The Last Unmapped Places

Jonathan Crowe — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 00:42:33 +0000

Lois Parshley’s essay on the last unmapped, mysterious places—Greenlandic fjords, the slums of Haiti, the ocean’s depths, black holes in space—is a long read worth reading. Originally published last month as “Here Be Dragons: Finding the Blank Spaces in a Well-Mapped World” in the Virginia Quarterly Review, it’s been reprinted by the Guardian, in an edited, tighter version, as “Faultlines, Black Holes and Glaciers: Mapping Uncharted Territories.”

San Serriffe

Jonathan Crowe — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 14:37:47 +0000

On 1 April 1977, the Guardian published something that has become known as one of the finest April Fool’s gags in history: a seven-page supplement about the fictional, “semi-colonial” island of San Serriffe, complete with a map (at right) full of typographic puns and gags. The Guardian has a page on the gag and has reprinted a couple of the articles here and here; the Museum of Hoaxes has scans of the entire supplement.

Guardian – The Map Room

The Last Unmapped Places

San Serriffe