges and Suzanne Scott has rightfully critiqued, this “dispersed” model of storytelling often relies on the unifying presence of a clearly defined creator figure. As Scott asserts: the media industry’s effort to create unified and coordinated entertainment experiences frequently requires the construction of a unified author figure to serve as a creative and textual coordinator. There are practical and promotional factors motivating this consolidation, but concerns arise when a unified author figure results in an attempt to unify and regulate the audience’s interpretations of the text. (Scott, 2013: 44) Scott contends that this regulatory function can be particularly problematic when it is practiced by a relatively recent instantiation of the author figure—that of the fanboy auteur. At first blush, the fanboy auteur may appear to level the hierarchies between authors and fans, and between canonical and marginal texts—after all, as Jenkins (2013) puts it, he is typically “the dungeon master made good, the guy who used to play with Star Wars action figures and now gets to manipulate big budget special effects” (p. 54). He may not even be the original “creator” of the imaginary world in question, as was the case with J.J. Abrams and the Star Wars universe, for example, or Joss Whedon and the Marvel universe. And yet with their obsessive, encyclopedic knowledge of the imaginary world, their ability to emulate and court fan interest, and the seemingly paradoxical ability to control and channel that interest, the fanboy auteur has come to the fore as a kind of “creative and textual coordinator,” steering the franchise mothership and its fans through an ever-expanding media universe, legitimating certain transmedia extensions as worthy expansions of the mothership, and denigrating others as cheap, ancillary tie-ins. In addition to this boundary policing of which extensions and additional authorial voices merit the notice of franchise fans, the fanboy auteur’s every tweet, blog post, and interview utterance are mined and analyzed for how they may further unlock the hidden meaning and context of the transmedia storyworld. As Scott (2013) asserts, “though these authorial extensions … are not fictional contributions to the storyworld being built, they perform similar narrative work, and they reinforce the fanboy auteur as a ‘human bible’, and the transmedia story’s sole navigator and interpreter” (p. 45). This deification of the fanboy auteur as “human bible” and “sole navigator and interpreter” of a transmedia story doesn’t just occlude the very real creativity of those lesser-known author figures laboring at different levels of that world and story; it also effectively forecloses the active interventions of those fans who once felt comfortable enough in that imaginary world to act on and through it. As we contemplate how to best theorize and challenge the concept of authorship moving forward, these elisions and foreclosures are crucial reminders that we cannot simply retreat to that ever-comfortable, ever-contradictory fallback position: The author is dead, long live the author. 222

Au t h o r s h i p

References Astruc, A. (1948), “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera Stylo,” originally printed in L’Écran française 30 March 1948 as “Du Stylo à la caméra et de la caméra au stylo,” reprinted via New Wave Film, available at http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/camera-stylo-astruc.shtml. Barthes, R. (1967), “The Death of the Author,” originally published in Aspen, No. 5–6, available at http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-content/death_authorbarthes.pdf. Foucault, M. (1977), “What is an Author?,” translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Donald F. Bouchard (ed.) Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, pp. 124–127. Gray, J. & Johnson, D. (2013), A Companion to Media Authorship, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Jenkins, H. (2006), Convergence Culture:Where Old and New Media Collide, New York: NYU Press. Jenkins, H. (2007), “Trans,media Storytelling 101,” Confessions of an AcaFan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, 22 March 2007, available at http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101. html. Jenkins, H. (2011), “Three Reasons Why Pottermore Matters,” Confessions of an AcaFan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, 24 June 2011, available at http://henryjenkins.org/2011/06/three_reasons_ why_pottermore_m.html. Jenkins, H. (2013) “The Guiding Spirit and The Powers That Be: A Response to Suzanne Scott,” in A. Delwiche and J. Jacobs Henderson (eds.) The Participatory Cultures Handbook, New York, Routledge, pp. 53–58. Johnson, D. (2013), Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries, New York: NYU Press. McDonald, P. (2013), “Introduction: IN FOCUS—Media Industry Studies,” Cinema Journal,Volume 52, Number 3, Spring 2013, pp. 145–149 | 10.1353/cj.2013.0025 O’Donnell, C. (2011), “Games Are Not Convergence: The Lost Promise of Digital Production and Convergence,” Convergence 17(3), pp. 271–286. Panganiban, R. (2015), “12 Intriguing (and Occasionally Bizarre) Harry Potter Fan Theories,” available at http://mentalfloss.com/article/67401/12-intriguing-and-occasionally-bizarre-harry-potter-fantheories. Pottermore Fans (2015), “Bring Back the Old Pottermore,” Change.org, available at https://www. change.org/p/j-k-rowling-bring-back-the-old-pottermore. Ross, A. (2015), “Here’s Why Some Harry Potter Fans Are Unhappy With the New Pottermore,” Time. com, 22 September 2015, available at http://time.com/4044232/harry-potter-pottermore-new-site/. Scott, S. (2013), “Who’s Steering the Mothership? The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling” in A. Delwiche and J. Jacobs Henderson (eds.) The Participatory Cultures Handbook, New York, Routledge, pp. 43–52. Totilo, S. (2007), “Harry Potter Video Game Creators Get J.K. Rowling’s Stamp of Approval,” MTV.com (20 June 2007), available at http://www.mtv.com/news/1562930/ harry-potter-video-game-creators-get-jk-rowlings-stamp-of-approval/. Wolf, M.J.P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds:The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York: Routledge.

223

28

Reboots and Retroactive Continuity William Proctor In February 2016, DC Comics posted a cryptic image on Twitter. Consisting of a pair of blue theater curtains with the word ‘Rebirth’ at the center, the image sparked a series of debates across the Internet as fans recoiled at the possibility that DC would reboot their universe only five years after “The New 52” ostensibly wiped the slate clean in order to begin again. To assuage fan anxieties, DC executives Geoff  Johns and Jim Lee posted a second image on social media that explained: “It’s not a reboot and it never was.” (See Figures 28.1 and 28.2.) Before its publication in June, Geoff Johns appeared on The Late Show with Seth Meyers to talk about Rebirth. Meyers asked Johns to “explain real quick what you’re doing with the DC Comics Universe [DCU] because it does seem like these days there’s often a sense of starting over. Is that what this is?” Johns responds: No. Thank God. DC Comics, like in the DNA, is all about hope and inspiration, so we needed to get back to that. So, the comic books, they’re not rebooting … which is a dirty word, it’s a swear word in the comic book world because that means everything that you ever read and bought doesn’t exist anymore. But the re-launch is just approaching it with a new light and bringing every character that hasn’t been around back. Here, as with the second Twitter image, Johns is keen to reassure a vocal (and often hostile) readership that Rebirth is definitely not a reboot. At the same time, however, there is certainly an element of revision involved in “bringing back every character that hasn’t been around back,” even if this doesn’t lead to a wholesale razing of the DCU (where “everything you ever read and bought doesn’t exist anymore”). Instead, what DC Rebirth evokes is the technique of retroactive continuity (usually shortened to “retcon”), that is to say, “when an author alters established facts in earlier works in order to make them consistent with later ones” (Wolf, 2012: 380). In other words, a retcon retroactively changes continuity. To be sure, there are similarities between rebooting and retconing: historically, both originate from the medium of superhero comics; both are “makeover modalities” (Hills, 2014); and both revise pre-established “facts” about an imaginary world, but do so in different ways, to different degrees, and for different reasons. Given that there has been a broad and inexact use

224

R e b o o t s a n d R e t ro a c t i v e C o n t i n u i t y

Figure 28.1 Geoff Johns promotes Rebirth on Twitter Image.

Figure 28.2  Jim Lee explains that Rebirth is not a reboot. of these terms in popular and academic circles, it is necessary to historicize their origins and then move on from there, for, as Roberta Pearson rightly states, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to misunderstand the present” (2014: xii). I shall take each of the concepts in turn, beginning with the most misunderstood of these “strategies of regeneration” (Proctor, forthcoming), that of the reboot.

225

W i l l i a m P ro c t o r

Crisis, Etymology, and History Etymologically, a reboot is a computer term that refers to the process of shutting down a computer system and then restarting it, often to “recover a system from failure” (Tucker, 2006: 644). As a metaphor for resetting and restarting narrative universes, however, the term was first used on the DC UseNet message board to describe the new adventures of The Legion of Superheroes (McKean, 1994). Effectively, this means that the pre-established continuity no longer exists and is deleted from the storyworld’s data banks (at least in theory and figuratively speaking) and that new narrative information reprograms the imaginary world’s memory and is disconnected from the earlier iteration (“everything you ever read and bought doesn’t exist anymore”). A reboot aims to purge the system and begin again with a tabula rasa (a “blank slate”), onto which a brave new world can be etched. As a metaphor, rebooting is rather apposite in the context of new media and the practices of contemporary, networked culture. As Stenport and Traylor argue, this “encompasses the significance of computerized conceptualisations” (2015: 77) and is arguably the principal reason for the term’s “remediation” (Bolter and Gruisin, 2000) in recent years across a range of platforms, such as film, television, and so on. As with a computer reboot, then, the process is often used following a malfunction of some sort that “suggests not only a restarting, but also that something was no longer viable or had gone wrong enough to require such an extreme measure” (Wolf, 2012: 380). Consider DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985–1986), a 12-issue maxi-series that (ostensibly) concluded with a system-wide reboot of the entire DCU. As an imaginary world that, at the time, had a complex continuity spanning almost half a century, a number of system errors had amassed. To begin with, such a convoluted and labyrinthine narrative history was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain and the system was riven with “continuity snarls,” inconsistencies in the imaginary world’s memory banks. Given the size of the DC storyworld that, alongside bête noire Marvel, are “the largest narrative constructions in human history (exceeding, for example, the vast body of myth, legend and story that underlies Greek and Latin literature)” (Lowe, quoted in Kaveney, 2008: 25), it is hardly surprising that the continuity system started to buckle beneath the weight of hundreds and thousands of texts created over a lengthy time span by an inordinate number of creative programmers (writers, artists, editors, etc.).The early DC Comics were “not conceived with an eye to internal coherence” and editors were “comparatively mild about relating one issue to another or one series to another” (Duncan and Smith, 2009: 191)—comics were thought to be “kids’ stuff ” with a limited lifespan during the period—yet, over time, writers started to make explicit links between issues to build a shared universe populated by a pantheon of characters, many of whom will be recognizable to the contemporary audience (such as the DC Trinity of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman). After a decade or so of popularity and prominence, the end of World War II coincided with a widespread industrial slump, and many titles were cancelled. In 1956, DC editor Julius Schwartz kicked off a superhero renaissance with a project that many believe saved the faltering industry (Carter, 2010). Beginning with The Flash, which “had died [in 1948] with the demise of other superhero titles” (Schwartz, 2000: 87), the editor devised a way to resurrect the character, not as a continuation, but by beginning again “from the ground up, keeping only the name and the superspeed powers” (Morrison, 2011: 82). In many ways, the new Flash was a “proto-reboot” but, eventually, the original incarnation was brought back into the imaginary world with the seminal storyline, “Flash of Two Worlds” (The Flash #123, 1961), which introduced the concept of parallel worlds into the DCU. From this point on, the DCU was transformed into a multiverse “in which an infinite 226

R e b o o t s a n d R e t ro a c t i v e C o n t i n u i t y

number of ­alternate Earths … each with its own history and superheroes” (Morrison, 2011: 111) existed side-by-side with one another. Henceforth, the original Flash came from Earth-2 while the new iteration of “the scarlet speedster” belonged to Earth-1. Soon after, the DCU was replete with adventures featuring parallel versions of staple characters crossing over into multiple titles. For example, Earth-3 was conceived as a “mirror universe” where the roles and characteristics of popular characters were reversed—heroes as villains and vice versa— and which preceded the classic Star Trek episode, “Mirror, Mirror” (1967) by three years; or Earth-X, a universe where World War II was won by Nazi Germany. The DCU continued to expand exponentially as more alterative worlds were added to the continuity, and, as a result, the “hyperdiegesis” (Hills, 2002) became “rickety at best” (Britton, 2011: 22). By the 1980s, DC was struggling economically: sales were down across the board, the readership was rapidly declining, and Marvel Comics ruled the roost. By the same token, the sheer size and scope of the imaginary world became off-putting for new readers. As Sacks explains, the DCU had grown into “an alphabet soup of letters and concepts that required readers to keep an encyclopaedic amount of information in their head” (2013: 129). Indeed, as Wolk puts it, comic book fans are often “‘super-readers”; that is, “readers familiar enough with enormous numbers of old comics that they’ll understand what’s really been discussed in the story” (2007: 26). One such super-reader wrote to Marv Wolfman, writer of Crisis, “asking about a mixup in DC continuity” (Wolfman and Perez, 2000: 1). Wolfman responded: In my reply I said, “One day we (meaning the DC editorial we) will probably straighten out what is in the DC Universe …and what is outside.” At this point in its history DC Comics had Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Three, Earth-B, etc. There were superheroes on each Earth and though old-time readers had no problem understanding DC continuity, it proved off-putting to new readers who suddenly discovered there was not one but three Supermans, Wonder Womans, Batmans, etc. (2000: 1) On the one hand, fans “expect adherence to established tenets, characterisations and narrative ‘back stories’.” (Hills, 2002: 28), but given that the DCU is “of an order of complexity beyond anything the television audience has become accustomed to” (Reynolds, 1992: 38), then rebooting is one of the ways that an imaginary world’s continuity can be reprogrammed to deal with a growing number of glitches in narrative memory. On the other hand, such reprogramming also signals to potential new readers that a functional entry-point has been opened, a direct invitation to those who might have been put off by the improbability of catching up with fifty years of continuity. This illustrates the doublelogic of rebooting, one that aims to address the maelstrom of contradictions to appease the fannish demand for cohesion and consistency, while also operating as a way to entice new readers with the promise of a blank slate. From this position, then, the DC comic book reboot is both a narrative technique and an economic/industrial strategy designed to stimulate the cash nexus. What is fascinating about Crisis on Infinite Earths is that the DCU is deleted from the continuity program as a part of the story itself, a technique that has since been used repeatedly to revise and recalibrate superhero comic universes, for example, DC’s Zero Hour: Crisis in Time (1994), Infinite Crisis (2006), and Flashpoint/“The New 52” (2011), and also in the J. J. Abrams’s Star Trek reboot (the latter of which operates as both a reboot and a continuation). As Colin B. Harvey explains, narrative devices, such as time travel and parallel worlds, afford creators the opportunity to “correct solecisms in the storyworld” (2015: 71). The primary rationale for demolishing the imaginary world as part of the narrative is to provide sufficient canonical 227

W i l l i a m P ro c t o r

reasoning for the core fan base. Indeed, as Johns points out above, reboots are a “dirty, swear word in the comic book world” because of the investment that fans make in terms of reading and buying large amounts of comics. To be told that the stories many have been reading for years no longer count as imaginary world “fact,” but are thrown into the dustbin of history as irrelevant and apocryphal, signals disrespect from producers to fans. This demonstrates that continuity and canon are often sacrosanct principles for super-readers “which production teams revise at their peril, disrupting the trust which is placed on the continuity of a detailed narrative world” (Hills, 2002). For the uninitiated, reading Crisis might well be an insurmountable task but, in a nutshell, the story revolves around the series’ big bad, the Anti-Monitor, who orchestrates the destruction of DC’s nexus of parallel worlds while an army of superheroes from across the multiverse battle to stop him. By the end of the series, the Anti-Monitor is defeated; Supergirl and The Flash are dead; while the multiverse is purged from continuity and contracts into a single world. By the final pages, fifty years of narrative continuity is washed away and replaced with a blank slate. The imaginary world isn’t simply destroyed: put simply, it “never existed in the first place” (Klock, 2002: 21). From this point on, the DCU (theoretically) splintered into pre- and post-Crisis universes. Here, the reboot process begins with the collapse of the imaginary system, followed by a program of recreation, of rebuilding. In superhero comics, the reboot process begins with a system purge, à la Crisis, but the “actual” rebooting process is that which is sketched onto the blank slate, texts such as John Byrne’s Man of Steel (1986) and George Perez’s Wonder Woman (1987) that respectively rebooted Superman and the Amazonian Princess from degree zero, from the beginning (again) with the characters in a state of becoming. It is necessary to understand, however, that the DC comic book reboot is a process and that both the demolition and rebuilding of an imaginary world are part and parcel of this process, something that film and TV franchises are unable to do due to the direct address to fan consumers. As I argue elsewhere, minority fan cultures are unable to prop up a tent-pole movie (Proctor, forthcoming). Vast narrative event-series, such as Crisis, are undoubtedly for super-readers while the reboots themselves are invitations to new readers. Of course, the notion of wiping away decades of canonical history, of an imaginary world’s biographical memory, is nigh on impossible: the slate is always-already populated by the ghosts and phantasms of history. A reboot might well aim to delete previously established programming, but this can never be achieved cleanly or without complication and contradiction. Here, Harvey’s model of storyworld memory is a valuable way of understanding the ways in which narrative continuity functions and the paradoxes set in motion by intertextual “remembering.” By viewing the parameters of the imaginary world across the two axes of “horizontal” and “vertical” memory, we are faced with the aporia of multiplicity and, consequently, anomaly. First, episodes, installments, chapters, sequels, prequels, and so forth are metaphorical bridges that establish sequential connections along the horizontal axis and form the storyworld. In short, each “micro-narrative” (Ryan, 1992: 373) should ideally “remember” other entries in the system. Second, and contradictorily, the vertical axis “remembers” every text in the DCU regardless of the intentions of creators and producers, but it also “remembers” the infinite spiral of intertextuality. From this perspective, then, a reboot’s principal objective is to “forget,” or “non-remember,” the contents of vertical memory but—and here’s the contradiction—it can never truly forget the horizontal. As Brooker acknowledges, “a text cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads” (2012: 47). What complicates this matter even further is that imaginary worlds are often comprised of multiple versions and variations, continuities and canons, so much so that the concept of an 228

R e b o o t s a n d R e t ro a c t i v e C o n t i n u i t y

imaginary world might be better reconfigured as an imaginary system. Within such a system, we can view an individual co-system as a story-program.To illustrate, the DC character Batman belongs to an imaginary system consisting of innumerable story-programs that are “hermetically sealed” (Ford and Jenkins, 2009: 307) from one another so that there is no such thing as a singular Batman, or for that matter a united Batman storyworld, but a plurality of Batmen co-existing in parallel with each iteration and incarnation as part of an imaginary system, not world. Such programming means that Comic Book Batman (and within this, Bob Kane’s Batman, Frank Miller’s Batman, DC Rebirth Batman, etc.),Tim Burton’s Batman, Christopher Nolan’s Batman, Animated Batman, Video Game Batman, and 1960s TV series Batman all belong to different story-programs.To this end, each variation on the Batman theme is in possession of individual mnemonic circuits, of memory and continuity. This is of vital importance when analyzing reboots, as one must ask: what is being rebooted? Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005), for instance, reboots the Batman film series, the cinematic program, and not the contents of the comic book system. In the contemporary “age of multiplicity,” as Jenkins (2009) describes the current historical moment, “readers may consume multiple versions of the same franchise” (Ford & Jenkins, 2009: 20) but, at the same time, “are expected to know which interpretative frame should be applied to any given title” (2009: 303, my ­italics). In recent years, the reboot concept has been transposed from comics and adapted across media. This has led to the term becoming a fashionable buzzword in popular and academic circles and a tendency to misinterpret the concept or treat it as axiomatic. The next section addresses and unpacks this conceptual hodgepodge.

Reboots, Remakes, and Re-launches: Film and Television Following the commercial and critical failure of Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin (1997)— “by most viewers’ account an atrociously bad film, too bad to even be camp” (Gray, 2010: 131)—Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins “successfully resurrected the Batman brand from the cinematic graveyard” (Proctor, 2012). In essence, the reboot responds to Batman and Robin as a “program error,” and supplants the series by resetting the horizontal memory to degree zero and beginning again. Batman Begins was the first film to be described as a reboot, most notably by co-writer, David S. Goyer: After Batman and Robin it was necessary to do what we call in comic book terms “a reboot”… Say you’ve had 187 issues of The Incredible Hulk and you decide you’re going to introduce a new Issue 1.You pretend like those first 187 issues never happened, and you start the story from the beginning and the slate is wiped clean, and no one blinks … So we did the cinematic equivalent of a reboot, and by doing that, setting it at the beginning, you’re instantly distancing yourself from anything that’s come before. (Goyer, quoted in Greenberg, 2005: 13–14) The triumph of Batman Begins has since led toward the reboot term becoming used frequently as part of the popular and academic lexicon. Other films, such as the Bond reboot Casino Royale (2006), J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek (2009), and Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) have been accurately defined as reboots, but other texts have been described as such in contradictory ways. One of the most common ways that the concept has been evoked incorrectly is by ­viewing reboots as “the current operative moniker for American or Hollywood-to-Hollywood remakes” (Stenport and Traylor, 2015: 77).To be sure, there are conceptual commonalities and 229

W i l l i a m P ro c t o r

considerable overlap between rebooting and remaking, but the principal differential is that a reboot is a serial paradigm as opposed to the archetypal remake that can be understood as a single narrative unit. As Steven Gil rightly states, “[w]hat may be said to immediately identify a reboot is the fact that it initiates a series of texts,” a plurality as opposed to the singular (2014: 25–26, my italics). Essentially, one cannot reboot a self-contained film. Another way that rebooting has been misused is in relation to revivals, those series that have spent some time hibernating in the cultural wilderness but are reawakened in the present. Texts such as The X-Files (2016), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), and Doctor Who (2005– present), for example, have been described as reboots in mainstream media, but this is problematic. All of these examples—and there are many more besides—“remember” the contents of horizontal memory and, as a result, can be understood as revivals or re-launches. Here is Shawn Shimpach describing the 2005 revival of Doctor Who as: not a reboot or a remake of the earlier series, nor another set of stories simply set in the same fictional universe, but instead an updated continuation of the previous program featuring the familiar box-shaped TARDIS, familiar antagonists (animated mannequin Autons—last seen in 1971, later Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, the Master, etc.), and young, female companions from early twenty-first century Earth ... especially London. This program was the same program—same histories, same memories—but with a new form and new traits. Doctor Who had regenerated. (2010: 155) Likewise, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is not a reboot, as fan Amanda Ward points out (with indignation, I might add): Star Wars journalism is kicking into high gear right now, and so is my extreme annoyance with loose semantics. Star Wars has never been rebooted … it seems obvious to me none of these films are reboots, reimaginings or remakes of any other Star Wars film, but apparently it is not that clear for others. Star Wars is now one big nine part saga, at least when talking about The Skywalker Saga. (Ward, 2013) Again, Star Wars:The Force Awakens and, by extension, other “new” episodes in the continuity (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars: Rebels (2014–present)) “remember” earlier serial utterances, such as The Original and Prequel trilogies or The Clone Wars TV series (see Proctor and Freeman, 2016). Such remembering, of course, might eventually be corrupted by faulty programming, such as with Doctor Who’s canonical conflicts. But the point remains: reboots delete established memory in order to begin again with a new horizontal memory, whereas revivals/re-launches provide a “substantive bridge” (Hills, 2002) between past and present as continuations. Briefly, reboots forget and disconnect; revivals/re-launches, and we could include other sequential concepts such as prequels and sequels, etc., remember, attach, and continue (for further analysis see Proctor, forthcoming).

Retroactive Continuity In many ways, reboots and retcons are part of the same family: whereas the former deletes the entire contents of a horizontal story-program, the latter revises partially. In other words, a reboot can be understood as an “extreme” retcon, and a retcon as a “partial” reboot. 230

R e b o o t s a n d R e t ro a c t i v e C o n t i n u i t y

Like the reboot, retconning originates from superhero comic books and the first printed appearance of the term appeared in the letter pages of All-Star Squadron #18 (Thomas et al., 1983) wherein writer Roy Thomas wrote: “we like to think that an enthusiastic ALL-STAR booster at one of Adam Malin’s Creation Conventions in San Diego came up with the best name for it a few months back: ‘Retroactive Continuity.’ Has a kind of ring to it, don’t you think?” The corollary to this is that the term might well have emerged at this point in history, but the technique has been utilized avant la lettre, such as the revisions Tolkien made to The Hobbit (1937) to bring it into alignment with The Lord of The Rings (1954–1955) or Conan Doyle resurrecting Sherlock Holmes following his ostensible demise at the Reichenbach Falls (“The Final Problem” (1893)). Retconning is more frequently used than rebooting, and such reprogramming of horizontal memory, that which is canonical and “factual” in the story-program (see also the “Canonicity” chapter in this volume), illustrates that canon “is not absolute gospel but a database that allows for constant tweaks, reboots and revisions. Metaphorically, its ideal medium is not stone tablets, but Wikipedia” (Brooker, 2012: 158). Indeed, one of the reasons why superhero comics have managed such longevity is through the means of periodic regeneration and revision. As Klock (2002) points out, survival is a key feature of the medium’s DNA. Consider the archetypal character, Superman, who first made his appearance in the pages of Action Comics #1 (1938). One can view Action Comics #1 as the first reading head of the DCU and the beginning of the imaginary world’s horizontal memory, of continuity (although as noted above, the DC titles were not created with coherence in mind from the start and so it was with the Man of Steel). In the early issues of Action Comics, and extended with the first Superman solo title a year later, the character could not yet fly, his most recognizable trait to contemporary audiences, but only “leap 1/8th of a mile” (Siegel & Schuster, 2006: 4). It was, in fact, not the comic book that bestowed the powers of flight on Superman, but the successful radio adaptation that started airing in 1940 and lasted until 1951. It wasn’t until Action Comics #55 (“The Million Dollar Marathon,” 1943), however, that the Last Son of Krypton took to the skies. As a result of this transmedia exchange, Superman’s abilities were retconned in the comic book to align with other media, including the classic Fleischer animated series (1941–1943). What this example shows is that Superman, the comic book character, was in “dialogue and oscillation with other texts” (Berger, 2008: 88), with other Supermen, transmedial expressions that influenced the “source” material via vertical memory. In this way, adaptation can often reconceptualize canonical elements that are then “rewired” (Berger, 2008) back into the comic book’s horizontal memory. Rather than a one-way process of translation as with “archetypal adaptations” (Harvey, 2015), what we have here is a “feedback loop” comprised of “a multiplicity of criss-crossing, appropriations and re-appropriations, borrowing and borrowing-back” (Brooker, 2005: 181). Such a “strategy of regeneration” is commonplace in superhero comics. Like reboots, retconning runs the risk of annoying dedicated readers. One of the most controversial retcons in recent years occurred in the pages of Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man storyline, “One More Day” (Straczynski et al., 2007). In the four-part mini-series, Aunt May has been shot and, in order to save her life, Peter Parker makes “a deal with the devil,” Mephisto, who requires him to sacrifice his marriage to Mary Jane. As Peter and Mary Jane tied the knot in the 1987 storyline, “The Wedding,” such a significant shift in the status quo was difficult for some fans to swallow. Not only that, but “One More Day” also wiped the memories of the entire Marvel character pantheon to rectify Peter’s unmasking as Spider-Man in Mark Millar’s Civil War (2006–2007) mini-series. By the close of “One More Day,” Aunt May is saved, Peter 231

W i l l i a m P ro c t o r

and Mary Jane are no longer married—indeed, they were never married in the first place— and Peter’s secret identity is reset. Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief, Joe Quesada, tried to rationalize the creative decision: “we have to do this to keep the character fresh for this generation and generations to come … this is really the right thing to do for the long-term health of the character” (quoted in Colton, 2008). For the fans, however, the retcon was an outrage: “People are very upset. They erased a lot of stuff that had been set in stone … it disrespects the readers by saying everything they read is wrong” (Newmand and Shutt quoted in Colton, 2008). As with reboots, the concept of horizontal memory is a valuable framework for understanding revision and regeneration, or as the case of Spider-Man demonstrates, degeneration, should audiences react negatively to such a shift in the status quo. The UK TV series, Doctor Who, has utilized the retcon technique multiple times over the years to try and repair the continuity snarls in horizontal memory. “Because the series is over half a century old,” explains Harvey, “many contradictions exist within the programme’s continuity” (2015: 94). As with comics reboots, the conceits of time travel and alternative universes provide the grounds for revisionism as a method of repairing inconsistencies in the story-program. Despite Paul Cornell’s claim that “[t]here is, with some caveats, no such thing as a Doctor Who canon” (2009), fans often work toward cataloging the contents of the storyprogram in order to make sense of it all by rationalizing inconsistencies, as with the online fan database,The Whoniverse (http://www.whoniverse.net/articles/canon). Hence, the “maintenance, ordering and enhancement of the Doctor Who hyperdiegesis has almost entirely been the work of fans” (Britton, 2011: 21). For instance, the controversial Doctor Who television movie contradicted established memory by informing audiences that the character was “half-human,” as opposed to “wholly alien,” which “led to many rejecting the television movie and rendering it ‘non-canon’” (Harvey, 2015: 95). Again, for fans, this was a retcon too far. To try and impose a course correction for those fans who deemed the text to be contradictory, tie-in media, such as the Big Finnish audio drama Zagreus (2003), which explained away the discrepancy by positing “multiple versions of this particular incarnation of the Doctor” (ibid), can function as a kind of “software patch” to reprogram what we think we know and understand. Whether or not tie-in media is accepted as authentic, as opposed to apocryphal, is another thing altogether (for further, see Jenkins, 2006; and Hills, 2012). As with reboots, retconning is a serial paradigm and has been evoked in other media and genres. Soap operas, such as Coronation Street (1960–present) or Dallas (1978–1991, 2012– 2014), are also imaginary systems consisting of thousands of texts, episodes, and tie-in media. Viewers of such programs share remarkable commonalities with science fiction and fantasy audiences in that they: do remember a serial’s past very clearly and expect any references to it to be accurate, down to the last detail.This accumulation of knowledge by the committed audience is recognised by those working on the programmes, who boast about the detailed attention to minutiae which their audience give the serial. (Geraghty, 1981: 16) Yet both Coronation Street and Dallas have retconned elements of established lore and horizontal memory. The latter is a particular egregious case. The famous, and indeed infamous, death of fan-favorite character, Bobby Ewing, was retconned in a way that actively defied belief. In the show’s sixth season finale, Bobby was killed in a car accident and the following season dealt 232

R e b o o t s a n d R e t ro a c t i v e C o n t i n u i t y

with the trauma of his passing. However, in the seventh season finale, Pam Ewing, Bobby’s distraught spouse, discovered Bobby alive and well in the shower. Season Eight rationalized the resurrection of Bobby by explaining that the previous season in its entirety had all been a dream and, therefore, none of the episodes actually occurred! Moreover, the Dallas spin-off, Knot’s Landing (1979–1983), ignored Bobby’s miraculous revival so that, effectively, the imaginary system was beset by breaches in horizontal memory. Not all retcons—or reboots for that matter—are treated with disdain by audiences. For the vast comic book empires of “the Big Two,” Marvel and DC, periodic updates are a fundamental way to ensure the story-program remains vibrant and contemporary “as part of its survival code” (Klock, 2002). This can be achieved by revising the established biographies of staple characters, such as Marvel’s Iron Man, who was initially an arms-dealer in the Vietnam War but has since been retconned multiple times to account for shifts in the socio-political landscape. Marvel often rationalize such shifts through their concept of “sliding time,” which means that the characters, and, by extension, the story-program, remain perpetually youthful through the compression of narrative temporality. Even though the Marvel Universe is decades old, the concept of sliding time—or Marvel Time—dictates that the temporality of the imaginary world is but a fraction of “real time.”

Conclusion To sum up: both reboots and retcons are “strategies of regeneration” that revise previously established facts about an imaginary world, its canon, continuity, and memory. As “product differentiation is key to profitability” (Johnson, 2013: 42), revisionism becomes a fundamental characteristic of long-running story-programs and imaginary systems. Here, the double bind is that industrial grounds are often confronted by fan cultures that may decry periodic paroxysms that shift the framework of memory, hyperdiegesis, and established continuity. That being said, worlds have a tendency to apocalypse and are frequently beset by stress fractures in the imaginary canvas: worlds often fall apart (Hassler-Forest, 2016), especially as more and more expansive materials are frequently uploaded to the memory banks of the story-program, and strategies of regeneration are employed to stabilize and/or update the imaginary world and purge the system of inconsistency, contradiction, and paradox. A careful balance between innovation and standardization becomes difficult to manage for vast imaginary networks. Both reboots and retcons function as “makeover modalities,” of repair, reprogramming, and regeneration; the former uses a method of beginning again with the establishment of new horizontal memory while the latter endorses the revision of an already existing narrative sequence without deleting the entire story-program. Rebooting, then, “means to restart an entertainment universe that has already been previously established, and begin with a new storyline and/or timeline that disregards the original writer’s previously established history, thus making it obsolete and void” (Willits, 2009). On the other hand, retroactive continuity refers to: [t]he process of revising a fictional serial narrative, altering details that have previously been established in the narrative so that it can be continued in a new direction or so that potential contradictions in previous versions can be reconciled. (Booker, 2010: 510) Such “strategies of regeneration” are thus employed to ensure that falls do not fall apart beyond repair. As Schwartz acknowledges, “every ten years the universe needs an enema” (quoted in Kaveney, 2008). 233

W i l l i a m P ro c t o r

References Berger, Richard (2008), “Are There Anymore at Home Like You? Rewiring Superman,” Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, 1:2, pp. 97–101. Bolter, Jay David; & Grusin, Richard (2000), Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. Booker, Keith M. (2010), The Encyclopaedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels. Oxford: Greenwood. Britton, Piers D. (2011), TARDISbound: Navigating the Universes of Doctor Who. London: I.B. Taurus. Brooker, Will (2005), Batman Unmasked: Analysing a Cultural Icon. London: Continuum. Brooker, Will (2012), Hunting the Dark Knight:Twenty-First Century Batman. London: I.B. Taurus. Carter, Mac (2010), Secret Origin:The Story of DC [DVD]. New York: DC Entertainment. Colton, David (2008), “Spidey Loses the Wedding Ring,” USA Today, January 10, 2008, available at: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20080110/d_spidey10.art.htm (Accessed: 13 June, 2013). Duncan, Randy; & Smith, Matthew J. (2009), The Power of Comics: History, Form and Culture. London: Continuum. Ford, Sam; and Jenkins, Henry (2009), “Managing Multiplicity in Superhero Comics: An Interview with Henry Jenkins” in Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (eds.), Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives. Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 303–312. Geraghty, Christine (1981), “The Continuous Serial: A Definition” in Richard Dyer et al., Coronation Street. London: BFI, pp. 9–27. Gil, Steven (2014), “A Remake by Any Other Name: Use of a Premise Under a New Title” in Lavigne, Carlen (ed.), Remake Television: Reboot, Reuse, Recycle. Toronto: Lexington Books, pp. 21–36. Gray, Jonathan (2010), Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press. Greenberg, James (2005), “Rescuing Batman,” Los Angeles Times, May 8, Sunday Home Edition. Harvey, Colin B. (2015), Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play and Memory Across Science Fiction Storyworlds. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hassler-Forest, Dan (2016), Science Fiction, Fantasy and Politics:Transmedia World-Building Beyond Capitalism. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Hills, Matt (2002), Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. Hills, Matt (2012), “Torchwood’s Trans-Transmedia: Media Tie-ins and Brand ‘Fanagement,’” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 9.2, pp. 409–428. Hills, Matt (2014), “Rebranding Doctor Who and Reimagining Sherlock: ‘Quality’ Television as ‘Makeover TV Drama,’” International Journal of Cultural Studies, pp.1–15. Jenkins, Henry (2006), Convergence Culture. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry (2009), “Just Men in Tights: Rewriting Silver Age Comics in an Era of Multiplicity” in Angela Ndalianis (ed.) The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero. Oxon: Routledge, pp.16–43. Johnson, Derek (2013), Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. London: New York University Press. Kaveney, Roz (2008), Superheroes! Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films. London: I.B. Taurus. Klock, Geoff (2002), How to Read Superhero Comics and Why. London: Continuum. McKean, Michael E. (1994), “Superboy and Moorcock Comics,” DCUsenet (archive), https://groups. google.com/forum/?hl=en#!Original/rec.arts.comics.misc/4gsPc8B2 Fic/CeEtYnhDy4wJ. Accessed: 01.10.16. Morrison, Grant (2011), Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero. London: Jonathan Cape. Pearson, Roberta (2014), “Foreword” in Scolari, Carlo A., Bertetti, Paolo, & Freeman, Matthew. Transmedia Archaeology: Storytelling in the Borderlines of Science Fiction, Comics and Pulp Magazines. London: Palgrave Pivot. Proctor, William (2012), “Regeneration and Rebirth: Anatomy of the Franchise Reboot,” Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies, Issue 22 (February). Proctor, William (2017), Reboot Culture: Comics, Film,Transmedia. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Proctor, William; and Freeman, Matthew (2016), ‘“The First Step into a Smaller World”: The Transmedia Economy of Star Wars” in Wolf, Mark J.P (ed.), Revisiting Imaginary Worlds. London: Routledge. Reynolds, Richard (1992), Superheroes: A Modern Mythology. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Ryan, Marie-Laure (1992), “The Modes of Narrativity and Their Visual Metaphors,” Style 26.3, pp. 368–387.

234

R e b o o t s a n d R e t ro a c t i v e C o n t i n u i t y

Sacks, Jason (2013), “Crisis and Creation” in Dallas, Keith (ed.), American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1980s. Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, pp. 128–151. Schwartz, Julius (with Thomsen, Brian M.) (2000), Man of Two Worlds: My Life in Science Fiction and Comics. New York: Harper Collins. Shimpach, Shawn (2010), Television in Transition: The Life and Afterlife of the Narrative Hero. WilleyBlackwell: Chichester. Siegel, Jerry; and Schuster, Joe (2006), The Superman Chronicles:Volume One. New York: DC Comics. Stenport, Anna Westerståhl; and Traylor, Garrett (2015), “The Eradication of Memory: Film Adaptations and Algorithms,” Cinema Journal, Fall, No. 1. Tucker, Allen B. (2006), (ed.), Computer Science Handbook. Florida: CRC Press. Ward, Amanda (2013), “Hey Internet Journalists, Star Wars Episode VII is Not a Reboot,” Making Star Wars. Available at: http://makingstarwars.net/2013/09/star-wars-journalists-upcoming-episodesvii-viii-ix-neither-reboots-remakes-reimaginings/ (Accessed: 21 April 2014). Willits, Thomas R. (2009), “To Reboot or Not to Reboot: What Is the Solution?” Bewildering Stories, available at: http://www.bewildering stories.com/ issue 344/ reboot1.html (Accessed: 30 September 2010). Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds:The History and Theory of Subcreation. London: Routledge. Wolfman, Marv; and Perez, George (2000) Crisis on Infinite Earths. New York: DC Comics. Wolk, Douglas (2007), Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press.

235

29

Canonicity William Proctor In May 2013, IDW announced that the cult TV series, The X-Files (1993–2002, 2016–­present), would continue as a comic book series that “picks up sometime after the last movie,” I Want to Believe (2008). Written by Joe Harris with art by Michael Walsh, the creative team on the comic book, subtitled Season Ten in deference to TV series continuity, also consists of X-Files creator and showrunner, Chris Carter, serving as executive producer in order to provide “feedback to the creative team regarding scripts and outlines to keep the new stories in line with existing and ongoing canon” (Brown, 2013). The involvement of Carter and the news that the series would be an official extension of the TV series was met with waves of enthusiasm from dedicated fans—known as “X-Philes” in fan vernacular—and that these new stories would “count” as an authentic continuation of the imaginary world, as opposed to counter-factual apocrypha, was for many a dream come true. Promoting the Season Ten comic as intimately bound to the canonicity of the TV series directly addresses the X-Philes community and the fannish desire for authenticity. In so doing, such a promotional strategy reassures fans that these new stories will constitute imaginary world “fact.” The canonical status of the comic book series would, however, be later threatened by the return of The X-Files on TV in a six-part “special event” series in 2016. The new televisual Season Ten would effectively disavow and supplant the comic book Season Ten as canonical, the latter being reconceptualized as fabrication (Figure 29.1). Put simply, the comic series’ status was effectively rendered “non-canon,” that is, it no longer “counts” as the genuine article. As Brooker explains, “[t]his is the rulebook of continuity canon; the strict sense of what counts and what happened, what is ‘true’, and what isn’t” (2012: 154). What this demonstrates quite clearly is that canonicity, or canon, is “not gospel, but a database that allows for constant tweaks, reboots and revisions […] its ideal medium is not stone tablets but Wikipedia” (ibid). As Wolf emphasizes, the idea of canon, that certain things are “true” for an imaginary world (that characters, locations, and objects exist, and that events have happened within that world), demonstrates the desire for authenticity from the point of view of the audience, who are often concerned with demarcating what is “official” for a world or franchise. (2012: 270–271) From the outside, the issue of canonicity might well seem strange; after all, an imaginary world is just that: imaginary. But for dedicated audiences, canonicity is a fundamental part of the fan experience and “one of the great pleasures of serial art” (Kaveney, 2008: 26). 236

Canonicity

Figure 29.1  This short example illustrates several things simultaneously. To begin with, the importance of canonicity has become a promotional instrument with which to potentially entice X-Philes to partake in the new (and now genuine) adventures of Mulder and Scully. In doing so, canon becomes a way to brand texts as official extensions and thus “makes sense from an economic point-of-view” within the industrial logic of late capitalism (Hayward, 2009: 2). Second, the involvement of Chris Carter signifies and activates his “author-function” (Foucault, 1969), which operates as a savvy branding mechanism to authenticate the comic series and signal its canonicity. Third, canon is subject to revision and fluency, not stasis and permanency. And fourth, canonical declarations emanate from the production/creative context as a top-down process. Although “for a work to be canonical requires that it be declared as such by someone with the authority to do so” (Wolf, 2012: 271), such official dictates have often led to quarrel, confusion, and contestation between fans. When did canon become such a significant characteristic of imaginary world organization? This chapter provides an account of canonicity from a number of perspectives. The first section explains the broad range of meanings of canonicity that then leads into the emergence of imaginary world canon, most notably in reference to Ronald Knox’s satirical essay, “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” (1911), a work that set out to deliberate on questions of canonicity regarding the famous detective’s adventures from the bottom-up.This leads into an examination of the way in which authorship and canonicity are intrinsically connected as a method of branding imaginary world fiction as legitimate and accurate through the lens of Star Trek. The final section discusses the importance of canon as both a fan concern and the industrial logic of “commodity braiding” (Freeman, 2014) as a way to provide genuine interconnections between imaginary world narratives. 237

W i l l i a m P ro c t o r

Defining Canonicity The term “canon” is usually defined as “law,” “rule,” or “norm” (Schnabel, 1995: 17). The Greek word from which it is derived has a broad range of meanings, and so it is with canonicity. For example, one might refer to “the Leavisian notion of a great tradition” (Parkin, 2007: 246), namely, the English literary canon, a body of work that includes “classic” authors such as William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and so forth. Traditionally, this is often set in opposition to popular culture, which is debased and “symptomatic of a profound political disorder” (ibid), of “anarchy,” and that the reinforcement of canonical distinctions thus constructs a binary relationship, or “moral dualism” (Hills, 2002), between “good” high art and “bad” popular culture. If one thinks of the (high) cultural outrage in regard to the popular author Stephen King being awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters—what elite critic Harold Bloom described as “another low in the process of dumbing down our cultural life” (quoted in Rolls, 2008: x)—or folk singer-songwriter Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, with many cultural commentators decrying the award as a slip in cultural standards, then it is clear that the organization of canonical works relies upon distinctions largely based in classed “taste cultures,” as theorized by Pierre Bourdieu (1984). In many ways, then, the literary canon is a sacred and evangelized body of work. This is not to say, however, that the great canon of English literature is the one and only “law” or “rule,” nor that the body of work contained therein represents a “closed” system. As the philosopher John R. Searle remarks: In my experience there never was, in fact, a fixed ‘canon’; there was rather a certain set of tentative judgments about what had importance and quality. Such judgments are always subject to revision, and in fact they were constantly being revised. (1990) Popular culture also canonizes aesthetic material and constructs distinctions between texts, so one might refer to the Film Canon, the TV Canon, or the Comic Book Canon as a yardstick for measuring the “quality” of popular texts and their authors (again, with the proviso that this is a fluid corpus of texts rather than one that is fixed and permanent). Directors, artists, and authors can equally be canonized within fan communities, but the literary canon is still upheld as the “true” canon by elite figures and institutions as “the best that has been thought and said in the world” (Arnold, quoted in Storey, 2012: 21).Who has the power to make these decisions is another question entirely and beyond the scope of this chapter. A second understanding of canonicity, and one that is more in line with our purposes here, is that of the biblical canon. Although “the genesis of both the OT [Old Testament] and NT [New Testament] are extremely complex” (Schnabel, 1995: 16), one can view the biblical canon as a body of work “which was applied to the list of books regarded as authoritative for the churches” (ibid). Despite the lack of consensus concerning the literary history of canonical processes, what is valuable here by way of analogy is that Catholic canonicity is a closed system. Those texts within the Catholic canon are deemed as authoritative and genuine by church governance whereas the gospels and texts that have been excluded are best understood as Apocrypha. By contrast, the canonicity of imaginary worlds such as, say, Doctor Who, Star Wars, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a matter of debate, rationalization, and exegesis—although debates about what texts are deemed as authoritative imaginary world “scripture” by the churches of popular culture are hardly conclusive, yet often pivot on questions of authenticity—of 238

Canonicity

authorship—that is analogous with canonicity principles in religious doctrine. As Parkin explains, secondary world creators, such as George Lucas (Star Wars) or Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek), are “authorities and can act like popes of their magisteria and make definitive, official rulings on matters of canon” (2007: 252). What should be clear at this point is that canonicity is synchronic—it develops over time—and diachronic—“the state of affairs at a given moment” (Reynolds, 1992: 41). I will now move on to look at a sampling of imaginary world canonicity, beginning first with the famous Baker Street detective, Sherlock Holmes.

Canonicity and Fandom: The Many Lives of Sherlock Holmes Like many imaginary worlds, the Sherlock Holmes universe is brimming with texts, the vast majority of which were not written by original creator and author, Arthur Conan Doyle. Recent examples abound across the transmedia expanse, including Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films (2009 and 2011); the BBC TV series Sherlock, including manga spin-off, “A Study in Pink” (2016); the US TV series Elementary (2012–present); Neil Gaiman’s short story, “A Study in Emerald” (2003); Caleb Carr’s The Italian Secretary (2005); numerous comic book series, such as Daniel Indro’s Sherlock Holmes:Year One (2011); and Anthony Horowitz’s novels, The House of Silk (2011) and sequel, Moriarty (2014). From this select list, then, we can see that there is no such thing as a singular Sherlock Holmes but a plurality of Sherlocks existing within a matrix of multiple versions and variations (for more on cultural matrices, see Brooker [2012]). None of these examples, however, are a part of the official Sherlock Holmes canon. The implication here is that the “truth-conditions” (Doležel, 1998) of the Sherlock matrix only apply to a small corpus of texts; to wit, 56 short stories and four novels all written by Arthur Conan Doyle. The rest of the hundreds and thousands of texts are counter-factual stories and, effectively, apocryphal; that is, they never really happened. The problem with any notion of a Holmes canon, even one anchored to Conan Doyle’s authorship, is that the body of work is “replete with all the contradictions, lacunae, and interesting mistakes of inspiration working under deadline” (Chabon, 2010: 41). As early as 1902 (Saler, 2012: 116), passionate Sherlockians began writing mock scholarly articles that aimed to “settle the questions raised by the gaps that Conan Doyle left lying around the canon” (Chabon, 2010: 41) and to “provide explanations for inconsistencies in … Watson’s writings of the master-detective” (Eckert, 2010: 11). Such a playful and participatory spirit became known amongst Sherlockians as “The Game” in which players: write critical essays that resolve the chronology of the Sherlock Holmes canon and otherwise provide explanations for inconsistencies in Watson’s work. Sometimes the inconsistencies are explained as resulting from Watson’s carelessness, whereas in other instances we are told that Watson deliberately changed certain details, times, and names to protect innocent parties and prevent delicate information from being uncovered through his writings. (ibid) Ronald A. Knox’s essay, “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” (1911), is such an example of painstaking scholarly exegesis and treats the canon with the same level of detail and rigor as what one might expect for an analysis of “high” cultural texts. Written as partsatire and part-sincerity, Knox offers “outlines of a possible mode of treatment” as a way to resolve “grave inconsistencies in the Holmes cycle” (1911). Here, Knox believes “that all the stories were written by Watson, but whereas the genuine cycle actually happened, the 239

W i l l i a m P ro c t o r

s­purious adventures are the lucubrations of his [Watson’s] own unaided invention.” Knox marshals “internal evidence, implicit or explicit” as a way to rationalize inconsistencies and contradictions within the Conan Doyle canon as a form of play and participation. Despite the mock seriousness of the essay, and the inclusion of invented sources, such as M. Papier Mache or M. Piff Pouffe, the Sherlockian Game “anticipated and helped to invent, the contemporary fandom that has become indistinguishable from contemporary popular art” (Chabon, 2010: 44). What this convincingly demonstrates is that an emergent Sherlockian fan culture shares many remarkable commonalities with contemporary fan practices, such as: the degree to which [some fans] want to see inconsistencies resolved; although they would seem to threaten the believability of a world more than the lack of completeness or invention, inconsistencies are treated by those fans as though they are merely gaps in the data, unexplained phenomena that further research and speculation will clear up. (Wolf, 2012: 45) What is also important here is that Conan Doyle is most certainly viewed as the sole authorGod of the Holmes canon and the texts created with his pen are the genuine article while all else is mere fabrication. However, and this is important, it is not Conan Doyle who is making such claims about The Gospel According to Watson, but, rather, the Sherlockian fan culture. To this end, the author is deified as sole creator of the imaginary world despite a multitude of contradictions and inconsistencies within. To prevent the world from falling apart, then, fans often play around with the text to ensure the pieces fit cohesively in lieu of any guidance from authorial governance. One of the ways in which we might be able to include every incarnation of the Holmes archetype within such a paradoxical imaginary system is through the concept of “possible worlds.” Each incarnation could then be viewed as an alternate fictional world, what Doležel describes as a “heterocosm” (1998). While this would seem to feasibly work, at least from a theoretical perspective, one should recognize that the activities and behaviors of fan cultures often pivot on questions around genuine articles versus imposter versions. The Conan Doyle canon is thus the “real truth” about the “inhuman and undifferentiated sleuth-hound” (Knox, 1911) whereas the wealth of Sherlock texts that continue to be produced in many variations and forms are interloper texts.

Canon and Authorship: The Imaginary World of Star Trek One of the ways in which imaginary world canonicity has developed as part of the industrial logic of late capitalism is through the concept of authorship. We have seen how canonical aporia can be of vital importance for the Sherlockian fan culture and that the deification of Conan Doyle’s authorship as the central source of the “truth-conditions” of the imaginary world is initiated from bottom-up participation as opposed to top-down industrial governance. The contradiction here is that canonicity is usually determined by an official authority, by an author or, if such a figure has passed away, through the invocation of an “author-function.”This section provides a brief case study of Star Trek, with “its storyworld more internally complex than that of any other American television show” (Pearson and Davies, 2014: 15), and of a size and scope that means it is incredibly unlikely that any one person has read, watched, and played all the works of the imaginary world. 240

Canonicity

The Star Trek Universe comprises thousands of texts, including seven live-action TV series, and one animated series, consisting of over seven hundred individual episodes and over 500 hours of television; thirteen feature films, including three set in “The Kelvin Timeline,” which is a parallel universe; hundreds of novels; and “several decades worth of video games, comic books, and other books including technical manuals, chronologies, and encyclopedias. And since it is an open-ended and still-growing universe, more Star Trek material appears every year” (Wolf, 2012: 2). What constitutes the Star Trek canon, however, has often led to skirmishes between producers and fans (Geraghty, 2007). The general rule of thumb is that the official canon consists of the seven TV series, excluding The Animated Series (TAS), and thirteen films. These texts are the immovable objects of the Star Trek Universe. All else—those hundreds of novels, comics books, and video games, etc.—are officially non-canon and non-genuine. This, however, is not as straightforward as it may seem. There are two versions of The Original Series (TOS), both of which are available at the time of writing on Netflix and on DVD/Blu-ray, the former being the “original” as it was broadcast and the latter including new digital/CGI scenes to revise and update dated special effects. Of course, this raises the question of which of the two available versions are canonical. Furthermore, it was not the TV series that first highlighted that James T. Kirk’s middle initial stands for “Tiberius,” but the TAS episode “Bem” (1974), which then became part of established canonicity. By the same token, there have been multiple episodes in the official canon that directly refer to TAS, such as the Enterprise episode “The Forge” (2004). For some, this promotes TAS from apocrypha to official canon and effectively revises the series as the genuine article. On the other hand, however, such a transposition can also be viewed as a “moment” of remediation rather than the complete elevation of an entire series to genuine canonical status. As writer Ronald D. Moore explains, “we don’t consider it [TAS] canon but it’s fun to drop in the odd reference here and there” (http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/ inconsistencies /canon.htm). Gene Roddenberry is often viewed as the author of all that is Star Trek. Despite many more canonical Star Trek materials, episodes, and films being produced after the creator’s death, and the fact that the imaginary world of Star Trek is a transnarrative and transauthorial mega-text, Roddenberry’s authorial vision continues to be evoked as a method of authentication, both by fans and by producers. But in actual fact, Roddenberry was quite lackadaisical when it came to questions of canonicity. David Gerrold, writer on TAS and TOS, including the classic episode, “The Trouble with Tribbles” (1967), said that: Arguments about “canon” are silly. I always felt that Star Trek Animated was part of Star Trek because Gene Roddenberry accepted the paycheck for it and put his name on the credits. And DC Fontana—and all the other writers involved—busted their butts to make it the best Star Trek they could. But this whole business of “canon” really originated with Gene’s errand boy. Gene liked giving people titles instead of raises, so the errand boy got named “archivist” and apparently it went to his head. Gene handed him the responsibility of answering all fan questions, silly or otherwise, and he apparently let that go to his head. (http://www.startrekanimated.com/tas_david_gerrold.html) Here, we see that Roddenberry’s authorship is handed down to a nameless “errand boy” rather than the sole province of an author-God, but, equally, that TAS should be considered canonical “because Gene Roddenberry accepted the paycheck” and that other authors, 241

W i l l i a m P ro c t o r

such as fan favorite D. C. Fontana, were involved. To complicate matters even further, Roddenberry himself did not believe that all the Star Trek films were necessarily canonical. He despised Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan (1982) because “he thought there were moments that betrayed the original show—he felt, for example, that it was out of character for Kirk to shoot the nasty worm that crawls out of Chekhov’s ear, rather than make every effort to study it” (Jones and Parkin, 2003: 7). He also denounced the disastrous fifth film, The Final Frontier (1989), as a violation of his liberal-humanist ethos but found that his protests went largely ignored. To this, “some commentators have argued that their [the films] frequent disregard for Roddenberry’s ethics excludes them from the true Star Trek ‘canon’” (Gregory, 2000: 41). There is certainly a powerful “aura” that envelops Roddenberry’s authorship and that has figuratively constructed a mythological halo around the creator. For instance, Roddenberry did not write any episodes for TAS and frequently farmed out TOS episodes to other writers and “over the years, a lot of the very best Star Trek has been the work of people other than Roddenberry” (Jones and Parkin, 2003: 7). In recent years, there has been some reconsideration of Roddenberry’s authorial signature, including William Shatner’s documentary, Chaos on the Bridge (2014), a film that details a struggle for power between the creator and Paramount Studios in relation to the second live-action series, Star Trek:The Next Generation (1987–1994). So, then, what is the current state of the constitution of Star Trek canon? With Roddenberry no longer able to provide authorial stewardship, it has since become the domain of Paramount Studios to issue canonical guidelines.The most current state of canonicity at the time of writing is advertised on the official website, StarTrek.com, which states that: the events that take place within the live-action episodes and movies are canon, or official Star Trek facts. Story lines, characters, events, stardates, etc. that take place within the fictional novels, video games, the Animated Series, and the various comic lines have traditionally not been considered part of the canon. But canon is not something set in stone; even events in some of the movies have been called into question as to whether they should be considered canon! Ultimately, the fans, the writers and the producers may all differ on what is considered canon and the very idea of what is canon has become more fluid, especially as there isn’t a single voice or arbiter to decide. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was accustomed to making statements about canon, but even he was known to change his mind. (https://web.archive.org/web/20100628174255/http://www.startrek.com/ startrek/view/help/faqs/faq/676.html) From this perspective, then, canonicity shifts from authorial governance toward an allinclusive sphere of interpretation. Like the Sherlockians, then, what constitutes the Star Trek canon comes down to interpretation, at least for those texts that exist outside the immoveable objects of television and cinema. By relinquishing the power to issue canonical dictates, Paramount has essentially awarded such power to the fan community: the power to interpret for themselves, a fact that runs counter to the way in which canonicity ostensibly functions as the product of an authoritative body or voice. Thus, Parkin’s concept of Roddenberry or Lucas as “popes of their magisteria” requires revision, especially given that the former has since passed away and had already lost his authorial grip on the series and that the latter is no longer involved with Star Wars, having handed the keys to the multi-billion dollar franchise to Disney in 2012 (for more on Star Wars canonicity, see: Brooker, 2002; Proctor and Freeman, 2016). Despite such a loose method of canonical management as proposed by Paramount 242

Canonicity

Studios—arguably a way to ward off potential fan skirmishes and hostile arguments—the ghost of Gene Roddenberry’s authorship continues to haunt Star Trek to this day.

Conclusion: Canon in the Twenty-First Century Canonicity has since gained a valuable cultural currency in the new millennium as multimedia conglomerates increasingly move toward integration in a variety of ways. The importance of canon is increasingly recognized as a fundamental part of the fan experience and, as a result, used as an economic method of commodity logic in contemporary capitalism (“it makes economic sense”).The enormous success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as an expansive imaginary world consisting of multiple transmedia expressions, such as film, TV, streaming, a series of short films (one-shots), and tie-in comic books, has proven to be a valuable template for the entertainment media industrial complex. As a result, Wolf ’s principle of “narrative braiding” (2012) needs to be considered as entwined with Freeman’s “commodity braiding” (2014) to fully understand the dialectic of production and consumption. Historically, tie-in materials and spin-offs, such as expanded universe novels and comics, were either defined as non-canonical—as with Star Trek—or quasi-canonical—as in the Star Wars canon. Prior to the Disney takeover, the films created by George Lucas occupied the highest tier of canonicity, with the Expanded Universe (EU) materials, novels, comics, and so forth belonging to a lower stratum and thus perilously unstable in that new narrative information could supersede and write over a previously established canonicity (Proctor and Freeman, 2016; Wolf, 2012: 270–273; see also Jenkins, 2006: 105; Hills, 2012). So it is that quasi-canonical material, such as Karen Traviss’s novel, Republic Command: 501st (2009), a text that depicted the history and culture of the Mandalorian Race, was overwritten and rendered apocryphal by The Clone Wars TV series. Indeed, the novel was to be the first in a series but this was canceled due to the canonical conflicts instigated by The Clone Wars (2008–2015) and, as a result, Traviss ended her tenure as writer of Star Wars tie-in novels. Traviss explained: When I was finishing 501st in January this year, I was told about a significant continuity change coming up in the Clone Wars cartoon […] That’s fairly common procedure for any franchise—but unfortunately it wasn’t that simple in practice.The two Commando series—and quite a few older books and comics, come to that— were based entirely on that original history, and basic logic meant that the fundamental plot of the series could never have existed if this had been a pacifist society. Neither could any of the characters or their motives have existed, because they were wholly based on a global warrior culture living on a non-nuked Mandalore. (http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/96176/mandaloreplanet-karen-traviss-versus-clone-wars) Star Wars fan culture has often been embroiled in hostile dissension and debates as examined by Brooker (2002: 101–115). One of the ways that Disney has managed this since the Lucasfilm buyout in 2012 was via the controversial decision to do away with the hierarchical canon system and cast all EU material into the dustbin of history. Lucas’s non-involvement means that the new Pope, to continue Park’s analogy, is a collaboration of creative minds dubbed The Lucasfilm Story Group who steward canonicity through close alliance with tiein writers and so forth. Since 2014, all new Star Wars material, be it novels, comics, or what have you, are deemed officially canonical and thus genuine imaginary world “fact,” with the old EU being r­ elegated 243

W i l l i a m P ro c t o r

to counter-factual apocrypha, “what if?” stories that henceforth bear the hallmark of “Legends.” It is not too much of a stretch to understand this maneuver as a form of editorial management and also as a way to latch into the coattails of the MCU’s transmedia success via the construction of a vast canonical imaginary empire. As with The X-Files comic book series that introduced this article, other comic spin-offs and tie-ins have followed a similar trajectory, such as the continuation of cult TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was promoted as “the definitive version of what happens after the TV series ends” (Ford and Jenkins, 2009: 305) and, as with The X-Files, carries the series numbering across media windows (beginning with Season Eight). Again, the author—in this case Buffy creator and showrunner, Joss Whedon—is activated as a “brand function” to authenticate the comic book extension. Of course, comics that spin off from television series are not a new phenomenon, but we have seen a significant shift in principles of canonicity. Star Trek and Star Wars comics were published in the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, but “nobody would consider those titles to be canonical” (Ford and Jenkins, 2009: 305), whereas the Buffy comics “are absolutely canonical in the views of many fans” (ibid). To this, we could add comic book series tie-ins, such as the canonical Battlestar Galactica comics (Scott, 2008) or mini-series such as 24: Undercover (2014), which functions as a prequel to the TV series revival, 24: Live Another Day (2014), and, simultaneously, as sequel to Season Eight. The comic book extension of cinematic universes is also continuing apace with prequels, interquels, and sequels (Wolf, 2012) exploiting narrative gaps in ways that directly address the fannish desire for authenticity. Rather than casting tie-in materials as non-genuine stories, as has been traditionally the case, there is an industrial movement at work that is shifting more toward an industrial logic of canon formation. That being said, fans might not accept such rulings as canonical and therein lies the rub. As this chapter has shown, canonicity may well operate as official policy, although not always as the case of Sherlock illustrates, and that conflicts between producers and audiences can never truly be managed and steered into interpretative cul-de-sacs. Canonicity may be interpreted as “rule” or “law” but this certainly doesn’t account for the bottom-up process of dissent and revolt instigated by fan cultures.

References Brooker, Will (2002), Using the Force: Creativity, Community and Star Wars Fans. London: Continuum. Bourdieu, Pierre (1984), Distinctions: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brooker, Will (2012), Hunting the Dark Knight:Twenty-First Century Batman. London: IB Taurus. Brown, Sophie (2013), “The X-Files Season Ten: What You Need to Know,” Wired, March 2013, available at https://www.wired.com/2013/03/x-files-season-10-guide/. Chabon, Michael (2010), Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing along the Borderlands. London: Fourth Estate. Doležel, Lubomír (1998), Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Eckert, Win Scott (2010), Crossovers—A Secret Chronology of the World:Volume One (Dawn of Time–1939). Encino: Black Coat Press. Foucault, Michel (1969), “What is an Author?,” available at: http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/Gustafson/ FILM%20162.W10/readings/foucault.author.pdf Ford, Sam; and Jenkins, Henry (2009), “Managing Multiplicity in Superhero Comics: An Interview with Henry Jenkins” in Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (eds.), Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives. Massachusetts: MIT Press, pp. 303–312. Freeman, Matthew (2014), “The Wonderful Game of Oz and Tarzan Jigsaws: Commodifying Transmedia in Earth Twentieth Century Culture,” Intensities:The Journal of Cult Media, pp. 44–54. 244

Canonicity

Geraghty, Lincoln (2007), Living with Star Trek: American Culture and the Star Trek Universe. London: IB Taurus. Gerrold, David (no date), “The David Gerrold TAS Interview,” available at http://www.startrekanimated.com/tas_david_gerrold.html. Gregory, Chris (2000), Star Trek Parallel Narratives. London: Macmillan. Hayward, Susan (2009), Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens to Soap Opera. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. Hills, Matt (2002), Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. Hills, Matt (2012), “Torchwood’s Trans-Transmedia: Media Tie-ins and Brand ‘Fanagement,’” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 9 (2), pp. 409–428. Jenkins, Henry (2006), Convergence Culture. New York: New York University Press. Jones, Mark; and Parkin, Lance (2003), Beyond the Final Frontier: An Unauthorised Review of the Trek Universe on Television and Film. London: Contender Books. Kaveney, Roz (2008), Superheroes! Capes and Crusaders in Comics and Films. London: I.B. Taurus. Knox, Monsignor Ronald A. (1911), “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes,” available at: http:// www.diogenes-club.com/studies.htm (Accessed: 02/12/2015). Parkin, Lance (2007), “Canonicity Matters: Defining the Doctor Who Canon” in David Butler (ed.), Time and Relative Dissertations in Space: Critical Perspectives on Doctor Who. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 246–262. Pearson, Roberta; and Davies, Maire Messenger (2014), Star Trek and American Television. Berkeley: University of California Press. Proctor, William; and Freeman, Matthew (2016), “‘The First Step into a Smaller World’: The Transmedia Economy of Star Wars” in Mark J. P. Wolf (ed.), Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology. London: Routledge. Rolls, Albert (2008), Stephen King: A Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing. Reynolds, Richard (1992), Superheroes: A Modern Mythology. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Saler, Michael (2012), As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Worlds. Oxford: OUP. Searle, John, R. (1990), “The Storm Over the University,” The New York Times Review of Books, December 6, 1990, available at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/12/06/the-storm-over-the-university/. (Accessed: 06/21/2014). Schnabel, Eckhard (1995), “History, Theology and the Biblical Canon: An Introduction to Basic Issues,” Themelios (20.2), pp. 16–24. Scott, Suzanne (2008), “Authorized Resistance: Is Fan Production Frakked?” in Potter, Tiffany & Marshall, C.W. (eds.) Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica. London: Continuum. Storey, John (2012), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Essex: Pearson. Weaver, Tyler (2013), Comics for Film, Games, and Animation: Using Comics to Construct Your Transmedia Storyworld. London: Focal Press. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds:The History and Theory of Subcreation. London: Routledge.

245

30

Escapism Lars Konzack The term escapism, to seek distraction from reality or from routine, first appeared in the 1933 Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (Ayto, 1999). This, of course, implies that it may have seen earlier use. “Escapism” should not be confused with “escapology,” which is the performance of escaping from restraints, traps, or confinements. Hence, an “escapist” could be either a person who escapes from captivity or, as in this case, a person who indulges in a mental process of emotional diversion by means of entertainment or other kinds of leisure activities to avoid or retreat from what is considered an unpleasant or unacceptable reality.

Cultural and Literary Criticism In 1921,T. S. Eliot wrote: “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things” (Eliot, 1982, p. 42). Eliot did not directly use the term escapism, but seen in retrospect, this points toward a discussion of the role of literature (and other media creations) as a way to escape from the world. It is implied that only people with a personality and emotions, maybe even rich personality and rich emotions, will truly understand poetry as a way of escape. In this sense, it was meant to be a positive aspect of poetry. This positive usage of escape would soon vanish. Nevertheless, it reveals that whether or not “escape” should be considered a positive or negative literary quality is a matter open to interpretation. The first use of the term “escapist,” to describe a person who seeks diversion from reality, has been ascribed to John Crowe Ransom, founder of the Southern New Criticism School of literary criticism in 1930 (Ayto, 1999; Flora, MacKethan, & Taylor, 2002). Ransom, as an avowed reactionary, decried his contemporaries as an escapist people blinded by progressivism and industrial power (to quote the British edition): “It is much too likely that they betoken a defeated and escapist people—a people which is afraid of the fullness of the inner life and prefers to rush into violent action—a people that takes its work as an anesthetic—an impotent people building up a legend of power” (Ransom, 1931, p. 184). Ransom attributed three properties to this escapist people: First, he perceives them as having a general illusion of personal and collective power; second, as taking on work as an anesthetic or anodyne; and, third, as exhibiting infantilism in the pathological sense of the word (Ransom, 1931). Following this logic, Ransom portrays escapism as a combination of illusionism, anesthetic, and pathological infantilism—the latter probably referring to Freudian psychoanalysis, though only implicitly so. Nonetheless, pathological infantilism would undoubtedly be understood in the context of Freudian psychoanalysis by his contemporaries. In prolongation of these views on escapism, 246

Escapism

John Crowe Ransom was apprehensive toward entertainment and communication devices such as radio and movies (Ransom, 1931). His disciple, Robert B. Heilman, would, decades later, categorize the counterculture of the hippies, with their sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, as escapism (Heilman, 1975). Another cultural criticism came from C. S. Lewis, who wrote, in The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933), an updated version of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1757), about an allegorical, and autobiographical, character named John questing for an ideal, desirable island. In a conversation with Angular, a man who represents the Anglo-Catholic movement, John asks: “Have you ever seen my island?” gaining the response: “God forbid.” John then asks: “And have you never heard of Mr. Halfways (the personification of decadent Romanticism) either?” Angular answers back: “Never. And I never will. Do you take me for an escapist?” John replies: “Then there is at least one object in the world of which I know more than you. I have tasted what you call romantic trash; you have only talked about it” (Lewis, 2014, p. 99). Lewis’s lines suggest that this criticism was targeted toward Romanticism. Cleanth Brooks, a prominent literary critic of New Criticism and student of John Crowe Ransom, similarly exhibits this development a year later, writing that the three characteristics of Romanticism were sentimentality, vulnerability to irony, and escapism (Brooks, 1934); and in his famous essay “Criticism Inc.,” John Crowe Ransom likewise calls the author of romantic literature escapist along with flabby, intemperate, unphilosophical, and simply adolescent (Ransom, 1937). In the late 1930s, Montague Summers called literature based on subjectivity, in the form of personal experiences of inner and outer realities and accentuating make-believe and fantasy, “romantic escapism” (Rustowski, 1976). And American journalist, and, later editor, James Wechsler argued, in his Revolt in the Campus, that some people could retreat into the fantasies of escapism even though it is neither satisfactory nor permanent (Wechsler, 1935). Escapism as initiated by John Crowe Ransom started out as a criticism of modernism, but rapidly turned into a criticism of Romanticism (Breines, 1977). This criticism of “romantic escapism” then developed into a general cultural criticism of the fantastic and capitalism in the 20th century, as Freudian and Marxist views on escapism rose to dominance.

Freudian and Marxist Use of the Term Escapism Although Sigmund Freud never used the term escapism, it has nevertheless been widely used by Freudian literary critics. Sigmund Freud was not himself opposed to reading and applying allegorical or mythical accounts, such as Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (429 B.C.), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1603), and E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman (1816), to make his point. Freudian critics’ adoption of the term may, however, have been facilitated by John Crowe Ransom’s related usage of words such as “pathological infantilism.” Sigmund Freud does use the term “fantasy” as denoting an infantile state; suffered by someone who indulges in his own dreams of power and control rather than understanding the realities of adulthood (Freud, The Psychology of Love, 2007). As explained by Murray Krieger: Now, one can simply dwell upon the once-upon-a-time element in fiction and justify it as an escape from the world around us. Fiction’s made-up, make-believe character is the very feature which the escapist celebrates. Indeed, it can be argued that Freud justified literature precisely on such escapist grounds, as a necessary sublimation for the frustrated poet who, as a daydreamer, provided daydreams for the rest of us. (Krieger, 1974, p. 335) 247

L a r s Ko n z ac k

As a consequence of this notion of Freudian escapism, Dominick Lacapra asks rhetorically, “who more than Freud taught us to suspect the escapism of a private, compensatory response to a public problem?” (Lacapra, 1984, p. 305). In this notion of escapism, it is not only a criticism of romantic literature, or a condemnation of a specific field of cultural misendeavor, but an overall criticism of any literature and fiction that contains fantastic elements. Consequently, it becomes a general criticism of any form of fantastic expression or cultural product—not merely escapist romantic literature. Had Freud, in fact, used the term escapism, he would have said that all artistic expression was the result of neurosis, hence any kind of artistic expression was, accordingly, escapist (Freud, 1930; Stapledon, 1939). One attempt by Freudian literary critics to break free from this reductionist and totalizing world view was the distinction between conscious fantasy and unconscious dreams. Sigmund Freud does not distinguish between dreaming, daydreaming, and conscious poetic elaboration. However, Neo-Freudian tradition has made some attempt at a more discriminating perspective. Melanie Klein decided, based on the usage of the German word “Phantasie” by Freud, that phantasy was unconscious, whilst fantasy was conscious (Hinshelwood & Robinson, 2014). The usage of the term was limited by the fact that, when spoken aloud, it is indistinguishable from fantasy; besides, the distinction had already been made in the 19th century by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge argues that fancy is based on the law of association, whereas imagination is an act of the conscious mind (Coleridge, 2004). Also, it doesn’t seem as if Melanie Klein’s distinction had any real impact on Freudian psychoanalysis in practice; Freudian literary critics, at any rate, persisted in treating conscious fantastic works of art as if they were unconscious dreams (Ellmann, 1994). Karl Marx did not use the term “escapism” either; nonetheless, it was adopted into Marxist vocabulary as well. The Marxists perceived art as “Bourgeois escapism” or escapist “NeoRomantic anti-capitalism” (Aronson, 1975/1976; Breines, 1977). In the early 20th century, Marxists regarded Freudianism as equally escapist. According to Silvio Gaggi, “Earlier in the [twentieth] century Marxists generally rejected Freudian notions, regarding them as mystical, escapist, and socially irresponsible, while the Surrealists were desperately attempting to achieve a reconciliation” (Gaggi, 1978, p. 462). At this time, Marxist criticism did not operate from a Freudian Left cultural vantage point. Marxist criticism did not only reject Freudian analysis, but any kind of literature that did not live up to their “uncompromising realism.” It seemed as if Marxist cultural critics became obsessed with the terms “escape” and “escapism” (Hyman, 1947; Schwartz, 2000). The counterculture, with its sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, was perceived as escapism (Jha, 1978). Likewise, Marxist cultural criticism was applied against nonfigurative art. Gerardo Mosquera, David Craven, and Colleen Kattau explain: Aside from the fact that they were influenced by Soviet dogmatism and its claims to scientific omniscience, many Marxists, who wished to transform reality, had little general faith in art that seemed to them vacuous. Although some of them assumed more flexible postures towards modernism, or even participated in modernist movements, they usually accused non-figurative art of being escapist, formalist, or ­inexpressive. (Mosquera, Craven, & Kattau, 1994, p. 76) During the Cold War, Western Marxist and Freudian criticism merged into a totalizing Freudo-Marxist critical superstructure, invariably rejecting fantastic artistic and make-believe productions as mere escapism (Gaggi, 1978; Roberts, 2000). David Sandner echoes this belief: “Fantastic literature’s declared position as purely imaginary or unrealistic clearly underwrites 248

Escapism

the persistent charges against it as ‘escapist’. Because the fantastic apparently refuses or is ­unable to connect with reality, it is commonly viewed as lacking serious intention or relevance” (Sandner, 2004, p. 320) This totalizing tendency was challenged as the Cold War came to an end.The Marxist critic Darko Suvin identified science fiction as that which had the potential for either conducting new directions for imagining the social order of society or to motivate oppressed people to repel hegemonic power. Conversely, fantasy, myth, space opera, and science fantasy did not have this potential and therefore had to be considered escapism (Suvin, 1979; Renault, 1980). This notion was soon disputed by Rosemary Jackson, who, in trying to grasp the fantasy genre from a Freudo-Marxist perspective, unfolded the idea that fantasy may not always be regarded as escapism but a way to disturb rules and transform the world (Jackson, 1981). Furthermore, Steph Lawler, in her writings about the theatrical representation of workingclass women, felt it necessary to distinguish between escape and escapism. Following her line of thought, trying to actively escape working-class conditions was a heroic act, whereas escapism, passive daydreaming, could only be seen as a failure (Lawler, 2000). Suddenly, the term “escapism” had become a nuanced cacophony. In the 21st century, Marxist and fantasy author, China Miéville, went even further: “Let me empathetically stress that this is not to make the ridiculous suggestion that fantastic fiction gives a clear view of political possibilities or acts as a guide to political action. I am claiming that the fantastic, particularly because ‘reality’ is a grotesque ‘fantastic form’, is good to think with. Marx, whose theory is a haunted house of spectres and vampires, knew this” (Miéville, 2004, p. 339). I do respect China Miéville’s sincere attempt at trying to revitalize Marxist literary criticism, although it was simply too little and too late. By then, the Soviet Union had fallen due to economic failure, whilst the Western democratic welfare states flourished, and it still remains a mystery why economic theory should be particularly applicable to literary criticism in the first place. Not only has Marxist economic theory widely come to be considered unviable (Prychitko, 2002), but, by now, many academics and intellectuals also question and denounce Freudian psychotherapy as being pseudo-science, even antitherapeutic (Eysenck, 1986; Torrey, 1992; Webster, 1996). It is important to stress that escapism was never a technical term founded on actual research. It does have a technical ring to it, reminiscent of psychotherapeutic pathology, but people declared escapists were as a rule not committed to an asylum. One possible reason the term “escapism” was so naturally adopted by Freudian and Marxist literary and cultural critics seems to have been that it was once fashionable, and due to its appearance of being scientific terminology, even though it was merely a para-technical expression, a simulacrum.

Reactions to the Charge of Escapism Long before Freudian and Marxist literary criticism imploded in the 1980s, the usage of escapism, as introduced by Southern New Criticism, was itself criticized. As early as 1935, Kenneth Burke condemns this tendency among cultural critics: Properly used, the idea of escape should present no difficulties. If a situation is unsatisfactory, it is quite normal and natural that people should want to avoid it and should try any means at their disposal to do so. But the term escape has had a more restricted usage. Whereas it properly applies to all men, there was an attempt to restrict its application to some men. […] In the end, the term came to be applied 249

L a r s Ko n z ac k

loosely, in literary criticism especially, to designate any writer or reader whose interests or aims did not closely coincide with those of the critic.While apparently defining a trait of the person referred to, the term hardly did more than convey the attitude of the person making the reference. It looked objective, as though the critic were saying ‘X is doing so-and-so’; but too often it became merely a strategic way of saying, ‘I personally don’t like what X is doing.’” (Burke, 1984, p. 8) Unfortunately, Kenneth Burke’s disapproval of this tendency did not have much influence on how the term would later be used by Freudians and Marxists in order to condemn any literary development that did not fit their close-minded modernist beliefs. But he was not the only one who recognized how “escapism” was being used as a fallacy. The influential British science fiction writer, Olaf Stapledon, wrote an essay titled “Escapism in Literature,” published in F. R. Leavis’s quarterly periodical Scrutiny. Written in 1939, it is obvious that the discussion of escapism had become common during this decade. It begins by simply stating: “We often hear it said disparagingly that some writer or other is a mere ‘escapist,’ or that a particular piece of writing is sheer ‘escapism.’ It is implied that the true function of literature is, not to offer escape from unpleasant facts, but to help the reader to face up to reality, and cope with it successfully” (Stapledon, 1939, p. 298). Hence, Stapledon takes a stand on this issue from a critical literary point of view; critical in the sense that he is sorting out different kinds of literary practices and adjudicating their literary qualities. Stapledon divides literature into four categories: creative, propaganda, release, and escape. Stapledon is hostile toward escapism, but it is in his view only escapism if there is no creativity involved, or the creativity applied is so unimportant as to not really matter. In his view, science fiction is not escapism when it is creative or gives some kind of psychological release or catharsis (Stapledon, 1939; Crossley, 1986). Stapledon states: “In ‘creative literature’ the dominant motive and the main import are creative” (Stapledon, 1939, p. 301). This means that literature that constructs a universe of fiction, such as an imaginary world, or brings a fresh new aspect of the world or self to literature should not be regarded as escapist. On the contrary, this is what literature is all about as long as it induces new appreciations and expands innovative and improved dimensions for accomplishment (Stapledon, 1939). J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, or Frank Herbert’s Dune series, to take two later examples, would not, in this theory, be escapist because they have been created through a groundbreaking ingenious and pioneering creative process. This means that, from a creative literary perspective, new discoveries in the sciences or other fields of human curiosity may be the very material from which to create fresh and exciting literature. Propaganda literature is without such artistic ambitions. It is about evoking the right thoughts and feelings to change people’s behavior. Propaganda may be justified, according to Stapledon, as long as its social effect is positive to society and humanity. Clichés and slogans are used to produce an anticipated effect on the opinions of the public (Stapledon, 1939).  In this perspective, works mostly concerned with changing people’s views in one particular direction should not be considered as significant literature because it is a mere matter of propaganda. Of course, the propaganda may, eventually, be justified, but that does not suddenly transform the work into a rewarding literary experience. In “release” literature, the motivation is catharsis or “the assuagement of starved needs.” It is the release of pent-up forces that leads to change in emotion, resulting in replenishment and renewal. The aim is not to be overly creative, but release literature does have a legitimate function; authored with such expressive imagination of sensitivity that it generates an 250

Escapism

inner recuperating outcome. While the creative kind of literature destabilizes or alters the ­conformist structure of established beliefs and accepted wisdom, release literature generally admits to these ideas, implicitly and unconsciously. Release literature could be anything from crime fiction and thrillers to poems and romances (Stapledon, 1939). “Escape” literature, to the contrary, is illegitimate. Seemingly, it is much like release literature, and it may prove difficult to decide whether a work of art is either escape or release. There is, nonetheless, a difference. While release literature creates catharsis so that the reader can meet the world renewed and refreshed, escape literature constructs a dream world that protects the mind of the reader from an unpleasant reality. The underlying raison d’être is escape, by making the imaginary world more alluring and seeming-real. Stapledon acknowledges that escapism is not only a problem for literature critics alone, and insists that psychologists and sociologists ought to have a say as well, pointing to Freudian psychotherapy (Stapledon, 1939). Any genre of literature can be made into escapism: the more realistic it seems, the more convincing the dream world. Release and creative literature are about personal achievement, while escape and propaganda focus on social effect. Creative and propaganda literature are conscious, whereas release and escape literature are unconscious (Stapledon, 1939). To illustrate this in a diagram, see Figure 30.1.

Figure 30.1  Olaf Stapledon’s four types of literature. 251

L a r s Ko n z ac k

Remarkably, Olaf Stapledon criticizes the usage of “escapism” among both Right-wing and Left-wing politics, saying: Whereas for the reactionary escapist true salvation lies in facing the fact that the existing social order and his own part in it are unhealthy and immoral, for the Left escapist it lies in recognizing that his motive for condemning the social order is not as disinterested as he believes. […] Left escapism is but a special case of the escapism which characterized so much of modern “scientific” culture. Accepting the temper of our age, we tend to withdraw attention from the inner life, and to seek escape from individual moral responsibility by constructing a fictitious world in which individuals are wholly the product of external forces, physical or social. (Stapledon, 1939, p. 308) While being positive toward Freudian psychotherapy and criticizing Right-wing political use of escapism, Olaf Stapledon’s thoughts were not used by Marxist literary critics because he was equally critical toward Left-wing political use of escapism. Furthermore, he was a science fiction writer and this kind of literature was increasingly perceived as being inherently escapist popular culture. J. R. R. Tolkien pointed out that stories of science fiction were the most escapist of all literary forms (Tolkien, 1975). Nevertheless, Stapledon’s essay was published by F. R. Leavis, who was associated with cultural elitism, high culture, yearning for traditional pre-industrial society, moralism, and a corresponding resentment toward Marxism, commercialism, and mass culture. The term “Leavisite” has, even, itself become a pejorative synonym for a conformist and traditionalist approach to literature and culture (Bilan, 1979; Farred, 1996).

When Realism Becomes Escapist Olaf Stapledon’s literary criticism of escapism is the only attempt at giving a proper theoretical foundation for the term, and it was very unfortunate that his work did not gain more followers and have greater impact at the time. That said, there were other literary criticisms of escapism that deserve mention. J. R. R. Tolkien addressed the issue in “On Fairy-Stories” (1939), his, it is important to stress, decidedly anti-romantic essay. He insists that fairy tales are best understood through reason by adults. As regard escapism, he does not deny that a part of the appreciation of Faerie is escape. But he distinguishes between two kinds of escape.There is the illegitimate escape of the deserter who flees from his responsibility, and then there is the legitimate escape by which a prisoner flees from his prison. The deserter is like the romantic, while the fleeing prisoner is the one who is more curious about life than to just sit locked up in his cell. He wants to go on adventure and learn more about the world and return with his experiences and insights. In this sense, this kind of escapism is a heroic act (Tolkien, 1975). C. S. Lewis commented: That perhaps is why people are so ready with the charge of “escape.” I never fully understood it till my friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, “What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?” and gave the obvious answer: jailers.The charge of Fascism is, to be sure, mere mud-flinging. Fascists, as well as Communists, are jailers; both would assure us that the proper study of prisoners is prison. But there is perhaps this truth 252

Escapism

behind it: that those who brood much on the remote past or future, or stare long at the night sky, are less likely than others to be ardent or orthodox partisans.” (Lewis, 1975, p. 67) C. S. Lewis, like Olaf Stapledon, was not focused on blaming Right-wing or Left-wing politics. The charge of escapism has been abused by both sides of the political spectrum. Like Tolkien, he does not see escape in literature as a problem in itself. It can be either responsible or irresponsible, depending on the quality of the content and how it is read. One of the irresponsible escapist readings is daydreaming and castle-building. Here, the reader wants to escape from reality, and, in order to do so, the imagery should, in fact, be as convincing as possible. That’s why the fantastic and marvelous are, actually, rejected by such irresponsible readers. The dream can only be approachable if it seems as if it could be real or happen in one’s immediate existence, with as little intellectual effort as possible. In this respect, fantastic elements actually obstruct the irresponsible escapist reading (Lewis, 1969). Ursula K. Le Guin points to the same realist escapist reader: “That all these genres are sterile, hopelessly sterile, is a reassurance to him, rather than a defect. If they were genuinely realistic, which is to say genuinely imagined and imaginative, he would be afraid of them. Fake realism is the escapist literature of our time. And probably the ultimate escapist reading is that masterpiece of total unreality, the daily stock market report” (Le Guin, 1979, p. 42) Here, Le Guin casts the term back at the realists, saying that believing in realist fiction is actually the true form of escapist delusion, because the escapist believes this kind of fiction to be true.

Conclusion The term “escapism” has been around since 1930 with a multiplicity of meanings. Before the term existed, T. S. Eliot perceived escape as a positive element of poetry. This changed with John Crowe Ransom’s Southern New Criticism. He defined escapists as those blinded by industrialism and progressivism.Thereupon, literary critics used it as a mere insult toward Romanticism, or simply any work the critic did not happen to like. The term moved into Freudian and Marxist vocabulary and was used for decades as a pejorative for any kind of work that was not considered realism according to Freudians and Marxists. However, by the end of the Cold War, the term was being used more and more inconsistently. Science fiction author Olaf Stapledon made, as early as 1939, a systematic attempt to situate the word in a literary perspective, and, later on, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Ursula K. Le Guin strove toward a more nuanced view of escapism. Seeing creative fantasy as escapism, in the sense of the reader only using it as a diversion from reality, is becoming an increasingly anachronistic approach. Rather, fantastic literature creates a free space from which one can gain new perspective. J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis used fantastic worlds to reconsider the real one.

References Aronson, R. (1975/1976, Winter). Sartre and the Radical Intellectuals Role. Science & Society, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 436–49. Ayto, J. (1999). Twentieth Century Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bilan, R. P. (1979). The Literary Criticism of F. R. Leavis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres. Breines, P. (1977, Fall). Marxism, Romanticism, and the Case of Georg Lukács: Notes on Some Recent Sources and Situations. Studies in Romanticism, V   ol. 16, No. 4, pp. 473–89. Brooks, C. (1934). A Note on Symbol and Conceit. American Review, Vol. 3, pp. 201–11. 253

L a r s Ko n z ac k

Burke, K. (1984). Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, Third Edition With A New Afterword. Berkeley: University of California Press. Coleridge, S. T. (2004). Letter (1797) and Biographie (1817). In D. Sandner, Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (pp. 37–40). Westport, CT: Praeger Publ. Crossley, R. (1986, Spring). Olaf Stapledon and the Idea of Science Fiction. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 21–42. Eliot, T. S. (1982). Tradition and the Individual Talent. Perspecta,Vol. 19, pp. 36–42. Ellmann, M. (1994). Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. London: Longman Group Ltd. Eysenck, H. J. (1986). Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire. New York, NY:Viking. Farred, G. (1996). Leavisite Cool: The Organic Links between Cultural Studies and Scrutiny. Dispositio, Vol. 21, No. 48, The British New Left and the Rise of Cultural Studies, pp. 1–19. Flora, J. M., MacKethan, L. H., & Taylor,T.W. (2002). The Companion to Southern Literature:Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements, and Motifs. Baton Rouge: LSU Press. Freud, S. (1930). Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. Vienna: Internationaler Pscychoanatischer Verlag. Freud, S. (2007). The Psychology of Love. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Gaggi, S. (1978, Summer). Semiology, Marxism, and the Movies. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 461–9. Heilman, R. B. (1975, Summer). Escape and Escapism Varieties of Literary Experience. The Sewanee Review,Vol. 83, No. 3, pp. 439–58. Hinshelwood, R. D., & Robinson, S. (2014). Introducing Melanie Klein: A Graphic Guide. London: Icon Books Ltd. Hyman, S. E. (1947, Winter). The Marxist Criticism of Literature. The Antioch Review, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp. 541–68. Jackson, R. (1981). Fantasy:The Literature of Subversion. London: Methuen. Jha, B. K. (1978, October-December). Marxism of the New Left. The Indian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 538–60. Krieger, M. (1974, December). Fiction, History, and Empirical Reality. Critical Inquiry,Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 335–60. Lacapra, D. (1984, October). Is Everyone a Mentalité Case? Transference and the “Culture” Concept. History and Theory,Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 296–311. Lawler, S. (2000). Escape and Escapism: Representing Working-Class Women. In S. Munt, Cultural Studies and the Working Class: Subject to Change (pp. 113–28). New York, NY: Cassell. Le Guin, U. (1979).Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons? In S.Wood, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction (pp. 39–45). New York, NY: Perigee Books. Lewis, C. S. (1969). An Experiment in Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lewis, C. S. (1975). On Science Fiction. In W. Hooper, Of Other Worlds: Essay & Stories (pp. 59–73). New York, NY: Harvest. Lewis, C. S. (2014). The Pilgrim’s Regress: The Wade Annotated Edition. Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Miéville, C. (2004). Marxism and Fantasy: An Introduction. In D. Sandner, Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (pp. 334–43). Westport, CT: Praeger Publ. Mosquera, G., Craven, D., & Kattau, C. (1994). Meyer Schapiro, Marxist Aesthetics, and Abstract Art. Oxford Art Journal,Vol. 17, No. 1, Meyer Schapiro, pp. 76–80. Prychitko, D. (2002). Markets, Planning and Democracy: Essays after the Collapse of Communism. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publ. Ransom, J. C. (1931). God without Thunder: An Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy. London: Gerald Howe Ltd. Ransom, J. C. (1937). Criticism, Inc. The Virginia Quarterly Review, Autumn 1937, pp. 586–602. Renault, G. (1980, Summer). Science Fiction as Cognitive Estrangement: Darko Suvin and the Marxist Critique of Mass Culture. Discourse,Vol. 2, Mass Culture Issue, pp. 113–41. Roberts, A. C. (2000). Fredric Jameson. London: Routledge. Rustowski, A. M. (1976). Convention and Generic Instability of the English Gothic Novel. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 8, pp. 175–87. Sandner, D. (2004). Joseph Addison: The First Critic of the Fantastic. In D. Sandner, Fantastic Literature: A Critical Reader (pp. 318–325). Westport, CT: Praeger Publ. Schwartz, L. H. (2000). Marxism and Culture: The CPUSA and Aesthetics in the 1930s. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse. Stapledon, O. (1939, December). Escapism in Literature. Scrutiny, pp. 298–308.

254

Escapism

Suvin, D. (1979). Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Tolkien, J. R. R. (1975). On Fairy-Stories. In J. R. R.Tolkien, Tree and Leaf (pp. 11–79). London: Unwin Books. Torrey, E. F. (1992). Freudian Fraud:The Malignant Effect of Freud’s Theory on American Thought and Culture. New York, NY: HarperCollins. Webster, R. (1996). Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Basic Books. Wechsler, J. (1935). Revolt on the Campus. New York, NY: Covici Friede.

255

31

Genre Lily Alexander For imaginary worlds, storytelling is the means of actualization: this is how “worlds” reveal themselves and flourish. Fictional worlds can be classified in many ways: by their authorship, media, design, aesthetic style, or genre. Worlds can be grouped by spatial relationships, such as island worlds, underground worlds, virtual worlds, or planetary worlds, which define them by their location and the boundaries that surround them (Wolf, 2012). Yet the fictional worlds’ time-space continua, or chronotopes (Bakhtin, 1938/1981), inevitably trigger a consequential story. For example, seeing people laboring in underground catacombs, we expect a dystopia, as in Metropolis (1927); or prison bars connote a jail tale and lead to escape story, as in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). Worlds can be also grouped stylistically, when influenced by the aesthetics of the Baroque, Romanticism, Expressionism, or Magic Realism. Some worlds combine many artistic layers, like the multifaceted storytelling of J. R. R. Tolkien or J. K. Rowling. This chapter examines and highlights genres as the means of both: the categorization and the configuration of fictional worlds. Genre structure is vitally important to fictional worldbuilding, representing not merely classification but the core modality of the organization of narrative systems. Worlds can be narratively homogeneous (one genre) or heterogeneous (a combination of genres), especially when they employ more than one story. Developing stories branch off along the powerlines of genres, revealing the imaginary worlds’ creative unfolding. Similarly to how Nature arrays the “golden-mean” patterns through sprouting flowers and branches, genres offer fictional worlds pathways to grow. Genre is a symbolic narrative system that purports influence and resonates with the audience. Just “naming” a genre triggers intense emotional responses, so do iconic visual images. Picturing the cowboys riding through a canyon or a female silhouette in the night’s fog transports us at once to a distinctive world of the Western or Film Noir. Genres have an enormous power over our symbolic experiences; they also profoundly influence box office success. Evolving as a set of narratives, an imaginary world most successfully advances through genre-based storytelling (such as fantasy, action-adventure, journey story, mystery, or coming of age). Hence, “genre awareness” becomes a necessary attribute of fictional world-building, in both theory and practice. This chapter outlines recent debates on genre in narratology and media studies, highlighting the latest in genre theories—the anthropological, which focuses on the genres’ ritual roots and socio-cultural functions in the development of humanity throughout time. All genres work in concert as a cultural and meta-narrative framework, based on the historical and transnational continuity of dynamic symbolic codes (Alexander, 2013a/b, 2017). Unlike previous genre theories, which emphasize genres’ function as the categorization of texts, the anthropological theory of genres underlines their importance for structuring socie256

Genre

ties. Current discussions of genres as a cultural system are especially topical because the rapid expansion of digital storytelling raises the question of how important genres are to interactive new media and fictional world-building in the context of globalization. Imaginary worlds are rooted in the collective imagination of early religions and folklore. They also unfold through individual visions in literature and modern art.What we call “imaginary worlds” includes a spectrum of interrelated cultural phenomena encompassing mythic, artistic, narrative, and fictional worlds (see the “Mythology” chapter in this volume). We must acknowledge the whole range of imaginary designs because fictional world-building, particularly when influenced by genre systems, includes all the types outlined below: 1. The mythic worlds of folk traditions. 2. The quasi-historical restoration of the worlds of “legendary past” through mythology, such as those practiced by the classical Greek dramatists (as in Oedipus Rex, Phaedra, Iphigenia, and Hecuba). Such activities were repeated in the revival of Greek myth during the Renaissance and in the 17th-century French theater, as well as in recent television series like Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001); Hercules: Legendary Journeys (1995–1999), which is also a video game; and The Young Hercules (1998–1999); add to this the “medieval worlds” of Gargoyles (1994–1996) and Game of Thrones (2011–present). 3. The unique world designs with the elements of the fantastic and philosophical wit (like those authored by Apuleius, François Rabelais, Jonathan Swift, and Lewis Carroll). 4. Worlds of Fantastic or Magical Realism of modernity, in which the ordinary worlds border/overlap with the fantastic, sometimes featuring just one “magic deviation” from the familiar reality, such as the nose in Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose wandering off from the face of his owner (1836), the Devil visiting the brother with a guilty conscience in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1880), or one lonely man morphing into an insect in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915). 5. The worlds in one’s imagination, subjective remembrance, illusion, or dream, as created by Joyce and Proust, following the poetics of Modernism (also encompassing nightmarish visions of Expressionism). 6. The realistic yet hypothetical futuristic realms of science fiction, with its utopian and dystopian worlds (including those of Yevgeny Zamyatin, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, and Stanisław Lem). 7. Any fictional storyworld, regardless of fantastic elements, that is logical and artistically vibrant. In the present, the so-called show reunions on television are undertaken with a purpose of enabling fatigued series. Beyond commercial reasons, they represent nostalgic attempts to revive the long-gone storyworlds, like those of The X-Files (1993–2002) and Full House (1987–1995). Usually, such profit-driven attempts are futile or a mixed success. The artist’s devotion to world-building, which resonates with the audience’s cultural needs, better ensures a storyworld’s longevity. A flourishing imaginary world is one that a “visitor”—a reader, the audience—does not want to leave, despite its dangers, its tragic events, or even if the story is over. Such audience craving—to revisit—facilitates the transformation of a story into a storyworld, and further into a serialized fictional world. Some worlds that did not bloom into a series are simply reread or watched all over again, perhaps generating fan movements and fan 257

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

fiction. Expanding worlds are manifest, for example, in the dystopian “cult” novel-film-video game, like the Strugatsky Brothers’ Hard to Be a God (1964) and Dmitry Glukhovsky’s Metro 2033 (2002). As stories of personal courage, they reveal their wisdom as enlightening parables of survival. A transformation of a story into a world is often empowered by its visitors, unwilling to accept the inspiring world’s end and eager to extend its vitality by “permanently populating” it. Genre can be defined as a symbolic script, a meta-story, and a game, the rules of which are familiar to both authors and audience. These “conventions” are known even to characters in the metafiction or parody, traditional or postmodern. Such genre-focused stories often play with the ingrained rules, or tease us with their self-knowledge, while folding one’s plot as a circle in jest (Pulp Fiction, 1994). Such worlds are also known to overlap and interact. For example, there is The Postman Always Rings Twice in all its three versions (1946, 1981, and Ossessione, 1943), as well as in its “doubles,” Double Indemnity (1944) and its meta-reference The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001); all these films, developing a similar crime story, merge into a metaplot, becoming a distinctive, genre-defined “storyworld” and a vivid ritualsymbolic endeavor. The British-Japanese fantasyland Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), a collaboration between Diana Wynne Jones and Hayao Miyazaki, becomes a multimedia endeavor of a book, animation, and a video game. Conversely, the same director/producer can envision a variety of mythic worlds, like Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves (1990), Waterworld (1995), and The Postman (1997). Multiple magical worlds sprang out of just one Akira Kurosawa film, Dreams (1990), admittedly influenced by the artistic visions of Van Gogh and Martin Scorsese; not to mention Kurosawa’s other magnificent storyworlds, from Rashomon (1950) to Ran (1985), inspired by such prominent world-builders as Akutagawa and Shakespeare, respectively. How did the understanding of genre develop? The history of conflicting ideas on genre begins with Aristotle. His classical treatise Poetics (335 B.C.) didn’t offer a theory of genre, but highlighted the key genres—tragedy, comedy, and drama—as the established narrative practices and conventions. The 17th-century neoclassical tragedy was shaped by the principle of following the “classical” conventions of the ancient Greek theater, and theorized in terms of genre imitation and “purity.”Yet, late Antiquity, following the rise of Greek civilization and the fall of the Roman Empire, had already shown a booming diversity of popular genres and a metanarrative outlook at crumbling classical conventions. This playful, self-reflective treatment of genres was manifest in the Menippean satire (Bakhtin, 1965/1968), a predecessor of defiant and innovative forms of comedy. In the 1920s, Mikhail Bakhtin and his contemporaries, the Formalists, an influential group of scholars in narrative theory, had already laid a foundation for exploring genres from new perspectives. Bakhtin assessed genres from a standpoint of dialogue and interactivity. Yuri Tynyanov (1977) viewed them as part of narrative systems, concluding that genre represents an interplay of three referential orders: (1) all elements of form refer to the text as a whole; (2) each text refers to literature as a whole and its evolution; and (3) literature as a whole is intentionally related to the whole human environment in its historical and social development. Boris Tomashevsky (1978) was intrigued by the displacement of genres in culture (particularly the high genres by the low) via historical change. The Formalists’ era, the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, perceived poetics as the victory of new cultural forms over the obsolete and “defeated” ones. International modernist and avant-garde art also eagerly awaited the collapse of traditions. Hence, the question of genre’s expected cultural death may have been overrated and politically influenced. The core genres represent the cultural constant—anthropologically, they are secured by their connection to the human condition—and 258

Genre

e­ volutionarily they remain linked to the same foundational rituals. What is subject to change is the ­variable—assorted subgenres and their combinations. The European tradition has demonstrated narrative diversity and the preference for certain genres, which rose to prominence while reflecting social-political changes of their eras. For example, the Middle Ages attempted to expand the canonical text of the Bible to the universal and all-encompassing narrative form. The Renaissance promoted the purity of high tragedy and comedy, with William Shakespeare also fostering chronicles, which took the cultural place of historical narratives, the descendants of epic genre and the myths of origin. Classicism favored and conceptualized the high art of tragedy, insisting that only kings can be the stage protagonists. The Classicists revisited the Aristotelian poetics, reinforcing the principles of order, yet also rigidity to stage art. The Baroque, while glumly reflecting on the decline of the Renaissance and the dusk of aristocracy, (re)invented urban mystery, and such suspensedriven forms as thriller and crime drama. Sentimentalism offered a proto-melodrama, while Romanticism reintroduced folklore, myth, mystery, and the symbolic journey to high culture and literature. Nineteenth-century Realism both rejected genres and integrated them in the novel, with its multifaceted form. A complex style rather than a genre, realist literature branched into several modes, such as Critical, Psychological, and Fantastic Realism. Each offered new narrative blueprints and propelled grand-scale fictional world-building. Symbolism highlighted the parable and fairytale, while Modernism discarded genre (as an artistic approach) altogether. This position lasted long into the 1960s, the dawn of Postmodernism, and is exemplified by the 1959 statement “Genres disappeared!” by the French theorist Maurice Blanchot (2015). Genre’s hidden power and strategy is, however, in its system of algorithms, which facilitate pattern thinking. It took almost a century of scholarship to prove the influential and beneficial presence of genre formulas. The delay in understanding the symbolic nature of genres stemmed in part from the 19th-century rise of Realism, itself shaped by the upsurge of the middle class and city culture, with their concrete and pragmatic thinking. Meanwhile, the era’s performative art—its thriving bourgeois theater—put forward genres that matched the new class’s idea of truth and entertainment. In France, vaudeville emerged, essentially a new take on the everlasting genre of farce, with the elements of physical and screwball comedy, and erotic undertones. The trendiest vaudeville plot, spreading across Europe like wildfire, presented the same storyworld with recurrent events, featuring the stupidity of cuckolded husbands. These characters always suffered a moral defeat after acquiring a trophy wife and treating her as a possession. The lucky tricksters, young women and their lovers, typically avoided getting caught and enjoyed the sympathy of the audience (ironically, often comprised of the bourgeois with their young wives, laughing at the show in sync). While parading adultery and seemingly lowbrow and tasteless, this jovial popular entertainment manifested the widespread tragic phenomenon of marriage disintegrating into a business contract. This bourgeois era’s social trend was even commented on by Karl Marx and prominently reflected in the “serious” literary genres of Gustave Flaubert’s Madam Bovary (1856), Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877), and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Meek One (1876); all three female heroines commit suicide. Hence, the upsurge of a popular comedic form of vaudeville resonated with significant socioeconomic changes. This genre aptly commented (albeit with sarcasm) on serious problems: deception, greed, dominance, and cruelty destroying the humans’ procreative force and family. Interestingly, the so-called high and low genres worked in tandem to express the same concern for the collapse of marriage; anthropologically, for the survival of the species. 259

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

Among the key criticisms of genre is its predictability. In fact, the pragmatic, hands-on d­ iscussions of genre and its limitations came from early Modernism (1910s), which focused on the artist’s unbound creativity. Genre in this context was seen and conceptualized with a reprimand as a set of “rules,” meant to deprive the artist of freedom. It was the spirit of the avantgarde movement that instilled the condescending attitude toward genre as a tool of mass art and an arm of vulgar entertainment. Genre was cast off as kitsch, a crude and trite cultural form shaped by bourgeois tastes and commercialism. Scholarly debates on genre were unleashed at the dawn of the 20th century by the rebellious Modernists, who openly scorned this cultural form as binding and curbing the artist’s imagination and innovative prowess. Genre was condemned as a darling of the philistines and mass market. Conversely, emerging experimental art was expected to reconfigure the familiar building blocks of culture into the freeform streams of creative consciousness, exemplified by the work of Picasso, Kandinsky, Dali, Joyce, and Proust. In the Modernist conception of art, a pure genre exists only as something to be defied or subverted; at very least, integrated into the larger-scale canvasses of experimental art. Therefore, the true cultural significance of genres still remained a mystery.Yet their power is in promoting pattern thinking: genres can be defined as part of what Turner emphasized as culture’s dynamic symbolic codes (Turner, 1975). The appreciation of genres as part of influential active symbolic systems was not possible before the rise of awareness of culture’s innate symbolic codes and meta-processes. The rise of metanarratives was facilitated by the ascent of Symbolism and Modernism in art at the dusk of the 19th century, reflecting the general turn in pattern recognition and paradigmatic thinking in knowledge and science. Theoretical deliberations regarding genre became even more urgent at the end of the 20th century. The controversial issues of genre politics, commercial use, limitations imposed on artistic freedom, the rise of interactive storytelling, as well as the persuasive and sarcastic attack on cultural clichés from the era’s aesthetic leader, Postmodernism, facilitated the need for a new genre theory. Since art per se was no longer viewed as the refuge of genre, it was considered as part of mass culture, literary tradition, and language, and, therefore, studied within these contexts. The field of genre studies had been influenced by the three theories, which all have demonstrated undeniable strengths, yet also limitations and fallacies.This chapter highlights the latest among genre theories, the anthropological, which explores the ritual roots of the media, and illuminates genres’ innate interactive potential for fictional world-building. The very origin of imaginary worlds can be fully understood only with the added contexts of symbolic anthropology and the anthropology of consciousness (Levy-Bruhl, 1935; Levi-Strauss 1974, 1995; Turner, 1975; Turner and Bruner, 1986; Meletinsky 1976/2000; Freidenberg, 1997). The previously dominating schools of thought, termed here “economic,” “literary,” and “semiotic,” trace the origins of genres to business, literary, and linguistic-communication practices, respectively. Economic theory suggests that film industry executives, the creators of Hollywood, along with the mass market book publishers, invented genres to encourage sales. The role of genres as fast and efficient deliverers of products to consumers cannot be overestimated. Stimulating further appetite for similar products, genres as marketing tools increase profits.Yet this theory disregards the cultural function of genres and their importance beyond efficacy as a business strategy. It also ignores the existence of genres prior to mass society and mass culture. The second school of thought fittingly links the rise of the 20th-century media genres to prior literary traditions, yet neglects explaining the existence of genres before literature developed. A vivid example of the literature-centered conception is Tzvetan Todorov’s “The Origin of Genres.” While identifying them as “metadiscursive notions,” he views genres as merely serving as the “horizons of expectations” for audiences and “models of writing” for authors (1976: 161–164). Todorov inquires: “From where do genres come?,” answering: 260

Genre

Why, quite simply, from other genres. A new genre is always the transformation of one or several old genres: by inversion, by displacement, by combination … The question of origins cannot be disassociated, historically, from the field of the genres themselves. Chronologically, there is no “before genres.” (161) Conversely, anthropology states “there is”: what existed before a spectrum of genres was a system of ritual performances and storytelling.The fallacy of “rootless genres” ignores the link between genres’ ritual origin and the ritual-symbolic codes of contemporary narrative/media (Turner, 1975; see also a table of rituals with correlated genres: Alexander, 2013a: 54).Todorov speaks for the narratologists who insist that genres represent a universe of their own, and should be defined strictly on their own terms as “classes of texts,” residing on the intersection of poetics and literary history (1976: 163–164). This approach denies the presence of genres outside of speech acts and literature, ignoring their anthropological roots and significance across cultures and time. The powerful genre prototypes in ritual/oral traditions are not clarified within the literary conception of genre. Despite lingering questions on the cultural roles of genre, a few scholars, following the literary and semiotic traditions, produced rich and informative analyses of genres across media borders in literature and film (Schrader, 1972, and Desser, 2003, on film noir; Sobchack, 1997, on science fiction. For comprehensive neoformalist and semiotic approaches toward film genre, see Altman, 1999; Bordwell, 1st ed., 1979/11th ed., 2016; Duff, 2000; Neale, 2000; Grant, 2003, 2012; Friedman, 2013).This list excludes Bakhtin’s original contribution to genre theory embodied in his seminal studies of the novel (1928/1984) and comedy (1965/1968) because he looks deeply into the matter of cultural continuity and evolution, defining his innovative methodology as “anthropological.” Bakhtin’s ideas influenced the examination of genres of comedy and the “worlds of laughter” on-screen (Stam, 1992; Horton, 2000; and Alexander, 2013a). The strictly semiotic approach treats genres as a linguistic system, a form of language with its own “vocabulary” and “grammar” (the terms used both metaphorically and literally, with mixed success). The semiotic and neoformalist approaches have been, so far, the most reputable among the scholars of genre, particularly in film. They should be credited for offering exhaustive descriptions of genre types, groups, and subgroups, along with the meticulous detailing of themes, iconic imagery, styles, and narrative/visual patterns. Yet even this highly regarded approach has its flaws. The semiotic conception of genres has shown rigor for classifications. But when (film) genres are considered as language, which operates by means of “grand syntagmas” (Metz, 1964/1990), they are often treated as a frozen language, while their historical roots and evolution are ignored. Although highlighting the power of narrative patterns, traditional film/narrative semiotics disregards the development of genres as an evolving mechanism of culture. In addition, the excessive focus on typical traits replaced the examination of genres’ social-cultural functions. After WWII, semiotics experienced first progress, then decline. Methodological flaws limited the value of the semiotic approach toward genre.While its frontrunner, Structuralism, had a profound impact, its constraints became also obvious: its methodology was criticized by its successor, Poststructuralism, for focusing on the phenomena (nouns) rather than the processes (verbs). The core notions of signs and symbols, as well as the signifier and the signified, were thus replaced by the concepts associated with the signification (as) activity. “Sign” was becoming a verb, answering the question “what is it doing?” rather than “what is it?” Likewise, Functionalism, a method developed by anthropologists ranging from Emile Durkheim to Victor Turner, facilitated the question “how does it work?”The field of ­semiotics 261

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

was unable to answer such inquiries into the social realm. Finally, the (micro) semiotic study of texts had been replaced with the (macro) agenda of the Semiotics of Culture (Levi-Strauss, 1974; Lotman, 2001; Ivanov, 1977). Genre studies had to undergo the same transformations as semiotics as a whole: refocusing on the (re)signification and symbolization processes, as well as on social functions and meaning-making, particularly, on the scale of culture rather than a single text. Functionalism, Poststructuralism, and the Semiotics of Culture advanced new scholarly methods that implicitly or directly impelled the rethinking of genres. This complex paradigm shift facilitated the anthropological conception of genre, which focuses on genre as an heir of ritual and its roles in culture. Socio-cultural functionality and discourse represent what is lacking in the earlier semiotic approaches toward text, and consequently, to genre. Some theorists made steps toward expanding the idea of genre as merely a category. Altman (1999) was the first to use the term ritual, albeit metaphorically, while Frow (2005) emphasized genre as a dynamic process, which expands our knowledge about the world; yet falling short of examining this process in social contexts. Meanwhile, rather than film or literary studies, it was the traditions of anthropology and studies of myth that informed the critical turn in genre studies. The breakthrough explorations of the ritual-symbolic codes of culture can be found in the seminal writings of James George Frazer, Arnold Van Gennep, Emile Durkheim, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Claude Levi-Strauss, and especially Victor Turner, whose work inspired Lily Alexander’s studies in the anthropology of genre. The symbolic-interactive foundation of mythic and folk narrative has also been highlighted in the foundational scholarship of Vladimir Propp and Joseph Campbell (see “The Hero’s Journey” chapter in this volume). Most theorists used to define the notion of (film) genres as a means of categorization of stories—enabling a viewer to immediately recognize certain types of storytelling, such as the Musical or the Western. While these theorists look at narrative and visual codes, the new anthropological theory of genre, proposed and outlined in the author’s book series Fictional Worlds, firmly links genres to rituals on the one hand and to the fictional world-building on the other hand (Alexander, 2013a/b; Jenkins and Alexander, 2014). Influenced by the advancing fields of symbolic and semiotic anthropology, the new approach points instead at the social codes and models of/for social behavior, which operate within narrative and media culture. This theory emphasizes genre’s function as a biosemantic protocol of ritual nature, and a tool for organizing and optimizing social behaviors, community-building, and the maintenance of society. Alexander examines how genres work within the formation of fictional worlds by means of dynamic symbolic processes, genre structures, and core narrative forms: the symbolic journey, drama, tragedy, mystery, and comedy. She also analyzes the interplay of subgenres, for example, crime drama, thriller, and film noir under the umbrella genre of Mystery; or screwball comedy, comedy of the absurd, and tragic farce within the realm of Comedy. The Symbolic Journey (as in The Wizard of Oz (1900), Alice in Wonderland (1865), The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955), Spirited Away (2001), and the Harry Potter series) represents another macro-genre, highly potent for designing imaginary worlds and world-building, and associated with a spectrum of related genres: coming of age, fantasy, fairytale, road movie, and science fiction (see the “Mythology” and “The Hero’s Journey” chapters in this volume). A perspective of anthropology informs the study of genre as an investigative experiential framework. Inspired by a range of social thinkers, an anthropological theory of genre discusses them not as merely narrative formulas or sets of storytelling conventions, but as different ways of structuring societies. “Genre” is understood as a behavioral modifier, to mean ways of organizing social practices and fine-tuning increasingly complex societies. Narrative and media genres are defined and differentiated by their social and cultural functions, rather than by 262

Genre

their semantics alone. Each genre evolves to address a specific cultural need, and thus is meant to fulfill a corresponding cultural function. All genres comprise a cultural system, working in concert to facilitate a harmonious synchronization of the diverse social whole. Genres provide storytellers with the framework within which they create templates for challenging experiences that inevitably guide participants toward new wisdom. These episodes are hypothetical, symbolic, occurring in imagination, as well as partially real: the audience lives through these events, while identifying with the protagonist, and absorbing emotions leading toward reflection on “what happened” and “why” in the story. The audience seeks out these answers, because through the narrative experience, it has happened “to us.” By means of the genre framework, storytellers shape their messages of social responsibility and collaborative behavior, helping with necessary communal adjustment of individuals and groups. The negative behaviors (social don’ts) are examined using the emotions of fear, pity, and laughter, through the genres of tragedy, drama, crime drama, mystery, and comedy. Many realms of experience and the rites of passage toward maturity may be addressed within one fictional world through a series of narratives. What “necessary” communal adjustment means varies from country to country, and is subject to debate within and across societies. In some cultures, the “fitting” young men and “proper” young women are those who silently comply and do not ask any questions. This “conception” of adjustment benefits groups in power (father knows best) but not the entire society, particularly when seen from the point of view of collective wisdom and the future. If media narratives do not support a healthy adjustment, they “don’t do their job,” that is, fulfill their cultural function. Offered by flawed “ill-adjusted” practitioners, or by those pursuing profit or ideological advantage, such stories promote the status quo while pretending to inspire individuals and transform community. Some theorists (Wright, 2003), following the Modernist mistrust of genres, insist that genres per se are the tools of oppressive politics. The anthropological approach also addresses the politics of genre, by employing a spectrum of ideas such as a “ceremony” as a pretend transformative ritual (Turner, 1975; Geertz, 1993) to explain how ineffective it is to blame genres. Instead, we should investigate how ideologies exploit the immense power of genre system, and how the groups in power effectively have done so around the world. Is there “bad” storytelling, ineffective in its adjustment role, even harmful? Some theorists of ritual insisted that modern media can and should be evaluated regarding its ritual efficacy, as a “transformative performance” (Turner, 1976, 1986; Grimes, 1990). If there are effective “right steps” toward social progress, precious to its outcome, there must be “wrong steps” to be avoided. “The harm is done” when stories demonize minorities; fallen victims or accidentally shot bystanders are not given second thought; dramatic conflict resolution is replaced by explosions/violence; and especially when the cause-effect is not traced throughout the dramatic arc, thus robbing audiences of enlightening Recognition in the realm of consequential logic. Specific cases of harmful or helpful narratives and their politics can be debated (as in Survivor (2000–present), Lost (2004–2010), Breaking Bad (2008– 2013), and Games of Thrones (2011–present)), but the question “how good is this story, television show, or movie to our species” is a vital one. Some storyworlds convey timely humanistic sentiments, propelling the influence of underrepresented groups. For instance, a simpleton and a schoolgirl singlehandedly fight evil, becoming the folk heroes for their time, the 1990s (in The Adventures of Tintin (1991–1992) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003)). Being part of more than one genre framework, a fictional world may offer adjustment mechanisms on several levels. Most of us would agree that action-adventure, love story, and social drama Casablanca (1942) teaches lessons that benefit us all, as does the sci-fi mystery Solaris (book, 1961; film, 1972), the sci-fi and coming of age E.T.: The Extraterrestrial (1982), and 263

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek: Next Generation (1987–1994) with its multifaceted storyworld, encompassing multiple extraterrestrial worlds, and many humans, as well as aliens, at once on their rites of passage, journeys of self-discovery and transformation. Conversely, the dark yet seductive worlds of vampires and sexual predators warn of rising neo-aristocratic elites, for whom the rest of us are just a subject of consumption (as in the Twilight saga (2005, 2008); and Fifty Shades of Grey (2011, 2015); books and adaptations). Growing out of the millennia-long framework of ritual, genre has become a new investigative experiential framework in its own right. Intact with the anthropology of experience, a field initiated in the 1980s by Turner (1986), the experimental exploratory activity we call “genres” can be viewed as a segmentation of reality with a purpose of finding optimal solutions within each type of circumstances. Genres ensure that the Western takes place on the frontier; film noir in the city-jungle; a crime will be solved in the police procedural, while in comedy “everything will turn out alright.” This framework reveals a wise approach toward solving problems “one at a time.” Genres shift our attention to the investigative process by liberating us from the uncertainty of: “What kind of fictional world is that?” “What happens there?” or even “How does this multinarrative, fictional world connect actions and consequences, even across separate stories?” (as in Aeschylus’ Oresteia and its heir, a serial television drama). Genres are shaped by the cultural need to address specific realms of reality, just like mythic stories were narrated at the dawn of culture within the correlated ritual experience. By employing pattern thinking, genres carry compressed and coded knowledge that is essential yet stipulated. Before the “show begins” and “the curtain rises,” we already know a lot about the typical storyworld behind a genre. Why is that important? These embedded assurances free our attention and energies for tracing something else occupying the spotlight: the hero’s steps and decision-making process. Genres gently refocus us on the problem-solving process rather than a story outcome (occasional clever twists notwithstanding). Essentially, genres represent a ritual-symbolic code of culture, for which their easily traceable and identifiable visual-narrative codes are just “the dressing.” Iconic images are identified as the “genre” markers for quick indication of which realm of experience is explored. Genre’s visual-narrative cursors must be promptly recognizable: their purpose is in delivering condensed information—even prior to the start of the audience’s experience. Importantly, pattern recognition is a condition and stimulus for the development of pattern thinking. Symbolic consciousness of the higher order, or deliberating by means of codes, results in superior levels of problem detecting and solving, essential to our collective survival. Not only do patterns help audiences to recognize genres promptly, they facilitate the diagnostic process of embedded behavioral codes. Their deep meaning is in investigating human actions associated with specific realms of experience and analyzing behavioral patterns in the social circumstances requiring problem-solution thinking. Genre is all about what characters choose to do, while attempting to navigate social mazes, and by doing so, ascending “from level to level” (to use a video game metaphor); in drama, such levels are charted by complications and peripeteias. Social pathfinding and pathmaking is at the heart of the cultural function of genres. “Action!” is known as a code-word signifying film art. Dramatic action is also central to genre and fictional world-building (Alexander, 2013a/b, 2014, 2017). In this context, genre may be defined as a systematic “step-by-step” examination of human conduct within the stipulated circumstances and set of rules defined by individual genres. “Action” is both the physical and symbolic micro-unit of behavior, essentially manifest in the storyworlds as characters’ steps. They encompass the footsteps, treading, stops, turns, and paths, as well as completing tasks, fighting back, escaping, or hiding. Imaginary worlds, including those of video games, with vibrant narrative unfolding, are propelled by exciting dynamics. In fictional world-building, 264

Genre

the ­designing of maps, roads, intersections, and the entire sphere of the journey, plays a vital dramatic role. The chronotopes of imaginary worlds ensure the mapping of arenas and battlefields, on which the reality-testing action takes place. The authors-heroes’ activity of pathfinding and pathmaking represents their collaborative input into solving cognitive and social riddles, which accompany the evolution of communal life. The audience and readers are actively involved in such path-tracing, assessing the value of each step taken, and deliberating on one’s own choices, if given a chance (ensured by interactive storytelling). The essence of genre-defined stories is that they focus our attention on what the heroes do while choosing the optimal behavior in critical situations. Unsurprisingly, the moves of chess figures symbolize the same. Each step/move underscores a choice, the decision-making upon analysis, however swift, of the (social) situation under examination. Hence, all the action, from hiking in deep woods to carpet-flying and riding Pegasus or a dragon, from the cowboys on stallions to car chases in the crowded cities, manifests the dynamic metaphors of choosing the right turn in the story’s cognitive maze. Rooted in ritual (an interactive activity), genre has proven to be a form of role-playing. A genre system is a super-contest on multiple chessboards.The rules of the game—known to all—allow one to focus on the moves of the players and their ability to thrill us with bold and original solutions. These “smart moves” represent the cognitive breakthroughs and intellectual discoveries (Aristotelian anagnorisis) of genre-asgame.Yet, the focus is on the chosen steps in the symbolic process of pathfinding. Creating fictional worlds involves a balanced combination of pattern thinking and innovation. While designing new storyworlds for the genre-based media, an author must combine rules/tradition and artistic freedom. The preset elements may be mixed-and-matched in new imaginative combinations, a sort of artist’s dreamlike marathon, with near-infinite configuration options.While conventions require mastering the blueprints of historical narrative codes, experimentation may be manifest in (1) the unique setup of mandatory situations, details, clues, and other information bits, but more importantly, in (2) the advanced problem-­solution thinking by the heroes. This interactivity, between symbolic presets and artistic liberty, reveals genre’s major appeal and its game-like propensity. This is the way a genre framework stimulates new thinking about forging ahead in familiar life circumstances for all of us, a society.The main anthropological value of genre is in its “pattern thinking” and the interplay between an invariant (core structures and formulas) and variations (changing details), while the audiences with their avatars are carefully choosing steps at the moral crossroads. Moving from a symbolic fictional world to community-building requires developed social pattern thinking. Just as traditional mythic worlds included spirits and magic beings, the modern-day cast of characters may enlist aliens (as in Star Wars, Star Trek, The X-Files, Solaris, and Hard to Be a God). Yet even so, genre’s sophisticated cognitive process impels deliberation regarding our own behavioral patterns, those of the human “typical characters under typical circumstances” (to use the famous definition of realism in Friedrich Engels’ letter of 1888). Codes and patterns became a subject of profound scholarly interest with the development of cybernetics and the new knowledge of meta-semantics, which reveal advanced levels of consciousness and the mental apparatus in charge of socio-cultural activities. In these contexts, genre can be defined as a meta-script or a (ritual) symbolic scenario. We already know what happens in the fictional worlds of romance, sci-fi, film noir, or crime drama. The romantic couple must overcome mounting obstacles. In the road movie or the journey in space/time, a hero runs into a gamut of strangers and dangerous situations. A decent and brave Private Eye navigates the treacherous waters of organized crime and corrupted officials. The police procedural (note the pattern-implying term!) is a “whodunit” within the crime investigation process established by society. 265

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

Far from being shy about bluntly relying on blueprints, genres “think” patterns and “play” with formulaic plots. By doing so, genres as dynamic symbolic codes, center their inquiry on finding advanced new solutions to typically thorny social situations. Social patterns, to be explored by genres, have drastically changed since the dawn of culture when the ancestral ritual-symbolic codes were created. New stories, and the worlds in which they take place, are still based on these codes and relevant genres, while addressing the complexity levels embedded in contemporary multifaceted societies.Yet, many new stories, inquiring into social dilemmas, align precisely with the “magnetic” powerlines of the genre system, foundational to both rituals and modern-day media. One of the keys to understanding pattern thinking (so definitive to genres and facilitating higher consciousness, including experimenting with codes) is progressive segmentation and focalization. Genres focus on story elements relevant to possible human behaviors and choices within the limitations of known “social presets.” Such “programmed” types of situations tend to reoccur across time, making classical stories forever relevant to generations of audiences. Genres are jam-packed with fixed features, cataloging all types of dramatic obstacles, complications, plotting of villains or tricksters, counteractions by heroes, help from allies, and backstabbing by traitors. Finally, stories ardently list the protagonists’ pathfinding tactics, because they are our ultimate role models for improving the social life. That is why stories highlight the hero’s best possible reactions, turns, choices, decisions, methods, and, hence, step-by-step walk toward triumphant outcomes. Such optimal pathmaking encompasses all problem-solving types: the cognitive/intellectual, the moral/interpersonal, and the macrosocial/humanistic, influencing the consequences for society at large. Authors are encouraged to creatively add unique options or recombine them as advanced ethical patterns, as has occurred in the imaginary worlds of Apuleius, François Rabelais, Jonathan Swift, Jules Verne, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, the Strugatsky Brothers, and others. Worlds like Wright’s Islandia or Levine’s airborne city of Columbia also present new worldviews and ways of life in detail, inviting audiences to reflect on and compare how their own cultures resolve conflicts and prioritize values. In imaginary worlds, a hero (our avatar), and certainly us, must make the best decisions, choosing between the known options, hopefully discovering an original path or pioneering problem-solving logic. The interplay of the new—uncovered by the hero and his civilization—and the familiar preset is the crux of the genre-based story, as a ritual-symbolic activity. Hence, it appears to be more efficient and logical to find new solutions to old problems with a genre’s precision focus on a selected segment of reality. The genre system’s social problem-solving activity carefully investigates each realm of experience at a time, employing the romantic comedy yesterday, film noir today, and tragic farce tomorrow. Pathfinding and pathmaking are keywords that define the intrinsic link between ritual, genre, and game. Progressive segmentation and focalization are achieved by a structure and system of limitations, embedded in rules. This applies to the laws of dramatic arc (so disliked by some writers as an “obstacle” to artistic freedom) and the “rules of the game” in interactive media. By means of presets, the loosely chartered scripts in each genre, a precision-focus investigation is applied to a spectrum of possible stories and social situations. Within a given storyworld, a protagonist is likewise limited to a range of choices and actions, be he a romantic lover, action movie savior, space explorer, or private detective. The protagonist-avatar—a shared, projected alter ego of the audience—makes complex decisions and initiates steps, considering variable options for the paths taken, limited by each genre’s conventions. As expected, the audience, familiar with the genre and aware of possible steps, is eager to follow the hero’s moves, in “his shoes,” calculating at once how to act wisely in this predicament. 266

Genre

A genre’s precision focus is achieved by a complex process, which includes a sequence of steps: (1) the initial segmentation of reality (a defined realm or world to be explored), (2) a narrowing down to a specific situation within limited circumstances, in which specifically (3) the story’s piling obstacles further confine characters to a restricted range of choices. In addition, all stories have a rhythm and are structured as the grid-framework of levels in video game, and scenes/acts in drama (also, the series and seasons on television); each segment focuses on selected problems. This progressive segmentation and “narrowing down” in tracing turns and counting steps allows one to analyze human choices (that is, the decision-making process) with exceptional accuracy and detail. Each genre’s familiar “playing field” allows one to closely focus on each micro-move (just like the known rules of the game of tennis, soccer, and so forth free fans to enjoy the athletes’ choice of actions and the acumen of their execution). This micro-breakdown is resonant with gamers’ keyboard taps. All action-adventure tales and crime dramas require measured moves around the minefields of conflicts. Detectives carefully follow the cold-hearted, calculating villains. Romantic lovers make tiny tender steps toward each other, then run away together from wars or hostile clans, as in Romeo and Juliet (1597) and West Side Story (1957). The musical, based on a group’s calculated dancing steps, underscores the interpersonal and social synchronization, within the storyworld, and with the audience. The Recognition (anagnorisis) of wrong-versus-right moves at each turn is where the teaching moments are most valuable. Our genre-story hero (and us) must quickly process a spectrum of choices, at every shift of the dramatic landscape. Audience members must think through their avatar-protagonist. (Don’t we all love figuring out problems and solutions before the characters do?) They experience disappointment or joy, depending on what the hero chooses. While the presets of a genre offer a comfortable cushion of familiar information, we are afforded the luxury of “attention to detail” (proven to be especially important in genre stories). Yet the crucial details are not merely visual signs, but motivational “clues” and behavioral elements. We learn leisurely and efficiently by means of genres because we can focus entirely on each storyworld’s action-reaction dynamics and trial-and-error pathfinding. Genres as informational channels encompass problem assessment, the pulsating beats of vital new knowledge, and the problem solution ideas, with the possible answers leading to survival and progress. It is not by chance that the search for clues is the intellectual staircase in many genre stories. Whether in a jail tale, escape story, or crime drama, each micro-move is of great significance, there are no second chances, attempts cannot be repeated, and counting steps toward victory requires precision. In sum, a genre’s investigative and calculative capacity stimulates the relevant types of storyworlds. Multiple paths, prearranged for heroes in genre-based stories, ensure that the avatars (and us) experience both constraints (of the game) and freedom (of experimentation). The system of possible paths, across all genre narratives and the media, represents an intricate, giant chess game. More precisely, genres are a Jumanji-type realm of diverse chess-like games, each with its own predetermined rules. This is how the traditional ritual activity of “rites of passage” is organized as well: the initiand has options, but may pass or fail, depending on personal choices, imagination, survival and problem-solving skills, and his or her ability for social adjustment. Each story is a successor of preceding stories in the same genre (there is natural genre-based intertextuality, as in the interlinked worlds of traditional myths), entailing the consistency of operations. The resulting pattern thinking facilitates a comparative analysis of different types of protagonists and their courses of actions. From the anthropological theory of genres, there is just a step toward understanding genre as an immersive and interactive “structured process” of ritual nature. Therefore, the continuity from ritual to folklore, to literature, to cinema, television, 267

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

video games, and all future successive interactive storytelling modes underscores the logical legacy and transition of narrative forms. As a cultural system, genres perfectly suit the future developments of storytelling and world-building, particularly in the directions of collaborative enlightenment through challenging intellectual quests. A ritual is an interactive performance of symbolic-mythic nature, while the genre, an heir of ritual, examines the realms of human social activities emerging throughout time.Within each genre and stemming storyworld we find a set of typical situations and conflicts that must be resolved for our collective survival, one at a time. While a semiotic approach emphasizes each genre’s emblematic images, characters, and events, the anthropological socio-behavioral theory looks deeper into protagonist reactions to conflicts and choices at the situational crossroads, typical for specific genres. The labyrinthine logic of the Symbolic Journey (Propp, 1928/1968; Campbell, 1968; Turner, 1969; Vogler, 2007; and Alexander 2007, 2013) resonates with a game, which amasses paths, turns, thresholds, crossroads, levels, entailing the actions of falling, climbing up, discovering dark corners and caves, crossing (doors and gates; open, closed, or locked), advancing, or being pushed back. All physical challenges cause a hero’s actions, resulting in right or wrong moves. What also stops our heroes in their tracks, forcing them to carefully address new riddles and think on new levels, is the encounters with the “Unknown” that manifests cognitive challenges and thresholds. This type of “narrative shock” is termed astonishment (Aristotle), the uncanny (Freud), making strange (the Formalists), symbolic inversions (Bakhtin, Turner), and suspense (Hitchcock), proving to be key factors for genre-focused storytelling and games. These disruptions break the flow of information and action with the different kind of segmentation: the units of the familiar (comprehensible, processed) and those yet to be grasped (perplexing or threatening); in tandem, they stimulate new experiences and innovative thinking. Any segmentation or grid-making is a property of, and stimulus for, a comprehensive analysis. We find the patterns of fragmented actions and movement in all interactive stories: each dynamic unit requires problem-solving. The ultimate victory is a sum of all the components contributing to a definitive resolution. To sum up the meaning-making mechanisms of focalization and pathmaking embedded in genre, we should mention the following phases: 1. segmentation to the units of specific realms of experience; 2. creation of ritual-symbolic scripts or narrative formulas, for each segment/ genre; 3. through trial and error, the implementation of a spectrum of stories (variations) for each segment/genre; 4. organization of storytelling, compositionally and rhythmically, as a set of actionable units: gestures-steps, scenes, and acts; 5. close tracing, with a precision focus, of the choices/steps of characters in mandatory situations; 6. ensuring that the pathfinding takes heroes through both familiar terrain and the Unknown; 7. promoting, reinforcing, and celebrating the optimal steps/decisions by means of charismatic and influential genre heroes (often embodied by stars, like the film noir leads Jean Gabin and Humphrey Bogart), who vividly and persuasively show the way toward victory through social pathfinding and pathmaking in storytelling, and other forms of cultural texts. A timely question is: how can genre awareness further empower the growing movement of fictional world-building? Imaginary worlds as modeling systems or models of/for the future 268

Genre

have proven to influence reality on many levels (Turner, 1969, 1975, 1986; Geertz, 1993; Lotman, 2001; Jenkins, 2006a/b; Wolf, 2012; Jenkins and Alexander, 2014). Fictional worldbuilding encompasses storytelling as a narrative tradition and industry, culture, society, consciousness, politics, and globalization. Despite the sophisticated mechanism of behavioral modification embedded in a genre system, few practitioners are aware of this influential cultural apparatus. Aspiring artists routinely cast off genres, and the market’s addiction to them, as an obstacle to creative freedom and desired legacy of the auteurs. Ironically, it is by means of genre that the media-makers most often launch prominent careers. This contradiction— between genre and the artist’s creativity or cultural prominence—is a faulty binary opposition, proposed by Modernism, and based on the premise that true art emerges only on the ruins of traditional forms. Such rejection of rules is vividly manifested in the world-as-abyss of Kazimir Malevich’s painting Black Square (1915); or the strange nightmare-world with the notorious melting watch of The Persistence of Memory (1931) by Salvador Dalí, and his surrealist assault on the act of seeing in the film Un Chien Andalou (1929), coauthored with Luis Buñuel. Since genre is a predetermined and “preset” narrative structure, authors always struggle in crafting fictional worlds that are designed “by the rules” yet powerfully original. A balance is often achieved by “playing” with conventions and boundaries.The potency of genre promises its enlightened role in fictional world-building, encompassing tradition and innovation: harvesting the power of individual genres and combining it with fearless experimentation. Both goals require a profound knowledge of genre, with all possible combinations. The current global narrative climate is conducive to genre fusions: the vast populace of fictional worlds follow multiple social paths, experience dissimilar segments of reality, and require distinct rites of passage. Hence, multifaceted storyworlds need different genres for their stories.The transcultural expansion of transmedia storytelling and audience also propels genre hybridization. For example, Tolkien’s and Rodenberry’s epics effectively combine fantasy, action, coming of age, romance, and crime dramas, addressing the manifold conflicts of complex worlds. Thoughtful experimentation, providing numerous trajectories (Borges’s “forking paths”) for the pathfinding aspirations of multiple heroes, is a future of imaginary worlds. Multifaceted narratives require a combination of genres to organize branching storyworlds with diverse populations that are busy, exploring the wealth of social paths. The larger our fictional universes become, spanning cultures and media, the more their creators should learn about genres to effectively use them in their world’s tales and fuse them in experimental ventures. Which story types should be defined as genres also remains a subject of ongoing debates. Some offhand groupings may be mistakenly named “genres”: the so-called mad science, monster movies, disaster movies, and gangster movies. Along with the genres that grow in scale or together with other genres, there are fractured forms, representing a broken genre structure, or a disintegrated part of preexisting genre, like “horror,” which is not a genre from a socio-anthropological perspective because it doesn’t have a related cultural need or cultural function (Alexander, 2013a, 2013b; Jenkins and Alexander, 2014). Experimenting with genrecharted worlds continues not only for the sake of artistic freedom but because, as a society, we must carry on the search for optimal pathfinding and pathmaking, recognizing an ideal course in each type of circumstances. The solutions for bridging rules (of genres) and creative freedom (of imaginary worldbuilding) auspiciously go with the growing complexity of fictional models and multifaceted storytelling. Outgrowing textual boundaries, stories continually expand into the fictional worlds of global media. Even created by a distinctive mind (like Lewis, Tolkien, or Rowling), imaginary worlds tend to develop as a transcultural and transgenerational endeavor. Bourgeoning fictional worlds (not unlike ancient mythologies) expand into macro-narrative forms, encom269

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

passing prequels and sequels, versions, series, adaptations, games, franchises, intertextualities, fan fiction, movements, and traditions (slipping in commercial merchandize, like cult-movie T-shirts and Disney character tie-ins at McDonald’s). Considering the wide range of stories that can be told about, and within, a single fictional world, it appears that the notion of genre works best in organizing multifaceted macro-narratives.Thus, fictional worlds tend to contain heterogeneous and multifaceted genre structures rather than rely on one genre. The collaborative nature of contemporary media production, manifest in film, video, ­television, and video games, entails collective authorship, adding a creative team’s multiple perspectives. Unsurprisingly, genres’ familiar depictive patterns, with their established logic, serve as an anchor, grounding complex narratives and guarding them from entropy and collapse. In addition, from the viewpoint of anthropology, manifold narrative forms cannot avoid combining genres because fictional worlds must examine many segments of social reality. A world aligns more organically with genre fusions when its initial storyworld is based on core genres that are “integral” or inclusive of other subgenres, such as Drama, Comedy, and Mystery. Let’s call them the “umbrella genres.” The comic genre encompasses physical comedy, screwball and eccentric comedy, the comedy of the absurd, farce, tragi-farce, tragicomedy, romantic comedy, and new hybrids such as sci-fi comedy (like the Men in Black film series). The world of The Sopranos (1999–2007) emerged at the fusion of the (antihero) crime drama and dark comedy or tragic farce, rooted in the ancient Greek satyr play. Drama includes a wide spectrum of the romantic, crime, court, and political forms. Science fiction branches into utopia and dystopia; the latter overlaps with tragedy, thriller, film noir, and the symbolic journey. Genres interlink and intersect: mystery may correspond with tragedy, thriller, crime drama, fantasy, and film noir. Genre experimentation naturally includes any number of possible combinations, suitable to specific content and message (on genre hybrids in Hollywood, see Jaffe, 2007). Trialing may invoke a few types of genre hybridity: the umbrella genres, with overlapping genres (often tied in natural fusions), and clashing genres (manifest as paradoxical unities or intentional contradictions, such as a tragic farce or tragic comedy). Genre fusions contain “moral lessons” and wisdom of sorts, hinting that story characters and events can be simultaneously viewed and “judged” from different viewpoints. The world of The X-Files (1993–2002) starts as sci-fi, gradually encompassing related genres: thriller, mystery, film noir, and crime drama, even screwball comedy and self-parody. The clownish worlds of Roseanne (1988–1997), The Simpsons (1989–present), and Home Improvement (1991–1999), while rooted in the comedy of the absurd, manifest working-class family dramas and tales of survival. In these familial farces, burdened-by-life simpletons with limited social opportunities keep going against all odds, with wisdom and dignity, while laughing at themselves and at everything they are supposed to fear, bouncing back after each fall. While some theory purists, who see genre clarity and consistency as its main traits or even “virtues,” are concerned about such “confusing” issues as genre transformations and inversions, there are no conceptual problems of this kind within the anthropological theory of genres. Fusing genres while experimenting with storyworlds is as legitimate and productive as following traditional genre models. If the multifaceted (multi-genre) narratives rooted in distinctive fictional worlds (such as Star Trek: Next Generation, The X-Files, or the Harry Potter series) have effectively fulfilled multiple cultural functions, they have served their purpose. Segmentation of reality is not an end but a means of achieving a “precision focus.” Hence, genres can be combined within one storyworld, while employing a multifocal observation in studying social behaviors. To examine how genres align within multifaceted multimedia storytelling, we should identify (at least) four macro-narrative forms with diverse genre relations and fusions: (1) the novel; 270

Genre

(2) the fictional world with continuing and branching story lines, including adaptations; (3) the serial television drama; (4) story-into-game, in which a storyworld that begins as a (comic) book or a movie becomes a pop culture phenomenon inspiring video games. These modalities overlap when a fictional world generates screen adaptations, a series, or interactive multimedia. The novel, erroneously called a genre, is better defined as a narrative form or format (with its distinctive styles and techniques). Similarly, a short story is not a genre, and neither is poetry; they are narrative categories or domains. Genres per se represent specific ritual-­symbolic codes associated with investigation and modification of human behaviors. The novel is a complex, multimodal form, able to integrate storylines adhering to different genres: coming of age, drama, tragedy, farce, self-parody, crime drama, crime investigation, and court drama, such as in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. His Notes from Underground (1864) contains scenes of dark comedy intertwining with tragedy, while The Meek One fuses crime, mystery, and farce. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869) is an unlikely fusion of an epic genre with a novel, yet strikingly successful. Defining macro-narrative forms (like the novel) as “an end of genre” ( Jameson, 1981: 151) takes us back to the genre-opportunistic era of Modernist theory and the misconception of rapidly developing fictional world-building as genre-less. Genres do not “end”: their interrelations signal the end of the dominance of the belief in strict genre purity and hierarchy. Conversely, Bakhtin’s views on genre fusions as a part of the “translinguistic” dialogue occurring on many semantic levels of culture are highlighted in his theory of carnival and theory of polyphony. This interchange is a step toward understanding the interactivity of genres (reinforced by the genre’s roots in ritual). Diverse genre elements convey multiple points of view involved in constant discussions about society within the realm of culture at large (Bakhtin, 1928/1984). A serial television drama—an heir to the novel—as a fictional world with multiple plots and parts typically encompasses several genres and subgenres, pointing at a range of cultural functions to be addressed. World-building implies the construction of a multifaceted fictional reality and multidirectional narrative paths. Such complexity entails the profound understanding of the function of genres as part of the ritual-symbolic mechanism of culture. World-building revels in genre diversity, hybridity, fusions, and increased functionality, to cover all experiential areas of the new fictional realm. Just as within the novel or serial TV drama, a range of genres coexist within, or co-govern, an evolving imaginary world, including what is now termed a world-building “franchise.” Genre combinations and hybridity do not represent a problem for the anthropological theory of genres, as long as the embedded cultural functions are effectively fulfilled. The current upsurge in interactive storytelling raises new questions on the relations between fictional world-building, genre, and video games. The game-like foundation of genres originates from ritual, which gave birth to interactivity as riddle-saturated challenges, inseparable from ritual structure. Genres exist as part of a genre system, an integral whole that is employed by world-builders, providing their audiences with the pleasure of interactivity, exciting challenges, all-out immersion, and “total experience.” Experimentations with fictional worlds in the ironic mode of self-parody (as in Pulp Fiction, The Simpsons, and Futurama (1999–2013)) reveal the playful nature of genres and their self-reflective capacity.The interactive and investigational qualities of genre essentially link it to games and the unfolding multifaceted imaginary worlds. A (symbolic) framework and a network (of social communication and innovation), the genre system is a laboratory of narrative and social algorithms, investigating the dynamics, 271

L i ly A l e x a n d e r

and input/output of ideas, from authors to audience. Through employing and experimenting with genres, society benefits from the discoveries of advanced behavioral patterns. Genre is a part of our species’ socio-cognitive problem-solving process (based on the continuity of its symbolic codes). Not only do genres gather their keen discursive communities but they also facilitate what anthropology terms “a symbolic construction of community,” which is currently in progress on a global scale.

References Alexander, Lily A. (2007), “Storytelling in Time and Space: Studies in Chronotope and Narrative Logic on Screen,” Journal of Narrative Theory,Vol. 37, No 1, Winter, 27–64. Alexander, Lily A. (2013a), Fictional Worlds:Traditions in Narrative & The Age of Narrative Culture. Charleston, SC: CreateSpace. Alexander, Lily A. (2013b), Fictional Worlds I:The Symbolic Journey & The Genre System. Expanded, interactive, and illustrated edition. iTunes, iBookstore. Alexander, Lily A. (2017), “Fictional World-Building as Ritual, Drama & Medium” in Mark J.P. Wolf, editor, Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology. New York: Routledge. Altman, Rick (1999), Film/Genre. London: British Film Institute. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1928/1984), Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis:The University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1965/1968), Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Blanchot, Maurice (2015), The Space of Literature: A Translation of “L’Espace littéraire”. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson (2016), Film as Art. 11th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Education. Campbell, Joseph (1968), The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 2nd edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Desser, David (2003), “Global Noir: Genre Film in the Age of Transnationalism.” In Barry Keith Grant, Film Genre Reader III, 3rd edition. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 516–536.. Duff, David (2000), New Genre Theories. Harlow, UK: Longman. Freidenberg, Olga (1997), Image and Concept: Mythopoetic Roots of Literature. New York: Routledge. Friedman, Lester (2013), An Introduction to Film Genres. W. W. Norton & Company. Frow, John (2005), Genre. New York: Routledge. Geertz, Clifford (1993), The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, Fontana Press. Grant, Barry Keith (2003), Film Genre Reader III, 3rd edition. Austin: University of Texas Press. Grant, Barry Keith (2012), Film Genre Reader IV, 4th edition. Austin: University of Texas Press. Grimes, Ronald L. (1990), Ritual Criticism Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Horton, Andrew (2000), Laughing Out Loud:Writing the Comedy-Centered Screenplay. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ivanov, Vyacheslav V. (1977), The Essays on the History of Semiotics in the USSR. In Russian. Moscow: Science. Jaffe, Ira (2007), Hollywood Hybrids: Mixing Genres in Contemporary Films. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Jameson, Fredric (1981), The Political Unconscious. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jenkins, Henry (2006a), Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry (2006b), Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, Henry and Lily Alexander (2014), “Why Humans Tell the Stories They Do: An Interview with Lily Alexander.” A six-part dialogue/interview series. April 1–15, 2014. http://henryjenkins. org/2014/04/why-humans-tell-the-stories-they-do-an-interview-with-lily-alexander-part-one.html 272

Genre

Levi-Strauss, Claude (1974), Structural Anthropology. Basic Books. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1995), Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture. New York: Schocken. Levy-Bruhl, Lucien (1935/1983), Primitive Mythology: The Mythic World of the Australian and Papuan Natives. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Lotman,Yuri (2001), Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Meletinsky, Eleazar M. (1976/2000), The Poetics of Myth. London-New York, Routledge. Metz, Christian (1990), Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Neale, Steve (2000), Genre and Hollywood. New York: Routledge. Propp,Vladimir (1968), Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd edition. Austin: University of Texas Press. Schrader, Paul (1972), “Notes on Film Noir.” Film Comment 8, No.1 (Spring) 8–13; also in Film Genre Reader III. Sobchack,Vivian (1997), Screening Space:The American Science Fiction Film. 2nd edition. New Brunswick: NJ: Rutgers University Press. Stam, Robert (1992), Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film. John Hopkins University Press. Todorov,Tzvetan, and Richard M. Berrong (1976) (trans.) “The Origin of Genres.” New Literary History, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Autumn), 159–170. Tomashevsky, Boris (1978), “Literary Genres.” Russian Poetics in Translation 5: 52–93. Turner,Victor W. (1969), The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Transaction Paperback. Turner,Victor W. (1975), Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Turner,Victor W. (1976),“African Ritual and Western Literature: Is a Comparative Symbology Possible?” in Angus Fletcher, editor, The Literature of Fact. New York: Columbia University Press, 45–81. Turner, Victor W., and Edward M. Bruner (1986), The Anthropology of Experience. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Tynyanov,Yuri (1977),“Dostoevsky and Gogol” in Priscilla Meyer and Stephen Rudy, editors, Dostoevsky and Gogol.Texts and Criticism. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 102–17. Vogler, Christopher (2007), The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 3rd Edition. Radio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012), Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation, New York: Routledge. Wolf, Mark J. P., editor (2017), Revisiting Imaginary Worlds: A Subcreation Studies Anthology, New York: Routledge. Wright, Judith Hess (2003), “Genre Films and the Status Quo” in Film Genre Reader III, 3rd edition. Austin: University of Texas Press.

273

32

Fandom Matt Hills Imaginary worlds can be engaged with in many different ways, and the communities and practices of fandom illustrate these varied reception strategies more visibly than perhaps any other group of readers/consumers/producers. Fandom has been defined as the regular, emotionally committed consumption of specific media narratives (Sandvoss, 2005), but many scholars have viewed fandom, more crucially, as both communal and productive (see Jenkins, 1992; Hills, 2002), whether this involves creating fan fiction, fan art, videos, or commentaries. In short, fans display a tendency to create their own paratextual realms (Gray, 2010) around the canonical texts making up imaginary worlds (that is, the officially produced and endorsed versions of a media franchise) as well as frequently acting as “paratextual completists” (Hills, 2015: 65) in relation to the cataloging/collecting of any given imaginary world’s transmedia extensions and branded merchandise. Historically and culturally, it is possible to analytically distinguish between literary fandoms that sprang up around novels and their characters in the pre-20th century—Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockian/Holmesian Societies, for example—and media fandoms that later emerged in relation to television series of the 1960s, such as Star Trek (1966–1969). Literary fandoms can be positioned as a precursor of these incarnations based in audiovisual media, yet each type of fandom shares ways of engaging with imaginary worlds, treating them playfully and imaginatively “as if ” they are real (Saler, 2012: 13). This is evident in the Sherlockian “game” of assuming that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were real figures (Saler, 2012: 124–125). But it is also apparent in ethnographic studies of “How To Watch Star Trek” (Amesley, 1989), where fans discuss how “Kirk wouldn’t behave like that,” treating characters simultaneously as media constructs and yet as if they are real personalities that some episode writers capture well and others do not. Likewise, both literary and media fandoms have shown a keen interest in mapping and collating information about their favorite imaginary worlds, compiling concordances, guides, and encyclopedia-like sources. Contemporary Web 2.0 iterations of such fan mappings typically occur online via fan wikis (Booth, 2010); Star Wars has the aptly named “Wookiepedia,” whilst Star Trek and Doctor Who have thriving fan wikis of their own, given that these: have both remained actively expanding worlds for … [many] decades … [with Who entering its sixth decade in 2013 and Trek in 2016 – MH].These [expansive, ongoing imaginary] worlds, then, are not only quantitatively different from earlier ones, but qualitatively different, in that the audience has an experience of a world which, like the Primary World, not only achieves saturation of mind, but virtually exceeds the audience’s ability to encounter it all in its entirety. (Wolf, 2012: 135) 274

Fa n d o m

This suggests that media fans, at least of very long-running franchises, are engaging with ­different kinds of imaginary worlds compared to those of literary fandom—ones that cannot be mastered or fully known. And whilst some fans will select out what they count as “real” Star Trek or Doctor Who to make these more quantitatively manageable (not reading original novels or following series of audio adventures), such fan communities nonetheless place an emphasis on organizing and refining knowledge about their favored imaginary worlds. In fan parlance, the “-verse” has become a way of referring to a distinctive imaginary world (e.g., the “Whoniverse”) that can, in fact, feature different parallel universes in science fictional terms, as well as different entries in the franchise or reboots/reimaginings. But we should refrain from demarcating literary and audiovisual media fandoms as overly separate today: often, literary fandoms also have vast amounts of material that can be learnt about, and sifted for canonical knowledge or non-canonical variants. Sherlockians, arguably forming one lineage of proto-fandom, may have been restricted to debating a fixed canon of 56 short stories and 4 novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but they can also discuss all manner of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, as well as adaptations and reimaginings. In a sense, then, the full panoply of Sherlock Holmes’s variants and versions may be just as vast and ongoing as the imaginary worlds of Star Trek and Doctor Who—except whereas these brands will arguably have a film/TV-based canon, the character of Sherlock Holmes has increasingly also dispersed into an array of adaptations and reworkings that are no longer restricted by intellectual property rights. Conan Doyle’s authorship can be used as a way of discursively containing the literary Holmes canon, to be sure, but over time Sherlock Holmes has become as much a media creation as a figure of literature, blending literary/audiovisual media fandoms. Also gradually deconstructing a strong historical binary of literary/media fandoms, J. R. R.Tolkien fans have latterly discussed, contested, and sometimes embraced Peter Jackson’s films of The Lord of The Rings (2001, 2002, 2003) and The Hobbit (2012, 2013, 2014). Without the support, the passion, and the creative imaginations of fan followings, many imaginary worlds such as those of Tolkien, Conan Doyle, Star Trek, and Doctor Who would not have attained such longevity and cultural potency. Indeed, at the time of writing, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016) has just enjoyed its international release as a playscript, with fans queuing across the UK at special midnight openings in bookstores—events covered live by UK broadsheet The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/books/live/2016/ jul/30/harry-potter-and-the-cursed-child-follow-the-midnight-launch-live). The previous, and supposedly “final,” Harry Potter novel was published in 2007, with the film version of this following in 2011. Although Harry Potter’s out-of-active-production phase has thus been relatively short (with the official website Pottermore filling in some of this time from 2011 onward), fans have nonetheless continued to keep the Potterverse active via their fan fiction and creativity. Fans often remain focused on imaginary worlds when they have been officially “completed,” and when there are no new books or films in the offing. Rather than these being thought of as “post-object fandoms,” as Rebecca Williams (2015) has described them—meaning fan objects that have passed out of official production—they might occasionally be better considered as fan-conserved imaginary worlds. Doctor Who fans kept the show culturally active even when it was off the air between 1989 and 2005 (with the exception of a one-off TV movie in 1996); similarly, Star Trek fans maintained the Trek flame between 1969 and 1979, the period between the cancellation of The Original Series (TOS) and its return as Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which had been bridged in audiovisual media forms only by a 1973–1974 animated series). To view imaginary worlds as entities created officially or canonically by media producers before then being “consumed” (or received) by fans and fan communities thus misses the 275

M at t H i l l s

extent to which fans can be viewed as co-creators—or perhaps more accurately, ­sustainers— of these worlds over time. Owain Gwynne (2014) has even described the anticipatory period between the official announcement of a new film or TV series and its broadcast/release as “fan-made time,” since fan paratexts (and para-paratexts) such as rumors, speculation, and spoilers predominantly occupy fans during this phase, allowing projected or imagined/desired versions of the specific films and TV shows to be shaped within fan discourse. That is to say, imaginary worlds are not simply fictional worlds: they are imagined by creators, yes, but they are also (pre-) and (re-) imagined by invested fans via processes of brand co-creation. This gives them an inter-imaginary quality, as multiple layers of imaginative activity cluster around successful pop-cultural artifacts. Indeed, a number of scholars have begun to theorize this collaborative creativity: Ian Condry refers to the “dark energy” of fan activities that, occurring outside realms of commodification, helps to make franchises successful (2013: 164), whilst Ramon Lobato and Julian Thomas (2015) relatedly distinguish between “formal” and “informal” media economies. The former belong to official, corporate practices, whereas the latter exist in “grey markets” and in unofficial, unregulated domains such as markets for “secondhand fandom” (Geraghty, 2014: 148) as well as the spaces of fan creativity and entrepreneurialism. Lobato and Thomas highlight how difficult it is to separate formal and informal economies in actuality: what we think of as culture industries and formal, official, economies are frequently inseparable from, and tightly interwoven with, informal economies such as those belonging to fan productivity. Perhaps the most developed analysis of how contemporary imaginary worlds are collaboratively created via media franchises occurs in Derek Johnson’s Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries (2013). Johnson makes the key point that we need to go beyond theories of “world-building to conceptualize the franchise in terms of worldsharing among creative workers and communities” (2013: 109). This can mean world-sharing between different production communities at broadly the same time (film/TV-makers and transmedia tie-in producers). It can also refer to world-sharing between producers across time, as when a production team takes over a new franchise entry and has to place its work in the lineage/tradition of earlier franchise producers or pioneers, as well as marking out its own creativity and authorship (something that is currently the case for Star Trek: Discovery (2017)). And, of course, fans have a role to play here—both in terms of specific individuals moving generationally from fandom into official production, and more generally in terms of how fan cultures play with, poach from, and engage in “immaterial labor” in relation to their favored imaginary worlds (Hassler-Forest, 2016: 57). It has also been suggested that as digital media such as Netflix or Amazon Prime move toward “bingeing” or “media marathoning” models of consumption, then imaginary worlds can hold greater power and “solidity” for viewers in this context (Perks, 2015: 8). Such developments demonstrate how much fan interpretation can center on the coherence and integrity of imaginary worlds (Perks, 2015: 10), with fans reading for, or even communally working toward, these attributes (explaining away possible continuity errors, for example, or fixing them via analysis). Fans’ collaborative creativity has typically been positioned as “transformative;” this is evident in the naming of the Organization for Transformative Works (http://www.transformativeworks. org/) and its journal, Transformative Works and Cultures (http://journal.transformativeworks. org/index.php/twc). Discussing fanworks as “transformative” emphasizes their legal status as non-copyright infringing, and as creatively changing imaginary worlds rather than merely copying them.There is a progressive cultural politics to championing fanworks as “transformative,” since this stresses the legitimacy, legality, and artistic value of fan creations, shielding them from delegitimating notions of derivative, trivial, or “amateur” cultural production. 276

Fa n d o m

Viewing fanworks as transformative has also focused much scholarly attention on the s­ exual politics of fannish and canonical productions: fandom has typically shaped more inclusive visions of imaginary worlds through “slash fiction” in comparison to the historically heteronormative canons of media franchises (slash focuses on same-sex character couplings that are not present in canon (e.g., Kirk/Spock) or that are subtextually implied at best). But fandom’s transformative energies have not only focused on character relationships or “ships;” fans have also explored “crossover” fiction. This aims to bring together different imaginary worlds, unifying their diegetic universes. As such, crossover fanfic strikes at the heart of current branding discourse that works to discursively position the uniqueness of the “over-design” distinguishing a franchise (Johnson, 2013: 119)—this is the branded universe that should be immediately recognizable through its production design as much as its characters (c.f. Star Wars’ lightsabers, X-wings, and the Death Star; Star Trek’s spaceship designs and redshirts; or Doctor Who’s Daleks and Police Box TARDIS). Different brands can be officially combined, but only when appropriate licensing deals are struck, and usually only at the level of transmedia tie-ins/paratexts whose canonical status is murky, or more a case of “What If?” parallel universe transmedia rather than “What Is” canonical transmedia (Mittell, 2015: 314–315). By contrast, fan crossovers create counterfactual hybrids such as SuperWhoLock, completely disregarding the branded “uniqueness” of BBC TV’s Sherlock and Doctor Who while fusing these with the U.S. TV show Supernatural, and thereby willfully transgressing their status as legally separate intellectual properties. Paul Booth has recently investigated such “crossing fandoms” (2016), and these practices of transfandom. He argues that SuperWhoLock GIF fictions or “fics” liminally combine “semantic reproduction of textual elements and syntactic appropriation of ideological moments from a media text … [and] both mirror and subvert the original narrative” (2015: 26). Simultaneously transformative and affirmational, SuperWhoLock GIF fics sample very brief extracts from the three source texts, yet overwrite and combine them into reworked material. For Booth, this also means that SuperWhoLock GIF fics “represent a liminal state between fandom and the media industry” (2015: 27). Yet this arguably overstates the importance of the individual textual excerpts that are stitched together and renarrated to create GIF fics. By virtue of patching together Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock into a single diegetic frame, this kind of transfandom productivity, I would instead suggest, very much resists and opposes a key industrial logic of brand identity. In effect, SuperWhoLock becomes an entirely fan-created “transworld” that integrates otherwise highly distinct imaginary worlds that usually follow their own different diegetic rules. Natalia Samutina has also explored the significance of crossover fanfic in a Russian context, arguing (as I do here) that such fan activity “undermines the traditional preconceptions of how imaginary worlds can be built, inhabited and developed” (2016: 1). Such fan practices are transformative, to be sure, but in a way that potentially outruns the transformational possibilities of imagining (same-sex) characters as being in relationships, as slash fiction has done. Instead, here “contemporary fan fiction writers build imaginary worlds themselves … in a course of transformative reception of unprecedented proportions” (Samutina, 2016: 2). This can involve imagining non-magical Harry Potter alternate universes, for instance, demonstrating how the fanfic crossover works as a literary game that plays with fans’ detailed knowledge of source texts and their characters, at the same time as seeking to create coherent, original, and convincing imaginary worlds. Such transfandom and transworld productivity does not merely elaborate upon a canonical imaginary world, then, as Samutina makes clear: It is quite hard to decide exactly where—and by what means—one can draw the line between the construction of a new imaginary world by a ‘creator’ or a ‘sub-creator’ 277

M at t H i l l s

and the ‘elaboration’ of an existing one by a fascinated user (the term ‘elaboration’ is used by Wolf and many others for the designation of a creative operation, secondary to the initial world-building) … While generating and populating multiple and sometimes quite unexpected versions of imaginary worlds, fan fiction encourages researchers … to think of this borderline as less essential and more porous. (2016: 4–5) But if crossover fanfic blurs the line between creating/supplementing imaginary worlds then it surely does something other than liminally bridging fandom and industry. Such transformative fandom takes on a brand-transgressing function by virtue of its failure to recognize the separate “-verse” or “over-designed world” that each franchise is presumed to offer, by way of legally enforceable intellectual property. Not all fan engagements with imaginary worlds are transgressive of brand identities and logics, however. In some cases, such as series of Trek fan films including Star Trek Continues and Star Trek: Phase II (formerly New Voyages), great care and attention has been put into creating material that is as close to the original TV show’s over-designed world as possible. James Cawley, who plays Captain Kirk in Phase II as well as producing the series, has overseen the creation of highly authentic replica costumes and sets, meaning that Phase II looks strikingly similar to the canonical mise-en-scene of Star Trek: The Original Series. Likewise, fan film productions such as Star Trek Continues, starring Vic Mignogna as Kirk, also feature actors from the original series (Star Trek Continues even includes James Doohan’s son, Chris Doohan, as Scotty) as well as precisely using designs and music characteristic of the original series. Star Trek fan films have also been crowdfunded, e.g., Prelude to Axanar (2014) and the asyet unreleased Star Trek: Axanar, which received $638,471 on Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/194429923/star-trek-axanar). With Trek fan films involving professional actors (including Star Trek alumni such as George Takei and others), using professional production crew, and raising substantial budgets, Star Trek’s rights owners eventually felt that it was necessary to act to protect their intellectual property: Once a franchise is established … the challenge shifts to problems with managing the brand, which includes elements of the imaginary world … In managing the brand, the owners of a franchise must walk a tightrope between actively engaging consumers and fans, on the one hand, and retaining the authenticity of the universe and preventing the dilution of its distinctive qualities, on the other. As the power of the franchise is based upon the recognizably distinctive features of the imaginary world, control of this world becomes a key site of struggle between content owners and audiences. (Lindsay, 2014: 57) Some Star Trek fan films had, in a sense, become too adept at brand-occupying: in such instances they certainly were blurring the lines between fans and industry, between formal and informal economies, in a way that could be taken to threaten CBS/Paramount’s control of the Trek “world.” And they were working directly in Star Trek’s original medium of TV (now digital video), rather than supplementing its imaginary world with written fan fiction or drawn fan art. By comparison, although fanfic crossovers may transgress brand logics, their mode of transformative reception does not leave them appearing to be in direct competition with audiences for official Sherlock, Harry Potter, or Star Trek. Ironically, by strongly reinforcing the 278

Fa n d o m

brand identity, authenticity, and imaginary world of Star Trek, fan film series such as Star Trek Continues and Phase II have fallen foul of highly restrictive and “prohibitionist” (Jenkins, 2006: 134) guidelines issued in 2016 by CBS/Paramount Pictures (http://www.startrek.com/fanfilms).These guidelines strike back at the mixed formal-informal economies that have sprung up around fans’ digital productivity, insisting that fan films should only be 15 minutes long (or 2 x 15 minutes at most), that they should be standalone rather than continuations or sequels, and that they should involve no industry professionals. Whether such a stance is legally viable, it is clear that CBS/Paramount have attempted to assert their ownership of Star Trek against fans’ interest in expanding and adding to this franchise’s imaginary world. This is less a case of “world-sharing” or co-creation, and more a case of world-shrinking, as Trek’s rights owners seem set on reducing the array of high-quality Star Trek fan films that have flourished to date. Meanwhile, replica USS Enterprise sets for Star Trek: Phase II have been officially licensed and repurposed as part of a 50th anniversary Star Trek Original Series Set Tour (http://www. startrek.com/article/the-original-series-set-tour-to-open). Rather than adding narratively to Trek’s imaginary world, the infrastructure underpinning James Cawley’s fan films has effectively been poached from and appropriated by CBS/Paramount via a kind of “convergent incorporation” (Booth, 2015: 103). Fans’ world-building—threatening to dilute the distinctiveness of official Trek—has thus been displaced by an alternative mode of imaginative world-experiencing, whereby fans can be interpellated as consumers seeking an “experiential,” embodied, connection with the Star Trek brand. Visitors cannot alter the pre-structured and “authentic” spaces of the Tour, meaning that fans are disciplined and repositioned not as competitors over Trek’s imaginary world, but as safe sources of consumer revenue whose affection for the show can be securely monetized without unlicensed (fan film) producers benefitting.This situation demonstrates that we shouldn’t simplistically celebrate fan-industry “co-creation;” at any given moment, if official producers feel that their intellectual property is under threat of dilution, collaborationist logics between fans and industry insiders can be replaced by prohibitionist strategies. Far from co-creation, this amounts to a stark re-creation of reactionary power relationships between official producers and policed, intimidated fans. It seeks to restrict fan films to a zone of audiovisual non-seriality where they cannot even create unofficial sequels to Star Trek canon, and equally cannot craft rival series of adventures, whilst official producers retain control of the imaginary world’s “extended seriality” (Pearson and Messenger Davies, 2014: 128), able to thread together entries in the franchise, and patrol Star Trek’s overall continuity. Fandom’s relationships to pop-cultural imaginary worlds may be many and varied, but as I’ve sought to show here, these relationships are both patterned across historical modes of fandom (literary/audiovisual media) and typically transformative—whether this means transforming character relationships and their heteronormative sexualities or transforming entire imaginary worlds (and brand logics) themselves by splicing imaginary worlds together. Fans may trangress the explicit or implicit rules of official imaginary worlds, yet it is by seeking to “authentically” occupy a brand’s semiotic and media space—blurring the line between industry and fans from an initial position of fandom—that fans perhaps become most threatening to producers’ intellectual property. Of course, blurring this line from an industrial position, in the form of the “fanboy auteur” (Scott, 2013), is entirely industrially acceptable, and in fact is viewed as part and parcel of reassuring and addressing long-term fans when franchises and their imaginary worlds are updated and revitalized. Fan-producers such as those working on Star Trek: Axanar are supposedly a threat to Trek’s intellectual property, but producer-fans such as Bryan Singer, J. J. Abrams, or Steven Moffat are an accepted aspect of industrially fantargeted recognition and communication. What’s clear is that not all hybrids of informal and 279

M at t H i l l s

formal economies—fandom and industry—have an equal status when it comes to managing fandom’s multiple engagements with imaginary worlds.

References Amesley, Cassandra (1989) “How to Watch Star Trek” in Cultural Studies 3 (3): pp. 323–39. Booth, Paul (2010) Digital Fandom: New Media Studies, Peter Lang, New York. Booth, Paul (2015) Playing Fans: Negotiating Fandom and Media in the Digital Age, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City. Booth, Paul (2016) Crossing Fandoms: SuperWhoLock and the Contemporary Fan Audience, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York. Condry, Ian (2013) The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story, Duke University Press, Durham and London. Geraghty, Lincoln (2014) Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, Fandom and Collecting Popular Culture, Routledge, London and New York. Gray, Jonathan (2010) Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts, New York University Press, New York and London. Gwynne, Owain (2014) “Fan-Made Time: The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit” in Kristin M. Barton and Jonathan Malcolm Lampley (eds), fan CULTure: Essays on Participatory Fandom in the 21st Century, McFarland, Jefferson: pp. 76–91. Hassler-Forest, Dan (2016) Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Politics:Transmedia World-Building Beyond Capitalism, Rowman & Littlefield, New York. Hills, Matt (2002) Fan Cultures, Routledge, London and New York. Hills, Matt (2015) Doctor Who: The Unfolding Event—Marketing, Merchandising and Mediatizing a Brand Anniversary, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York. Jenkins, Henry (1992) Textual Poachers, Routledge, New York and London. Jenkins, Henry (2006) Convergence Culture:Where Old and New Media Collide, New York University Press, New York and London. Johnson, Derek (2013) Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries, New York University Press, New York and London. Lindsay, David (2014) “Franchises, imaginary worlds, authorship and fandom” in Kathy Bowrey and Michael Hander (eds), Law and Creativity in the Age of the Entertainment Franchise, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: pp. 52–74. Lobato, Ramon and Thomas, Julian (2015) The Informal Media Economy, Polity Press, Cambridge and Malden. Mittell, Jason (2015) Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, New York University Press, New York and London. Pearson, Roberta and Messenger Davies, Maire (2014) Star Trek and American Television, University of California Press, Berkeley and London. Perks, Lisa Glebatis (2015) Media Marathoning: Immersions in Morality, Lexington Books, Lanham. Saler, Michael (2012) As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Samutina, Natalia (2016) “Fan fiction as world-building: transformative reception in crossover writing” in Continuum, published online 11 Feb 2016, available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 080/10304312.2016.1141863. Sandvoss, Cornel (2005) Fans:The Mirror of Consumption, Polity Press, Cambridge and Malden. Scott, Suzanne (2013) “Who’s Steering the Mothership? The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling” in Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson (eds), The Participatory Cultures Handbook, Routledge, New York and London: pp. 43–52. Williams, Rebecca (2015) Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-Narrative, Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York. Wolf, Mark J. P. (2012) Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation, Routledge, New York and London.

280

33

Worlds as Satire George Carstocea The breadth of the satirical imagination in the contemporary mediascape defies static d­efinitions and taxonomies. Although satire has been categorized as a genre over the course of centuries of literary theory, most contemporary accounts of satire argue that it functions across genres, inflecting many different forms of discourse and artistic practice. In his complex “re-introduction” of satire, Dustin Griffin therefore calls it a “mode” or “procedure” (Griffin, 1994: 4), exploring its affinities with the functions and modalities of polemical rhetoric. Charles Knight similarly writes not just of satire, but of a “satiric frame of mind,” combining two elements: “ironic perspective on [a] historical subject and parodic borrowing of a literary form” (Knight, 2004: 8 et passim). The satirical worldview therefore emerges primarily from a critical attitude toward the content to be represented, combined with rhetorical strategies and formal devices that elicit a comedic response. In the terminology of world-building, there are two aspects that mark any particular world as satirical: first, the presence of structural characteristics that make a polemical, politically charged implied or explicit argument about the workings of the homologous structures in the real world; and second, the use of humorous medium- or genre-specific devices (jokes, gags, puns, caricature, hyperbole, absurdist contrast, word play) that explore the divergence between the constructed world and reality. The world-building view re-frames Knight’s insights in a more general formulation, highlighting the fact that contemporary satires borrow not only literary forms, but rather world-building forms and devices that take up medium-specific characteristics across the breadth of the contemporary, fragmented ­mediascape. Much of the contemporary understanding of satire relies on parallels to its historical correlatives: Greek satyr plays and Roman saturae, Horatian and Juvenalian verse, and Menippean prose, or the satirical polemics in the poems of Alexander Pope and the poems and prose of Jonathan Swift. Drawing inspiration from these historical traditions, Dustin Griffin insists that satire has historically functioned in the context of a larger cultural dialogue, either through univocal interventions that are supposed to participate in a contextual debate, or embedding within a single work multiple, distinct, satirical voices engaged in a polemical dialogue (Griffin, 1994: 32, 39, 41, et passim). Satires that derive their polemic power from complex world-building consequently rely on a polyphony of voices, allowing the audience to come to their own conclusions regarding the inconsistencies of particular voices within the represented world.They foreground a complex interplay between univocal riffs on a single topic, back-and-forth battles of wit, and multiple, partial views on the topics at hand within the constraints of a single work. In Griffin’s terms, they enjoin the audience to seek out the satiric “truth” rather than locating it in the voice of 281

George Carstocea

a single, reliable narrator (Griffin, 1994: 41). As such, satirical worlds prompt their audiences to reconsider received notions of goodness, truth, prosocial behavior, and the ways in which such notions might be complicated by social negotiations. Beyond their explicit targets, most satires also focus on processes of mediation as their implicit object. A foundational world-building pattern of satire focuses implicitly on the concentric processes of abstraction required to articulate the connection between the individual body and the body politic: from the individual to the family, to formal institutions (workplace and/or public space), to tribe, ethnicity, race, gender, and sexual orientation. The satirical view foregrounds the tensions and paradoxes that emerge across these different levels of identity formation, highlighting the inconsistencies between a worldview defined in strict ideological terms and the more complex reality of daily human interaction. Political abstractions such as citizenship, legal frameworks, and institutions are, for the satirist world-builder, structural patterns of social power that elide the complexities of human behavior, motivation, and ­cooperation.

Origins of Satirical World-Building The comedies of the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes (circa 446–386 B.C.) form the earliest surviving corpus of satirical work in the Western world. Aristophanes came of age during the latter part of Athens’s Golden Age under the rule of Pericles (circa 461–429 B.C.). By the time of Aristophanes’s plays, Athens had become embroiled in the Peloponnesian war (431–404 B.C.), a protracted conflict between the city-states under Athenian hegemonic rule and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Aristophanes opposed the war, satirizing the perceived moral and intellectual decay of the Athenian populace under the rule of Pericles’s successor Cleon, a bellicose populist. Most of the action in his plays takes place in a satirically heightened version of the real world, interspersed with fantastic and mythological elements that allow Aristophanes to critique Athenian politics and mores through fictional ­world-building. Some of these departures from reality are quite cursory, contained in the words or actions of a single character.The protagonist of The Wasps (422 B.C.), for example, is so obsessed with his power as a juror that he compares himself hubristically with Zeus (Konstan, 1995: 16). In other instances, Aristophanes resorts to allegorical personifications of abstract concepts, which enable him to explore large-scale political issues within the limitations of live theatre. His last play, Wealth (388 B.C.), critiques the role of money in Athenian society through a personification of wealth itself (Plutus) as well as poverty (Penia). Plutus is blind, and therefore unable to distribute his bounty to the virtuous. Chremylus, the protagonist of the play, helps Plutus regain his sight, banishes Penia (who argues that without poverty, there would be no slaves left and therefore no labor to maintain the polis), and redistributes wealth to the virtuous. The traditional Olympian gods send their messenger Hermes to register their displeasure at this new state of affairs, in which humans have turned their attention from Zeus to Plutus. The play’s utopian vision comes to fruition when the citizens force Hermes to work for them and install Plutus in the Acropolis, replacing Zeus at the geographical and conceptual center of Athenian political life (Konstan, 1995: 75–90). The same kind of allegorical world-building undergirds Peace (421 B.C.), in which the worship of War and his servant Havoc has displaced the traditional deities. The protagonist inspires the community to take back their city, defeating War and liberating Peace, Harvest, and Festival, the deities that War has maliciously imprisoned with the aid of power-hungry demagogues. Similarly, the eponymous deities of The Clouds (423 B.C.), who preside over metaphysical sophistry, 282

Wo r l d s a s S at i r e

allow Aristophanes to launch an attack against Socratic philosophy, which the play portrays as impractical and self-involved. Aristophanes creates significantly more expansive satirical worlds in two of his plays: The Birds (414 B.C.) and The Frogs (405 B.C.). In The Birds, two Athenians displeased with the state of their city set off to found a new, better polis. They search for the Thracian king, Thereus, who has been transformed into a hoopoe and therefore can guide them with the wisdom of both earthbound and celestial beings. Upon finding him, they decide to found a city among the birds themselves, for amusingly hegemonic reasons: by controlling the interstitial realm, they can impose their will on both the earthlings below them and the gods above, the latter of whom would starve if deprived of the sacrificial aromas wafting up from the ground (Konstan, 1995: 29–30). David Konstan notes the foundational irony of this utopian endeavor: in their search for a space unbound by the legal and political strictures of Athenian life, the protagonists replicate in the skies the hegemonic struggles that they were initially attempting to escape. The only major difference between their project and contemporary, real-world Athenian naval expansionism seems to be their direction of travel (Konstan, 1995: 30–44). The Frogs is Aristophanes’s least typical play, and the one that has attracted the most scholarly attention because of its complex meta-commentary on the conventions of the Greek dramatic arts. As Leo Strauss notes in Socrates and Aristophanes (1966), the play signals its departure from established tropes from the beginning: the protagonist is Dionysos, God of revelry and theater itself, rather than a simple human; the play opens with a dialogue between a master (Dionysos) and his slave Xanthias, rather than a complaint; they discuss how best to make an audience laugh, differentiating between the simple pleasures of physical comedy and more refined forms of humor (Strauss, 1966: 236). Xanthias, the everyman, is inclined to make physical jokes, which Dionysos has come to abhor as boring clichés. Although this opening scene is relatively short, it abounds in subtextual irony: in discussing physical humor, the characters are simultaneously problematizing easy jokes and performing them for the audience. The same pattern of ironic juxtaposition and knowledgeable meta-commentary structures the entirety of the play, simultaneously engaging in the established conventions of the Ancient Greek dramatic arts and subverting them.The overall plot is a parody of the katabasis, a mythological trope present in many traditional cultures, in which the hero descends into the underworld in order to return a character to life; the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is the most prominent Greek example. As the patron god of the theater, Dionysos knows this, and his first stop on the journey is at his half-brother Herakles’s abode, to ask for advice. In the conversation with Herakles, who had retrieved the three-headed hound Cerberus from the underworld in his own katabasis, Dionysos reveals that he intends to resurrect the tragedian Euripides, who had passed away the year before The Frogs premiered, because there are “no good poets” left in Athens. Herakles, as knowledgeable as Dionysos, suggests that he might as well bring back Sophocles, who had also died in the months leading up to the play’s premiere at the Lenaia festival (Dover, 1993: 6–9). Almost every line of their conversation is a laugh line, peppered with bawdy physical and sexual commentary. Herakles mocks Dionysos for disguising himself with a pelt and club, Herakles’s own attributes, but wearing that outfit over Dionysos’s traditional androgynous garb. He lampoons the lines that Dionysos cites as proof to Euripides’s superiority over still-living writers, whose work they also discuss. When Dionysos asks for an easy way into the underworld, Herakles suggests three different ways that he could commit suicide, before telling him to go to Lake Acheron, the boundary to the netherworld, and pay the mythical ferryman Charon to carry him across in his boat. Throughout the conversation, they ignore Xanthias, who keeps complaining about being ignored and aching under the burden of their luggage. 283

George Carstocea

Throughout its action, the play comments on and subverts the established tropes of its established mythological world. Dionysos, albeit a god, is debased in every way imaginable, from verbal mockery and abuse to physical punishment; even Xanthias the slave outmaneuvers him at every step. As Dionysos crosses into Hades, even the frogs turn against him, driving him to paroxystic rage with their cackling refrain, “brekekekèx-koàx-koáx.” Charon refuses to carry Xanthias alongside Dionysos in his boat because he is a slave, and reveals that he can just walk around Acheron—a stunning parodic rendering of the established myth, in which the border to the netherworld is nearly impenetrable. When, after a protracted series of misadventures, Dionysos finally makes his way to the depths of Hades, he learns that Euripides has challenged Aeschylus, the grandfather of Greek tragedy during the Golden Age of Athens, to a ritualistic battle of wits in an attempt to unseat him as the leading poet of the underworld. Dionysos presides over their exchange of antagonistic barbs, which parody the stylistics, character types, and poetic devices employed in their plays. Aristophanes’s version of Hades, devoid of the gravitas that it used to hold in oral mythology and classic tragedy, becomes a staging ground for a battle between Aeschylus’s old-fashioned language of soaring metaphors and larger-than-life characters and Euripides’s more realistic, pragmatic, and colloquial style (Segal, 2001: 105). Dionysos ultimately decides in favor of Aeschylus, as his high morality seems more appealing than Euripides’s ambiv