Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
It's the importance of place to the genre, not just slavish imitation of Tolkien, that ex-
plains why today's fantasy authors still make sure maps are front and center. David Ed-
dings, one of epic fantasy's most popular writers, went so far as to put maps on the
covers
of his books. (Eddings's nation of Aloria was born the same way Stevenson created Treas-
certainlyfunctionaltoo;manyfantasynovelsareepisodicquests,andamapisaneasyway
to plot that course for a reader—it's no accident that the word “plot” can refer to the con-
tents of both a chart
and
a narrative. But Brandon's tried hard to get away from the quest
narrativeinhisownbooks,mostofwhichtakeplaceincontainedurbansettings,yethestill
makessurehisbookshavemaps.Hislatestnovel—thefirstvolumeinaprojectedten-book
series—is called
The Way of Kings,
and it includes no fewer than nine maps.
In fact, maps are so important to Brandon that he's paid nine thousand dollars out of
pocket to illustrate the topic with full-page maps and other “ephemera.” Fantasy fans don't
just want maps that look as though they've been laid out digitally on a Mac. They want
their maps to be artifacts
from the other world,
maintaining the illusion that it actually ex-
ists somewhere. The map in the front of
The Hobbit
wasn't commissioned by a New York
publisher; no, it's the very same map the dwarves in the story use to find their way to the
dragon's lair. If you're not inclined to believe in dwarves or dragons or their lairs, then
burnt edges and water stains on the map can help suspend that disbelief.
Isaac Stewart is the local artist who produces Brandon's maps, and it's no easy job. He's
notjustproducinganine-pageatlasofterritorythatdoesn'texist.He'sproducing,ineffect,
a sample page from each of nine vastly
different
atlases from nine different time periods.
One map might be a street plan reminiscent of Regency London; the next might be a crude
battleplanscrapedonthebackofafictionalcrustaceancalleda“cremling.”Likerealmaps
from the Age of Discovery, some are meant to have been drawn by surveyors who actually
saw the territory; others aren't.
*
“
The achievement of
a plausible state is not so easy as it might appear,” wrote Gelett
Burgess in 1902. Burgess was a humorist best remembered today for coining the word
“blurb” and writing the poem “The Purple Cow,” but he was also an inveterate map geek.
“There is nothing so difficult as to create, out of hand, an interesting coast line. Try and in-
vent an irregular shore that shall be convincing, and you will see how much more cleverly
Nature works than you.”
A video-game designer who moonlights as a fantasy mapmaker, Isaac probably has as
much experience testing Burgess's dictum as anyone in the world. A century later, coast-
lines are still hard. “You wind up doing this seizure thing with your hand, and it doesn't
work sometimes,” he tells me. Burgess's solution was to spill water on his paper, pound it
with his fist, and trace the resulting blotch. Isaac has developed his own tricks of the trade.
