How to build a universe? An essay asking that in its title caught my eye a few months ago. I thought the idea preposterous, whether you’d seek an answer in religion or in science. But Emily Meller’s piece turned out not to be about faith nor astrophysics. It’s about something much more mundane — a computer program called Space Engine. In her own words:

It’s somewhere between a space simulator and a game — a mostly true reconstruction of the universe that lets you travel in any direction as far as you want to go. I say true because it is based on scientific data — the entire Hipparcos catalogue of stars, galaxies from the New General Catalogue, all well-known nebulae and extrasolar planets. But once you pass the point that scientists have mapped or modelled, the game keeps going. It starts generating its own planets and stars, combining accurate astronomical phenomena in wild patterns.

Space Engine is a full-sized model of a universe. Not the universe, because although governed by similar laws, it’s completely different, with its own stars and planets. But this layer of fiction doesn’t matter to the thousands of people who scour the algorithmic space for anything of interest and share their findings. From the trivial, like a sunset over an unnamed world, to the strangely epic discovery of an Earth-like planet. Their subreddit and forums are full of screenshots, videos, and discussions. They are a community of real explorers of a non-real universe.

That universe was built by a single person. A Russian developer, Vladimir Romanyuk.

But Vladimir is not the only algorithmic world builder out there. You might have heard about No Man’s Sky after it ignited a media frenzy last year. It’s a space exploration game that, just like Space Engine, utilizes procedural generation — a method of creating data through algorithms. No Man’s Sky features a whole universe built from scratch, open for endless exploration. The world is so big that everyone can be first: first to see planets no one else will find and first to discover species no one else will encounter.

The more I thought about this new phenomenon of procedurally generated worlds, the more I realized the only new thing here is the technology. In fact, we have been conjuring worlds even before we were writing and we carried that affection over to the modern times. This is what sci-fi and fantasy owe their popularity to. It’s why Marvel Cinematic Universe smashes the box office with each superhero movie. It’s also why me and my friends loved acting out knights, wizards, and vampires tangled up in byzantine plots during our tabletop roleplaying days, with nothing more than sheets of paper and a set of dice.

Reading Emily Meller’s essay, I realized that I’ve spent thousands of hours in imagined spaces throughout my life. Thousands of hours of exploring and creating. And it struck me that I never stopped to think about why do I do that. Why so many other people do that, seeking and creating new worlds in books, in computers, in their heads. Does our world suck? Are the alternatives any better? And can you even call them alternatives, if they don’t exist?

There are as many answers as people out there, so I wanted to compare different perspectives. That’s how Inner Worlds came to be. I went out and interviewed writers, game designers, community members, and scientists to better understand the allure of imagined worlds. It was much more personal than I expected, but I guess you cannot talk about imagination without exposing yourself. I hope you enjoy visiting Inner Worlds as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

The final words of this introduction should be words of appreciation: for the 11 people who shared their precious time with me to discuss imagined worlds and for Jess Anderson, who illustrated Inner Worlds and offered relentless support. Thank you.