Extra-Dimensional Spaces

[Saigonnus]

As the title suggests, I was curious as to everyone's thoughts on extra-dimensional spaces in a fantasy world. It has come up a few times in literature and I was curious if it would be worth doing having an entire city in an extra-dimensional space.

I had a dream last night where I was looking down on a city in a wasteland that covered perhaps a square mile, but inside it was twenty times that large; obviously in an extra-dimensional space and it seemed like a cool idea. As is common in a dream, I knew the rest of the planet was pretty much uninhabitable, so I didn't dwell much on it. Everything (for infrastructure) the city needed was part of that massive area, including a lake that provided the city with fresh water.

Another variation occurred to me a while ago, having thought about it, having the city take up a given area, but all the buildings within the city each are seperate dimensional spaces, like the tent from Harry Potter, looking small on the outside, but vast on the inside.

Which variation do you prefer and why?

 

[Darkblade]

I think calling them "extra-dimensional" sounds a bit more sci-fi than fantasy.

That said having more space than appears physically possible is always a cool fantasy device. Out of the two ideas you presented I think I prefer the second, the extra city within a city has been done many times before, whereas an finite city filled with buildings of infinite interior space is something I have never heard of before.

 

[Saigonnus]

I think calling them "extra-dimensional" sounds a bit more sci-fi than fantasy.

I was simply using that term to describe it, hoping people would understand what I meant by it. I haven't even done more than wrote up the basic concept of how the city operates and background for the world and what made it that way.

I really appreciate the valuable input and I had the same idea. I really haven't seen a city depicted in that way myself, but I still like the second option better myself, seems more believable to me.

 

[The Unseemly]

I've actually been using the concept of this "extra-dimensional" space myself quite a bit, and I believe I posted part of my WIP involving the "extra-dimensional" space (though this may not be exactly what you're looking for.):

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/showcase/7875-prologue-explain-all-things.html

Basically: weirdness. I suppose this makes the extra-dimensional reality slightly looking more like something you don't get as part of your everyday life, and it breaks rules. Paradoxes are most welcome here.

Odd characters have been working for me as well, things that think and interact with their environment in that slightly weird way. And, of course, they think what they're doing is perfectly normal.

Also: look up Tartis (courtesy of Doctor Who...).

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I like the idea. Hidden locations is not new of course, but it can be an excellent element in a story. It can lead to huge possibilities like hide and seek on a city sized scale. If every building is not say maybe one extradimensional space, but two or three. Here I'm thinking a little of Crossworlds - but what say you open the door to a building and end up in the building. You open the back door and end up in a completely different building.

You could end up having thieves / assassins coming and going with chases ending up in inexplicable dead ends. Spies walking out of nowhere to do their business. Crims escaping their cells where it simply isn't possible. And if you make the world large enough and complex enough, actual wars between factions, where the battles start in one plane and end in another, all within the confines of a single city.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Nihal]

Here I'm thinking a little of Crossworlds - but what say you open the door to a building and end up in the building. You open the back door and end up in a completely different building..

This instantly reminded me of Howl's Moving Castle's Magic Door...

...which is a quite interesting concept I've not seen being used so often.

 

[Anders Ämting]

Oh, I love this sort of stuff. In one of my older projects, the main character's family were specialists in space/time magic and their ancestral castle made heavy use of warped spaces. The plot of one of the books was supposed to be that the enchantments started affecting nearby areas as well, so that doors suddenly didn't lead to where they were supposed to and so on.

Also, this topic reminds me of this awesome Portal 2 video:

 

[Saigonnus]

You could end up having thieves / assassins coming and going with chases ending up in inexplicable dead ends. Spies walking out of nowhere to do their business. Crims escaping their cells where it simply isn't possible. And if you make the world large enough and complex enough, actual wars between factions, where the battles start in one plane and end in another, all within the confines of a single city.

A whole thieve's guild in a 20x20 building seems viable, maybe even with hidden exits to some of their "fronts" for ease of travel through the city. Escaping a cell wouldn't really happen since magicians who have the capability of manipulating space like that are kept in special cells that eliminate their magic.

There no saying yet whether it is simply "bending space" within the buildings or using space from another dimension to accomplish the feat. I haven't really decided which way I want to go but likely it wouldn't be a dimension/plane that is inhabited, so wars with being from another dimension probably wouldn't come into it.

 

[ThomasCardin]

I am having a lot of fun with extra-dimensional spaces in one of my WIPS. The trick will be making your 'funkyspace' integral to your story and not just mind-candy. What is responsible for this extra breathing room? Is it just a nexus of magical uberness?

 

[Saigonnus]

I am having a lot of fun with extra-dimensional spaces in one of my WIPS. The trick will be making your 'funkyspace' integral to your story and not just mind-candy. What is responsible for this extra breathing room? Is it just a nexus of magical uberness?

I haven't decided yet what it is beyond a magically constructed space. I would think if the rest of the planet was uninhabitable for whatever reason, they would be forced to live in the only place that still sustains life; and as such would need more space as the population increases beyond what the original city was designed to hold. I can see the population being such that the city government sets up a schedule for people to be out on the street so all of them aren't out all at once, stopping all traffic in the city in the press of people.

Necessity is the motherhood of invention, so the wizards simply experimented until they got it right; perhaps a few died in the process.

 

[Corvus]

It sounds like a really interesting idea.
I got this image whit the thief's guild of them disappearing in to this innocent looking house and the authorities just looking confusedly as to where the thieves disappeared of to.

The second sounds batter to me but you have the problem of regulating how many people are out on the streets. The schedule thing sounds somewhat oppressive, then again if everyone is used to it they might not even think about it.
How about a combination: manly have the interior of the houses be in another dimension but whit a few public places like parks be larger then the actual space so the people can meet and socialize in larger numbers.
I don't think I ever came across extra-dimensional space being the solution for living space in an post-apocalyptic world before.

 

[Addison]

Look up fairy lore. There's a legend in Scotland, or Ireland, about a rock door which only opened one day, May Day (a fairy holiday) to an invisible island where humans were allowed to come and party with the fairies. This ended hundreds of years ago when a guest plucked a flower. The pissed fairies threw them out, shut the door and moved it supposedly to the top of a mountain. It hasn't been opened since.

But the island wasn't in the Otherworld where the fairies live. It was its own space which sounds like what you want. Another way to look at it from fairy lore is the veil. The writers of Charmed did their research for the episode "Once Upon a Time". The trolls (not to lore-code) and fairies could only be seen in tween places. Fairies can only be seen in places where the edge of their world meet our world. Doorways and windows are common as are places of water. These places can be doorways to places. In your story you can make it that certain door ways, at certain tween times or such, are doorways to pocket dimension places.