Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
think that the prevalence of kiddie maps in geeky pastimes like these is just another sign
of arrested development, like eating Hot Pockets and playing
Halo
all night even though
you're in your thirties. But fantasy map fans prefer to see a different connection to child-
hood: a way to recapture the innocence and awe of discovery.
“The hallmark of epic fantasy is immersion,” says the best-selling genre writer Brandon
Sanderson.“That'swhyI'vealwaysincludedmapsinmybooks.Ibelievethemapprepares
your mind to experience the wonder, to say, 'I am going to a new place.' “
Brandon and I were college roommates a decade ago, and in most of my memories of
him, he's following one of his roommates around the apartment, reading aloud passages
from his latest bulky fantasy manuscript, presumably part three of some eight-volume saga
where all the characters had lengthy names full of apostrophes. At the time I was amused
by Brandon's antics, but hey, at least it was a pleasant surprise not to be the nerdiest guy in
the apartment for a change.
Well, Brandon had the last laugh. In a shocking twist, the epics he'd been writing while
working the graveyard shift at a local Best Western were actually, uh,
good
. He sold his
sixth completed novel,
Elantris,
two years before graduating, and on the strength of that
bookandhisfollow-uptrilogy,
Mistborn,
Brandonwaschosen(“handpicked,”theaccounts
always say, as though he were a grape-fruit) by the author Robert Jordan's widow to com-
plete
The Wheel of Time,
the megaselling fantasy series that had been left unfinished at the
time of Jordan's 2007 death. His first
Wheel of Time
book, the twelfth installment in the
series, debuted atop
The New York Times
' best-seller list, knocking Dan Brown out of the
number one spot.
A Japanese samurai sword, which Brandon was allowed to choose from Jordan's im-
mensepersonalcollectionofhistoricalweaponry,hangsoverthefireplaceinhisUtahbase-
ment, where we're talking. Brandon and his wife have plans to remodel the basement into
a stone medieval dungeon, complete with torch holders and maybe a mounted dragon head
on the wall, but currently it's just an empty bonus room with a navy blue beanbag chair the
size of a Volkswagen Beetle sitting in the middle of it. This is where Brandon does most of
his writing.
Thesummeraftereighthgrade,whenBrandonfirstfellinlovewiththegenrethatwould
eventually pay for his house, maps were a big part of that love. “I started to look and make
sure a book had a map,” he remembers. “That was one of the measures of whether it was
going to be a good book or not, in my little brain. When I first read
Lord of the Rings,
I
thought, 'Oho, he knows what he's doing. A map
and
an appendix!'”
J. R. R. Tolkien single-handedly created the epic fantasy genre with his publication of
The Hobbit
in 1937 and then the
Lord of the Rings
trilogy in the 1950s.
Tolkien never read
Islandia,
but his own world, which he called Middle-earth, was just as meticulously con-
