Talk:Worldbuilding/Archive 1

Clarification
Please clarify which The Dark Tower the statement refer to. --Bensin 16:32, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Magic Types?
Since there's apparently no associated pages for Limited and Limitless Magic, could a small explanation be included somewhere? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.214.134.193 (talk) 23:43, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Merge
Constructed world should be merged here. Same topic. And this is the commoner term. Goldfritha (talk) 23:21, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Merge with Worldbuilding
Whoever put the proposal in didn't start a talk section on it. I support the change-- though since noone including the proposer have talked about it since august, maybe the point is moot anyway.

Wellspring 19:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Suppoerting merge also. Both articles are completely OR and uncited, but this one is far more extensive, so worldbiulding should be a redirect to here.Yobmod (talk) 09:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I support a merge as well. --Brandon (talk) 16:15, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I also support the merge. However, since "constructed world" is the less used term, this should be merged to Worldbuilding. I never heard the term "constructed world" used for worldbuilding outside Wikipedia, and a glance at the Google results shows that it is not commonly used for worldbuilding. Goldfritha (talk) 23:22, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. Where "constructed world" is used outside wikipedia, it is more often in the sense of constructivism. It's use for fictional world building almost seems like a neologism, whereas "world building" (in this sense) has been around since at least the 1970s.&mdash;RJH (talk) 14:47, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I believe that the two articles should merge, using material mainly from the current constructed world page while having the same name as the current Worldbuilding page. Series premiere (remake) (talk) 05:55, 13 July 2008 (UTC)


 * There has been no opposition to a merge, either here or on the worldbuilding talk page. I think we can take that as a consensus. (The exception would be the external links; the worldbuilding page external links include several that are inappropriate per wikipedia guidelines.)&mdash;RJH (talk) 16:30, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Merge completed.&mdash;RJH (talk) 16:52, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Citation?
Can I point out that this article has absolutely no citation. Neither is there anything in the text to explain the source of the terminology it describes and uses. In short, there is absolutely nothing on this page to demonstrate that the terminology which is the subject of the article, is anything except the personal contrivance of the author or authors - and therefore in any way valid. I'm not discrediting the validity of the information, only pointing out taht it does absolutely nothing to verify itself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.217.231.252 (talk • contribs)

There used to be external links to several amateur conworlds. Those links have been removed, and now there are dead internal links to non-existent Wikipedia articles about those amateur conworlds.

I don't think any of these amateur conworlds deserve Wikipedia articles, but why remove the external links? Was it done by accident?

If no one objects, I'll remove the nonexistent article links and add back the external links. --Jim Henry 22:56, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree with you, that sounds reasonable (I am on the way to translate this article to the german wikipedia and will do this in the same way there) -- Gomeck 18:35, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I've restored the lost links and added one more (the Ferochromon -- it has some seriously weird physics, the best amateur attempt I've seen at a world with different basic physics than ours). There's more detail about the physics in this list mail message than on the web page, but I'm not sure I should add two external links for one conworld. --Jim Henry | Talk 16:34, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Merge with fictional universe?
already the intro says it, "a constructed world is a fictional world". "world" and "universe" in this context are synonyms, and there is no intrinsic difference. dab (&#5839;) 10:12, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I am not sure it is a good idea to merge them. The focuses of the articles and their topics are slightly different.  In  fictional universe the term "fictional" means "used in narrative fiction"; in this article the term "fictional" means "made up, imaginary".  One article is about worlds that are made up as background for stories; the other article is about the process of making up worlds for any purpose, not just as background for stories.   The material from this article about map making and professional vs. amateur constructed worlds would be out of place in the other article without some major rework. --Jim Henry | Talk 15:55, 8 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Agreed; oppose merge. &mdash; JEREMY 10:16, 10 August 2005 (UTC)


 * The difference: in this article "world" has a fairly narrow meaning (a planet, its ecology, and its cultures), while fictional universe uses a much broader meaning. A fictional universe may be built around a large number of constructed worlds.  &#8227; &#5339;&#5505;  [[Image:Venus symbol (blue).gif|&#9792;]] [ &#5200; ] 01:50, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
 * If I understand this right (unlikely), fictional universes are ad hoc creations for use in books, comics, what have you, whereas conworlds can be ends in themselves. --Kizor 08:22, 20 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Do not merge, these things are different. Sjakkalle (Check!)  07:58, 15 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I also oppose a merge. Conworlds are often created as ends in and of themselves; fictional universes tend to be created as a backdrop for a story. (In other words, I agree with Kizor.) Jiawen 21:45, 15 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I am with you - I oppose the merge. And sorry my name doesn't show up - wiki wont let me login. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.127.198.77 (talk) 20:25, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

Professional Created Worlds
On the first sentence, is mentioning Ethshar really appropriate since it is mentioned in the next paragraph? The first paragraph seems to only be about Middle-Earth and J.R.R. Tolkien, so the mention of this world throws everything off, unless that world is to be compared to Middle-Earth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.42.155.5 (talk • contribs)

Conreligion
Needs to be included.Jeff503 00:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

what does THIS mean?
"Authors typically revise constructed worlds to complete a single work in a series." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.100.204.87 (talk • contribs)

map making
Shouldn't it be sapient(wise or trying to appear wise) settlements rather than sentient (ability to feel)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.23.56.68 (talk • contribs)

Tolkien
There are little or no scholarly works concerning conworlding. It sounds to me like most of the references about Tolkien and Sub Creation come from his essay, "On Fairy-Stories" which may be found online. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.238.73.35 (talk • contribs)

Rewrite
There is enough good content here that I'd like to propose a total rewrite. I've already subdivided and expanded the article into sections, but a front-to-back rewrite would help alot if it's planned in advance.

My todo list is to make a new structure, convert the existing material to that strucuture, and then add source citations. I agree with —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.238.73.35 (talk • contribs) that there is little scholarly material available; however, there is some good material on the web that can be cited. Winchell Chung has some credentials on the cosmology side and is extremely well-regarded. Geoff Eddyis an amateur but his site is widely linked and well-received. While I'd support academic links in preference to amateur or commercial links, when such are unavailable we have to use what is available just like any other article as long as it is reliable.


 * Purpose (RPG vs conventional fiction vs world-building for its own sake)
 * Approaches
 * Top-down vs bottom-up. Emergent worlds (worlds designed retroactively as part of a shared creative universe or in response to accretion of sequels). RPG worlds
 * Methodology
 * Cosmology
 * Magic / Natural Law
 * Physical Geography
 * Climate
 * Ecology
 * Human Geography
 * Language and Culture
 * Names
 * Constructed Worlds in fiction
 * Fantasy
 * Science Fiction
 * Roleplaying Games
 * Conworlds as Art
 * Criticism (there are some good critiques of conworlding we can reference)
 * Resources
 * Conworlds in fiction
 * Sample Conworlds
 * World Construction Techniques

This is alot to do in one sitting and I'd rather have buy-in before I proceed. Any objections? Or suggestions?

Wellspring 14:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I would suggest changing "Human geography" to something like "Social geography" or "Political grography" as the native population may not necessarily be human.&mdash;RJH (talk) 15:19, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Novelas
Hello, Wikipedia's contributors. I am Mighty Erick, a conworlder from Wikia. Just to inform the section division of conworlding in Novelas is not working anymore. You can ask to the administrators there to confirm it. At this moment only ConWorlds Wiki and Imagination Wiki (fantasy conworlds only) are working on worldbuilding, so I will update that info at this page.

Any question you can talk us at:

Serpex, current admin of Novelas: http://fiction.wikia.com/wiki/User:Serprex/Miscellaneous

Yanus, admin of ConWorlds Wiki: http://conworld.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:Yanus

Mighty Erick (me), current admin of Imagination: http://conmyth.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:Mightyerick

I hope this info would be useful. Thanks for your collaboration.Mightyerick (talk) 01:11, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Links Section?
It seems to me that there is a lot of "advertising," and not very much in the way of resourceful links in this section, other than a few. Perhaps we should discuss these links and trim down a bit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ishmayl (talk • contribs) 01:08, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree. The links section should not just be an advertisement for your favorite (or personal) sites.  There are several links in this section that lead to new pages, or pages that really don't have to do with ConWorlding so much as they do generic role playing.  I see probably 3 on the list that should really stay. --70.63.69.116 (talk) 22:39, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Edited to remove superfluous links. Please make sure you look at links to be avoided before adding tons of links.  Personal sites, wikia sites with little or no content, pages specifically catering to gaming and not conworlding, are against wikipedia's rules for external links.  Several of the sites removed were nothing more than advertisements for personal sites, and several links led to dead sites, or spam sites.  --WormShade (talk) 20:21, 17 April 2008 (UTC)


 * We could probably remove any of the external links with the work "community", "discussion" or "forum". Conversely, we could add the DMoz World Building link as I think that site has at least a modicum of editorial control. Here's a few more suggestions:
 * http://www.sfwa.org/bulletin/articles/baxter.htm
 * http://www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuilding1.htm
 * http://www.seventhsanctum.com/www/wwwfull.html
 * Thanks.&mdash;RJH (talk) 18:00, 19 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know why "community," "discussion," or "forum" would be criteria for deleting links? --Brandon (talk) 16:15, 20 May 2008 (UTC)


 * External links: Links normally to be avoided, #10. Links to social networking sites (such as MySpace or Fan sites), discussion forums/groups (such as Yahoo! Groups), USENET newsgroups or e-mail lists.&mdash;RJH (talk) 17:52, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

No content?
The links to Wikia Conworlding Communities were wrongly deleted. Those wikias are not personal nor wikia sites with no content, they are big communities, you can look at them and you will find over 60 persons working right there, Conworld has 1900 articles, Pegasus has 800 articles and Basilicus has over 400 articles, it is one of the bigger conworlding communities and one of the biggest collections of conworlds on the web. Please look out before deleting stuff!!! Those wikis are the center of a loooot of conworlding. Furthermore, I did not add tons of links, I just correct the Novelas one (Novelas is not conworlding anymore, that link was since a lot of time ago) replacing it with its current replacements Conmyth and Conworld. Look at them, they are not about generic role playing, they are about pure conworlding.

But I know it may be wrong that I, being involved on that giant project, added it by myself. If any external person wants to add those three links back, thanks a lot!!! Please look them out!! They are big!!!! Mightyerick (talk) 01:13, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's possible some of those edits were removed without due consideration. Mightyerick, which links are you referring to, I'll look at them and add them back if they look to be content-worthy.  In actuality, I doubt anyone will mind you just adding them yourself, but some people do get a bit up in arms about that. --Brandon (talk) 19:39, 12 May 2008 (UTC)


 * On the other hand, I do see that an extremely large majority of your edits are links to your own personal sites - I don't believe this is generally considered acceptable procedure for adding links... --Brandon (talk) 19:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The size of the community is irrelevant. Discussion forums just aren't appropriate for external links. See External_links.&mdash;RJH (talk) 14:51, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Copy edit needed
I have some issues with the following paragraph (which I removed from the article):


 * English toponyms such as found among the place names of the British Isles might also be used, along with an explanation that the civilization's language has been (fictionally) translated "completely" into English; the only restrictions here being that, remembering henceforth that the rules applying to place names within a given translation scheme only do so because it was first decided which rules should apply to proper names as a whole, therefore automatically applying to place names, personal names, and surnames by extension, one must for the sake of consistency resist the urge to create any proper names simply for aesthetic appeal (only very recently have personal names been chosen this way; traditionally, all proper names within a language have an immediately recognizable meaning such that anyone should recognize a given name as but a nominal application of an ordinary word), with the possible odd exception of a name that could not be translated from the (fictional) original language, in which case one might wish to create a scheme for Anglicizing spellings, and momentarily barring this exception, that one can only use morphemes of known etymology (as it would make no sense to translate something from a source language using words that have no known original meaning in the target language) in a place name or any other proper name. J. R. R. Tolkien used this strategem for dealing with names, including place names, that were "originally" the same language fictionally translated into English throughout The Lord of the Rings and its relatives, which were likewise "translated" into relatives of Modern English such as Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse.  While seeming a dauntingly complicated process, it is actually infinitely simpler than developing a realistic language.

It contains quite possibly the longest sentence I have ever seen in a paragraph. The writing badly needs to be reworked so that it is much more comprehensible and makes for smoother reading.&mdash;RJH (talk) 20:00, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Jennifer Diane Reitz
Is this a notable enough example to include in this page? Compared to the works of published authors such as Tolkien, Pratchett, LeGuin, etc., a webcomic seems rather... obscure. There are certainly many webcomic authors who have built worlds, why should this example be included over others? CallMeCaito (talk) 12:44, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Where do we draw the line?&mdash;RJH (talk) 19:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure, but it seems reasonable to stick with worldbuilding examples that have been published by established, third-party publishers. There's no dearth of examples from fantasy and sci-fi novels, video games, RPGs, etc.CallMeCaito (talk)
 * I agree that this seems a big obscure. It sounds like it was added out of a fan's love not for any worth of content —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.4.93.35 (talk) 23:16, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Age of Worldbuilding
What was the oldest work of worldbuilding? How old is worldbuilding? Was it existing even before in olden works like "The Epic of Gilgamesh" or is it fairly a new phenomenon developing only in the 19th to 20th centuries? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.105.37.169 (talk) 14:41, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Middle-earth and Azeroth
Two examples of famous maps in both literature and modern media are Middle-earth and the world of Azeroth.

Two examples of famous fictional detectives are Sherlock Holmes and Tom Barnaby. Two examples of famous fictional pirates are Long John Silver and Captain Jack Sparrow. Two famous alien invasion stories are The War of the Worlds and Independence Day. Two examples of famous beauties are Helen of Troy and Angelina Jolie. Two examples of famous revolutions are The French Revolution and The Pink Revolution. Two examples of famous religion-founders are Moses and Brigham Young. Two examples of famous vampire hunters are Abraham van Helsing and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Two examples of famous rock operas are Jesus Christ Superstar and Antichrist Superstar. ...

I give up. Not one of these does full justice to the original sentence that I was trying to parody. And I wonder if there is anything in them that strikes someone else but me as somehow inappropriate.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 19:25, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Some examples of constructed worlds in professionally published works are Middle-earth and Ethshar.

Wow. This one actually beats the previous one.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 20:05, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

"Wow. This one actually beats the previous one."

Well, what would you suggest as an alternative second example? I can think of several from literature, such as Brooks' Shannara, Robert Jordan's "Randland", George RR Martin's Westeros, and so forth. Azeroth, though, actually isn't a bad example considering the widespread appeal of World of Warcraft, and the fact that world-building doesn't simply happen within the context of books. WiseBass (talk) 05:35, 4 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Robert E. Howard's Hyborian World or H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamland. It has to be something from a classic. --Bluejay Young (talk) 23:08, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Construction section
We've got a lot of words on the top-down building method, but are still lacking in anything on the bottom-up route. Similar but not identical is when the builder starts with a gimmick, leading to either extrapolative (assume premise X; what follows?) or justificational (suppose X, now how does that make sense?) methods. Is anyone feeling driven to talk about these? Wyvern (talk) 18:55, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you know of a reliable source that discusses these methods in more depth? Regards, RJH (talk) 21:02, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Dubious

 * The result may sometimes be called a constructed world, conworld or sub-creation.

I've tried to verify this statement with independent, reliable sources but I have been unable to do so. For example, "constructed world" is used in a number of different disciplines including psychology, sociology and literature, but I could not confirm that it is used in the sense of a well-developed "Worldbuilding" exercise used here. Unless the statement can be properly confirmed, I think it should be removed as a non-notable assertion. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * "Sub-creation" is from Tolkien's On Fairy-Stories (as is the unmentioned "Secondary World"). As for "conworld", construct currently appears 28 times in the article; but, as you say, that doesn't make it notable. The statement can probably be removed/rewritten as Wikipedia is not a dictionary and the use of "sometimes" bothers me. -- Kazwolf (talk) 05:33, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I think "Secondary World" is a more useful term, and one that I frequently hear from authors and fans from forums and blogs discussing these types of stories. "Conworld" is too vague, and "Sub-creation" is a reference to the process of world-building, not an actual secondary world (I've never heard of someone refer to their imagined world as a "sub-creation"). WiseBass (talk) 05:38, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * To call the world a "subcreation" is a misuse of Tolkien's wording. WiseBass is right. Subcreation is the process of making a secondary world (with the real or earth world as primary). Tolkien believed only God could create primary worlds so human subcreation was analogous to kids imitating their parents.
 * Of course, what is needed is citations from notable sources -- not some fanzine, obviously, but something like Time, Newsweek, etc. I'll do some looking around. --Bluejay Young (talk) 22:58, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I saw no reliable sources using the term "conworld" so I removed it. Also, the wikibook called conworld is fine, but Wikipedia does not link to random wiki projects just because they are operated by the wikimedia. A book somebody created out of nowhere fails WP:EL rules,so I removed it. DreamGuy (talk) 17:54, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Conworld is non-notable
I've tried repeatedly to find reliable sources for this statement, but have been unsuccessful:
 * The resulting world may be called a constructed world or a conworld.

Legitimate writers just call it "world building". The terms "conworld" and "constructed world" appear to be neologisms adopted by a few hobbyists that have yet to attain any notability. "Constructed world" is used for different purposes in psychology, politics, religion, and sociology; anything but the sense in which it is used here. I think the statement should be removed from the article per WP:WEIGHT. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:23, 5 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I removed it after coming to the same conclusion. DreamGuy (talk) 17:55, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Title
According to the rules of wikipedia, the title of this article should be "World building" because it gets more hits. Any thoughts on this?--Hitsuji Kinno (talk) 15:57, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * A potential drawback might be some confusion with the New York World Building. Another issue is that "World building" has the low number of redirects, compared to some of the others (Ex.: Constructed world, Conworld, Geofiction and World-building). But otherwise I would have no issue with a rename.&mdash;RJH (talk) 18:33, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I like World-building. There is a website called world-building which is getting second place on google searches for "worldbuilding". --Bluejay Young (talk) 22:59, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I was going to start fixing it to "world-building" throughout the article until I noticed that the article currently uses the incorrect word. We need to get this article moved. DreamGuy (talk) 17:56, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Geofiction
What about the link to "Geofiction" - it redirects you back to this article, though geofiction is a slightly different thing with a focus on the graphical presentation of the imaginary places. I would like to write the article, but English is not my mother tongue. Perhaps there's another user who would start the article? There are several good sources on the net, just google "geofiction". Joschi81 (talk) 10:05, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * My suggestion would be to start a stub article and reference it with your good sources so that it doesn't quickly get AfD'd.&mdash;RJH (talk) 18:35, 18 August 2010 (UTC)


 * There used to be a separate page about Geofiction, and there should be as Geofiction and Worldbuilding is not the same. See this page for an explanation of the difference. For some reason, someone at some time thought it would be a good idea to merge Geofiction and Worldbuilding in Wikipedia. It would be better to change that back and reinstate the separate Geofiction page. — Lajib (talk) 04:55, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * True, geofiction and worldbuilding are not the same thing. The geofiction used in game-playing is alluded to in the end of the opening paragraph, "for personal enjoyment or its own sake," but is mentioned nowhere else. There is no commentary on how geofiction is played, in that it is an open-ended creation of a fictional world by its many players with no story arc to follow. (I fear someone is going to cite ONEDAY, but that "one day" was decades ago — indeed, the game of Risk is a basic form of geofiction. More advanced forms of the game contain players from all over the world, and some individual games have been going on for nearly 15 years. I don't feel comfortable adding it myself due to NPOV and CONFLICT, but I wish someone would.   → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 01:23, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I added a mention of geofiction in the Map making section, along with a cite, and updated the redirect. If it is split off again, I think a WP:SS section here would still be appropriate. Regards, RJH (talk) 17:07, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The term "geofiction" was coined in the early 1980s by Dutch hobbyists to describe what they were doing: designing fictional countries and worlds. Geofiction is not fictional map-making (and I have never seen the term used with that meaning before). The book cited refers to a webpage that no longer exists, which makes it rather difficult to check whether some terminological change occurred in some sub-community of worldbuilders/geofictionists or that the author is just wrong, but I suspect it is the latter. In any case, I would suggest to remove the current mention of geofiction. At best that usage of the term is idiosyncratic; at worst it is wrong. If geofiction is mentioned on this page (which may be the best alternative if it doesn't get back its own page), then it should either be treated as a synonym of worldbuilding or - more appropriately - as an overlapping phenomenon differing in two respects: (a) geographic scale is not limited to worlds but is often smaller, and (b) worlds/countries/etc. are not created for any other purpose than the joy of creation itself. Lajib (talk) 05:35, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Faster-than-light travel
In § Physics, I've mitigated this bald assertion:
 * faster-than-light travel is a common factor in most much science fiction.

I've been reading sf for almost 60 years. FTL is certainly a common trope, and it may well have been in most sf in the 1950's. But the field has expanded far, far beyond space travel since then (not that it was ever just space travel), and I daresay nobody is, or could possibly be, familiar with enough of it to know for certain. Thnidu (talk) 04:05, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Mythopoeia - A Potential Synonym
Mythopoeia appears to be a potential synonym. It feels this might belong in the See Also section, but, admittedly, I'm not 100% certain and felt it would be better to post this in the talk section rather than edit the article without a word. Zorrent12 (talk) 21:16, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Recentism
The statement "The creation of literary fictional worlds was first examined by fantasy authors such as George MacDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, and C. S. Lewis." doesn't seem to be an accurate characterization of Mark P. Wolf's Building Imaginary Worlds. Wolf recounts several pre-20th century examples, back to Homer and the Bible. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy cites the Odyssey (8th c. BC), True History (160), Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657), and Gulliver's Travels (1726) as prime examples preceding Edgar Rice Burroughs. This should be written to have a broader historical scope. See also Recentism. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 06:36, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

If the source counts as reliable, use it. You are a registered user, so you can improve the text with better sources.

Now for the examples you mention:
 * The Odyssey was apparently written in the 8th century BC. It was part of the Epic Cycle, a collection of 8 epic poems based on the Trojan War, the events leading up to it, and its consequences. Most of the other epics are now lost, though we have summaries and various adaptations of material from them. As with much of Ancient Greek literature, we do not know how much the author/authors drew from older works or oral tradition, and how much they invented themselves.
 * True History depicts "travelling to outer space, alien life-forms and interplanetary warfare." And it was clearly not intended as a factual account. "Lucian goes on to state that the story recounted in True History is about "things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." " In many ways it is a more clear-cut exercise in worldbuilding.
 * Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon is in part based on True History. It depicts the invention of flying machines, use of rockets to fly into outer space, use of solar energy to power machines, and some alien life forms. A large influence on science fiction.
 * Gulliver's Travels has protagonist Lemuel Gulliver traveling to several fictional islands and continents over a period of 16 years (1699-1715). He gets a hell of a culture shock and ends up a reclusive misanthrope. A pretty good example of worldbuilding, with the introduction of multiple cultures and civilizations, each of them distinct. And in this case the work is satirical. Among the themes of the work: "A satirical view of the state of European government, and of petty differences between religions", "An inquiry into whether men are inherently corrupt or whether they become corrupted", A restatement of the older "ancients versus moderns" dispute.

By the way, George MacDonald (1824-1905) is more of a 19th-century writer than a 20th century one. He wrote all his major works between 1858 and 1895. He is considered the founder of modern fantasy, though John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River (1841) may count as an earlier British fantasy novel. Ruskin's tale is part fairy tale, and part Christian allegory on the value of charity and mercy. Dimadick (talk) 09:33, 22 April 2017 (UTC)