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Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world or setting, sometimes associated with a fictional universe.[1] Developing the world with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, culture and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers.[2] Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology and often if writing speculative fiction, different peoples. This may include social customs as well as invented languages for the world.[3][4][5][6]: PT103 

Not to be confused with Terraforming, manipulating a planet to make it habitable to Earth lifeforms.

The world could encompass different planets spanning vast distances of space or be limited in scope to a single small village.[6]: 104  Worldbuilding exists in novels, tabletop role-playing games, and visual media such as films, video games and comics.[7][8][9][10][11] Prior to 1900 most worldbuilding was conducted by novelists, who could leave imagination of the fictional setting in part to the reader.[6]: 106  Some authors of fiction set multiple works in the same world. This is known as a fictional universe.[12] For example, science fiction writer Jack Vance set a number of his novels in the Gaean Reach, a fictional region of space.[8] A fictional universe with works by multiple authors is known as a shared world. One notable example of such is the Star Wars Expanded Universe.[13]

Etymology[edit]

The term "world-building" was first used in the Edinburgh Review in December 1820[14] and appeared in Arthur Eddington's Space Time and Gravitation: An Outline of the General Relativity Theory (1920) to describe the thinking out of hypothetical worlds with different physical laws.[15]: 160  The term has been used in science fiction and fantasy criticism since appearing in R.A. Lupoff's Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965).[13]: 270 

History[edit]

One of the earliest examples of a fictional world is Dante's Divine Comedy, with the BBC's Dante 2021 series describing it as "the first virtual reality".[16] The creation of literary fictional worlds was first examined by fantasy authors such as George MacDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord Dunsany, Dorothy L. Sayers, and C. S. Lewis.[8] William Morris would be the first person to create the entire world of his story.[17]


Tolkien addressed the issue in his essay "On Fairy-Stories", where he stated that the "Secondary World" or "Sub-Creation" (the constructed world) is substantially different from the art of play-writing: "Very little about trees as trees can be got into a play."[18] Constructed worlds may sometimes shift away from storytelling, narrative, characters and figures, and may explore "trees as trees" or aspects of the world in-and-of-themselves. Tolkien sought to make his constructed world seem real by paying careful attention to framing his world with narrators and versions of stories, like a real mythology.[19]


Later analysis of fantasy worlds in the 1960s contextualized them in the medium or the narrative of the works, offering an analysis of the stories in the world, but not the world itself. In the 2000s, worldbuilding in film has increased in popularity. When before, writers sought to create a character that could sustain multiple stories, now they create a world that can sustain multiple characters and stories.[8]

Types of constructed worlds[edit]

Examples of constructed worlds include Terry Pratchett's Discworld, the pseudo-Earth Hyborian Age in the Conan series, the planet Arrakis in the Dune series, the continent of Tamriel in the Elder Scrolls series of games, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea universe and Hainish worlds, the Subcontinent of Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Arda, the location of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, in The Lord of the Rings.


Constructed worlds are not always limited to one type of story. Lawrence Watt-Evans and Steven Brust created Ethshar and Dragaera, respectively, for role-playing games before using them as settings for novels. M. A. R. Barker originally designed Tékumel well before the advent of role-playing games, but many gamers, including Barker himself, have used it as a setting for such games.


A shared universe is a fictional universe that can be used by different authors. Examples of shared universes include the Star Wars expanded universe, the Arrowverse and campaign settings developed specifically for role-playing games. One of the oldest of these is Oerth, developed for the Dungeons & Dragons' Greyhawk setting. Forgotten Realms is another such D&D setting, originally a homebrew campaign world by Ed Greenwood.

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Worldbuilding