About the Journal

Mapping the Impossible is a student journal publishing peer-reviewed open access research into fantasy and the fantastic.

We welcome submissions from undergraduate and (post)graduate students from any higher education institution, and from those who have graduated within the last year. We publish articles on any aspect of fantasy and the fantastic and any work within this multimedial genre. Increasingly, students from more established disciplines (including, but not limited to, Literature Studies, Game Studies, Film and Television Studies, Media Studies, Philosophy and Theology) elect to write essays on a fantasy related topic that intersects with their primary discipline: Mapping the Impossible is an ideal venue for the publication of such work.

Submitting work to the journal is an excellent opportunity to hone your article writing skills, because you will receive constructive feedback on your writing from at least two of your peers. And while we do only accept submissions in English, we aim to be sensitive and welcoming to second language speakers, and provide copy editing as part of the publication process. Submissions may be based on a piece of work you’ve already written for a course, or you may opt to write an original piece for submission to the journal.

As a student journal, the Editorial Board and reviewers are fellow students. We are keen to attract participants from a variety of disciplines: if you are a current student or recent graduate and have an academic interest in fantasy, please visit our recruitment page to find out more about becoming a reviewer. Working with the journal is another great opportunity to develop critical skills and gain experience with working as part of a remote team. And it looks good on your CV!

Finally – while we do not offer full payment for papers at Mapping the Impossible, we are pleased to be able to provide a small, token reward for each paper we publish. For more details, please see our Rewarding Research page.

Defining Fantasy

In ‘The City of Lost Books’, Robert Maslen defines Fantasy as that which ‘focuses instead on what certainly did not happen and never could, foregrounding the impossibility of what it represents.’ While this is only one definition of how fantasy works, and certainly not definitive, we find ‘representing impossibility’ to be a useful starting point when approaching fantasy, the fantastic, and the techniques of wider speculative fiction. However, we would like to note that this is only a starting point. We are open to papers that explore all different kinds of interpretations and definitions of fantasy across disciplines and across media, possibly even those contradicting our journal’s own name!