Here’s the seventeenth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

[Editor’s note: This piece brings to mind ComaCocoon. In 1990, Dr. Joseph Schlafer (aka Joey Skaggs) offered the world’s first comprehensive dream vacation package. Its purpose being to combat the ever increasing risk involved in traveling away from home, as well as the negative effects of tourism on native environments.

Utilizing the revolutionary and totally safe pioneering BioImpression(tm) computer system, the company would, at its New York City facility, provide a state of total suspended animation and intensive, concentrated regeneration through anesthesiology and subliminal programming. The resulting subpoenas added a layer of reality to this dream vacation. Read more about it here.]

LiteratEye #17: Travel Guide for a Dream Vacation
By W.J. Elvin III
June 12, 2009

Don’t know about you, but I figure to be spending summer vacation in my head. It’s not just a matter of economy. There are lots of advantages to head travel. Like, you get back home without neat souvenirs like swine flu, STDs or bomb-fragment tattoos.

Of course, unless you’re relying on private visions, you’d probably need a guidebook. The best guidebook I’ve found, far and away, is The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (Expanded Edition) by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi. This is a big, hefty book, rich in text, illustrations and maps.

The editors put some boundaries on the scope of their work. After all, fiction is chocked full of imaginary places. They do not, for example, include realms from the future. They left out real locations in disguise, like Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha. But they also put fun ahead of rigid rules, so some locations are in there just because the editors found them fascinating.

As with a conventional travel guide, from time to time there’s helpful advice to the traveler. You get tipped off if you might run into pirates or cannibals. And, just so you don’t lose your head in some far off corner of the dream-world, it’s advised in one locale to show respect for royalty by rubbing your nose on the ground. (more…)