Fictional country
Fictional countries
Fictional countries were common in first stories of science fiction (or scientific romance). Jonathan Swift’s protagonist Lemuel Gulliver visited various strange places. Edgar Rice Burroughs placed adventures of Tarzan to areas in Africa that, at the time, were mostly unexplored. Isolated island with strange craatures and/or customs were all the rage. When western explorers had surveyed most of the Earth’s surface, this option was lost and thereafter utopic and dystopic societies have been usually placed on other planets, whether human colonies in our solar system or societies in fictional planets orbiting other stars.
These countries are supposedly part of the normal Earth landscape although nobody can find them in the normal atlas. Superhero and agent comics and some thrillers still use fictional countries as backdrops. Most of these countries exist only for a single story, TV series episode or an issue of comic book.
Fictional countries are often made to resemble or even represent some real-world country or used to present an utopia or dystopia for commentary. Writer may create a fictional version of a specific country or, for example, stereotypical “European”, “Arabic”, “Asian” or “Latin American” country for the purposes of his story. Variant of the country’s name usually makes clear what country he really means.
However, modern writers usually do not try to pass their stories as facts, unlike George Psalmanazar who in 1600’s pretended to be a prince from an island of Formosa (what is now Taiwan) and wrote a fictional description about it to convince his sponsors.
Fictional countries include:
- Aerican Empire
- Ardistan of Karl Friedrich May
- Babar’s Kingdom
- Beninia of John Brunner: Stand on Zanzibar
- Calia in Modesty Blaise episode of Jerico Caper
- Country of the Blind of H.G.Wells
- Dinotopia
- Ecotopia of Ernest Callenbach
- Erewhon of Samuel Butler
- Freedonia
- Freiland of Theodor Hertzka
- Gormerghast of Merwyn Peake
- Grand Fenwick
- Graustark
- Herland of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Latveria of Marvel Universe
- Maple White Land, land of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World
- Mardi archipelago of Herman Melville’s Mardi and a voyage thither
- Moominland of Tove Jansson
- Ophir
- Pellucidar, one version of Hollow Earth.
- Porto Claro
- Pottsylvania
- Riallaro archipelago of Godfrey Sweven (Riallaro, the Archipelago of Exiles)
- Ruritania of Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda
- San Lorenzo of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Gradle
- Skull Island of King Kong movie(s)
- Tanah Masa of Karel Capek’s War with the Newts
- Treasure Island of Robert Louis Stevenson
- Utopia by Thomas More
- Tarzan had adventures in Ashair, Caspak, Castra Sanguinaries & Castrum Mare, London-on-Thames, Opar, Pellucidar, Pal-ul-Don and Xujan Kingdom
- Tintin traveled to Borduria, Khemed San Theodoros, and Syldavia
- Lemuel Gulliver stumbled upon Balnibarbi, Brobdingnag, Glubbdubdrib, Laputa, Lilliput and Blefuscu, Luggnagg and the land of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos
- See also Imaginary countries
Books:
- Alberto Manguel & Gianni Guadalupi: The Dictionary of imaginary places
- Brian Stableford: The dictionary of science fiction places.