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Edmund Drury - Royal College of Art · On Other Worlds Edmund Drury Introduction ‘Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism

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Page 1: Edmund Drury - Royal College of Art · On Other Worlds Edmund Drury Introduction ‘Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism

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Edmund Drury

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On Other Worlds Edmund Drury

On Other

Worlds

An Investigation into

Worldbuilding

A Dissertation By

Edmund Drury

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On Other Worlds Edmund Drury

Printed and Bound by Edmund Drury

Contents

Introduction 7

Fictional Worlds in Real Place 12

Maps and Fiction 29

Translation 60

Conclusion 78

List of Illustrations 90

Bibliography 95

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Introduction

‘Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.’

(Harrison, 2007) So is worldbuilding just boring nerdism? Certainly

not all aspects of worldbuilding appeal to everyone. According to many it was the lengthy detail of trade disputes and politics that made the new Star Wars trilogy such a disaster, and certain passages in Lord of the Rings, one of the key texts in fantasy worldbuilding, are not always the easiest to read. Of course M. John Harrison cannot be totally averse to worldbuilding (his best known work is set in the fi ctional city of Viriconium) but he believes that focusing on it as an activity in its own right risks putting the creative emphasis in the wrong place. Harrison suggests that the process of making things up for the purposes of fi ction does not need to be justifi ed by calling it worldbuilding.

If there is one single purpose to worldbuilding it is

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to allow the reader to suspend disbelief, and I agree with Harrison when he says that ‘The worst mistake a contemporary f/sf writer can make is to withhold or disrupt suspension of disbelief.’ (Harrison, 2007). When worldbuilding jolts the reader out of their reverie, either through the awkward inclusion of detail or through sheer boredom, it has lost its purpose. This said, worldbuilding can be the reader’s bridge in to the author’s world, and as such many fi nd worldbuilding to be a discipline in its own right. And this is the case in other creative fi elds too. Worldbuilding is not just the writer’s prerogative. It can play an essential part in architecture and, for fear of being branded a nerd, it is often my favorite part of a project.

Growing up, I read a lot of books set in fi ctional worlds. The vastness and the complexity of these worlds, from the mountain ranges and cityscapes, to the smallest objects, was mine to explore through the pages of a book. The compulsion to consume these stories could become almost irresistible, knowing that by simply following a linear plot would allow further exploration of these amazing creations, learning all there was to know about each world before moving on to another. They become part of my childhood, a world in which fantasy and reality are sometimes indistinguishable. As I got older and moved on to ‘grown up books’ the discovery of new worlds becomes less frequent, books were more often set in realistic depictions of the actual world. As a result, I no longer read with such intensity.

Despite the lapse in my reading I never forgot the worlds I visited as a child. In a recent article, Emma Dryden stated that ‘there are some people who don’t outgrow

make-believe at all, and they became…fi ction writers!’ (Dryden, 2013). I did not become a fi ction writer; instead I became an architecture student, which seemed to me like a logical progression. Architecture is about designing new worlds, or at least redesigning the one we have, and operates on all scales from master planning to individual human interactions. The pleasure I had found in exploring other people’s worlds became the pleasure of creating my own, and my most common source of inspiration remained those worlds I had visited through the pages of books.

Although memories of these once familiar worlds continued to provide inspiration, I have not revisited them since I began my studies in architecture. In this dissertation I will re-examine a selection of the worlds I explored as a child, to examine the techniques employed and the results their creators achieved. When considering these worlds I hope to fi nd relevance for my own creative processes within architecture, looking for similarities in working methods and for ways to learn more from these fi ctional worlds.

The fi rst chapter, entitled Fictional Worlds in Real Places, briefl y explores the taxonomies of fi ctional worlds. It uses Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials as a case study to examine how fi ctional worlds can be based on our own. What makes a world fi ctional? How different does a world need to be before it is classed as fi ctional? As Roger Schlobin claims ‘Setting does not determine the fantastic’ (Schlobin, cited in Ekman, 2013, ch.1.). How do imaginary worlds mutate and how much can a world change while remaining consistent geographically?

The second chapter, Maps and the Creative Process

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looks at the map as an accompaniment to literary worldbuilding. In The Map Book, Peter Barber classifi es maps as ‘graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events…’ (Barber, 2005, p.6). Maps are a versatile tool that can help to orientate the user, be they fi ctional maps or maps of the real world. In an imaginary world, a map can guide the author as well as his reader, helping the author to navigate through the intricate maze of worldbuilding. Using texts from interviews and biographies we can gain insights into the differing methods used by authors and perhaps by architects, ways in which they use graphic representations to facilitate the creation of new worlds.

Translation, the third and fi nal chapter, examines the transformations that take place when fi ctional worlds are re-interpreted into other media, either by the original creator or through collaborators:

Given the impossibility of representing the total reality, with

all it’s complexity, on a fl at surface – be it of paper, parchment, gold or tapestry – hard decisions have to be taken as to what features to select for accurate representation or indeed for representation at all.

(Barber, 2005, p.6)

What affect can changing the medium of a construct have on the content? How does the end-user experience the original concept and what impact does his personal interpretation of the medium in question have on the end result? Consequently this chapter also considers the question of the ownership of an imaginary world. Once it is in the public realm, must the author

relinquish ownership of his world? Certainly an architect cannot claim to own a building once his design has been constructed.

Finally, this paper is a personal investigation into worldbuilding, revisiting those worlds that have stayed with me since I fi rst read them, in the hope of fi nding out what made them so successful and how I can apply this to worlds of my own.

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Fictional Worlds in Real Places

The location of a story has a signifi cant impact on a book’s overall tone and style. It will even determine its place in a bookshop. A novel set in our own world will be classifi ed as fi ction but should the world itself be fi ctional or perhaps just a signifi cantly altered version of our own, the book will be shelved as fantasy or science-fi ction. So it seems that setting a narrative in an invented environment shifts it from fi ction to ‘super-fi ction’ as if the term fi ction ‘something that is invented or untrue’ (The Oxford Dictionary of English, 2005), from the Latin root ‘fi ngere’ meaning to ‘form or contrive’ is not suffi cient. This distinction holds true despite the fact that no work of fi ction can ever exist entirely in the real world for to change nothing would be to write non-fi ction.

In his article ‘On Fairy Stories’ J.R.R. Tolkien (1947) used the terms Primary and Secondary worlds to refer to the real world and any setting of fi ction respectively. Stefan Ekman (2013), in his book Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings, expands these terms, calling the real world the Actual world. A Primary world then becomes any fi ctional setting that closely corresponds with the Actual world, making Secondary worlds those that depart largely or entirely from our own.

These categorisations might also apply to architectural projects. Until built, no projects can be said to exist in the Actual world. Although most will start out as a creation designed to appear in a real setting, one that closely corresponds to our own (ie a Primary one), other, such as theoretical or student projects, are so are so far removed from the Actual world they could be said to exist in Secondary worlds.

However this is by no means a perfect taxonomy with the term Secondary world covering a huge amount of variation. Some, like Tolkien’s Middle Earth fi t the classifi cation neatly, while others are more complicated. Narnia is a Secondary world accessed through a Primary world while the wizarding world in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is a Secondary world located within a Primary world. Some Secondary worlds are less distanced from the Primary world than others. These might include the divergent or near future world, such as Fatherland, in which Robert Harris imagines Europe in 1964 following a Nazi victory in the Second World War or 1984, George Orwell’s famously prophetic imagining of the world fi fty six years in the future. The Secondary worlds that come closest to being Primary Worlds are those like Thomas Moor’s Utopia and William Morris’s News from Nowhere or China Meiville’s twin cities of Besźel and Ul Quoma in The City and The City. Fictional states in a Primary world, they are distinguishable from it only by their unusual societies and systems of governance which nonetheless create an environment alien to any existing in the Actual world.

Despite the breadth of the ‘Secondary’ category it remains a useful taxonomy when considering world

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building. One example of world building I fi nd especially interesting in terms of categorisation is Phillip Pullman’s (2011) His Dark Materials. Within this epic story, published originally as three instalments, Pullman takes the reader to several different worlds the most intriguing of which is Lyra’s world which is later expanded in the accompanying book ‘Lyra’s Oxford’ (Pullman, 2003). Lyra’s world exists in a parallel universe one that largely matches our own but in the ways it differs he creates a completely secondary world overlaid on our own. Lyra’s world could almost be seen as a divergent world, which split from our own at the protestant reformation. In Lyra’s world, the Pope moved the centre of Christianity from the Vatican to Geneva where he now presides over a protestant church, which remains powerful in every aspect of society. However there are too many other deviations from our world such as the existence of daemons, witches and armored sentient polar bears for this to be the case.

How a world that is full of fairytales and sagas, romance and grandeur can remain familiar and believable to the reader is testament to Pullman’s research and discipline. The passage below taken from early in His Dark Materials marks a scene change taking us from Lyra’s Oxford to Lyra’s London and provides a succinct example of Pullman’s world building:

East along the great highway of the River Isis, thronged with slow-moving brick-barges and asphalt-boats and corn-tankers, way down past Henley and Maidenhead to Teddington, where the tide from the German Ocean reaches, and further down still: to Mortlake, past the house of the great Magician Dr. Dee; past

Falkeshall, where the pleasure-gardens spread out bright with fountains and banners by day, with tree-lamps and fi reworks by night; past White Hall Palace, where the King holds his weekly Council of State; past the Shot Tower, dropping its endless drizzle of molten lead into vats of murky water; further down still, to where the river, wide and fi lthy now, swings in a great curve to the south.

This is Limehouse … (Pullman, 2011, p.39)

Pullman imparts a lot of information about this world and his approach to it in this relatively short passage. Firstly, we learn that barges are still a common method of transport and, as a result, the waterway between London and Oxford is still a major goods highway. By using the name ‘German Ocean’ rather than the North Sea, Pullman indicates that this world is based in a time period similar to the Victorian era of the Actual world, the German Ocean fading from common usage around the start of the twentieth century (Gittings, 2012). The locations of Whitehall Palace, Falkeshall Gardens, and the Shot Tower continue this tour through the history of the Thames. Whitehall Palace having been the centre of government until it burned down in 1698 (Norman and Cox, 1930), Falkeshall, thought to be the origins of the name Vauxhall (Durant 2012), pleasure gardens refers to Vauxhall gardens a venue for public entertainment up until the mid nineteenth century. The Shot Tower refers to a shot tower that stood on the South Bank until it was demolished to make way for the Queen Elizabeth Hall after the Festival of Britain in 1951 (London Borough of Lambeth Council).

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Perhaps the most revealing reference in the passage is that of ‘the great magician Dr. Dee’ which refers to Dr. John Dee who did in fact own a house in Mortlake. John Dee (1527-1608) (The British Museum) could very easily have been a character from His Dark Materials. An accomplished mathematician, navigator and astronomer, he also immersed himself in magic, alchemy and perhaps most signifi cantly claimed to converse with angels (Lee, 1996). So with the most passing of references to a real historical fi gure Pullman outlines the themes and atmosphere of Lyra’s world where history, science, polar exploration and spirituality are all woven together. In this fashion, by picking and choosing places, names, objects and scientifi c discoveries through history, Pullman rearranges the Actual world to create a brand new one layered over it, described by Lucy Hughes-Hallet in her introduction to His Dark Materials as being ‘set in a world like our own but grander, in a parallel present with the archaic glamour of an imaginary past.’ (Hughes-Hallet, 2011, p. ix)

None of this is of course clear to the average young reader when fi rst entering Lyra’s world. Personally, having little knowledge of Oxford or London at that age, I recognized only a couple of place names from the Actual World and imagined Lyra’s world as an almost entirely fi ctional setting. How could it not be when it was full of zeppelins, ‘anbaric’ equipment and dæmons? Years later, shortly after moving to Oxford I was given a copy of Lyra’s Oxford, the small, red, hardbound companion book to His Dark Materials, as Pullman explained in an article:

‘The point of all this was to fi ll out Lyra’s world both backwards, towards His Dark Materials, and forwards in the direction of what will come next.’

(Pullman, 2005) The bulk of Lyra’s Oxford is a story entitled Lyra and

the birds, a story set in Lyra’s Oxford after the events of His Dark Materials, but the book also includes a number of souvenirs from Lyra’s world. Among these are a ‘Globetrotter’ map, two pages of a Baedecker (Baedeker in the Actual world) guide of Lyra’s Oxford and a postcard of Actual Oxford showing the real life places where scenes from the book took place. Looking at the map one can see that Lyra’s Oxford perfectly overlies the real one, this resulted in the odd sensation of having to rearrange my earlier mental images of a Secondary Oxford, to fi t over the Actual place in which I then found myself.

Having read the story again I found you could follow the plot not only on the map of Lyra’s Oxford but also on Google maps - such is the clarity of Lyra’s journey through Oxford and the intricacy with which both worlds intertwine. Lyra’s home, ‘Jordan College’ is based on Exeter, the college Pullman attended. ‘St. Sophia’s’, the school Lyra attends is overlaid on Lady Margaret Hall, the fi rst Oxford ladies college. The Oxford University Press becomes ‘The Fell Press’ after Bishop John Fell, one of its Founders and while the Eagle Ironworks retains its name, it, along with the Fell Press, is given a fi ctionalised history in the Baedecker guide accompanying the book. The guide combines facts with Pullman’s imagination in

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Fig. 1.Globetrotter map of Lyra’s Oxford

Fig. 2.Lyra’s route mapped on Google maps

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perfect measure so as to bind Lyra’s world to our own. It is this ratio of fact and fi ction that makes Lyra’s

world so fanciful yet believable, her footsteps being easy to follow for anyone who knows Oxford. Many of the buildings and the majority of street names retain their Actual names in Lyra’s world: the Radcliffe Observatory and Camera, the Ashmolean Museum and The Botanical Gardens as well as some of the Oxford colleges. There are also places not marked on the map but recognizable through the text, for instance a turning on St. Giles opposite St John’s College on which sits an oratory (churches are referred to as oratories in Lyra’s world) and a bookshop can be identifi ed as Pusey Street.

These consistencies are made possible by the historical nature of central Oxford and in Lyra’s Oxford we can perhaps detect Pullman’s desire to keep it so today. Pullman’s campaigning have mainly been focused in Jericho around the canal, preserving a historical area of Oxford that is attractive to developers who have already redeveloped Eagle Ironworks since the publication of Lyra’s Oxford. Pullman has spoken out against both the development of Castle Mill boatyard in Jericho by Spring Residential developments (Bingham, 2008) and the construction of Castle Mill student accommodation built on Port Meadow, describing them as: ‘…destructive, brutal, ugly vandalism’ (Thomas, 2013). Both the boatyard and Port Meadow are key locations in His Dark Materials, providing the inspiration for the gyptian characters that travel the canals in Lyra’s world as such Pullman longs to retain the old lifestyle of the canals, wishing to not only protect the boatyard but to restore it to working Fig. 3.

Pusey Street Google Street View

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condition. A jaundiced view, perhaps Pullman’s own, of

Actual Modern Oxford appears in the middle section of His Dark Materials with the introduction of Will, a teenage boy who lives in a Primary world. After going on the run Will ends up in his version of Oxford. Here the landscape is very different. Having: ‘…eaten at a Burger King and gone to the cinema to hide…’ we join Will as he, ‘…came to a large roundabout where the road going north crossed the Oxford ring road going east west’ (Pullman, 2011, p.365)

By focusing on these features of current day Oxford Pullman creates a strong juxtaposition with Lyra’s city emphasizing how different the two worlds are while using geographically identical locations. As Lucy Hughes-Hallet writes in her introduction to His Dark Materials it is an ‘… abrupt shift back to the familiar ugliness of modern Britain.’ (Hughes-Hallet, 2011, p. xiii)

The next time we are in Will’s Oxford we experience it through Lyra’s eyes where ‘the familiar ugliness of modern Britain’ is just as much a shock for her as stepping into Lyra’s Oxford was for us:

‘Lyra let him deal with the bus, and sat very quietly, watching the houses and gardens of the city that were hers and not hers. It was like being in someone else’s dream.... “It’s all changed” she said. “Like … That en’t the Cornmarket? And is this the Broad. There’s Balliol. And Bodley’s Library down there, But where’s Jordan?”’

(Pullman, 2011, p. 412)

Lyra’s experience was the reverse of my own. When trying to square one version of Oxford with another we

Fig. 4.Castle Mill Boatyard

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shared a reality shift. Like re-visting a place known long ago when you are unsure if it was the place that had changed or yourself. Our memories no longer matched with our surroundings. Here again Pullman takes the opportunity to demonstrate the extreme similarities and differences between the two worlds: ‘… this Oxford was so disconcertingly different, with patches of poignant familiarity right next to the downright outlandish’. (Pullman, 2011, p.416) He indicates on a new level just how similar the worlds can be:

‘But here were St. John’s College gates which she and Roger had once climbed after dark to plant fi reworks in the fl owerbeds; and that particular worn stone at the corner of Catte Street – there were the initials SP that Simaon Parslow had scratched, the very same ones! She’d seen him do it! Someone in this world with the same initials must have stood here and done exactly the same.’

(Pullman, 2011, p.416)

Pullman then goes on to demonstrate the dissimilarity between his two worlds, having Lyra track down a scholar, but rather than placing them in one of the many colleges in Lyra’s Oxford that retain their historical glamour, he sends her to an under-funded department in a modern university building (either the Holder or Hume Rothery buildings: both are shown in the postcard featured in Lyra’s Oxford, and both suitably enough are part of the materials department of Oxford University): ‘These rooms, the walls of this corridor, were all fl at and bare and plain in a way Lyra thought belonged to poverty, not to the scholarship and splendour of Oxford’ (Pullman, 2011, p.424). So if Pullman has trawled through legend and

Fig. 5.Castle Mill Development from Port Meadow

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history collecting and embellishing his favorite parts to create Lyra’s world it is almost as if Will’s Primary world is what’s left behind, stripped of its charm and intrigue like Martin Parr’s Boring Postcards that the postcard in Lyra’s Oxford imitates,

‘the thing I enjoyed most was the boring postcard. I have long admired Martin Parr’s extraordinary book called “Boring Postcards,” which is exactly that: reproductions of genuine postcards illustrating highways and shopping centers and cafeterias and the like.’

(Pullman, 2005)

But if Pullman’s young readers are mostly, like me, unaware of Pullman’s references to real places and historical events, it begs the question: what was the point of all his research? Surely he could have just made it all up without his target audience realising? The point is that without all this research Lyra’s world would not seem so rich, so expansive and so authentic. By using real names, places and history Pullman has created a world so complete and in places familiar to our own that it allows readers to share Lyra’s world and her adventures with her without questioning the settings or events.

‘World building is an essential tool for creating successful stories where the reader can suspend disbelief.’ (Verion, 2010) The events of Lyra’s world could not have been played out in a Primary world, as we are shown when the events shift from kidnapping, murders, crusades, mercenaries and unethical experimentation in Lyra’s world to Will’s Primary world where we ‘…are shaken back to full moral alertness as they confront the horror of an inadvertent killing in a

Fig. 6.Pullman’s ‘Boring Postcard’

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drab suburban street.’ (Hughes-Hallet, 2011, p.xiii) This essay contends that similar techniques of world

building might be employed in architecture. It may not be possible to transfer every subtlety from a written to a buildable form but the system of in-depth research, mixed with imagination and a sense of narrative is a similar process to one from which I have tried to begin some of my own architectural projects; researching the site to discover what has existed there in past incarnations, its provenance relating to historical events and geographical developments. Through this process I have discovered underground rivers, railways for the dead, Roman highways and other historical links to the sites of my projects. In creating this collage of research over the existing site a new world has been created.

Once the setting is established it is then up to the creator to establish the subjects and themes of the narrative and them let them playout within the created world. Pullman takes his story forward through combining his world with discoveries in particle physics and an exploration of theology. My projects, while on a smaller scale, have employed a similar system whether partnering the history of the river Seine and the possessions of Louis XIV with the science of emergence theory and self-organizing systems, or the history of consumerism on Oxford Street with the geographical process of ecosystem succession and pioneer species. Within the world of architectural education every student project is a fi ction in a world that differs from our own by the scope of their intervention. Although some may be more fi rmly rooted in a Primary world, the ambition of others can lead them into entirely Secondary worlds.

Maps and Fiction

‘To the inner eye, all maps are fi lled with roads that lead to wonder and dreams of fantasy’

(del Rey, 1973) All maps are fi ctional to some extent as no one map

could ever convey all the information in even a small area of the Actual world. Choices have to be made in regards to what information is important to what the map is trying to say, the fi nal result being a skewed view of the Actual world.

‘For many map enthusiasts the fascination of maps ironically stems from their necessary lack of truth. They can be regarded as the most successful pieces of fi ction ever created because most of their users instinctively suspend belief until the unpleasant reality is forced on them that the enclosure map they were using does not give truthful outlines for the buildings or that the military map does not accurately depict the shapes of the fi elds that they were interested in’

(Barber, 2005, p.8)

This is also the case when portraying a world through fi ction. Authors must constantly make decisions about what information makes the fi nal edit, how to best represent the story they are trying to tell. Perhaps this is why so much fi ction features accompanying maps.

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For the reader, maps can be essential to understanding a new world but maps are also a useful tool for the author, helping them to keep track of their creation and indeed to create it. Peter Hunt claims that maps ‘…stabilize the fantasy, while releasing greater imaginative potential.’ (Hunt, 1987, cited in Ekman, 2013, p.16)

For some authors the map comes fi rst. A well known example is Robert Louis Stevenson’s treasure map in Treasure Island, which he drew before starting the book. It is perhaps fi tting then that the book begins with Jim Hawkins’ acquisition of the map and as J.B. Post says in An Atlas for Fantasy: ‘In the case of Treasure Island the geography of the island infl uenced much of the action’. (J.B. Post, 1979). A personal childhood favorite was another world that began with a map. Set on the world of The Edge, created by illustrator Chris Riddell and author Paul Stewart, The Edge Chronicles are a series of ten books:

‘Chris drew a map of the Edge, with its familiar jutting rock, fl oating city and endless forests. He gave it to Paul saying, “Here’s the world. Let’s fi nd out what happens in it.”’

(Riddel and Stewart, n.d.)

The intricate line work with which Riddell rendered the map made it instantly accessible to the imagination of a ten year old. It was as if the map was a portal through which one could dive, straight into another world. To achieve this Riddell gives the illusion of detail by drawing at a low aerial perspective, rather than in the traditional plan view of a map. This allows him to imbue his landscape with texture and atmosphere although in Fig. 7.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island

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Fig. 8.The Edge Map by Chris Riddell

Fig. 8.The Edge Map by Chris Riddell

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Fig. 9.Map of Sanctaphrax, part of The Edge by Chris Riddell

Fig. 9.Map of Sanctaphrax, part of The Edge by Chris Riddell

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actual fact his map only gives a brief overview of the world. By fi lling the blank spaces with intricately drawn clouds, mud, rock and trees Riddell conjures a feeling of completeness and credibility but none of this information is specifi c enough to become an obstacle to the narrative.

Although they now had a vague map, Stewart and Riddell still needed to rationalize a world that had sprung from imagination. Numerous practical issues had to be resolved. How come a city was built on a fl oating rock? Where did the resources come from to sustain this city? If the resources came from the forest how were they transported across the mire? What was the mire?

It took about 3 years to produce the fi rst book. It was a very collaborative process and took so long because we had to work out how everything worked and what to do and also get used to working together.

(Christ Church Libraries, n.d.)

Having invested so much time fi guring out the details of their entire Secondary world, Stewart and Riddell then based the fi rst book in the series, Beyond the Deepwoods in just one area of it. Limiting their scope by examining a section of The Edge in detail, secure within a wider coherent world, not only do they increase authenticity but possibility is left for further exploration in future books.

If the confi nes of the Secondary world become restrictive, Stewart and Riddell periodically dismantle and rebuild their world. They avoid boxing themselves into a single period of time. Throughout the ten books

Fig. 10.Map of The Knight’s Academy, part of Sanctaphrax.

By Chris Riddell

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the reader travels through three ‘Ages of Flight’. Each age is defi ned by the aeronautical technology available, which in turn changes the politics, economics and even the geography of The Edge. Rather then being hemmed in by the world they created, Stewart and Riddell manipulate it to provide the basis for all ten plots, each one being in essence the exploration of further specifi c locations in further specifi c times.

The process of creating an imaginary world fi rst and then post-rationalizing it later is a recognizable one in architectural education, especially through an involvement with architectural design studio ADS4 at the Royal College of Art. Questions arise that have parallels with those that Stewart and Riddell had to address. What if carbon nanotubes were to be manufactured successfully on a large scale (Perkins, 2013)? What if fracking became a major industry in the U.K (Green, 2013)? Or what will happen as property prices in London continue to rise (Wilson, 2013)? All such questions create worlds upon their asking. All must be explored. Maps and plans are the tools we use to rationalize them.

The earliest book I can remember in which the story could be followed on the accompanying map was Mossfl ower, one of Brian Jacques’ Redwall series in which humans are replaced by woodland creatures. The map shows the quest route taken by Martin (our hero) through Mossfl ower, an environment that Jacques tells us is roughly based on Britain (Christian Books, 2007). At each geographical marker there is an accompanying plot event. For example crossing a river leads to a confrontation with a snake and a newt and his passage Fig. 11.

Illustration from Jerusalem by Joshua Green

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through a cave helps a colony of bats rid themselves of a tyrannical owl. Looking at the map, some 16 years after reading the book, is all it takes to recall the story, reading as it does like plot notes or a timeline for the book.

Despite its close relationship with the narrative, the map feels like an afterthought, or a tool to keep track of the plot rather than the deliberate creation of a world in which to set a story. Jacques says the his writing was initially intended as a way to ‘paint pictures with words’ (Penguin Books, n.d), his fi rst stories being written for the children of the Royal Wavertree School for the Blind in Liverpool where he worked at the time (Jacques, n.d.). This suggests that while Jacques may have made sketches of his map as he wrote, to record his hero’s passage, it would not have been fully developed at the outset. Although the story and the plot are closely intertwined the plot is creating the landscape rather than the other way round. J.R.R. Tolkien describes a similar process it in a letter to Hugh Brogan,

‘As for the shape of the world of the Third Age, I am afraid that was devised “dramatically” rather than geologically, or paleontologically.’

(Tolkien, 1955)

This method of using a map to keep track of your narrative, and in turn your world, can be a useful tool for relatively simple stories like Jacques’ Mossfl ower. It can also be advantageous in the sense that the landscape works entirely for its creator. For example in Mossfl ower, after making friends with Log-a-log - a boat owning Fig.12.

Map of Mossfl ower Country and Beyond

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shrew - our heroes should have a straightforward boat trip to their destination, but by introducing a waterfall the author destroys the boat and they are obliged to have a more eventful journey.

Unfortunately with more expansive worlds and complex plots such as those found in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, it can become tricky to make narrative consistent. Tolkien had particular problems keeping track of distance and timing as he had several characters exploring Middle-Earth at the same time. This was not helped by his writing method which involved little planning and extreme rewriting and reimagining of the story in each subsequent draft (Charlton, 2009). Here then we see the restrictions a fi nite world can impart on the narrative and the reason why Middle-Earth was created ‘dramatically’, remaining unfi xed until the completion of the book, as Tolkien explains in a letter to his son Christopher:

I have been struggling with the dislocated chronology of me Ring, which has proved most vexatious, and has not only interfered with other more urgent and duller duties, but has stopped me getting on. I think I have solved it all at last by small map alterations, and by inserting an extra day’s Entmoot, and extra days into Trotter’s chase and Frodo’s journey (a small alteration in the fi rst chapter I have just sent: 2 days from Morannon to Ithilien).

(Tolkien, 1944)

This method of using maps and diagrams to keep track of a project and to infl uence it is common in architecture as many, myself included will tend to use

Fig.13.Christopher Tolkien’s Map of Middle-Earth

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drawing as an integral part of the thought process. The map or plan is a drawing that can be especially useful in the control of a project:

The map on the other hand, aided by abstraction and necessary choice of symbolic language, has the opportunity to insinuate a strategy.

(Cook, 2008, p.30)

Also, like Tolkien, when I have designed myself into a corner it is through alterations to maps and plans that I attempt to escape but when this fails there is no choice but to start from scratch. While Jacques and Tolkien may have built their worlds in a similar way; Jacques states he has never read Tolkien (www.redwall.org) but by looking at the Redwall maps you would imagine that his illustrator had, as surely all subsequent fantasy cartographers must have.

It seems likely that today’s vernacular fantasy maps must result from a jumble of infl uences, though in his article Here Be Blank Spaces: Vaguely Medieval Fantasy Maps, Jonathan Crowe cites Christopher Tolkien’s depiction of Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings as the original fantasy map. Nonetheless he notes that features from historical maps, such as the oblique depiction of mountain ranges, and elements of earlier illustrations such as E.H. Shepard’s map of 100 Acre Wood also fi nd their way into Tolkein’s cartography (Crowe, 2013). Nonetheless J.B. Post also suggests that Tolkien’s maps mark the beginning of a trend:

Fig.14.Thror’s Map by J.R.R.. Tolkien’s

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The ever growing interest in fantasy has inspired most publishers to want maps in their major books if for no other reason than maps are now becoming fashionable, and because “Tolkien had them”.

(Post, 1979, p. vii)

J.R.R. Tolkien’s own maps, like Thror’s map in The Hobbit, are more whimsical. Featuring illustrations of monsters and inscriptions in Tolkien’s invented alphabet, they are more akin to early medieval examples like the Mappa Mundi where text is used extensively and illustrations of creatures, both real and mythic, are commonplace. Christopher Tolkien’s maps in The Lord of the Rings however have more in common visually with later examples such as Wiliam Baffi n and Thomas Roe’s 17th century A Description of East India. The Lord of the Rings has a more complex plot than The Hobbit and its serious tone demanded more precision. The Lord of the Rings covers a much larger area of Middle-Earth too but ‘there’s only so much detail you can put on a small-scale map, particularly one printed on C-format pulp paper’ (Crowe, 2013).

This dichotomy of large sprawling worlds and the size of the average paperback is an important factor in the aesthetic of the fantasy map causing the characteristic blank spaces Crowe’s article is named after. This is further exacerbated by the fact that while fantasy maps are often of entire worlds they only tend to mark places visited in the narrative.

There are of course many fi ctional worlds that are not published with maps but their creators must still keep track of space and time in relation to the narrative.

Fig.15.Map of 100 Acre Wood by Christopher Robin

With help from E.H. Shepard

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Fig.16.Section of the Mappa Mundi Facsimile

Fig.17.A Description of East India

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J.K. Rowling handled this while writing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by laying out her notes in a chart plotting chapters and all of the sub-plots over time. This alternative method of mapping a narrative is one used by many authors, Norman Mailer’s narrative mapping for Harlot’s Ghost being one of the most interesting visually. The process can end up being so accurate that maps can be made just from the information given in the text. This is how the maps of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld came about:

‘I said there would never be a map of the Discworld. This is it.’

(Pratchett, 1995)

Pratchett had avoided maps. ‘I’ve always been mildly against mapping the Discworld. It’s a literary construction, not a place.’ (Briggs and Pratchett, 1993) Although he admitted to making rough sketch diagrams as he wrote, he maintained that the Discworld was ‘unmappable’:

‘Drawing the wiggly river and the pointy mountains fi rst

before you actually build the world is the prerogative only of gods.’(Briggs and Pratchett, 1995)

Drawing them afterwards is a different matter and it was Stephen Briggs, a fan of Discworld who sent Pratchett a map he had made of Ankh-Morpork (A city location for many of the Discworld novels) based on information from the books. Briggs had adapted several of the novels into plays and has since collaborated with Fig.18.

J.K. Rowling’s plot map for ‘The Order of the Phœ nix’

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him on several ancillary Discworld projects. His map was so close to the images in Pratchett’s head that although Pratchett had thought it impossible to communicate his world in graphic form, he had to admit he was wrong. After all, the act of building evolved long before the art of drawing buildings:

‘The city which features in many of the Discworld books would have to be unmappable because I’d made it up as I went along… (but) it dawned on me that most ancient cities got made up as people went along.’

(Briggs, Pratchett, 1993)

Pratchett’s unwillingness to map the Discworld is understandable. The fi rst novels in the series, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic seem freer and loser as if the landscape is quickly forming around the story as it develops. They read as parodies of traditional fantasy fi ction or historical events from the Actual world. Pratchett would, it seemed write about whatever interested him at the time, be it Shakespeare, evolution, rock and roll or religion. He would take his chosen subject and transfer it into the Discworld to take it apart. His Secondary world worked for him, not the other way round.

Perhaps Pratchett feared that his world would be a less useful place to him were it to be committed to a drawn form. That something might be lost in the process is surely a familiar concern for an architect too. Sometimes, having spent so much time trying to communicate through drawings the designs that seem so clear in one’s head, the concept turns out to have been too complex or ephemeral to survive the process. ‘Or maybe the image – of a

Fig.19.Norman Mailer’s plot map for ‘Harlot’s Ghost’

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project is sitting there inside ones brain but the drawn version is but a poor thing’ (Cook, 2008, p.12)

Writing can be a more direct form of communication for as the Discworld developed through his subsequent books, Pratchett manages to carefully convey all his ideas, be they complex or ephemeral, from his head to the page. As he does so, he delights in the names, history and development of places and with each book the Discworld became more cohesive. Nonetheless anomalies remained. When Briggs was drafting his map of The Discworld, Pratchett asked him: ‘Do you know what a rain shadow is? ... which gently led up to the fact that I’d put the Great Nef, the driest place in the world, in what would have been a very large swamp.’ (Briggs, 1995)

Character development is an essential part of good fi ctional literature and for Pratchett Discworld became one of his main characters. Its development is most noticeable in the city of Ankh-Morpork, which evolved from a fantasy that was almost a caricature of a chaotic medieval town into something resembling a functioning city from around the late nineteenth century. The creation of such a satisfyingly complete world attracts a certain sort of reader and Pratchett knew he had to be careful:

‘Readers are perceptive. They notice little details. If a journey that takes someone three days in one book takes someone else two hours in another, harsh things get written. Irony is employed.’

(Pratchett, 1995)

So much thought went into the detail of his evolving Fig.20.

Æ rial view of Ankh-Morpork

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Secondary world that, without realizing it, Pratchett had effectively mapped it without ralising. Pratchett was initially surprised by the accuracy of Briggs map compared to what existed in his own head, but on refl ection Pratchet stated : ‘…after eighteen books, the world has either got some sort of shape or something has gone wrong.’ (Pratchett, 1995)

The map of the city of Ankh-Morpork was published in 1993 and by 1995 Briggs had created a map of the whole of Discworld. Whatever Pratchetts fears, any worries that this might have interfered with his writing process have been dispelled for more Discworld novels have now been written since the mapping than he had before it.

‘people asked me if this fossilization of the imagination will prevent future stories. Well, London and New York have been mapped for some time, and still seem attractive as locations for novelists.’

(Pratchett, 1995)

Although Briggs managed to successfully transform the written word into a graphic image, he could hardly expect it to convey anything more than a shadow of Pratchett’s complex imagery. This process of fi nding creative power through prose rather than drawing is one that Peter Cook thinks is creeping into the realm of architecture. Traditionally architects had relied on the drawing to interpret their conceptual world:

‘…the statement would gain power through the likelihood of the drawn image. Now it is likely that the spoken or written

Fig.21.Map of Ankh-Morpork

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statement will have the acknowledged power and the drawing will be consigned to a supporting role.’

(Cook, 2008, p.12)

A writer like Pratchett may have had reservations about maps but his readers explore Briggs’ creation with relish. Pratchett has demonstrated the ability to create a completely legible world without the use of drawn imagery but sometimes the map informs the creative process.

Maps can be used to create worlds in numerous ways, whether conjuring them up directly at the hand of a cartographer, crystalizing a world that has long lived in imaginations or by mapping a world as it is explored through narrative. These are all valid processes, recognizable not only in literature but applicable to architecture too. The setting is intrinsic in literature, implicit in the narrative, and architecture too is determined by the world in which it is set. The setting is fundamental and the better it can be conveyed, be it by drawing or the written word, the richer the resulting creation will be. In Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings Stefan Ekman paraphrases Don D. Elgins:

‘…the main value of the setting derives from how the characters affect and are affected by it, despite its signifi cance as a world “complete in and of itself.”’

(Schlobin, 2000 cited in Ekman, 2013, ch.1.)

In literature the characters are a product of their setting. In architecture the same applies, but to the built form.

Fig.22.Map of the Discworld

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Translation

The translation of an imaginary world from literature to other forms can enrich, distort or completely transform the original. It also raises the question of to whom the world in question belongs. Is it to the reader or to its author? It’s creator or it’s inhabitant? Terry Pratchett was originally reluctant to map the Discworld. Suspicious, he wondered if such an interpretation of his literary creation might have a negative impact. Tolkien took a similar stance, not towards maps but to illustrations:

‘However good in themselves, illustrations do little good to fairy-stories. The radical distinction between all art (including drama) that offers a visible presentation and true literature is that ... literature works from mind to mind and is thus more progenitive. It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular.’

(Tolkien, 1947, p26)

Tolkien did not reject illustrations entirely. Early publications of the Hobbit featured his own illustrations and cover art. However in subsequent years, during which various editions of the Hobbit appeared, his opinion of the various illustrators employed varied from admiration to acute dislike. Those he favoured seemed to be those that most closely matched his own style, like the work of Pauline Baynes’: ‘Tolkien described “some (but Fig.23.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s cover art for The Hobbit

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not all) of Baynes’ illustrations as “akin to my own inspiration.”’ (Davis, 2012)

Where the illustrators strayed from the text, either factually or stylistically, Tolkien reacted adversely. He thought Robert J. Lee’s work inaccurate, labelling his illustrations: ‘… vulgar, stupid, and entirely out of keeping with the text, which Robert J. Lee does not seem to have read with any care.’ (Thomsen, 2012)

With the publication of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien decided against illustrations, telling his publisher in 1967:

“As far as an English edition goes, I myself am not at all anxious for The Lord of the Rings to be illustrated by anybody whether a genius or not.”

(Tankard, 2012)

Tolkien’s earlier reservations had hardened, resulting in a decision to forego illustrations completely. He thought his world would be clearer without them and was decided to rely instead on direct communication between the reader’s imagination and his written word. In doing so he was following some ancient precedents:

‘For God creates, and to create is also ascribed: and God has being, and men are said to be, having received from God this gift also. Yet does God create as men do? Or is his being as man’s being? Perish the thought; we understood the terms in one sense of God, and in another of men. For God creates, in that He calls what is not into being, needing nothing thereunto; but men work some existed material, fi rst praying, and so gaining the wit to make, from that God who has framed all things by His proper Word.’

(Athanasius, 367)Fig.24.

Pauline Baynes’ cover art for The Hobbit

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The word of God is seen here as the purest form of creation with no translation between his intentions and the creation; he wills it and it is so. Men however must struggle with inert materials to bring their ideas to fruition. Within architecture the medium has most commonly become the drawing and despite the increase in digital technologies many architects will begin by hand, relishing the immediacy with which they can explore their ideas: ‘The pencil in the architect’s hand becomes the bridge between the imagining mind and the image appearing on the paper.’ (Pallasama 2009 p. 7).

While God can frame all things with his proper word, for mere mortals to create through words is to grapple with the medium of imagination. In so doing, an author might fi nd words to describe his creation:

‘…yet each hearer will give to them a peculiar personal embodiment in his imagination…. If a story says “he climbed a hill and saw a river in the valley below,” the illustrator may catch, or nearly catch, his own vision of such a scene; but every hearer of the words will have his own picture, and it will be made out of all the hills and rivers and dales he has ever seen, but especially out of The Hill, The River, The Valley which were for him the fi rst embodiment of the word’

(Tolkien, 1947, p26)

This then is the danger of illustrating fi ction. While the link exists between writer and reader, the reader can imagine any number of versions of what the author describes. An illustration provides only one, one which is not the reader’s and usually not entirely that of the author. However this is not always the case. Sometimes

Fig.25.Robert J. Lee Illustration for The Hobbit

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illustrations are not merely reductive but can, when employed correctly be used to add layers of detail and interpretation to text. For instance while analysing The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, Matthew Collings tells us:

‘An altarpiece showing the bible is never really the bible, the bible is beliefs written down in words. An altarpiece is a picture. The picture shows the theology that comes from centuries of the church interpreting the meanings of the bible, the picture does that by responding to visual traditions that have built up over the centuries.’

(Renaissance Revoloutions, 2010)

The Garden of Earthly Delights is a visual world entirely of Bosch’s contrivance, incorporating his own symbolism and visual vocabulary but whose seed was taken from the text and interpretation of the Bible.

‘Imagining, when that is carried out by images, is thinking of things through representations’ (Warnock, 1976, p169). So when confronted with an illustration by a third party, the author must acknowledge its drawbacks. As Terry Pratchett says of the map of The Discworld made by Stephen Briggs: This map possibly isn’t the way things are. But it is one of the ways they could be (Pratchett, 1995).

The interpretation of written imagery can change in the telling. The interpretation of written imagery into pictures can have even greater implications. Most people will tell you that Humpty Dumpty is an egg, yet there is no evidence of this within the rhyme. The name Humpty Dumpty was a fi fteenth century colloquial term for an obese person (www.rhymes.org.uk) and within the

Fig.26.Section of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch.

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context of the text is thought to refer to the nickname of a heavy cannon that fell from the wall of St. Mary’s Church during the Siege of Colchester in 1648. The oldest recorded version of the rhyme (In Samuel Arnold’s Juvenile Amusements , 1797) ends with the lines:

‘Four-score men and four-score more,Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.’(Anon cited in Upton, 2013)

It is not until 1871 when, within the pages of C.S. Lewis’ ‘Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There’ that we fi rst see Humpty Dumpty drawn as an egg-shaped man by John Tenniel in response to Lewis’ description of an egg that slowly turns into a man:

‘It’s very provoking,’ Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, ‘to be called an egg — very!’ ‘I said you looked like an egg, Sir,’ Alice gently explained. ‘And some eggs are very pretty, you know,’

(C.S. Lewis, 2011)

Humpty adds later that ‘…my name means the shape I am - and a good handsome shape it is, too.’ (C.S. Lewis, 2011).

After Lewis and Tenniel Humpty Dumpy was to be forever drawn not just as a man who resembled an egg but as an actual egg. The last lines of the ancient rhyme have now become:

‘All the King’s horses and all the King’s men,Couldn’t put Humpty together again.’

(Anon cited in Alchin, 2009)Fig. 27.

John Tenniel’s Humpty Dumpty

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We read this as a description of the impossible task of re-building a broken egg but even today there is no mention of an egg. Even so that is what Humpty has become in every available children’s book. His evolution is a cautionary tale. He started life as a piece of artillery, described in a rhyme that was probably most commonly passed around by word of mouth. Hi-jacked by C.S.Lewis and re-interpreted through the phrase ‘Humpty Dumpty’, Humpty was then transferred to a drawn image by Tenniel as an egg-shaped man. Curiously, although Tenniel’s depiction is still the common image, we now think of him as a man-shaped egg.

Such is the fate of the author or designer, whether their creation is in written form or in any other creative medium that passes into the public realm. As architecture takes such a prominent place in public life it is not surprising that it fi nds itself subject to such re-interpretation. Built form is as vulnerable as the form of Humpty Dumpty and many buildings have shared his fate. In the city, the Swiss Re has become the Gerkin and will always be so. In 1984 Richard Rogers’ proposed extension to the National Gallery was described as a fi re station and any subsequent attempt to resuscitate the scheme was doomed to failure. It became ‘the monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend’ (Prince Charles cited in Glancey, 2004) and whatever its architectural merits, it will always be remembered as such.

With the publishing of a book the author must in some way let it go, to fi nd its place in the world and within the minds of its readers. If they wish to share it they no longer claim complete ownership. Understandably, the

stance an author takes over their Secondary world can be fi ercely defensive. J.K. Rowling’s response is probably fairly typical: ‘Having lived for so long in my fi ctional universe, I feel very protective of it.’ (Rowling cited in Sacks, 2013)

Despite her protective feelings, the Harry Potter series has become one of the most adapted texts in modern literature and with each version it is altered in some way. Even the audio-books, unabridged recordings of the text by Stephen Fry, changed the relationship between reader and text by creating ‘offi cial’ pronunciation of many of Rowling’s invented terms.

If Fry’s audio-books have caused a minor shift in our understanding of Rowling’s work, a more dramatic shift has come about as a result of its fi lm adaptation the Harry Potter series became eight fi lms by Warner Brothers and the most profi table fi lm franchise of all time (Box Offi ce Mojo). A deluge of merchandise, video games, a theme park and a museum followed in its wake.

The translation of worlds from literature to fi lm is always a diffi cult one. A fi lm adaptation usually focuses on condensing the original plot into a couple of hours of screen time. In the case of Harry Potter, Warne Bros. also had to create an entirely new world. Here the constraints of time and money can become an issue:

It is simply impossible to incorporate every one of my storylines into a fi lm that has to be kept under four hours long. Obviously fi lms have restrictions novels do not have, constraints of time and budget; I can create dazzling effects relying on nothing but the interaction of my own and my readers’ imaginations.

(J.K. Rowling, cited in J. Eberts, 2012, p. 31)

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While a novel can be one of the most detailed ways of exploring a Secondary world, cinema is one of the briefest. Much of the enjoyment from the world Rowling has created comes from the detail with which she fi lled it. In the fi lms there is simply not enough time to show the detail. The fi lms I see as the most successful of the Harry Potter fi lms are those that compress the fewest words. Four of them, The Philosophers’ Stone, The Chamber of Secrets and The Deathly Hallows parts 1 and 2 each cover an average of 90,078 words. The others compress twice as much text, averaging 180,965 (O’bannon, 2011).

Covering half as much of the written word allows a greater amount of world building in the fi lm, achieved in the Harry Potter series through props, sets, costumes and computer generated magic. On the screen most of these speed by as the fi lm makers struggle to keep up with the condensed plots but much of their hard work has since been put on display as another spin-off, The Warner Bros. Studio Tour London. Leavesden Studios, where all eight fi lms were fi lmed has been converted into a museum displaying many of the props, sets, and costumes featured in the fi lms. Here, fi nally is a chance to see all the effort that goes into creating a Secondary world in physical form.

Although the directors of the fi lms changed throughout the series, Stuart Craig was art director for all eight. The resulting cohesion of the world Craig and his team built is far more apparent in the studio tours than in the movies as each element may be explored at leisure. In fact the sets and props were made with far more detail than was ever apparent in the fi lms. Each character had

Fig. 28.Olivander’s wand shop at ‘Warner Bros Studio Tour London’

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his or her individually carved wand. The 17,000 wand boxes in Olivander’s wand shop were hand labelled, as were the hundreds of bottles of ingredients in the potions classroom (Shontell, 2013).

Perhaps the most engaging though smallest parts of the studio tour is the work of Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima who spent ten years creating all the graphic elements of the Wizarding World including packaging, leafl ets, posters, books, newspapers, propaganda and all 120 unique products in the shop, Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes (Shontell, 2013). Here the fi lms’ creators have a chance to add even more detail to Rowling’s world. A book like ‘Flying with the Cannons’, referenced by name only in the text, now exists with carefully designed covers. The visitor can relate to these everyday, intimate objects and their accessibility goes furthest towards bringing the world to life.

Similar are the souvenirs found in Lyra’s Oxford:

The world is full of things like that: old postcards, theatre programmes, leafl ets about bomb proofi ng your cellar, greetings cards, photograph albums, holiday brochures, instruction booklets for machine tools, maps, catalogues, railway timetables, menu cards from long-gone cruise liners – all kinds of things that once served a real and useful purpose, but have now become cut adrift from the things and the people they relate to.

(Pullman, 2003, p.ii)

Just as the taste of the madeleine triggered an involuntary memory in Proust, these objects can trigger an imaginary one in those familiar with it’s world of origin. The creation of such objects is one that becomes

Fig. 29.Cover Art for ‘Flying with the Cannons’

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apparent not only in fi ction but also during studies in Architectural Design Studio Four at the Royal College of Art. As alluded to in an earlier chapter, this studio focuses on near future or divergent worlds and uses this kind of artefact to bolster the credibility of these constructs. Examples of such objects include a geological sample from Rain Wu’s Plastic Island (Wu, 2013) and an altered calendar from Alex Holloway’s After the Party project, where the UK government has imposed a twenty-one hour working week (Holloway, 2013). They are recognisable items, at a human scale but from another world, that have somehow ended up in our own. They strain at the boundaries between the fi ctional and the real.

Although the use of everyday objects can make a Secondary world seem more realistic, we have already seen that the translation of a fi ctional world from literature to other media can be a help or a hindrance to its authenticity. For the most part it seems that it is most benefi cial – or at least less detrimental - when done or at least supervised by the original creator, just as an architectural project is more likely to stay true to its intentions if the original architect oversees its construction. That is not to say collaboration is a hindrance to creation. Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, the creators of The Edge Chronicles, work in tandem as writer and illustrator to create their world together and architecture is perhaps the most collaborative of all art forms.

Architecture relies on each participant to clearly communicate their vision through drawings, diagrams, models and the written word. While an author’s work remains in text, most architectural projects are intended Fig. 30.

Authors own Souvenir from ‘Warner Bros. Studio Tour London’

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to be realised in built form. This translation from an architect’s Secondary world to an Actual one can only be achieved through the agency of others. Commonly it involves the work of multiple consultants and contractors. William Morris gave up architecture in favour of the multitude of other creative processes because, as his friend Philip Webb put it: ‘He found he could not get into close contact with it; it had to be done at second hand.’ (Webb cited in Lethaby, 1935, p.122.) That is not to say that all or even the majority of designs pass through this secondary process. Many are abandoned before they leave the page, others never have the chance to fi nd a built form and some are left behind as they are as yet incapable of translation into an Actual world.

So much can be lost in translation. At this point we must face a nagging suspicion: that the drawing can possibly be better than the reality. (Cook, 2008, p.16). But if they are to achieve results in the Actual world, architects too must accept the loss of control over their designs. Even if they exercise the utmost control during the construction process they will eventually have to part company with their creation, if not by degrees to its constructors and co-contributors, then entirely to its end users. While the architect might foster the design in a Primary or Secondary World they are rarely the owner of its incarnation in the Actual world.

Fig. 31.Geological sample from Rain Wu’s ‘Plastic Island’

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Conclusion

Although a dissertation of this nature can only explore a small proportion of the multitude of approaches to worldbuilding - and an even smaller number of the worlds themselves - it is apparent that worldbuilding is a widespread and complex process. Some authors, like Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, use their worlds as inspiration; others, like Brian Jacques, use them to create confl icts and instigate plot development. Phillip Pullman fi lls his worlds with his favorite parts from the Actual world and J.K. Rowling allows us to suspend belief by immersing us in a world so full of magic that we are prepared to accept what would otherwise be unacceptable. The overall function of worldbuilding within fi ction is to enable the reader to become engrossed. The book becomes a portal to another place; just as Lucy stepped through the wardrobe and Alice through the looking glass, we can visit these worlds through the pages of a book.

A successful world will also encourage its readers to return. Many imaginary worlds form the setting for a series of books. They become a safe place to which the reader can escape once more, secure in the knowledge of a familiar fi ctional world. J.K. Rowling has now published three short companion books to the Harry Potter series,

none of which feature characters or events from the main series but as Rowling says, they are ‘… neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world’ (Rowling, cited in Sacks, 2013). Similarly, Terry Pratchett will publish his fortieth Discworld novel this November, and although the novels sometimes feature recurring characters the only constant throughout the series is the continued exploration and development of The Discworld itself. Here then is a desire in the reader not just to follow a plot and relate to characters but also to explore worlds.

One aspect the worlds we have examined have in common is their ability to change. Lisa Cron suggests that ‘Story is about change, which results from unavoidable confl ict’ (Cron, 2012, p.124). In most fi ction this change is seen in character development but in many of the books we have looked at, the worlds can change just as much. In The Edge Chronicles and the Discworld series we see the worlds evolve and adapt to technology. In the Harry Potter series Rowling’s world slowly expands until fi nally, in the last book all the established locations mutate, altered or damaged through warfare. These changes impact on the plot and the setting plays as signifi cant a role as the characters; just as readers are fascinated to see the development of the characters, they are equally keen to see the development of worlds.

Lisa Cron claims that as well as change, stories require a point or purpose: ‘A story is designed, from beginning to end, to answer a single overarching question’ (Cron, 2012, p.25). As we saw in Maps and Fiction, the asking of a question can bring about the birth of a fi ctional

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Fig. 32.Map of The Free Glades in ‘The second age of Flight’ by Chris Riddell

Fig. 33Map of The Free Glades in ‘The third age of Flight’ by Chris Riddell

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world. The creation of worlds is similar to the creation of a scientifi c model or experiment. Used to explore a certain hypothesis or existing condition, the world is built to a set of parameters that defi ne the question; once complete the creator is free to examine the results. More often than not these questions within architecture are more mundane. How would the world change if we were to build an extension on the back of this house? But by exploring these Primary worlds through drawings or graphic representation, decisions can be made as to the future of the house without having to make any costly changes in the Actual world. However the questions are not always so inconsequential. Every major movement within architectural history begins with a hypothesis and the imagining of better worlds, a pursuit that has inspire many achirtects, two examples being Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City. If it had not been for Corbusier’s enquiry into a world where houses and cities became machines for living (Corbusier, 1986) the modern movement may have evolved in a different direction. It is these more radical projects, often remaining unbuilt in their own imaginary worlds, that pave the way for the development of architecture in the Actual world. Without visions of new worlds our own would never change:

‘…a map of the world that does not include utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when humanity lands there it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias’.

(Wilde, 2001, p.141)

Fig. 34.‘Broadacre City’ by Frank Lloyd Wright

Fig. 35.‘Plan Voisin’ by Le Corbusier

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The further into the subject of worldbuilding we

look, the harder it becomes to distinguish the Actual world. The boundary between the real and the imagined are in constant fl ux and examples can readily be found in the realm of cartography. In J.B Post’s An Atlas of Fantasy he includes a modern redrawing of a fi fteenth century nautical chart of the Atlantic Ocean. Scattered across it are numerous mythical islands:

‘Mapmakers did the best they could, but hearsay, compounded

in part by outright fraud, honest error in sighting, and garbled reporting, soon populated the Atlantic Ocean with innumerable islands, most of them ghosts.’

(J.B.Post, 1979, p.4) While these islands were believed to be real and

turned out to be imagined, sometimes the imagined can become real. Agloe, New York, was one such place. Originally marked at an intersection of two roads on Esso maps of the 1930’s, the town of Agloe was a ‘copyright trap’. If it appeared on any other maps the original cartographers would know they had been directly copied. However when a shop was built on the intersection it was named Agloe General Store, after the builder consulted an Esso map. As a result the town of Agloe was eventually registered with the county administration and crossed over from the Primary into the Actual world (Alex 2009). In a similar way J.K. Rowling’s world of Harry Potter has entered the real world through the process of fi lmmaking. For ten years over

Fig. 36.Gago Coutinho’s Map of The Azores

Fig. 37.Agloœ , New York

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700 people were employed on the fi lms and the child stars spent their formative years entirely surrounded by Rowling’s world, for all these people Rowling’s world was a very real part of their own.

Whether created over the top of the Actual world, presented as a recognizable cartographic image or translated into physical form, fi ctional worlds are always within touching distance. It is this proximity to the Actual world as much as the differences from it that is key to the fascination these worlds hold over us.

The Actual world is such a large and complex thing that no one person can comprehend it, as China Miéville says ‘…worlds are too big to build, or to know, or even, almost, to live in. A world is going to be compelling at least as much by what it doesn’t say as what it does.’ (Miéville, 2011). All we can do is create our own perception of the world based on our experiences. In doing so we each create our own personal world and perhaps this is why we fi nd such joy in exploring fi ctional places. In many ways they are as real as the Actual world. Given just enough information we can comprehend an imagined world just as well as our own:

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

(Albus Dumbledore in Rowling, 2007, p. 579)

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Illustrations

Fig. 1. - Lawrence, J. Pullman, P., (2003). The Globetrotter [Map] In: Pullman, P., (2003). Lyra’s Oxford. Oxford: David Fickling Books. P. 16.

Fig. 2. - Google Maps, (2013). Directions from Exeter College, Turl Street, Oxford to Juxon Street Oxford. [Online Map] Available through: <www.maps.google.co.uk> [Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 3. - Google Maps, (2013). Pusey Street Street view [Online Image] Available at: <www.maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=pusey+street+ox-ford&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x4876c6a665bea32d:0x-973718395097e486,Pusey+St&gl=uk&ei=tSVTUrvPBu-PS0QXY9YC4Bg&ved=0CJ0BELYD> [ Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 4. – Isisbridge, (2006). Castle Mill Boatyard. [Online Image] Available at: <www.fl ickr.com/photos/61686932@N00/431592969/> [Accessed On 4th October 2013]

Fig. 5. – Bowen, J.P., (2013). Castle Mill student accommodation blocks of Oxford University from Port Meadow, Oxford, England. [Online Image] Available through: <www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Mill_from_Port_Meadow,_Oxford.JPG> [Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 6. – Pullman, P., (2003). Images of Oxford. [Fictional Post-card] In: Pullman, P., (2003). Lyra’s Oxford. Oxford: David Fickling Books. P. 51.

Fig. 7. – Stevenson, R.L., (1883). Map of Treasure Island. [Fic-tional Map] In: Post, J.B., (1979), An Atlas of Fantasy. London: Souvenir Press Ltd. p. 39

Fig. 8. – Riddell, C., (1999). The Edge Map. [Fictional Map] In: Riddell, C. and Stewart, P., (1999). Beyond the Deepwoods. London: Corgi. pp. 2-3

Fig. 9. – Riddell, C., (2006). Map of Sanctaphrax. [Fictional Map] In: Riddell, C. and Stewart, P., (2006). The Winter Knights . London: Corgi. pp. 8-9

Fig. 10. – Riddell, C., (2006). Map of The Knights Academy. [Fic-tional Map] In: Riddell, C. and Stewart, P., (2006). The Winter Knights . London: Corgi. pp. 10-11

Fig. 11. – Green, J. (2013). Artifi cial Dairy Pastures, License Zone PEDL 245 (New Addington). [Online Image] Available at: <www.show2013.rca.ac.uk/13_arch_joshua_green/> [Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 12. – Uncredited. Map of Mossfl ower Country and Beyond [Online Image] Available at: <www.oocities.org/redwallhq/mapmossfl ower.jpg> [Accessed on: 4th October 2013]

Fig. 13. - Tolkien, C., (1954). Map of Middle-Earth [Fictional Map] In: Post, J.B., (1979), An Atlas of Fantasy. London: Souve-nir Press Ltd. p. 90.

Fig. 14 – Tolkien, J.R.R. (1937). Thror’s Map [Fictional Map] In: Post, J.B., (1979), An Atlas of Fantasy. London: Souvenir Press Ltd. p. 93.

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Fig. 23. – Tolkien, J.R.R., (1937). Cover Art for ‘The Hobbit’. [Online Image] Available at: <www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/images/hobbit-dust-jacket-design-by-tolkien.jpg[Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 24. – Baynes, P., (1961). Cover Art for ‘The Hobbit’. [Online Image] Available at: <www.paulinebaynes.com/?what=arti-facts&image_id=501&cat=70> [Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 25. – Lee, R.J., (1962). Illustration for ‘The Hob-bit’ [Online Image] Available at: <www.2.bp.blogspot.com/-n01CR32SHuk/UEuiTMJycdI/AAAAAAAAAYE/cefKHmXL-AQ/s1600/Lee+%231.jpg> [Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 26. – Bosch, H., (1504). The Garden of Earthly Delights. [Online Image] Available at: <www.computus.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/the-garden-of-earthly-delights.jpg> [Accessed on 4th October 20133]

Fig. 27. – Tenniel, J. (1871). Alice Shaking Hands with Humpty Dumpty. [Online Image] Available at: <www.alice-in-won-derland.net/alicepic/through-the-looking-glass/2book29.jpg> [Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 28. – Oldham, S. (2012). Olivander’s Wand Shop. [Pho-tograph] Available at: <www.fl ickr.com/photos/travel-lingred/7728461928/> [Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 29. – Mina, M. and Lima, E., (n.d.). Flying with the Cannons. [Online Image] Available at: <www.images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130801122924/harrypotter/images/5/53/FlyingWith-TheCannons.png> [Accessed on 4th October 2013.]

Fig. 15. - Shepard, E.H. (1926). Map of 100 Acre Wood [Fictional Map] In: Post, J.B., (1979), An Atlas of Fantasy. London: Souve-nir Press Ltd. p. 79.

Fig. 16. – Agricola, P. (2009). Photo of a 1869 Facsimile of the Mappa Mundi. [Online image] Available at: <www.fl ickr.com/photos/28433765@N07/3397651709/> [Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 17. – Baffi n, W. and Roe, T., (1619). A Description of East India. [Map] In: Barber, P. ed., (2005). The Map Book. London: Weidenfi eld & Nicholson. P. 150.

Fig. 18. – Rowling, J.K., n.d. Plot Chart for ‘The Order of the Phoe-nix’ [Online image] Available at: <www.vivianleemahoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05> [Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 19. – Mailer, N., n.d. Plot Chart for ‘Harlot’s Ghost’ [Online image] Available at: <www.webspace.utexas.edu/alicia36/Mail-erHarlotOutlineFullSize.jpg> [Accessed on 4th October 2013]

Fig. 20. – The Discworld Emporium, (2012). The Great Cities of Ankh and Morpork. [Fictional Map]. In: The Discworld Em-porium, (2012). The complete Ankh-Morpork City Guide. London: Doubleday.

Fig. 22. - Briggs, S. and Pratchett, P., (1993). The Streets of Ankh-Morpork.[Fictional Map] In: Briggs, S. and Pratchett, T., (1993). The Streets of Ankh-Morpork. London: Transworld Publishers.

Fig. 22. – Briggs, S and Pratchett, T., (1995). The Discworld Map [Fictional Map] In: Briggs, S and Pratchett, T., (1995). The Discworld Mapp. London: Transworld Publishers.

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