Worldbuilding is the process of constructing an imaginary world, sometimes associated with a whole fictional universe. Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers. Worldbuilding often involves the creation of maps, a backstory, and races (if one is writing speculative fiction), including social customs and, in some cases, an invented language for the world.World building exists in novels, role-playing games, and visual media such as films, video games and comics. Some authors of fiction set multiple works in the same world. This is known as a fictional universe. For example, science fiction writer Jack Vance set a number of his novels in the Gaean Reach, a fictional region of space. A fictional universe with works by multiple authors is known as a shared world. One example of such is the Star Wars Expanded Universe.