ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the technical aspects of secondary worlds, the purposes for which some modern writers have used the concept of the secondary world, and the success, or lack of it, with which they have employed this complex and demanding medium. Although modern secondary worlds share with traditional fairy-lands and enchanged forests a quality of otherness, of strangeness and wonder woven into their fabric, they also differ vary widely from their literary predecessors. Provided the secondary world does induce secondary belief, the advantages of the genre are obvious. The first essential in making a secondary world acceptable to readers is that its physical nature should seem comprehensible and logical. The historical dimension of a secondary world leads naturally to a definition of the period of culture against which the narrative is set. The initial task of the writer of a secondary world fantasy would thus seem to be to convince.
