CONTENTS

List of Contributors

Acknowledgments

Mark J. P. Wolf

Worlds of Words

1 The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground by Ludvig Holberg: Subcreation and Social Criticism

Lars Konzack

2 ‘A Little Bit of England Which I Have Myself Created’: Creating Barsetshire across Forms, Genres, Time, and Authors

Helen Conrad O’Briain

3 Mythopoetic Suspense, Eschatology and Misterium: World-Building Lessons from Dostoevsky

Lily Alexander

4 Building the Vorkosigan Universe

Edward James

Audiovisual Worlds

5 Our World: World-Building in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town

Mark J. P. Wolf

6 “Suckled on Shadows”: States of Decay in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast Novels

Edward O’Hare

7 The Gothic World-Building of Dark Shadows

Andrew Higgins

8 Daventry and the Worlds of King’s Quest

Christopher Hanson

Transmedia Worlds

9 The Softer Side of Dune: The Impact of the Social Sciences on World-Building

Kara Kennedy

10 Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: Balance and Interconnectivity in the Fractured Worlds of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s The Death Gate Cycle

Jennifer Harwood-Smith

11 Welcome to the “Second-stage” Lynchverse—Twin Peaks: The Return and the Impossibility of Return Vs. Getting a Return

Matt Hills

12 The Fault in Our Star Trek: (Dis)Continuity Mapping, Textual Conservationism, and the Perils of Prequelization

William Proctor

Appendix: On Measuring and Comparing Imaginary Worlds

Mark J. P. Wolf