ABSTRACT
In his recent landmark book, Mark J. P. Wolf (2012) explores the imaginary worlds introduced through books, videogames, television, and other pop culture forms, arguing that the worlds themselves, not just the narratives, set within them or the media in which they appear, hold rich potential for media scholars. The term ‘world,’ as Wolf uses it, is both geographic and experiential, referring to fictional terrain that “invit[es] us to enter and tempt[s] us to stay, as alive in our thoughts as our own memories of lived experience” (2012, 2). Anyone who has yearned to visit the intricate landscapes of Westeros (Game of Thrones), 1 Middle-earth (Lord of the Rings), 2 or the Tommy Westphall Universe (reader: please Google this) identifies immediately with Wolf’s claim, and the disappearance or deep freeze of such worlds—through network cancellation, a creator’s death, or an author’s decision to end a book series—can have devastating consequences for fans. Some imaginary worlds leave a material legacy in that books can be reread and movies rewatched, while others are ephemeral. When the virtual space of EA-Land (formerly The Sims Online) shut down at precisely 4:35 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on August 1, 2008, its world was “forever deleted not with a bang, but an error message” (Lowood 2009, 121).
