Science Fiction Book Club: Do You Like Maps With Your Fantasy?
Via the SFBC's blog, a discussion on a couple of sites about Maps in fantasy novels. On Strange Horizons, Johan Jonsson has come up with an anti-map essay, and over on Mumpsimus, a rebuttal.
As for me...
My cartographophila is well known by anyone who knows more than a casual amount about me. The wonderful maps in Tolkien were my first exposure to maps of imaginary places.
I'm not that skilled at the creation of maps, even with trying to use things like Campaign Cartographe, I've never been good at actually making maps. But I have a strong aesthetic liking for maps, and I do look for the map in the epic fantasy novel when I pick it up.
Posted by Jvstin at July 16, 2006 4:39 PMJoel Rosenberg's The Sword and the Chain series had a great map. Kinda helped that the series started as a group of roleplayers that were transported to the world they played in.
And as the series progressed, the map changed! Book one was a standard quest, book 2 they founded their own country. By the series end, they had merged two other countries into one and were building rail-lines, all displayed on the map.
But I most fondly remember Paul "The Cartographophile" and I following the London wall from The Tower of London, past the Barbican and to the end.
Posted by: Greg"BlackSheep"Weimer at July 17, 2006 8:52 AMI think one of the best examples of a game "clicking" for its participants, and also for a well described novel is when you can point to where something is, and everyone agrees. Cherryh did it well with the "Fortress" series; I almost never needed to look at a map. I think Carey did it fairly well in the Kushiel series, too.
Posted by: MT Fierce at July 17, 2006 11:15 AM