Fictional country



         




A fictional country is a country that is made up, and does not exist in real life. Fictional lands appear most commonly as settings in literature or movies.

Fictional countries appear commonly in stories of early science fiction (or scientific romance). Such countries supposedly form part of the normal Earth landscape although not located in a normal atlas. Later similar tales often took place on fictional planets.

Jonathan Swift's protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, visited various strange places. Edgar Rice Burroughs placed adventures of Tarzan in areas in Africa that, at the time, remained mostly unknown to the West. Isolated islands with strange creatures and/or customs enjoyed great popularity in these authors' times. When Western explorers had surveyed most of the Earth's surface, this option was lost. Thereafter fictional utopian and dystopian societies tended to spring up on other planets or in space, whether in human colonies or in alien societies originating elsewhere.

Superhero and secret agent comics and some thrillers also use fictional countries as backdrops. Most of these countries exist only for a single story, a TV-series episode or an issue of a comic book.

Contents
1 Purpose

1 Incomplete list of fictional countries
2 Lands in Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs
3 Lands in the Tintin stories by Hergé
4 Lands in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
5 Lands inside the Earth
6 Lands of Robert E. Howard
7 Lands of Arda and Middle-earth
8 Lands of Earth in the DC Universe
9 Lands of Earth in Marvel Comics
10 Not on Earth
11 Semi-fictional countries
12 Questionable cases
13 Books
14 Related articles
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Purpose

Fictional countries often deliberately resemble or even represent some real-world country or present a utopia or dystopia for commentary. Variants of the country's name sometimes make it clear what country they really have in mind. (Compare semi-fictional countries below.) By using a fictional country instead of a real one, authors can exercise greater freedom in creating characters, events, and settings, while at the same time presenting a vaguely familiar locale that readers can recognize. A fictional country leaves the author unburdened by the restraints of a real nation's actual history, politics, and culture, and can thus allow for greater scope in plot construction.

Writers may create an archetypal fictional "Eastern European", "Middle Eastern", "Asian," or "Latin American" country for the purposes of their story. (Relatively few fictional countries outside of alternative history have locations in North America or in Western Europe, presumably because global audiences have better familiarity with these areas' actual circumstances.)

Such countries often embody stereotypes about their regions. For example, inventors of a fictional Eastern European country will typically describe it as a former or current Soviet satellite state, or with a suspense storie about a royal family; if pre-20th Century, it will likely resemble Ruritania or feature copious vampires and other supernatural phenomena. A fictional Middle Eastern state often lies somewhere on the Arabian peninsula, has substantial oil-wealth, and either a sultan or a mentally-unstable dictator as a ruler. A fictional Latin American country will typically project images of a banana republic beset by constant revolutions, military dictatorships, and coups d'état.

Modern writers usually do not try to pass off their stories as facts. However, in the early 18th century George Psalmanazar passed himself off as a prince from the island of Formosa (present-day Taiwan) and wrote a fictional description about it to convince his sponsors.

Entrepreneurs have also invented fictional countries solely for the purpose of defrauding people. In the 1820's, Gregor MacGregor sold land in the invented country of Poyais. In modern times, defrauders have invented the Dominion of Melchizedek and the Kingdom of EnenKio (http://www.enenkio.org/). Many varied financial scams play out under the aegis of a fictional country, including selling passports and travel documents, and setting up fictional banks and companies with the seeming imprimatur of full government backing.

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Incomplete list of fictional countries

Fictional works describe all the countries in the following list as located somewhere on the surface of the Earth as we know it -- as opposed to inside the planet, on another world, or during a different "age" of the planet (see below).

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Lands in Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan had adventures in:

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Lands in the Tintin stories by Hergé

Tintin traveled to:

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Lands in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Lemuel Gulliver stumbled upon:

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Lands inside the Earth

See also Hollow Earth.

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Lands of Robert E. Howard

While the map of Earth in the "Hyborian Age" differs markedly from today's, some of Howard's fictional, ancient countries are obviously serve as ancestors of historical ones.

...and others.

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Lands of Arda and Middle-earth

Though J. R. R. Tolkien indicated that he intended Arda to represent our Earth in a previous age, sometimes few correspondences exist between modern landmasses and countries and those of Arda. The following countries, areas or regions feature on the continent Middle-earth:

See also the category Category:Realms of Middle-earth.

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Lands of Earth in the DC Universe

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Lands of Earth in Marvel Comics

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Not on Earth

These countries do not exist on our Earth, but on another planet (or in another universe).

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Semi-fictional countries

Some lands exist uneasily on the borderlands of fiction and fact, of imagination and reality. There follows a list of places with a real counterpart, but which in romantic/poetic imagination or nationalist fervour or historical dimmed memory can become "other". Note that a Latinate name may conjure up visions of (questionable) past grandeur.

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Questionable cases

Countries from stories, myths, legends, that some people have believed to actually exist

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Books

Excellent book; includes details of inhabitants, government structure, and sightseeing tips. Does not cover off-planet locations.
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Related articles






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