"Atlantis" by Lloyd K. Townsend: Atlantis, described by Plato, was imagined by him as an exemplary setting

An imaginary world is a setting, place or event or scenario at variance with objective reality, ranging from the voluntary suspension of disbelief of fictional universes and the socially constructed consensus reality of the "Social Imaginary", to alternate realities resulting from disinformation, misinformation or imaginative speculation, and the subjective universe of altered states of consciousness, psychosis or dream sleep.

Imaginary worlds have been the subject of cosmological and philosophical speculation since ancient times, as well as being used for entertainment.

[edit] Settings

Imaginary settings need not reflect or resemble the natural world, and logic, physics and plausibility are frequently ignored or violated. Imaginary places are best known from myth and fiction, such as where a purposely-created fiction forms part of a fictional universe, and provide background information and locale for the story. In this context an imaginary world may be a world constructed for a specific purpose (eg. constructed world), or created for personal enjoyment (eg. as in geofiction), or may emerge naturally from the narrative. Cogitation and fiction may both conjure events which did not, might not have, may never or will never happen; such events can be said to occur in an imaginary world.

[edit] Imaginary worlds in Fiction

Imaginary worlds are a common subject of fiction as a way to break the limits of reality and give an excuse to the suspension of disbelief. The Calvin character from the famous comic strip Calvin and Hobbes has most of his adventures placed in imaginary worlds and realities of his own creation. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland takes place in an imaginary world Alice dreamt of after falling asleep while sitting on a riverbank.^[1]

[edit] See also

• Constructed world
• Fictional universe
• Paracosm
• Parallel universe (fiction)
• Virtual reality
• Utopia

[edit] References

1. ^ http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19033 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Project Guttenberg

[edit] External links

• Jacmus Prime