has a special relation to postmodernism, it is what he calls postmodernism’s
‘low art’ double, its ‘sister-genre in the same sense that the popular detective
thriller is modernist fiction’s sister-genre’ (1989, p. 59). However, the cre-
ation of another world can take a lot of forms other than science fiction.
There are many different types of world that you might create:
- a world in the future
- a world on another planet
- our world after a major change such as a nuclear war
- our world as it might have been if history had been different
- a world after death
- a utopia or dystopia
- a mixture of some of the above.
You might ask, what is the purpose of constructing another world when
there is so much to say about this one? First, conceiving another world can
be a way of commenting on the actual world we live in. In other words, it
can produce social criticism about our world, it can have a satirical edge,
and in consequence it can be highly political. Creating new worlds defa-
miliarises our own, making us see it afresh. Consequently, it can be a way
of generating new ideas about our world, and how it could be constructed
in an entirely different way, and with different values.
Second, creating another world can also be a way of exploring the
unconscious, so that the new world consists of a hidden psychological
reality in which forbidden things happen, or in which unrelated events are
brought together. In this way it can be a surreal, or Freudian, landscape:
one which reflects inner realities that are normally repressed.
Finally, some authors use the creation of a new world to talk about, and
question, metaphysical beliefs. In other words they use it as a way of
illuminating philosophical problems about the nature and purpose
of existence. So to create another world is to pose the question of what
the purpose of our own existence is.
Building your world
A number of issues about the physical construction of the world will need
to be addressed:
- Is the world going to be very close in time to our world or very distant from
it? Will it be in the future, the near future or the far future? I usually find
pieces of this type more interesting when they are further removed from
our world. But if you want to make the piece a critique of our society, it
can be beneficial to forge a more explicit link between the world you are
148 The Writing Experiment