Fantasy maps: threat or menace?

August 28, 2017 12:02 PM

Thesis: Maps in fantasy books are kinda shite. Antithesis: They're good actually, when done right. Synthesis: N. K. Jemisin gets it right.
posted by MartinWisse (72 comments total)

As a conworlder, my reactions are... complicated.

• I get it, as a geologist, most maps annoy him, just as most authors' conlangs annoy me as a linguist. Most non-geologists won't care.
• Corollary: nice as Jemisin's map is, I can't imagine why the plate boundaries are relevant to the story. (But I haven't read the book, maybe they are.)
• Rather than "Fantasy maps suck", it sure would've been better for him to come up with a list of things not to do on maps. (E.g. "don't put right-angle bends in your mountains", from his Tolkien page, is excellent.)
• It's very weird for him to assume that the map was created last. That seems impossible to me: the author needs to have some idea of where things are located. Even if he doesn't mention cardinal directions, if you go from the Shire to Mirkwood you should pass through the Misty Mountains in between.
• As a reader, I totally disagree with him: I love maps and if a (non-fantasy) book doesn't have them, I'll go find one for the area anyway.
• Maps are a great way to build curiosity in the reader. What are all these places like? As I've developed my own conworld, people have expressed great interest in the places they see but I haven't described yet.

posted by zompist at 12:34 PM on August 28, 2017 [21 favorites]

Related: Uncharted Atlas generates fantasy maps with toponyms in generated languages. The notes on how the algorithm works are quite interesting.
posted by likethemagician at 12:36 PM on August 28, 2017 [15 favorites]

I love fantasy maps, to the point where multiple people sent me this Onion article when it came out - Grown Man Refers to Map at Beginning of Article to Find Out Where Ruined Castle of Arnoth is Located. I'm pretty forgiving about the reality of the maps themselves, but one thing that does bug me is trying to go back to them when reading a novel digitally. Come to think of it, that's one of my least favorite aspects of reading a fantasy novel via Kindle.
posted by DingoMutt at 12:37 PM on August 28, 2017 [15 favorites]

I read a novel a few years back where the map at the beginning was an in-world artifact, drawn and annotated by the protagonist, who was not a part of the story for her expertise in cartography.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:40 PM on August 28, 2017 [9 favorites]

Corollary: nice as Jemisin's map is, I can't imagine why the plate boundaries are relevant to the story. (But I haven't read the book, maybe they are.)

Her Broken Earth trilogy has been described as "tectonic fantasy", so yes, they are.
posted by Lexica at 12:42 PM on August 28, 2017 [37 favorites]

I was thinking it would be pretty cool for a series to have a map in the beginning of each book that starts out rudimentary (hand drawn, iffy, etc.) in the first book and is gradually refined as the characters learn more about their realm and travel extensively... or as time progresses, that sort of thing. Make the map a plot device, not just a bit of art. Heck, use the map as a recurring image at the beginning of each major book section, filling it in gradually as the book progresses.

Kind of like how weird North America looked in early maps, the shape was all wrong but the coastline was detailed because that's all people could see at first. And then the rivers get penciled in, and the mountains, and the shape becomes more true to life as people get better measurements...

But, really, I'd settle for a world map where the known realm doesn't look like Alaska. For some reason fantasy writers really like mountains (or impassible desert!) to the east, ocean to the west, on some sort of big peninsula. Always shaped vaguely like Alaska (or the Iberian peninsula).
posted by caution live frogs at 12:48 PM on August 28, 2017 [15 favorites]

In defense of Tolkien's map of Middle Earth, it seems to me that it isn't meant to be taken as literal truth, like a geological map would be... Instead, it is referencing a particular style of old map, where they may not have known all the facts, but they drew the map anyway. It looks a lot like this map of Africa from 1648, where you see, for example, mountain ranges meeting at right angles, large rivers running parallel to those mountain ranges for long distances, and (unless I missed it) no explicit scale (though there are lines of latitude and longitude, so you can infer the scale).
posted by surlyben at 12:49 PM on August 28, 2017 [23 favorites]

Related recent read: Here at the End of All Things, linked by the excellent Evan Dahm
posted by rivenwanderer at 12:57 PM on August 28, 2017

Fussing about the geology/tectonics of Middle Earth is silly because it is explicitly molded by godlike forces that, among other things, bent the whole world from being initially flat into it's current spherical shape. Unlikely mountain ranges or inexplicable volcanoes are pretty small potatoes compared with that.
posted by straight at 1:02 PM on August 28, 2017 [17 favorites]

That seems impossible to me: the author needs to have some idea of where things are located.

Well, it's not impossible because a lot of authors do it. There's a difference between knowing that your characters pass through the Great Desert on their way from the Western Coast to the Shining Capital City, and knowing exactly how those would be placed on a map.

I've never drawn a map first, though I've also never drawn it last. The map and the story have to inform each other; it's back and forth. But I can easily imagine not bothering with a map at all, because all I need to know is that they travel up a river and over some mountains. I don't really need to know where those are--I just need a basic idea of climate and distance and the less detailed the world, the easier it is to do what you want.

I'm dealing with that with that story right now - I tried to make a map that was geologically and climatologically accurate, but you know, some of the rain shadows are in the wrong places and in the end, whatever. It would have been easier just not to draw a map (but I'm having fun with the map).

You can excuse some things by saying that the mapmaker wasn't accurate, but that explains certain kinds of errors - not all of them.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:28 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

I love that the debate continues, as I had a FPP on fantasy maps, with some stuff by Acks, earlier this month as well.

For the record: maps are good.
posted by blahblahblah at 1:44 PM on August 28, 2017 [7 favorites]

As it turns out, Jemisin isn't too fond of fantasy maps herself.
posted by Iridic at 1:49 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Wait until you see how bad the sci-fi maps are.
posted by GuyZero at 1:53 PM on August 28, 2017 [6 favorites]

Not maps but they are - I make these things I call Bookmaps to go along with books as I'm reading them. The rules are simple - new characters are linked to the character that introduces them.

Makes re-reading books a bit of a conundrum because I don't know if I should make a new one, or use the old one.
posted by rebent at 1:53 PM on August 28, 2017 [9 favorites]

to anyone who doesn't like maps at the beginning of fantasy books: I will not break bread with you, and if we are forced to spend any time in close proximity, I will probably hiss at you the entire time. It will be awkward and problematic but you asked for it by being a map hater

if the book is good, the map will make sense, even if it doesn't. the Middle Earth map is fucking ridiculous but also it is beautiful and perfect
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:54 PM on August 28, 2017 [17 favorites]

Maps are fine. But please, let's stop the pointless added apostrophes in names:

"Wait here" said El'a'LaUlia to Ol'beth Inori'anaHa' while scanning the forest.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 2:27 PM on August 28, 2017 [23 favorites]

Yeah maps on Kindles really suck - if you're an author who's selling your books, with maps, via kindles please put a hi-res version of your map online and make it easy to mind
posted by mbo at 2:36 PM on August 28, 2017 [16 favorites]

In defense of Tolkien's map of Middle Earth, it seems to me that it isn't meant to be taken as literal truth

I think it's likely that A) many fantasy maps are shite and B) it isn't because they fail to be geologically plausible. The principles that make a fantastic story enthralling are not necessarily scientific principles.
posted by octobersurprise at 2:36 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

I guess I'm the only one who uses fantasy maps to gauge the level of magic in a world. Really improbable? Fuckton of magic, the gods have definitely played with the landscape. The mountains around Mordor aren't natural, of course. Sauron raised those to help him defend his realm while he gathered his power.

This is partially why I love the map from Numenera. It's 1 billion years in the future, society has risen and fallen a bunch, technology is even beyond Clarke's law and regular humans are back. The supercontinent is a square rotated 45 degrees. It's clearly not natural. Some incredibly powerful technology reshaped the earth for some reason (this also ties into the fact that photosynthesis is still easily possible and the earth hasn't started to be roasted alive).

I am completely fine with maps that make no natural sense. It shows that the universe contains powers that can shape worlds.

Of course, if you mean the map to actually look realistic, well, then, learn some basic geology.
posted by Hactar at 2:36 PM on August 28, 2017 [9 favorites]

The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (now an app!) was constructed based on clues from the text. Short Street is the longest street in the city, the Patrician's Palace can see the Opera House, the Dwarf Bread Museum can be found in Whirligig Alley, etc.

There are other Discworld maps but that one is my favorite.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:38 PM on August 28, 2017 [15 favorites]

Does this explain the discussions in the GoT threads where the distances and timelines are all messed up, perhaps these are all non-euclidean planets and the maps are accurate as the territory is different than our plain old topologically boring planet.
posted by sammyo at 2:45 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Tangentially, If Planets were Donuts.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:01 PM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

I love fantasy maps. As a youngster, I wouldn't buy a fantasy book unless it had a really good map or two in the front, and I liked the sounds of the names.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:26 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Does your map contain the KANGARAT MURDER SOCIETY?

If not, start again.
posted by delfin at 3:29 PM on August 28, 2017 [13 favorites]

In defense of Tolkien's map, Middle Earth was created by a mysterious deity made of living song, and then repeatedly broken in a series of titanic battles among lesser deities, interspersed with bouts of recreation and repair by those same godlike beings. It's not meant to be the product of natural forces as we know them. If Morgoth wanted a square mountain range to fence off his kingdom of everlasting despair (although I'm not sure that's quite what happened, my memory of the Silmarillion is hazy) he could just make it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 3:54 PM on August 28, 2017

A friend of mine was writing a book (low fantasy, so couldn't just explain everything with BECAUSE MAGIC) for fun, and was struggling to draw a map from scratch. I basically told him to follow some simple rules about erosion, effect on flora according to altitude, moisture trapping, effects of seasons according to latitude, cities near resources or trade routes etc. and it simplified the process a lot.
I think he also complained to me once about a book where the author liked to impose so much hardship on the protagonist a trip (the only path, obviously) between two cities was uphill both ways, so probably not sounding like an idiot was somewhere on the priorities.
posted by lmfsilva at 4:32 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Listen, maps are vital, if only as a reference tool for the author. How can I possibly get the politics sorted if I don't know who's neighboring whom, who's got natural defenses and of what kind, and where what natural resources are?
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 4:37 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

And once I've put all that effort in, you're darn tootin' I'm gonna slap that baby in front of my book for all the world to see. Maps are HARD.
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 4:38 PM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

I started reading Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy recently, and it opens with a map of a single house and surrounding property. The mind boggles at the amount of detailed description of the space that the author might have added to the text if the map was left out.
posted by idiopath at 4:43 PM on August 28, 2017

trip (the only path, obviously) between two cities was uphill both ways,

That's possible easily enough if one of the cities is very tall.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:44 PM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

and has an exit-only basement, i guess
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:51 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

The spires of Har Cuaradis, spiky pearl of the Eastern Slope, seemed to challenge the myriad concentric battlements of Jalnac, the marvel of the Western Ridge. Between the city of the Slope and the city of the Ridge flowed the River Ivriqeir, black and sharp-edged as a line of ink, as indelible as the enmity between the two sisters who, one hundred years before, had founded Har Cuaradis and Jalnac on opposite walls of the river valley.

Each sister sited her city as far up her respective slope as the engineering of the time permitted. Each envisioned the other abasing herself, some glorious day, by coming down from her proud perch, wading across the ford, and struggling up the stony road to enter her sister's dominion by the humblest gate, the one reserved for shepherds, beggars, and envoys from defeated armies.

But neither sister ever left her city, and each passed away in time with her pride unsatisfied. There were few indeed of Har Cuaradis or Jalnac, even a century later, who made the trip across the Ivriqeir and back; for the roads up the valley walls were steep indeed, and it disconcerted even the canniest merchant or the most experienced traveler to imagine that long, leg-breaking journey, uphill both ways.
posted by Iridic at 5:04 PM on August 28, 2017 [12 favorites]

was thinking it would be pretty cool for a series to have a map in the beginning of each book that starts out rudimentary (hand drawn, iffy, etc.) in the first book and is gradually refined as the characters learn more about their realm and travel extensively

What you want is Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman novels, which have exactly that. And which also happen to be totally awesome.
posted by suelac at 5:11 PM on August 28, 2017 [12 favorites]

Intentionally-missing-the-point nitpicky bullshit is definitely my least favourite form of clickbait.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:27 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Suspect actually giving the readers a map has stitched up Game of Throwns good and proper as far as their new accelerated travel times go - gage a sense of place to things so that now they want to collapse everything down it just seems silly.
posted by Artw at 5:35 PM on August 28, 2017

> Does this explain the discussions in the GoT threads where the distances and timelines are all messed up, perhaps these are all non-euclidean planets and the maps are accurate as the territory is different than our plain old topologically boring planet.

...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 5:35 PM on August 28, 2017 [5 favorites]

Suelac, you beat me to Kirstein's series. The maps are very helpful when you pick up the next novel. And, yes, they are totally awesome.

Also, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's series about the vampire Saint-Germain (27 books by now) quite often has maps. She draws them herself as her family had a cartography business so she grew up map-making. These, however, are not fantasy maps as they are set in different times and places on Earth, and sometimes she gives an ancient map and a contemporary map of the same place (because the vampire is really old).

I love maps.
posted by MovableBookLady at 5:36 PM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

1. The Name of The Wind/WMF map was frustrating in its lack of some of the major story locations.

2. I've been breezing through the Cadfael series (not fantasy), and some versions come with three maps, the abbey where the story takes place, the town where it takes place and the region. They don't really add anything to the story, but they're fun to look at. I've tried to match it up to Shrewsbury as it is today.
posted by drezdn at 5:37 PM on August 28, 2017

That's possible easily enough if one of the cities is very tall.


It's a hell of a lot easier than that. Just have both cities on separate hills with a low spot between. Voila! Uphill in either direction. I mean, it's also downhill both ways, but no one ever specifies it can't also do that.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 5:47 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Maps are fine. But please, let's stop the pointless added apostrophes in names:

There's a good riff on this in Stephenson's _Reamde_
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:53 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Soooooo not fantasy or sci-fi, but I always liked that Louis L'amour (not an extraneous sci-fi apostrophe) books had maps in them. Took almost as long to read the map as it did to read the book.
posted by LionIndex at 6:22 PM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

I am very pro maps in things, but you know what is better than maps? Crossesctional drawings in comics.
posted by Artw at 6:27 PM on August 28, 2017 [19 favorites]

Also the best Tolkien map is the one in The Hobbit.
posted by Artw at 6:30 PM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

"Fantasy maps have unrealistic geology" "Fake names have too many pointless apostrophes" this thread is Reamde all over again.
posted by ckape at 6:34 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

As a geographer and an unabashed fantasy fan, I love fantasy maps. Plausible, impossible, or in-between, I love poring over them and trying to figure out how the geography displayed on the map is going to influence the story, or whether or not it will. It's all very fascinating to me however it plays it. I honestly don't care if maps are accurate not by whatever measure you apply, but I do get a little flummoxed if they are not present when it's clear the author had a particular geography in their head and doesn't provide a map. I get the reasons for not providing a map, but it always seems like a dereliction of duty to me not to do so. I guess that's why I don't write fantasy.
posted by mollweide at 6:34 PM on August 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

I am very pro maps in things, but you know what is better than maps? Crossesctional drawings in comics.

I was hoping that would just be a map of the main city from Finder - the stories make a lot more sense once you have a general idea of what it looks like.
posted by dinty_moore at 6:36 PM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

this thread is Reamde all over again.

Neal Stephenson Books have too many pages to bother reading.
posted by Artw at 6:40 PM on August 28, 2017 [7 favorites]

As a My Little Pony fanfic writer, I am reminded of the heated discussions we once had about the nature of Equestria: is it a country? a continent? the world? Given that Princess Celestia raised the Sun (and, for a long while, the Moon), one couldn't make too many assumptions. Was the world round? Was it flat?

Then in Season Two, in the episode "The Secret of My Excess," Spike (going through a dragon-hording phase) collected a globe! Huzzah! Huzzah! The fanfic writers cried. The world is round!

In fantasy, you can take nothing for granted.
posted by SPrintF at 7:00 PM on August 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

MLP frequently self-contradicts on a number of points though. Never mind, it's all true.
posted by Artw at 7:02 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

...crossesctional drawings in comics.
True.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:09 PM on August 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

MLP frequently self-contradicts on a number of points though. Never mind, it's all true.

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:46 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

The first fantasy story I read, at the tender age of eight, was Ursula Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan, the second of the Earthsea books. It had wonderful maps in the beginning, of the place where the story is set, and a useable, find your way throughable map of the labyrinth in the story, that matched the descriptions in the text. So now I always am excited to have maps, or things you can play with in the beginning of stories, like Tolkien's maps with translatable runes.
posted by glitter at 8:47 PM on August 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

blahblahblah: “I love that the debate continues, as I had a FPP on fantasy maps, with some stuff by Acks, earlier this month as well.”

Is this where I admit that I used SimEarth to create a planetary map for a D&D campaign?
posted by ob1quixote at 10:00 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

The linked anti-map was very reasonable as far as unhinged rants go. Wrong IMHO but clearly knows it's partly the side effect of being a geologist. The anti-Tolkien one is a bit rantier but it does crack me up that the went-completely-overboard-on-languages Tolkien is getting hammered for not being obsessive on plate tectonics, too.

One complaint though: I try to be laid back on how other people criticize works but deep down I feel everyone should approach fantasy (and other genre) books as if everything is correct and then try to explain discrepancies without breaking the fourth wall. I grew up reading stuff that did this* but it's out of favor. I don't know why, it's infinitely more fun to me to play with the facts I know from the real world and fantasy world and try to make them fit, rather than just recite the places they differ.

Applied to fantasy maps it'd be "what can we learn about the geology of this fake world?" and maybe you start with deducing "no plate tectonics I guess." So what fits the observation best? Ancient meteor craters + lower erosion rates? Dueling magicians? Fossilized dragon poop? Do none of those work? Probably someone made a mistake. Were they ignorant? If so why were they drawing maps? Or maybe they are all stylized for a vain monarch? Maybe they think the gods love right angles and draw the large scale maps that way?

What you want is Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman novels, which have exactly that. And which also happen to be totally awesome.

I am reading the second one now and I love it so much. Like the first one it captures the joy of science and exploration and learning things in a way that I've never seen a fantasy book manage. Heck, I don't know if I've seen any science books manage to pull it off so well.

The Annotated Sherlock Holmes is the classic of this sort of too-much-time-on-your-hands commentary, the collected wisdom of a century or dilettantes from the pre-internet days.
posted by mark k at 10:03 PM on August 28, 2017 [11 favorites]

[...] t sure would've been better for him to come up with a list of things not to do on maps. (E.g. "don't put right-angle bends in your mountains", from his Tolkien page, is excellent.)

I didn't get to the Tolkien page but fwiw if he's complaining about right-angle bends in mountains that is actually a real-world-earth thing, albeitkinda rare (see Pamir-Karakoram Syntaxis for an example) and in terms of mountain ranges the Karakoram to Hindu Kush (not a great illustration for it but still gets the point across), unless he means one single "range" (frankly I'd rather have an exact definition here (although i'll give him 'alignment' but see the following--how big of a 'gap' would he accept here?--they are, along conjoined fault systems), which personally I think ranges from fundamentally no different in terms of the underlying tectonics/surface fault lines by which they are formed to largely inconsequential and just plain being picky, especially especially if you're already applying it to fantasy.

disclaimer: i have the same issues though with fantasy maps, guilty as charged
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 10:51 PM on August 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

In defense of Tolkien's map of Middle Earth, it seems to me that it isn't meant to be taken as literal truth

I've always assumed that Tolkein was intentionally making a map that looked like something from antiquity in order to capture a sense of timelessness. That's not a halfhearted defense of a bad map, I mean I always noticed the way the mountain ranges look and so on, and I never considered that he was attempting to create something realistic. I'm not a mind-reader (and I haven't read the Silmarillion), so I can't say for certain that he wasn't trying to make something as realistic as possible, but this is how I've always seen it.

Anyway, these days I like things to have kind of a sense of unboundedness. I like stories that take place in the Green Valley (or something along those lines), that make the valley seem like it goes on forever. Sometimes a map can undermine that. Perception of place can be very subjective, and if I'm reading, say, a story about a frightening trip through the dark woods, it kind of spoils the moment for me if I can refer back to a map and see that they're really only a 25 minute walk from town.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:34 AM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

But, really, I'd settle for a world map where the known realm doesn't look like Alaska. For some reason fantasy writers really like mountains (or impassible desert!) to the east, ocean to the west, on some sort of big peninsula. Always shaped vaguely like Alaska (or the Iberian peninsula).

It's Europe, dawg!

(And yes one of the best early reactions against this trend is the Earthsea books, which at least in physical form are basically Fantasy Polynesia)
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:47 AM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

it does crack me up that the went-completely-overboard-on-languages Tolkien is getting hammered for not being obsessive on plate tectonics, too.


....for not inventing the theory of plate tectonics, in the 1940s, really
posted by thelonius at 4:05 AM on August 29, 2017 [13 favorites]

Why would accurate plate tectonics be required anyway? Not all planets have tectonic processes. Just claim your mountains are caused by meteors or giant termites or something, and maybe go easy on the volcanos.
posted by oulipian at 5:40 AM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

It's been many years since I spent my youth reading nothing but fantasy novels with sketchy maps in them. But I distinctly remember that my main gripes with fantasy maps were not their geological coherence, but rather:

1) The great number of maps (even in major fantasy works) that didn't label key locations in the story. (Seriously, what is up with that?)

2) Maps that were too small or cluttered to read, which probably looked beautiful in their full-size glory but which were almost useless when shrunk down to paperback novel size.

There was also the occasional map that seemed interesting or even moderately realistic but which I was simply never able to figure out. I recall the map of Arrakis in Dune being one such map--I was never able to use it to better understand the locations and distances of the story.

I will note that if you are, like so many of us, harboring inside your heart an epic fantasy trilogy based on your old Dungeons and Dragons games, D&D actually produced several useful books explaining how to create at least quasi-believable fantasy worlds. I relied heavily for both my writing and gaming on the AD&D World Builder's Guidebook, which contained a lot of advice for creating and mapping relatively realistic-looking worlds. That was back in the 90s; I'm sure other books along those lines have been published in the decades since.
posted by Byzantine at 5:54 AM on August 29, 2017 [3 favorites]

This (horrible interface) is the almost infinitely zoomable map of the Half-Continent, the setting for the Monster Blood Tattoo series, written and fantastically illustrated by DM Cornish. I have gotten more enjoyment from just reading that map and imagining the stories and histories contained within it than I have from any number of fantasy novels, not to mention the fact that it is attached to a criminally underappreciated YA series.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:56 AM on August 29, 2017

Does your map contain the KANGARAT MURDER SOCIETY?


No love for MAD-HOLE country of the screamers?

I can't imagine why not...
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:18 AM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

One of my favourite aspects of Beard & Kenny's Bored of the Rings is the map of Lower Middle Earth amongst the front matter. The map, like the "text excerpt" also found up front, of course bears little relation to the saga told. Being a parody, it does comply with most of the rules of fantasy maps (ocean to the west, conveniently placed impenetrable mountain ranges, vaguely Scandinavian looking place-names, etc. ) set forth above.

There are copious umlauted place-names, though my favourites are probably "The Tiny X-Shaped Forest" and "The Land of The Knee-Walking Turkeys."
 
posted by Herodios at 9:17 AM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

Instead, it is referencing a particular style of old map, where they may not have known all the facts, but they drew the map anyway.

I would throw in this 1778 map of the imagined Buenaventura River in the western U.S. It, too, has several pretty uniformly rectangular valleys outlined by mountains, and a couple of nice examples of rivers flowing long distances parallel to and alongside mountain ranges. From the Wikipedia article on Buenaventura River (legend).

That was a fairly imaginary landscape assembled from various partially understood verbal explanations of the geography of the region (which, again, may be the exact type of 'exploration map' that Tolkein was trying to duplicate).

But it is worth pointing out that things like right angle mountain chains and rivers flowing parallel to mountain ranges really aren't completely impossible, especially if we are envisioning maps as slightly simplified schematic representations rather than the spatially accurate type of maps we are accustomed to seeing nowadays.

For example, I would offer this simplified schematic of some of the main mountain ranges & rivers of northern Utah, where I grew up.

The two mountain ranges that meet at right angles are the Wasatch Range and the Uintahs. The river that parallels the Wasatch range first on the east side, then on the west side, is the Bear River. The river that parallels the Wasatch between Utah Lake & the Great Salt Lake is the Jordan River.

When humans draw a map, they tend to straighten things and align them with points of the compass. It's not a fact of geography (though mountain ranges in western North America are, for various reasons, aligned rather uniformly on a north/south axis) but human memory and cognition.

Separate from that, however, mountain ranges that align mostly north/south and east/west are definitely a thing, as are rivers that flow generally parallel to nearby mountain ranges. Maybe or maybe not are they super common, but they definitely exist.
posted by flug at 2:20 PM on August 29, 2017 [4 favorites]

The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (now an app!) was constructed based on clues from the text

... and, I believe, a street naming contest. The LARPmedieval combat sport I'm a part of has a street in Ankh-Morpork named after us (just inside the Rimward Gate, a short jog over to Hide Park).
posted by hanov3r at 2:45 PM on August 29, 2017

rivers that flow generally parallel to nearby mountain ranges.

The Tsangpo-Brahmaputra also comes to mind. It can't drain through the Tibetan plateau, so it cruises along along the northern edge of the Himalayas for hundreds of miles before executing an improbable series of 90 degree turns that unites it with the Ganges and sends it into the Bay of Bengal.
posted by Iridic at 3:22 PM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]

The Streets of Ankh-Morpork (now an app!) . . .

As I walked out in the streets of Ankh-Morepork
As I took a spin on the Discworld one day
I spied a poor wizard in a hat red and pointy
A sprig in his brim for the 25th of May

I can see by your outfit that you are a wizard
These words he did say as I sought to sneak by
Come sit down beside me and hear my sad Story
Narrativium's weight says I never can die . . .

posted by Herodios at 3:49 PM on August 29, 2017 [3 favorites]

...crossesctional drawings in comics.
true

Truer

(thanks artw - that picture/memory has been wobbling around my head for years but it never occurred to me to look for it until I followed your link)
posted by Sparx at 5:53 PM on August 29, 2017

While a good amount of it is griping for griping's sake, there is a lot of good stuff here, especially for me as I struggle with building out a world for a large-scale saga that I will (maybe) eventually write into a story, while trying to avoid obvious tropes (I guess I'm not immersed enough to know the cliche of the boundless western ocean) and take into account obvious geographic attributes (although I guess I already knew that).

After a solid nearly twenty-year hiatus following Shards of a Broken Crown, I'm just now finishing Feist's Riftwar series, and while his maps are actually really gorgeous and useful, one thing that gripes me is that his stories tend to span several continents and worlds even, but most of the books only have the Triagia continent at the front. When they spend most of a book (ahem, Exile's Return) on another continent, even though they've already previously published a map of that continent in a prior book, the map of that continent or world isn't in the book.

Anyways, finding these resources fills me with glee like when I first bought the Rough Guide to Fantasy Land.

P.S. I've decided that Westeros is the size of New Hampshire, which makes the instant travel times a little easier to stomach.
posted by General Malaise at 4:25 PM on August 30, 2017

Oh, meant to add in there that it's interesting that Feist actually added a continent to the west across the endless western ocean, which ends up being sort of Tempest-like, and the characterization in one of the articles of fantasy writers not wanting to include an America-thing made me chuckle on thinking of that.
posted by General Malaise at 4:29 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Artw: "Also the best Tolkien map is the one in The Hobbit."

[pushes up glasses] There are TWO maps in The Hobbit.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:45 AM on September 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

One is the second best.
posted by Artw at 9:41 AM on September 21, 2017 [4 favorites]