https://emsenn.net/tags/paracosm/Recent content in Paracosm on emsenn.netHugoen-usThu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://emsenn.net/blog/2025-09-04-1957-paracosms-and-secondary-worlds/Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000https://emsenn.net/blog/2025-09-04-1957-paracosms-and-secondary-worlds/<p>In paracosm, the term &ldquo;paracosm&rdquo; refers to psychological concept developed in the 1970s, after a paper by Robert Silvey LaRue and David Cohen. Reading about it, however, it seems like it is about endless variations on a theme, speaking to fiction where my understanding of &ldquo;paracosm&rdquo; was semi-organically emerged secondary worlds, of the sort Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft made, with geographic overlap and timeline continuity.</p> <p>From what I can get (the paper isn&rsquo;t open-access), LaRue and Cohen are more concerned with the method, and when the method results in one big world or many little ones, that isn&rsquo;t important to them so much as how the people developing and expressing them are being affected.</p>