Imaginary country

Map of South America with the imaginary country of Palombia.

The imaginary countries or dream nations are the fruit of the imagination of various people —mainly writers and artists— who created fictitious nations in their works. Imaginary countries appear in literature, movies and video games.

Countries in art

Imaginary countries appear regularly in science fiction. Such "countries" are supposed to be part of the Earth, although they are not locatable in the usual atlases. There are also imaginary countries on other planets and even on fictional planets. Generally, these nations have traits that identify them with existing nations, but to avoid naming issues, they merely hint at them. The protagonist of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift visited several strange places. Edgar Rice Burroughs located Tarzan's adventures in areas of Africa that were, at the time, unknown. Superhero stories, secret agent stories, and thrillers often use imaginary countries as a backdrop. Many only exist in a single work, although there are exceptions such as Latveria, a fictional nation created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in the Fantastic Four comic series, or DC Comics' Qurac and Bialya.

Map of Land of Oz, imaginary country of the book The wonderful Wizard of Oz.

One of the best-known examples of an imaginary country is that of Thomas More who, in his book Utopia, created and described his own imaginary nation. Another famous example is that of George Orwell, who in his novel 1984 described a world divided into three superpowers, "Eurasia", "Estasia" and "Oceania", where neo-Bolshevism, "worship of death" and ingsoc, an acronym for "english socialism." Eurasia would comprise Russia and Europe (except the UK). This Asia would include China, Japan and Korea. Oceania would comprise the United Kingdom, America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Then there would be various areas of the world that would be disputed between the various superpowers.

Imaginary countries are common in the literary genre known as "dictator novels," in which the protagonist is often a dictator who rules an imaginary country at an imprecise time. For example, Río Transparente that he names in various stories and would be located in Patagonia and governed by an evil tyrant or in Yo el supremo by Augusto Roa Bastos the dictator ruled a country of illiterates dictating infinite circulars, orders and recommendations.

A cinematographic example is the film Bananas by Woody Allen in which the character Fielding Mellish visits San Marcos Island and becomes involved in the revolution taking place there against the fascist dictator. Mellish ends up being the president of San Marcos.

Countries in games

There are also imaginary countries in strategy games, whether in traditional board games or in video games. Examples of board games that use imaginary countries are Risk, TEG, Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000, as well as the kingdom of Hyrule from The Legend of Zelda. Imaginary countries are also used in business strategy or negotiation exercises or programs. Some companies have developed training software with imaginary countries, such as the Bourse Games or Treasury Games.

Technical countries

Imaginary countries can also be used for technical reasons in reality for the development of specifications, as in the case of the "imaginary country of Bookland", which is used by the European Article Number for ISBN codes 978 and 979 assigned to books and for ISSN code 977 assigned to magazines and newspapers. Also the International Organization for Standardization uses the imaginary country code "ZZ" for States classified ISO 3166-1, not members of ISO.

Map of the imaginary island of Sodor used in British animated child series Thomas and his friends.

Countries for opinion polls

Some imaginary countries were created for the sole purpose of conducting public opinion studies. In April 2004, a poll was conducted in Great Britain where 10% of respondents said that the imaginary country of Luvania would soon join the European Union. Something similar happened in Hungary in March 2007, when two thirds of those surveyed spoke out against giving asylum to immigrants from the imaginary country of Piresa.

Micronations

Imaginary countries are a different category than so-called micronations. These are fictitious countries or projects of new countries. In general, they are entities that have the appearance of an independent nation or state, but are only a reality for their members or creators. They usually have or say they have claims to sovereignty.