I know a lot of members here are into things which take place in fictional worlds - and I'm talking about movies, games, books and even some kinds of music - and I know I am, even if I know a lot of it is dumb. This topic is about fictional worlds and talking about why they are so appealing.

(you could probably skip this section if you want)

What i'm interested is asking is what the reasons are for you liking this stuff - for example, I watch some of the Star Trek shows. A lot of the time Star Trek is really, really stupid and worthless for various reasons, right? But I keep watching it because of the sheer excitement factor I sometimes get when they stumble upon this really cool outlandish concept, i.e. any time travel episode, the borg, or parallel universe episodes. Plus, they are flying around space and this is exciting to me.

I've been playing the Half Life games recently, and quite a lot of that is really exciting, too. The idea of alien worlds spilling over into our own and then unstoppable forces taking over the earth.

But I'm not just into bad science fiction, I also like some really bad fantasy stuff. Not as much as sci-fi mind you, but things like wandering around in Oblivion or Dragon Quest VIII continue to be really interesting to me. Like, I'm the kind of guy who has picked up some of those books in Oblivion and read it. Both of the video game examples I gave probably owe a lot to the music for the reasons I like them.

Which brings me to music - I listen to plenty of contemporary stuff, mostly rap/electronica/ambient music - but looking in my music folder there is also a sizable amount of stuff which is really far removed from reality, and some of it does just legitimately sound good to my ears but I think a huge part of the enjoyment I get out of listening to it is the fantasy aspect. For instance I've got a Debussy album and yeah it is some nice music but the main reason I'm listening to it is to get that romantic ideal of 19th century France. I've got Joanna Newsom on there and I know the main reason I listen to that is tied up with the same reasons I like Oblivion and the music in that.

With books, there is shit like William Gibson and (less shit) Philip K. Dick., and Kurt Vonnegut. The best thing about sci-fi books is that a lot of the time they are intellectually valid, as well! This is really cool, but I would probably still read some sci-fi books even if they were all a load of shit.

(stop skipping if you are skipping)

Now why I'm making a topic about this is because I like to make stuff - music/writing - and I've always wanted to make something which can evoke the same feelings in me as some of this stuff does. I know some of it will be nostalgia but like, I only ever heard of most of the things I mentioned within the last year. It's been frustrating for me because I absolutely do not want to write some shallow, artificial story about a fantasy world which has nothing to say - so I need to examine why I continue to enjoy this stuff the way I do.

As I get older I am less utterly entranced by the cyberpunk adventures of JC Denton and his bioaug buddies, but it continues to have a hold over me in regard to really embracing real life - and maybe this is a bit of a problem, I don't know, but I do know that this stuff continues to be pretty captivating, really. So I want to think about the attraction and excitement.

I guess I've got a couple of ideas about this:

   - there's the obvious one that our lives are simply so sad and depressing that we need this escapism to   
      live with ourselves
   - just the excitement of adventure
   - boredom with the real world
   - ideal images of a, if not perfect, much better world
   - magic/space eels/zombies/cyborgs/arcologies/legendary chronicles/the kingdom of etc

None of those really feel like they get to the core of it though. They are all kind of obvious, and heck maybe that's all there is to it and I'm over thinking it? I still get the tingles down my spine sometimes over this stuff.

So post what you think about this, and also about some of your favourite fictional worlds, too, because we'll be able to see things reoccur and maybe realise something. Or maybe not, and this topic won't be much more than fantasy wanking - but I don't have a big problem with that.

edit: i'm off to bed now so i'll come back and reply tommorrow

For me, a fictional world has to be one of two things in order for me to get really into it:  either so fleshed out that you can sort of predict what could happen in that world outside of what is given to you from the creator because you know so much about it, or so little of it is revealed to you that you desperately want to know more about it.  Kind of like you said about escapism, in the first scenario of these two it's almost like there is so much to that world that you could picture someone, even yourself, living and interacting in it.

As far as favorites go, here are some of mine:

Delicatessen:  This falls under that second category, throughout the movie you don't really learn much about their world besides the fact that it's post-apocalyptic France where people use corn for money and eat each other for food.  I like the way that it just kind of forces you to accept the world from the start, they're not going to set the scene for you, you just have to go with it, and end up enjoying it more that way because it kind of involves you all the way through.

Firefly:  There are too many things I could say about Firefly so I'll try to keep it really short and simple.  The reason the world of Firefly appeals to me so much is because it's not busy trying to throw in the science or have a bunch of aliens, it's about people.  It's like us in the future, and that's what makes it so believable, which in turn makes it so interesting.  It's also a lot easier to get involved in a series with characters that make you want to give a shit about them.  When you're interested in the people, it's pretty hard to NOT be interested in their environment.

The Chanur Saga:  There is a name for this universe because it exists outside of just this one series of C.J. Cherryh's but this is the only series I've read of hers and it's been a long time so I don't remember it (wikipedia could probably tell me but OH WELL MOVING ON).  What I like about this universe is that humanity is entirely new to it.  The hani, stsho, and other races have all been there for a while, and their entire social structures and interactions with each other are established and set, and as far as they know humans don't even exist.  I just like the concept of a single human trying to be in a world where there aren't any other humans around and no one there wants him to be there because it disrupts their normal lives.

Also I am too tired to write much more but let me just also mention The Giver.  That universe blew my mind when I was younger, and is still really amazing to me.

edit:  It doesn't count exactly as a universe, but I guess it would count as a reality of sorts:  Better than Life from Red Dwarf is something that interests me a RIDICULOUS amount too.

The only fictional universe that I LOVE that's currently popping into my head (outside of D&D stuff0 right now are Pern from the Dragonriders series by Anne McCaffrey, which I LOVED as a child/young adult and the Redwall world from the Redwall series.  Oh, and Middle Earth, from LotR.

I think the thing that makes fictional worlds so engrossing and entertaining is that, without having to risk life and limb, you can explore the most exciting, amazing, wonderful parts of these worlds.  From your armchair or bed or public transportation or whatever, you can imagine and envision the kinds of experiences that, frankly, you will never have.

On top of all that, though, these worlds are (almost) always grounded in our own world.  The kinds of issues that we face, the politics we have, and the personas we encounter in those worlds are all present in our world, it is mostly just the setting that is different.  (well, okay, t here also tends to be more than one type of sentient being as well, but those tend to be dealt with in a very similar manner to how we deal/dealt with ethnicity, so that just adds to the real world politics dynamic) and so we can easily engross ourselves in the new world.  In many ways, that's why I tend to like fantasy and sci-fi series that do not take place in our world more than ones that do.  With ones that do, we have to be taken to the most obscure places in order to be excited and learn new things.  In a unique world, we can be led through an average town and be fascinated.

Oh, and the Discworld series has an amazing world, as well.

the more i think about it, i get closer to deciding that what i thought at first was probably correct.

let's take dragon quest VIII - it's a really, really stupid videogame and quite a lot of it pisses me off. but standing out on some cliff on the world map is still pretty enthralling with the music blaring on a big tv. it's just the idea of adventure - but adventure which is totally safe. there's no danger of a gang of neds coming up from behind and smashing you over the head with a bottle. it's just a safe, brightly coloured adventure world. and that's cool, but i think now i am over dragon quest viii!

maybe this is just me letting go of some old childhood stuff. since making that big post the whole question of WHY DO I LIKE THIS STUFF? seems less important. i feel like i've answered it enough to satisfy myself, and anything which i don't quite understand i can only blame on nostalgia and idealism. so maybe the topic is over, but here's a different direction:

sci-fi and fantasy needs to have some relevance to the real world to be worth anything at all, i think. if you can't draw any real world conclusions from a fictional world, then it's just a piece of fluff. so, while star trek has a lot of stupid shit in it, i actually think some of it's message is pretty admirable and perhaps the simplicity and blatant nature of it's stories is a good thing, because it can help young people (or even just stupid people) understand basic things like how racism is wrong for example.

when you take something like video game fantasy/sci-fi, it very rarely has anything constructive to contribute and is usually pretty destructive in some things considering the kinds of people who play them. i.e. the constant stream of videogames where women are relegated to being sex objects and support characters while the men get big guns and all the good lines. it instills sexist images on young people who might be vulnerable to it, and it then contributes to them becoming sexist assholes later in life.

i think this might be part of the reason why i like half-life 2 so much, and really just valve's way of making videogames. they seem at least aware of the way portrayls of people and the stories they tell can influence people. i'm only basing this on the games themselves, but they seem to try to strive for something a bit better than most games in their narratives.

If you like sci fi what-ifs, you will prolly love the Perry Rhodan series. Its a huge-ass sci fi series with over 1800 novels to date, that all spawn from one single "what if": What if we had found an alien spaceship crashed on the moon in our first expedition there?
The first book, "mission stardust", was written in 1961, and its events happen in 1971, when Perry Rhodan and three other crew members depart for the moon. There they find alien technology that will allow them to put an end to the cold war and unify the earth. All of the events there will spawn a long chain of what ifs that never seem to end.

The series soon turn into something like you described Star Trek was; discovery of new alien civilization and weird planets. As the series advance, the scope widens; after the humans are finally to be considered masters of the milky way, there is a great build up to the point when they finally try to cross the enormous gap between two galaxies for the first time(well actually the second time, but never mind that),and then leads much later to the discovery of alternate universes and so on. At one point there are so many main characters in the series that it gets pretty damn hard to keep track of who is where!

The series is originally written in german and then translated to a bunch of other languages. Ive been reading it for years now, and its pretty neat to know there is no way it will ever end for me. I read like, 200 books of it so far? They arnt huge books, like maybe 200 pages each? But theres like 1800 of them in all, not counting all the sub-series spawned from the main one (they usually follow the lives of secondary alien characters before they encountered humanity). If you're looking for a whole world to explore, that series is perfect for that.

My favorite part so far was when Perrys' own giant ship was catapulted by force in the middle of another galaxy during an epic space combat scene. The following 40 or so books where split between stories of the stranded humans trying to survive in this other world and find a way to come back home (crossing the immense gap between two galaxies, something they don't have the technology for at the time), and stories of whats happening back home meanwhile, where the government tries to conceal to the public eye the disappearance of Perry Rhodan, as well as fend off the still-attacking invaders responsible for this situation in the first place.

1800 books what the fuck

that evens out to what like 35-40 books a year?

There were two authors at first, Karl-Herbert Scheer and Clark Darlton, and more authors joined in later. I dont know how much of them there are now. It was something like, they met together regularly and carefully planned out the evolution of the story throughout the next month and then all wrote their own assigned books separately, but closely staying in contact to make sure everything is consistent.

Also haha I was wrong, there are about 2300 or so volumes right now in german (still not counting spin-off series).
But I think there might be something about the german volumes... I saw a pic of the german books and they looked very thin, so maybe
german volumes are actually even shorter than this, and that the translated ones I read are actually composed of 2 or 3 of them put together. This would explain sudden changes in style in certain books, and why some of them had 2 or 3 author names on them. (the covers always read K-H Scheer and C.Darlton though)

But seriously, its a great series, I strongly recommend it to anyone whose even slightly into SF

The first book doesnt sound like S-F at all though. Its more like, politics and spying and shit. Much more down-to-earth... compared to later, like when the story follows human spies trying to sabotage the fleet of an alien force they call the "blue"( in french anyways. from their description, these aliens look like a four-eyed GLOBOX). Disguised as one of them, theyll try to blend in their population and will learn about some form of resistance building up in the alien population, and will try to stir things up further, turning the minor public unrest into an all-out civil war.

The earliest SF element in Perry Rhodan are mutants. Theyre introduced in the very first book. A lot like the X-men if you will. Actual SPACE TRAVEL TO OTHER PLANETS starts like in the 10th book.
Its really a strange build-up. At first it reminded me a lot of Barjavel's "La nuit des temps" (translated to "The ice people", story about scientists from all over the world work together to save the lives of a man and a woman found frozen deep within the north pole, who apparently come from another, surreal humanity that existed before this one. It has really fucked up things like, black people came from mars.)

Sci-fi people are nuts