There has been, in recent years, a pronounced shift within Media Studies away from the more time-honored concerns of plot, character, and action and towards “world,” reflecting a number of intersecting factors, among them, the increasing prevalence of transmedial narratives that feature a common universe but that “unfold across multiple media platforms” (Jenkins 2006, 334); the renewed popularity of science-fiction and fantasy, genres often noted for vast imaginary worlds and intricate mythologies (Thompson 2008); and the impact of computers on how we engage with and understand narratives and media alike (Murray 1998; Kinder 2002; Manovich 2002; Bordwell 2006; Cameron 2008). Whereas stories tend toward narrative economy by offering only information that is crucial to the plot, worlds brim over with textual detail that contributes a verisimilitude that “absorbs” or “immerses” the reader, gamer, or viewer in them (Wolf 2012).

But what does a world sound like, and what role, if any, does sound play in its construction? Sound, like “world,” cuts across genre and medium, turning up in a diverse array of forms both new and old, from radio and television to video games and new media art installations. This remarkable heterogeneity of sound in media, however, prohibits a thorough consideration of its various incarnations in the space of a single essay. Therefore, in what follows, I will limit my focus to the context of film and how sound contributes, in ways that often escape notice, to the spectator's mental representation of imaginary worlds and, often, to her seeming “integration” or “immersion” into them.