The research network Imagining the Impossible brings together eleven researchers working with media fictions (television, film, games, literature), human play (real and virtual), and production design in games and films. We connect theories from the humanities with biocultural, evolutionary, and cognitive theories. We view fantastic fiction as offering imaginary play and cognitive meta-thinking. The network asks why the fantastic has exploded in contemporary entertainment, how and why we play with – create, design, use, engage with – the fantastic, and why the fantastic is adaptive and important for human existence. We use a broad definition of the fantastic as stories which create an ontological rupture, thus making possible the impossible and the inconceivable. We include all fantastic subgenres, such as supernatural horror, fairy tales, science fiction, fantasy, and superheroes.
