Not the territory

[mrissa]

I know that there are some people out there who object strenuously to maps in fantasy novels. If you're among them, can you explain to me why? and whether it's an inherent objection or just an objection to things that are correlated but not causal?

Also -- and again, this is for people who object to maps in fantasy novels, so if you don't so object, don't worry about it unless you feel you have something particularly clarifying to say -- do you just dislike having them in the book, or do you feel that the author shouldn't make them at all?

Comments

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I like maps except in the following situations:

* it doesn't correlate with the author's descriptions. (The Prydain maps are maddeningly abstract.)

* it's geographically improbable. (I know this is a little nit-picky, but it drives me a little batty.)

I think it kind of falls in the same category as illustrations or cover art. If the map doesn't mesh with your picture of the place, it can cause some cognitive dissonance.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Exactly what zalena said. Sometimes the map is so impossible it makes me cringe.

[rosefox]

Nonsense! Everyone knows that every continent contains forest, jungle, desert, swamp, plains, mountains, rivers, four coastal cities, one landlocked city with no available source of water, six roads, and absolutely no evidence of agriculture.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

One of my old maps, back from when I first started drawing them, had a river that ran from one coast to the other.

These days, I'm consulting a sort of geologist/climatologist hobbyperson for one big project, and posting essays on my website about realistic worldmaking.

[rosefox]

See, it would be interesting to include a nonsense map that made sense from the perspective of the people in the book. Some European explorers actually thought the Hudson River went all the way through to the Pacific, because the natives called it "the river that flows both ways" and it was salty forty miles up. Turns out it's just a whopping great tidal estuary, but Henry Hudson got some good money out of the idea that he had found a possible trade route to the West Coast. (At the time it also wasn't clear that North America was ~3000 miles across.)

Or maybe not a nonsense map, but one that skews things, like the "U.S. from the perspective of New York" ones where New Jersey is about thirty times the size of California. Maybe a different one for each culture, at the start of each section! Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. *)

I haven't consulted a geologist or climatologist yet, but I'm reading everything I can about urban studies as I work on developing a realistic city. Lewis Mumford's The City in History is terrific for this.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Ooh . . . goes to look for the Mumford

[rosefox]

Oh, if you haven't read Mumford, do! He wrote tons of fabulous stuff about cities and how they work. See also A Timeless Way of Building and The Death and Life of Great American Cities and just about anything by William H. Whyte and... well, look up those on Amazon and then start clicking around "People who bought this book also bought..." and that will give you a pretty good selection.

What I love about Mumford is that he quotes heavily from primary sources. This means you get stories about farmers rafting down rivers with their donkeys, selling their goods, selling their rafts for scrap because wood was scarce downstream and poling the raft back up the river was nearly impossible, and then riding the donkeys home. It's details like that that absolutely make a setting, IMO.