A fictional country is a country that is made up for fictional stories, and does not

exist in real life, or one that people believe in without proof.

Sailors have always mistaken low clouds for land masses, and in later times this was
given the name Dutch capes.
Other fictional lands appear most commonly as settings or subjects of myth,
literature, movies, or video games. They may also be used for technical reasons in
actual reality for use in the development of specifications, such as the fictional
country of Bookland, which is used to allow EAN "country" codes 978 and 979 to be
used for ISBN numbers assigned to books, and code 977 to be assigned for use for
ISSN numbers on magazines and other periodicals. Also, the ISO 3166 country code
"ZZ" is reserved as a fictional country code,.
Fictional countries appear commonly in stories of early science fiction . Such
countries supposedly form part of the normal Earth landscape although not located
in a normal atlas. Later similar tales often took place on fictional planets.
Jonathan Swift's protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, visited various strange places. Edgar
Rice Burroughs placed adventures of Tarzan in areas in Africa that, at the time,
remained mostly unknown to the West and to the East. Isolated islands with strange
creatures and/or customs enjoyed great popularity in these authors' times. By the
19th century, when Western explorers had surveyed most of the Earth's surface,
this option was lost to Western culture. Thereafter fictional utopian and dystopian
societies tended to spring up on other planets or in space, whether in human
colonies or in alien societies originating elsewhere. Fictional countries can also be
used in stories set in a distant future, with other political borders than today.
Superhero and secret agent comics and some thrillers also use fictional countries on
Earth as backdrops. Most of these countries exist only for a single story, a TV-series
episode or an issue of a comic book. There are notable exceptions, such as Qumar
and Equatorial Kundu in The West Wing, Marvel Comics Latveria and DC Comics
Qurac and Bialya.
Purposes
Fictional countries often deliberately resemble or even represent some real-world
country or present a utopia or dystopia for commentary. Variants of the country's
name sometimes make it clear what country they really have in mind. By using a
fictional country instead of a real one, authors can exercise greater freedom in
creating characters, events, and settings, while at the same time presenting a
vaguely familiar locale that readers can recognize. A fictional country leaves the
author unburdened by the restraints of a real nation's actual history, politics, and
culture, and can thus allow for greater scope in plot construction and be exempt
from criticism for vilifying an actual nation, political party or people. The fictional
"Tomania" serves as a setting for Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator and skewers

a rgime infamous for religious bigotry, militarism, diplomatic bullying, and

violations of civil liberties.
Fictional countries are also invented for the purpose of military training scenarios,
e.g. the group of islands around Hawaii were assigned the names "Blueland" and
"Orangeland" in the international maritime exercise, RIMPAC 98.
Fictional countries in survey research
Fictional countries have been created for polling purposes. When polled in April
2004, 8% of British people believed that the fictional country of Luvania would soon
join the European Union. In the 1989 General Social Survey, U.S. respondents were
asked to rate the social status of people of "Wisian" background, a fictional national
heritage. While a majority of respondents said they could not place the Wisians in
the U.S. social hierarchy, those who did ranked their status as quite low, giving an
average of 4.12 on a 9-point scale, where 9 was the highest social standing. "Once
you let the Wisians in, the neighborhood goes to pot," quipped Time Magazine.
Questionable cases
Countries from stories, myths, legends, that some believe to exist, or to have
existed at some point.
Atlantis
Aztln
El Dorado
Hidalgo
Lemuria
Lyonesse
Mu
Ophir dating to the eighth century BC. It bears, in Paleo-Hebrew script the text
"gold of Ophir to/for Beth-Horon 30 shekels" 'The find confirms that Ophir was a
place where gold was imported from,' although its location remains unknown.)
Shangri-La or Shambhala
Tazonia
Xanadu
Zanj

Transformatia
Zembla
See also
Fictional African countries
Fictional Asian countries
Fictional city
Fictional companies
List of fictional companies
Fictional geography
Jennifer Government: NationStates
List of fictional counties
List of fictional countries
List of fictional European countries
List of fictional planets
List of fictional U.S. states
List of fictional universes
Proposed country
Worldbuilding
Books
Alberto Manguel & Gianni Guadalupi: The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, ISBN 0-15626054-9
Brian Stableford: The Dictionary of Science Fiction Places. Simon & Schuster, 1999.
ISBN 978-0684849584
References

Bibliography:
Wikipedia

@baygross