Emissaries Guide to Worlding

By Ian Cheng

What is a World? And how does one bring it to life?

Emissaries Guide to Worlding is both a behind-the-scenes chronicle and a philosophical companion to one of the most ambitious experiments in simulation art of the 21st century.

This richly illustrated, full-colour hardback brings readers into the conceptual and technical process of creating Emissaries (2015 - 2017) -- a trilogy of simulations about cognitive evolution and ecological emergence. As Cheng built his agentic beings, he also began a theory of Worlding: the unnatural art of designing systems that grow, change, and take on a life of their own.

Now returning in a revised collector's edition with a new preface and updated materials, this is the foundational artifact of Cheng's thinking on Worlding--where theory and practice emerge side by side. Released alongside WORLDING: A Guide for Creators in Changing Times, its distilled and expanded successor, this edition offers the origin: a record of Worlding as lived process.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1068765739
• ISBN13: 9781068765735
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Cosmogenesis
• Length: 312 Pages