Here Be Cartographers: Reading the Fantasy Map

[RobA]

An interesting read.

I particularly liked this:

The gravitation towards realistic detail in maps is especially remarkable if you remember that maps are inherently abstractions. The whole point of a map—of any variety, not solely the geographical kind—is to pack the chaos of information into a selectively delimited and instrumentally efficient container. Short of the 1:1 scale maps of Lewis Carroll and Jorge Luis Borges, cartography is a form of compression.

I've seen the trend here towards the realistic map and have tried to avoid doing to many of them myself for many of these for the same reasons.

The comparison of the two Wheel of Time maps is apt. While the painted one is beautiful as a piece of art, in my opinion the inked one is more useful as a map.

From http://kartoweb.itc.nl/webcartograph...ch05/ch05.htm:

Maps are there to answer questions. They should offer solutions to questions like "Where can I find…?", "How do I get to…?", "What feature can be found at…?", or "Where else do I find that feature?"

-Rob A>