Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Maps in Books

Many times when I look at the maps of great fantasy novels, I do feel a bit let down. My undergrad degree was geography, with my primary track being urban geography (and transportation geography), and physical geography (and meteorology) as my secondary track.

Many of these maps are not possible in the natural world, and if they were formed by magic, the weather patterns must be dictated by magic also, because in a natural system, there are patterns that could be very beneficial to a plot.

Not only that, there are patterns to the distribution of settlements, many of them related to the land itself, but most of them relative to each other. These patterns influence the relative importance of every locale.

In many novels, there are vast spaces, slow transportation, yet little difference in the culture and language from one end to the other.

In other words--authors, I can give you good, smart, meaningful maps, that will be as realistic as the language you have worked so hard to invent.

That is all, my rant is over

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