Thanks to modern technology, we are now living in an age of multiplatform fictional worlds, as television, film, the Internet, graphic novels, toys and more facilitate the creation of diverse yet compact imaginary universes, which are often recognisable as brands and exhibit well-defined identities. This volume, situated at the cutting edge of media theory, explores this phenomenon from both theoretical and practical perspectives, uncovering how the construction of these worlds influences our own determination of values and meaning in contemporary society.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Section 1: Theories of World Building
- 1. The Aesthetics of Proliferation1
- 2. Building Science-Fiction Worlds
- 3. “He Doesn’t Look Like Sherlock Holmes”
- The Truth Value and Existential Status of Fictional Worlds and their Characters
- 4. “Visible World”
- The Atlas as a Visual Form of Knowledge and Narrative Paradigm in Contemporary Art1
- Section 2: Economies of World Building
- 5. A World of Disney
- Building a Transmedia Storyworld for Mickey and his Friends
- 6. World-Building Logics and Copyright
- The Dark Knight and the Great Detective
- 7. Battleworlds
- The Management of Multiplicity in the Media Industries
- 8. Platform Producer Meets Game Master
- On the Conditions for the Media Mix
- 9. Narrative Ecosystems
- A Multidisciplinary Approach to Media Worlds1
- Veronica Innocenti and Guglielmo Pescatore
- Section 3: Immersion
- 10. The Building and Blurring of Worlds
- Sound, Space, and Complex Narrative Cinema
- 11. Beyond Immersion
- Absorption, Saturation, and Overflow in the Building of Imaginary Worlds
- 12. Zombie Escape and Survival Plans
- Mapping the Transmedial World of the Dead
- 13. MMORPG as Locally Realized Worlds of Action
- Section 4: Media as World-Building Devices
- 14. The Worries of the World(s)
- Cartoons and Cinema
- Karen Redrobe (formerly Beckman)
- 15. Linguistic Terrain and World Time
- Chinese Media Theories and Their World Imaginations
- 16. The Worlds Align
- Media Convergence and Complementary Storyworlds in Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World
- 17. World Building and Metafiction in Contemporary Comic Books
- Metalepsis and Figurative Process of Graphic Fiction
- Section 5: Appropriations and Fan Practices
- 18. The Monster at the End of This Book
- Metalepsis, Fandom, and World Making in Contemporary TV Series
- 19. Traversing the “Whoniverse”
- Doctor Who’s Hyperdiegesis and Transmedia Discontinuity/Diachrony
- 20. Transmediaphilia, World Building, and the Pleasures of the Personal Digital Archive
- 21. The Politics of World Building
- Heteroglossia in Janelle Monáe’s Afrofuturist WondaLand
- Index
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