An interesting discussion topic...

[jbgibson]

Olive Garden fantasy maps

It amused me that I'd just gotten through reading pretty much the same article, only decrying the standardization and least-common-denominator quality of... Olive Garden restaurants. I eat there, and I read genre fiction, both precisely *because* the experiences are predictable. For non NorteAmericanos - that's a ubiquitous generic American-Italian restaurant chain.

I understand the guy he linked to, with an even stronger personal antipathy for fantasy maps - as a degreed geologist he just can't suspend disbelief when geomorphology is too, too implausible. I can imagine linguists getting wierded out by clumsy conlang use in a novel, or real doctors being horrified at or ROFL amused by television medical dramas. Me: I can suspend disbelief and enjoy many an implausible story, map, film - for me it's bad disaster movies that get under my skin. <shrug> to each his own, yes?

But to diss the fantasy maps most folks encounter- those squished into way too little space in the front of a novel... sheesh. So they don't have the typical info density of real medieval maps? How *could* they?! Many's the Guilder who has gently broken the news to an author seeking a map... it's actually hard to boil down a setting into the few dozen lines and labels that fit in a paperback and which look okay on crummy paper. Heh- far as I'm concerned the novel is a part of the map is a part of the novel... how's 650 pages of ancillary text to explain a map? ;-). Atlases have oodles of text not right within the linework and symbology.

There *are* issues with some book maps... the 650 pages I just referred to was a volume in David Weber's Safehold series... where the mapper got two vital territory-control icons backwards. I figured it out in like 20 seconds, but it bugged me from then till I found a corrected version online :-). When a cover artist or illustrator or cartographer gets things *wrong* with respect to the 'facts' of a story-- that's 'bad execution'. The only thing wrong with his 'bad example' was probably the lack of a scale.

The elements he disses - without suggesting improvements - really are *exactly* in the spirit of good mapping- to show enough info without extraneous extras, and to appropriately generalize what you do show. Too, like the article author or somebody he linked to admitted - exquisitely detailed maps would need to come with spoiler alerts! Somebody in my last hour of rabbit-trailing - one of the books he reviewed- had some stats on mountain symbology across a selection of books. Again, simplest is *best* when a dismaying portion of the populace doesn't 'speak the language' of more exact (contours, hatchures, shaded relief) or 'period-plausible' symbols... an author is Trying To Communicate. If he slips into Latin or Khmer or Klingon because it's exact or 'realistic' then he's lost me. Those awesome US Civil War maps with 'caterpillar' ridges and elegant script annotation are great for period flavor, but 90%? of a general audience won't parse them well.

Maybe if the guy wants to be a scholarly resource on fantasy maps (stated goal!) he ought to distinguish between our usual maps-for-maps'-sake and the limited subset of that which can affordably be printed, or can be affordably be created. He ought also to make massive allowance for the limits of ANY medium... I *adore* classic atlas styles. I will *never* own enough computer resources to create them at full resolution, nor will you all have displays capable of rendering their full glory.

He also ought to distinguish between after the fact 'gotta have a map' scribbles vs. the detail some authors pour into their *working* worldbuilding maps... which can wind up in print at least as reasonable subsets, or which can be put online as ancillary info. These days there's little excuse for an author not putting SOMEthing online as bonus content. Call it loyalty rewards, patron payback, or marketing... web space is cheap, and all that stuff the editor rightly pointed out didn't help the story along and axed? Well there's oodles of readers who would LOVE more background info, and getting it in front of them - even sneakily doling it out in dribs and drabs as teasers - would sell more hard copy or Ebooks. In my humble opinion, anyway.

The same linked-to guy whose degree in Geology keeps him from enjoying most book maps acidly remarked if an author wrote 100,000 words without needing a map, they don't need a lame last-minute one in the published product. True for some books, dead wrong for others. Also: true for some *readers* and not for others. I'm pretty visually oriented (hello: I like maps, eh?!) and I am *always* happier if a novel (TV show, play, radio drama, comic book, game, whatever) comes with map(s).

[Diamond]

I'm on board with what Jb said. I'm one of those readers who always feels better when the fantasy novel I read has a map. Strangely, I don't care if there is one or not in a scifi novel, even if the action is, say, cross-country on a planetary surface. Maybe because with fantasy it's a straight-up different world, where (if the author has done their job) the cultures aren't immediately recognizable, whereas with scifi, it's really just our-world cultures transported into space?

[Falconius]

Speaking of sci-fi, I actually do miss maps where they would be relevant to the story. Many sci-fi novels don't require maps though, same thing can be said for fantasy too to be honest, but less so since most fantasy things tend to be traveling adventures. Honestly even with novels set in our world I appreciate maps when they are relevant, and miss them when they are not there despite being relevant (even though I can easily just look them up I guess).

[vorropohaiah]

Really interesting conversation going on here, and one that I don't think I can contribute much to.

Funnily enough - I like fantasy books that have maps, but i rarely bother looking at them. I think a map is a sign that the writer at least spend 'some' time worldbuilding, which is a big deal to me, though given that its rarely the writer himself who draws the map presented in the finished book, I don't think about it too much.

I fall into the camp that finds most fantasy maps boring and repetitive. I think most people tend to get caught up with whether or not their map looks fantasy-enough and tend to forget about a personal style or characteristic that would allow a casual onlooker to identify the 'artist' (I use the term loosely as I don't consider most people here to be artists - myself included). Black Mountains, the Dead Desert, Howling Cove... I hate seeing such cliched names on maps, though to many people I think the familiarity is comforting. I wast my fantasy cartographers to be original and put their own spin on maps, not just rehash Tolkien's middle earth, which is why I hate seeing fantasy maps in paperback novels with sea to the west and mountains to the east.

To those of you who are lucky enough to be qualified in fields relevant to cartography, I say use your knowledge to create maps that are both realistic and beautiful as well. Use those rainshadows to your advantage

[Straf]

Is there a tendency for fantasy maps to have a vast ocean to the west and an unknown or mysterious land to the east beyond some mountains? Or is this an observation that someone has made about a limited subset of fantasy books and their associated maps that has propagated into 'common knowledge'. There are many things in common knowledge that don't stand up to scrutiny when challenged. If there is any truth in this, what is (are) the origin(s)?

Growing up (I use the term loosely ) there was a sort of exoticism about the East. In fact Eastern, Orient and Exotic were almost synonymous to my young mind. If something was exotic then it had to have originated beyond the dull, grey apartment blocks of Communist era Eastern Europe with their endless chains of drably dressed and morose faced citizens queuing for a loaf of bread. (note that these were the images I was presented as a child/teenager)

Even the place names sounded exotic. 'Malaysia' still conjures up images of colours, aromas, vibrancy and mystery in abundance for me. That's just from the sound of the word. I think of pineapple and coconut featuring heavily in spiced meat dishes, even though neither of those are native to Malaysia. So there is something of a 'mystic land to the East' feel for me. I also think of emperors and difficult to reach places, mystic monks living in mountain retreats, that sort of thing.

To the west, an endless ocean the Atlantic may feel like but I know that there's a land over there somewhere. At one time the European adventurers of the early pioneer days would have seen their directions reversed. The ocean was to the east, the mountain ranges to the west, with who knows what lay beyond. California was for a long time considered an island. It was named after a fictional amazon queen who fought alongside Muslims - hence 'calif'. For North America the mysteries lay to the west. (From what I gather Californians consider themselves a distinct people, or at least the ones in the Baja Peninsula area, independent from the USA and Mexico). The mountains were a barrier to easy passage compared to the Atlantic coastal areas and the Mid Western plains.

So what about history? Current accepted knowledge about the journey of homo sapiens says we originated somewhere around Ethiopia and started wandering out somewhere around 80,000 years ago. At some point we decided enough was enough and settled down - agriculture played a huge part in this. The cradle of civilisation is said to be around Iraq 12,000 years ago. Western historical culture has been focused on the journey west since then, even though imperial centres of power spread out from there, or perhaps co-evolved in separate locations. But Persia - Egypt - Greece - Rome - France - Iberia - Britain, and now the centre of power could be argued to lie within the USA.

Maybe western history has ingrained in us a sense of suspicion of the East, that the West is righteous and good whereas the East is mysterious, but devious and dangerous. Maybe this prejudice, along with the platitude that fantasy maps are cliched in their west-east topographies, lends itself to confirmation bias so critics fail to see anything that doesn't conform to this 'cliched convention'. Perhaps in 10 years or so fantasy maps will be considered to be cliched because they always feature a never ocean to the east and unpassable mountains to the west because nobody wants to write a cliche.

[rdanhenry]

Is there a tendency for fantasy maps to have a vast ocean to the west and an unknown or mysterious land to the east beyond some mountains? Or is this an observation that someone has made about a limited subset of fantasy books and their associated maps that has propagated into 'common knowledge'. There are many things in common knowledge that don't stand up to scrutiny when challenged. If there is any truth in this, what is (are) the origin(s)?

I can recall this being discussed before. Fantasy worlds I can visualize maps of off the top of my head:
Middle-Earth and Prydain: Ocean to the west, mountains to the east if you want to call anything to the right of the ocean "the east". Of course, ME has ocean to the west because it is in origin a mythical "historical" Europe, whereas Prydain is fantasy Wales, so these simply pick up this ocean-to-the-west trait from Earth geography.

The Hyborean Age of Conan, same thing. Ocean to the west is literally the Atlantic.

The Young Kingdoms. Elric's world is a big island in the middle, seas around it, with land masses in the corners. Not based on terrestrial geography and a fairly symmetrical map with no favored ocean direction. Other Moorcock series tend to use terrestrial geography and there Europa has a big ocean to the west.

Narnia. Sea is to the east.

Earthsea. Ocean is everywhere. Heck, it is so distinctively so that I have a rough idea of how it looks in spite of not reading the books.

Nehwon. Ocean to the west, not strictly European, though still thinking in terms of very rough parallels to historical cultures as a shorthand.

Now looking at maps on my shelves and admitting that my collection is a bit long in the tooth:

The Princess Bride: The sea is in the middle, land to east and west.
The Thief of Kalimar: Great ocean to the west, central sea. However, the map makes no attempt to disguise being a direct redrawing/relabeling of Europe and northern Africa (mainly the contours are a bit smoothed out compared to the real thing).
Thieves' World: Ocean to south, also to west and east. Major mountain range towards western side of peninsula.
... and at this point I remember that most of my fantasy books are boxed up and I don't want to go digging through them.

At any rate, what one sees at this point is that, yes, there are quite a few maps with big oceans to the west, but these are nearly all literally Europe, in a fantastical historical period or parallel Earth. Otherwise, this "trend" is a chimera. I'd say that what may appear significantly more often than is likely is the great inland sea, copying the Mediterranean. This is, however, such a useful feature for narrative purposes, connecting yet separating peoples over a large area, that it probably is worth copying into more settings than is "realistic".

Mind you, Middle-Earth is the most redrawn of fantasy maps, and Conan's Hyborean world (though when fully mapped, you have ocean in the east as well, as you reach the end of Asia, and to the south once past Africa) may be the second-most. So sheer repetition of these maps when doing searches for fantasy maps may give a false impression that the vast ocean to the west is iconic. I'm not sure how you get "mountains to the east", though. Sure, if it is a fantasy Europe cutting off at the Urals. The Tolkien maps sort of run out of mountains at the eastern end. Even the fortress-box of Mordor is open to the east.

I can vaguely recall another map that fit the "pattern" that was in a novel, but that was a version of California and, again, simply followed actual geography in putting the ocean to the west and a range of mountains in the east.

I know I've seen some fantasy maps based on alternative United States Atlantic coast areas, but I'm not sure if any of those were from books, or just on the Guild. The great ocean is to the East, but again these should be thrown out if considering a "trend" in fantasy maps, because these are just following the actual geography.

Maybe behind this complaint is a jumbled notion that fantasy needs to get away from rehashing Europe, though. The thing is, I think that is more a matter of not simply cloning cultures rather than worrying about geography, insofar as it is true.

[ladiestorm]

I am sitting in a possibly unique and slightly uncomfortable position after reading this article... and yes, I did read it from beginning to end. On the one hand, I found the article to be ambiguous, circling prattle with grandiose arguments and grandstanding statements with no concise clarity of thought. Claiming examples of 'bad fantasy mapping' with no precise examples or explanations as to why they are 'bad' does nothing to give credence to the author. I couldn't tell whether he was complaining about fantasy maps, or complaining about those who try to critique fantasy maps. In fact, most of his arguments seemed to contradict each other, at least to my understanding.

On the other hand, I have mixed feelings about some of the statements he made: specifically about the fact that people who critique fantasy maps, are not necessarily critiquing the map as much as they are critiquing the territory the map represents, and that fantasy maps are invented, but not inventive. I'm also pondering the statement about fantasy maps all seeming to have a mideval feel to them.

While I detest his generalization, and agree with most that he is missing the point of fantasy maps to begin with... these above mentioned statements do resonate with me, to a certain degree. Before I go any further, I do agree with Mouse on one of her points... the point of glyph language that we, as cartographers use (whether in fantasy settings or real world settings) to convey the terrain we use in our maps has become universal, for the sake of understanding by anyone that views it. It has become necessary that we do use these glyphs, or symbols to represent territory so that viewers of our maps understand, and can follow our vision of the territory we are trying to show them.

Perhaps I'm giving the author more credit than he deserves, because I believe I found a 'deeper meaning' in some of his less ambiguous statements. He spoke of rules that we follow in making fantasy maps, and I think this is the reason that some of his statements hit me the way they did... because some of his questions are questions I've asked myself.

I've been caught by the 'River Police' on this site, and the other mapping site I belong to. I've had people tell me that my mountain ranges are 'wrong' or that deserts are in the wrong place. I recently received a compliment, about how my topography or terrain placement has gotten better in the past year and a half since I started mapping. My maps are becoming more believable.

It seems to me that, generally speaking, when people look at fantasy maps, they expect to see a map of a place that is either a version of Earth, or is 'Earthlike', at least in part - that analytical part of their mind expects rules to be followed. But the creative part of them does tend to be disappointed when they see a map that looks realistic, because realistic is not fantasy.

But a fantasy setting, whether it's part of a game, or whether it's a novel...is just that: a fantasy setting. Why is it that we can accept dragons, and orcs, or hobgoblins, or magic, but can't accept a river that splits, or flows from one end of a continent to another? Or, flows uphill from the sea to the mountains for that matter? If a writer wrote about an island suspended in the clouds, and that island was mapped floating above the ocean (or a landmass), and we 'believe' it because it's part of the story, then why can't we believe a snowy/icy region in the middle of a continent.

I can't help but wonder if the lack of inventiveness the author spoke of may be fantasy mappers' preference to mimic the realism of Earth, and to force 'real world' geological ideas onto the fantasy scene. Maybe it's our attempt to blend realism with fantasy that is behind the critique. Or maybe it's the critics that are trying to impose real world ideology onto the fantasy setting, and that is why fantasy maps are getting bashed the way they are. People have a tendency to compare fantasy maps to real world maps, and in my opinion that is like trying to compare apples to oranges. They are, and should be, mutually exclusive.

[Wingshaw]

I don't think it is necessarily something Earthlike that people are looking for in a map. I think they are looking for something that is logically consistent. Why don't we allow rivers to split? Because that goes against the rules of physics, as we know them. There are billions of planets in the universe, but, as far as our knowledge and theoretical models current allow, liquid will always run downhill, because of gravity, on every single one of them. A cartographer can break these rules, but - at least in my opinion - I would want to see some kind of explanation as to why.

And on oceans 'always' being to the west, with some vast land to the east: I'd say that the vast majority of fantasy settings are Eurocentric. The cultures, languages, architecture, landscapes, histories etc. have a startling resemblance to medieval Europe. There are exceptions, of course - and they are warmly welcomed - but the pattern is quite apparent to me, at least. Furthermore, as an Australian I was always aware of how infrequently the Southern Hemisphere features in maps - never mind East-West, what about the South!

Wingshaw

[Straf]

Australia is implausibly far fetched though. The whole country is trying to kill everything! Even the sea isn't safe.

[Mark Oliva]

As far as geography, geology and philately are concerned (among many other things), in terms of real world cartography this thread has, of course, nothing to do with anything.

The theories, guidelines and suggested rules brought forward here are the unfortunate products of false religions and false gods, which in turn have led to an absolutely incorrect understanding of how our world developed, which in its turn has produced hundreds of thousands if not millions of totally false maps worldwide.

We're quite aware that almost all religions as well as those who follow them proclaim that the religion in question is the only true religion and all others not only are false but also often result in the adoration and worship of false gods as well as the advancement of false geographical, geological and philatelical theories!

Any sensible person will recognize that there can be at the most only one true religion and that, therefore, all others must be false. In the beginning we humans recognized only one set of gods, and the wise among us still do so, because this primeval faith still is indeed the one true religion. It is so encompassing a religion that it also teaches all of the fundamental truths of geography, geology and philately including how mountains were risen, how rivers flow and why they do so in the way that the do. This is how it really was and still is:

In the beginning there was only the void. First to develop within the void, long before our earth formed, was the land of heat and flame. In it there were no rivers to police. Following it was the land of cold, upon which a mountain called Uppsala arose and atop Uppsala, a great lake named Hvergelmir formed. It was and remains the source of the 11 great rivers which shaped and still shape our world. All 11 still flow unstoppable from Hvergelmir. The river police have done their best to declare these 11 rivers as being impossible, but they have failed. They still flow unceasing from Hvergelmir as they always have since the cold land came into being.

Once the 11 flowed far beyond Hvergelmir, binding the cold lands with the hot lands, the yeasty venom that they carried turned into a slag which we now name ice. The northern part of the void became filled with ice pounded by drizzling rain, but the southern part became light by meeting the sparks and embers which flew from the hot lands. Where the heat of the south met the cold of the north, the ice melted and took a form not unlike that of a human, although that form in reality was a frost ogre.

When the frost melted, it turned into a cow with four teats that produced rivers of milk to feed the frost giant. The cow fed herself by licking blocks of ice, which were salty. As she licked the ice blocks, the first humans, a man and a woman, began to emerge from the ice. Among their offspring were the highest of our gods.

These then slew the frost ogre and took his body into the void, making of it our earth. From his blood they made the seas and the lakes, from his flesh the earth, from his unbroken bones the mountains, from his broken bones and teeth the rocks and pebbles and from his skull the sky.

Now that the truth has been revealed, one easily can see, for instance, why there is nothing at all illogical about Prof. Tolkien's Mountains of Mordor. If our gods simply tossed the frost ogre's bones in that direction and that is where they landed, it is absolutely logical that there are mountains there!

Now, I think that you unfortunate pagans may rejoice in these revelations, knowing that you have been freed of not only the river police but also what for many doubtless are years of heretical cartography, geography, geology and philately. However, some of you who have been heavily indoctrinated in one false religion or another still may have doubts whether our deities are the true things. Let us dispel those doubts by considering the words of our Allfather, Óðinn the One-Eyed:

No man should trust a maiden's words
Nor what a woman speaks
Spun on a wheel were women's hearts
In their breasts was implanted caprice

Naked I may speak now, for I know both
Men are treacherous too
Fairest we speak when falsest we think
Many a maid is deceived

I doubt anyone here can cite a false god with such deep wisdom!

Onward and upward, in our mapping and stamp collecting!