An imaginary world is a setting, place or event or scenario at variance with objective reality, ranging from the voluntary suspension of disbelief of fictional universes and the socially constructed consensus reality of the "Social Imaginary", to alternate realities resulting from disinformation, misinformation or imaginative speculation, and the subjective universe of altered states of consciousness, psychosis or dream sleep. Imaginary worlds have been the subject of cosmological and philosophical speculation since ancient times.
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Settings
Imaginary settings need not reflect or resemble the natural world, and logic, physics and plausibility are frequently ignored or violated.
- Artificial mythology
- Campaign setting
- Fantasy world
- Flatland
- List of fantasy worlds
- Mythical place
- Phantom island
- Planets in science fiction
- Virtual world
- Dream world
Places
Imaginary places are best known from myth and fiction, such as where a purposely-created fiction forms part of a fictional universe, and provide background information and locale for the story. In this context an imaginary world may be a world constructed for a specific purpose (eg. constructed world), or created for personal enjoyment (eg. as in geofiction), or may emerge naturally from the narrative.
- Fictional country
- Fictional universe (which may also be known as a "science fiction universe" or a "fictional realm")
- List of fictional counties
- List of fictional universes
- List of fictional U.S. states
- Ruritania
Events or scenarios
Cogitation and fiction may both conjure events which did not, might not have, may never or will never happen; such events can be said to occur in an imaginary world.
- Alternate history
- Alternate future
- Future history
- Secret history
- List of fictional timelines
- Counterfactual history
See also
- constructed world
- fiction
- geofiction
- Parallel universe (fiction)
- multiverse (which encompasses the concepts of "alternate universes" and "parallel universes")
- parallel world
- possible world
- shared universe
- virtual reality
