David Stark extracted elements from a 1688 map of part of Germany to create a library of tree, hill and town signs that he thought entirely appropriate for use as map assets for a role-playing game. I look at them and see fantasy map design elements. In 2019 I noted the similarities between 16th-century maps and modern fantasy map design. Also, digitally created fantasy maps often feature clone-stamped hill signs; you could do worse than clone-stamp these if you were whipping a fantasy map up. At least there’s more than one kind of hill sign to clone-stamp: there are, in fact, 159 hills and 26 mountains—more than 400 tiny images in all, and it’s interesting that David has separate categories for towns and cities, and for hills and mountains. [via]

When it comes to rivers, I’ve noticed that quite a few fantasy writers don’t understand the basics. While their intent is noble, I’ve seen plenty of examples of authors struggling with the underlying science of rivers and river systems. I sympathize. These are mistakes I have made myself. Early on, in one of my first projects, I made a mess with the waterways in my fantasy world. Mistakes like these—I like to jokingly call them “river sins”—might go unnoticed at first, but when they are noticed, they can draw a reader out of the story or setting. It wasn’t until I later learned more about the behavior of these ecosystems that I was able to hone in on my worldbuilding, and the end result was something much more interesting and complex. The cool got cooler.

Previously: ‘The Perplexing River Systems of Middle-earth’.

John Nelson’s One Style to Rule Them All is an ArcGIS Pro map style that applies fantasy map design elements to real-world geographic data. It does something similar to his earlier (2018) map style, My Precious (described here) only differently and with fewer assets (and 1/60th the download size). John has examples and links to a four-part video tutorial at this ArcGIS Blog post.

Previously: Maps Middle-earth Style: By Hand and by ArcGIS.

A limited edition print of Ursula K. Le Guin’s map of Earthsea has just been released. “Starting with a high resolution photographic image of Le Guin’s original, the team digitally cleaned or reinforced each line and letter, separating each color in the drawing as a layer, to make the maps as legible as the original and to avoid the artifacts of a typical CMYK process.” The cost is $150 for the black-and-white version and $300 for the colour version, with only 50 and 250 copies of each being printed, respectively. (I suspect you shouldn’t dither too long if you’re interested.) Proceeds go to the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Freedom to Read Foundation. [Tor.com]

Previously: Fantasy Maps Don’t Belong in the Hands of Fantasy Characters.

Matthew Edney has a post on Bernard Sleigh’s Anciente Mappe of Fairyland, about which we have seen much already; Edney’s look is deeper and more analytical. “Of special interest to me is how, despite his overtly anti-modernist subject matter and style, Sleigh nonetheless gave structure and system to his fictive panorama by giving it the trappings of normative maps and of realistic imagery more generally.”

Previously: An Anciente Mappe of Fairyland; North of Nowhere: The Osher’s Fantasy Map Exhibition.

How often do Star Trek tie-in novels come with maps? John Jackson Miller’s Strange New Worlds novel, The High Country, which comes out today, includes maps of the low-technology world on which it is set; in Miller’s Twitter thread last month, he wondered whether his book was the first, but it turns out that a 2000 Deep Space Nine novel also had maps. Amazon (Canada/UK) | Bookshop

In my article about maps in science fiction I made reference to the maps in Kim Stanley Robinson’s 1993-1996 Mars trilogy. Mastodon user 65dBnoise decided those maps were “very few” and “very coarse” (he’s not wrong¹) and made some higher resolution maps based on USGS topographical maps of Mars.

While researching his forthcoming book, Origins of the Wheel of Time (Tor, Nov 2022), Michael Livingston discovered that a map published in a 1997 guide to the Wheel of Time universe—which unlike the maps in the Robert Jordan novels showed the entire world—was, in the opinion of Jordan himself, wrong: according to notes Livingston discovered in the author’s archives, one continent was misnamed and another was too small (see above left). With the permission of the estate, Livingston worked with map artist Ellisa Mitchell—who drew the original map for The Eye of the World—to create a new map of the Wheel of Time world that reflected the author’s intent (see above right). Details, and closeup looks at the maps, at Livingston’s Tor.com article.

At Tor.com, Simon Jimenez talks about the map that accompanies his upcoming epic fantasy novel, The Spear Cuts Through Water. It’s not a map that follows the default fantasy map design by any stretch. He starts with the map, drawn by Chris Panatier.

There is no compass rose for orientation, no place names, no handy scale for distance ratios so that a reader might be able to tell how far one location is from another. There are barely even locations. Even the perspective is different—not a bird’s eye view, but something closer and more intimate, for a better view of the imagery that leans away from literalism and more towards the metaphorical, and the eerie.

Because of all of these choices, it is not a particularly useful map. One would be hard-pressed to use it as a reference tool as they journeyed with the characters through the book. This is by intention.

Jimenez explains how he grappled with the idea of mapping, and of fantasy mapping, when decided whether, and how, to include a map in his book. Very insightful and worth reading (and I’m not just saying that because he name-checks me at the end).

The online sf/fantasy magazine Strange Horizons (which, note, I review for) is in the middle of their annual fundraising drive. Their special fundraising issue includes an essay by Noemi Arellano-Summer: “Maps, Worldbuilding, and the Journey in Fantasy.”

Last month, MapLab’s Laura Bliss interviewed the Huntington’s curator of literary collections, Karla Nielsen, about the Huntington’s Mapping Fiction exhibition (previously).

The text of my article “Maps in Science Fiction” is now available online (previously).

Maps are a central part of our experience of the fantasy genre: “No Tour of Fantasyland is complete without one,” wrote Diana Wynne Jones in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland; fantasy maps “are only much noticed when they’re absent,” notes The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. It’s easy to forget that maps are also found in science fiction. They don’t turn up as frequently, nor are they expected to, and we don’t talk about them or think about them nearly as often. But they do exist. I’ve been writing about fantasy maps for years, and even I didn’t give science fiction maps the same consideration at least until 2014, when during a presentation about fantasy maps at Readercon, I had to extemporize in response to a question about science fiction maps. My off-the-cuff response led me to look into where and how maps are used in science fiction and from there to write this article on the subject.

This article took a while to come to fruition. I put out a call for examples of science fiction maps and pitched the idea to the NYRSF’s editor back in July 2014—and then life got thoroughly and fundamentally in the way. It was still thoroughly and fundamentally in the way when I finally, finally finished it and sent it off to NYRSF in the summer of 2020. Life was thoroughly and fundamentally in the way at their end, too—thanks, pandemic!—so it’s taken until now to see print at last. I’m glad it has: science fiction maps don’t get a fraction of the attention fantasy maps do, and I think I might have come up with some useful frameworks in this piece.

From the examples explored here, we can discern several functions science fiction maps can perform on behalf of both text and reader. Maps may have a thematic purpose as in the case of maps of Pern or Majipoor in that their style signals a science fantasy environment, the use of fantasy reading protocols, and a text of likely interest to fantasy readers. They may have a storytelling purpose as with the maps from Dune, the Steerswoman series, and the Mars trilogy: the maps separate the known from the unknown, the transformed from the untouched, the colonized from the indigenous. Or they may have a conceptual purpose by giving the reader a big-picture understanding of structures, solar systems, networks, or empires.

I will post the complete text of the article later. In the meantime, if the teasers above have left you unwilling to wait even a little bit, you can buy the NYRSF issue here; it costs just $2.99 in the usual electronic formats.

Update: You can read the article here.

Inspired by our recent acquisition of Bernard Sleigh’s six-foot long “An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland, Newly Discovered and Set Forth,” (1918) we have selected thematic maps, books, and ephemera from our collections that reflect whimsy and visionary thinking. This exhibit invites visitors to ponder the ways in which myth, fantasy, and fiction have, for centuries, provided both an escape into alternate worlds in times of great strife, as well as an opportunity to create alternate worlds and imagine new realities.

Runs until May 30th; free admission with timed ticket. The digital version won’t be online until February (I’ll post an update then, because this is very much relevant to my interests), but in the meantime the Library is posting teasers on its Instagram account.

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For her upcoming fantasy novel The Freedom Race (Tor, July 2021), Lucinda Roy decided to do what a lot of fantasy authors do: draw a map. But she did it in a way that most fantasy authors don’t: “I needed a persona map—a map that could feasibly have been drawn by Ji-ji, the main character in the book. Her map doesn’t simply introduce the world to readers, it actually appears inside the narrative and helps catalyze the action.” Then she decided that she needed two maps, both intrinsic parts of the story, both revealing a great deal about their respective mapmakers. Very much relevant to my interests: I wrote, after all, a piece about fantasy maps in fantasy worlds (and got some flack for it). Though it’s the first time I’ve heard the term persona map. A new term of art?

Australian author and illustrator Kathleen Jennings will teach a workshop on fantasy mapmaking in June: the focus of Map Making and World Building is “on story and art,” the mapmaking illustrative rather than cartographical, and in general it seems to be about the relationship between map and story. The workshop will take place on 19 June both in-person (at the Queensland Writers Centre in Brisbane) and via livestream; tickets range from A$35 to A$100, depending.

A History of Maps and Mapping, a short introductory online course taught by Katherine Parker as part of the London Rare Books School’s program of summer courses, “will challenge students to destabilize and broaden the traditional definition of ‘map’, and to recognize maps as socially constructed objects that are indicative of the values and biases of their makers and the cultures that created them. Students will learn how to analyse and catalogue maps for a variety of research purposes, and to discuss changes in map technology and style without recourse to a progressive narrative of scientific improvement.” Matthew Edney will supply a guest lecture. The course runs from 29 June to 2 July and costs £100 (student) or £175.

Here’s another map artist who draws maps of real-world places in the style of fantasy maps: Isaac of Lord of Maps has around 30 maps—mostly of U.S. states, but also a few countries and one city—available for sale as prints of various sizes. Style-wise they’re dead ringers for Christopher Tolkien’s maps of Middle-earth, down to the hill signs, trees and red lettering.

Previously: Callum Ogden’s Fantasy Map of North America; Callum Ogden’s Fantasy Map of North America; Maps Middle-earth Style: By Hand and by ArcGIS; What Does a Fantasy Map Look Like?

Previously: Dan Bell’s ‘Tolkien-Style’ Maps of the Lake District; Maps Middle-earth Style: By Hand and by ArcGIS; What Does a Fantasy Map Look Like?

Previously: Christopher Tolkien, 1924-2020.

Christopher Tolkien, the third son of J. R. R. Tolkien and the executor of his literary estate and editor of his posthumous works, died yesterday at the age of 95. But one of his legacies is likely to be overlooked: he drew the map of Middle-earth that appeared in the first edition of The Lord of the Rings. That map proved hugely influential. It helped set the norm for subsequent epic fantasy novels: they would come with maps, and those maps would look rather a lot like the one drawn by Christopher Tolkien.

Christopher Tolkien himself was self-deprecating about the execution of his map, and about the design choices he made. Regarding a new version of the map he drew for Unfinished Tales, he took pains to emphasize that

the exact preservation of the style and detail (other than nomenclature and lettering) of the map that I made in haste twenty-five years ago does not argue any belief in the excellence of its conception or execution. I have long regretted that my father never replaced it by one of his own making. However, as things turned out it became, for all its defects and oddities, “the Map,” and my father himself always used it as a basis afterwards (while frequently noticing its inadequacies).

However hastily it was drawn, it was pivotal all the same.

The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands, which I reviewed on Tor.com last year, has won a World Fantasy Award for its editor, Huw Lewis-Jones.

The 2019 World Fantasy Awards were announced yesterday at the World Fantasy Convention, held this year in Los Angeles; Lewis-Jones won in the Special Award—Professional category.

Winners in each category are decided by a panel of judges.

Previously: The Writer’s Map; More from (and on) The Writer’s Map; Essays on Literary Maps: Treasure Island, Moominland and the Marauder’s Map; David Mitchell on Starting with a Map.

Meanwhile, a couple of other things. Here’s a piece by the author Lev Grossman about the urge to map fictional places. It’s excerpted from his essay in Deserina Boskovitch’s Lost Transmissions: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy (which came out last month from Abrams).

It didn’t matter that these places didn’t exist, what mattered was how much people wanted them to. Fictional maps are a visual trace of the ridiculous, undignified passion that we pour into worlds that we know aren’t real. They seem to confirm the ridiculous faith we place in novels—to see one is to say, silently and only to yourself, See? I knew it was real!

And the author Diane Duane has a simply massive collection of links to digital mapmaking resources in re fantasy maps, from map generators to tools to tutorials.

New from me at Tor.com this morning, the latest instalment in my series on the history and design of fantasy maps. “Where Do Fantasy Maps Come From?” looks at the influences on and origins of the fantasy map style—the existing traditions, stretching back as far back as the sixteenth century, that the fantasy map drew upon when it came into being in the early to mid-twentieth century. (Tolkien couldn’t have made it up out of whole cloth, after all.)

This is a speculative piece that draws upon a large and diverse number of sources—everything from Forlani to Berann, from bird’s-eye views of cities to children’s book illustrations—to come up with … well, something interesting, at least. To do proper justice to the subject would require a Ph.D. dissertation. This is a start.

My latest piece for Tor.com went live this morning. It’s called “Fantasy Maps Don’t Belong in the Hands of Fantasy Characters” and it deals with the question of in-world fantasy maps: the maps that characters inside a fantasy novel might use. (Hint: They wouldn’t look like the maps found on the endpapers of a fantasy novel.)

(For some background on how this article came to be, see this post on my personal blog.)

“An Anciente Mappe of Fairyland,” produced by Bernard Sleigh around 1917, is a marvellous conflation of classical myth and fairy tales. Nearly five feet wide, it was apparently designed to hang in nurseries. The echoes of its design elements can still be seen in later fantasy maps and children’s book illustrations, such as E. H. Shepard’s maps of the Hundred Acre Wood and Pauline Baynes’s maps of Narnia, though none of them are this vibrant.

It was making the rounds a month or two back, probably because a copy was being offered for sale: Atlas Obscura, Kottke. High-resolution digital versions are available via the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Center, the British Library and the Library of Congress; the Leventhal’s reproduction is is much more brightly coloured and in the best shape. The map came with an accompanying booklet.

Previously: The British Library on Fantasy Maps.

I’m impressed by the work of fantasy mapmaker Priscilla Spencer, whose maps have illustrated novels by Seanan McGuire, Myke Cole, Jim Butcher and Saladin Ahmed, among others. Spencer’s maps push the boundaries of the default fantasy map style: some of them appear as they would in-universe, others adopt elements appropriate to the culture of the world being mapped. Making a note for future reference.

Art designer James Shadrach Schoenke imagines a modern-day Westeros with a modern-style map that mimics the design of European road maps.