Fantasy maps usually reside in a book’s endpapers, or in the front of the book. They’re part of a fantasy novel, but not necessarily a part of the narrative: they are, as Stefan Ekman has pointed out, part of the paratext (to use Gérard Genette’s term).
But every so often, one of these maps makes a break for it, escapes from the endpapers, and lands in the story itself, where it may find itself in the hands of the story’s protagonists.
What happens then?
Because maps are a visual medium, let’s start by looking at a couple of visual examples. Peter Jackson’s 2002 film adaptation of The Two Towers adds a scene in which Faramir, hiding in Henneth Annûn, studies a map of Middle-earth. And in “Dragonstone,” the first episode of Game of Thrones’ seventh season, we find Cersei and Jaime Lannister scheming in a courtyard of the Red Keep where a still-incomplete map of Westeros is being painted on the floor.
In neither case is the maps’ presence incidental, nor their symbolism subtle: Faramir notes that Rohan and Gondor are surrounded by the forces of Saruman and Sauron; Cersei simultaneously reaches out to claim the entire continent (“It’s ours now; we just have to take it”) even while she and Jaime feel their enemies closing in around them. The maps mirror the dialogue, but more importantly they’re a visual aid for the audience: they help us situate the action.
These are far from the only instances of maps appearing in either series (or, in the case of “Dragonstone,” even in that episode: Cersei’s map is mirrored by the Dragonstone map room). But what’s interesting is that these two maps in particular are used directly by the characters, and they each make use of the default fantasy map style, which we explored in our last installment. (The maps are even lettered in an Uncial script, which has become pervasive in recent fantasy maps.)
Here’s the thing: I don’t think fantasy maps should turn up inside their own stories. For reasons I will set out in this essay, fantasy maps don’t belong in the hands of fantasy characters. And if you’re building a fantasy world that has maps in it, there are several things you need to take into consideration.
Who Are Fantasy Maps For?
The main problem is that fantasy maps are for readers, not for characters.
Let’s return to Stefan Ekman’s 2013 monograph, Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings, which gave us our working definition of the default fantasy map style: “a pseudomedieval aesthetic” in which “pre-Enlightenment mapping conventions” are added to a “mostly modern” map (p. 66). Note the words pseudomedieval and mostly modern. A fantasy map is a modern artifact, but with enough pre-modern flourishes to give it a semblance of ancientry. That’s not an accident. A fantasy map can’t be purely medieval in aesthetic, eschewing all modern map elements, because it would be unintelligible: for example, Ekman points out, “the serrated bands and cockscombs that represented mountains on many pre-Renaissance maps cannot be deciphered by today’s readers” (p. 41).
The reverse is also true: a pseudomedieval, mostly modern fantasy map would be, to the denizens of the fantasy world being mapped, a thoroughly alien artifact. It’s not simply that they would fail to understand such a map (more on that momentarily). They would fail to understand the need for it.
Maps are tools. Each map has a purpose: you wouldn’t consult a nautical chart or a cadastral map to figure out the best way to drive to Poughkeepsie. A fantasy map has a purpose as well: to ground the audience in an unfamiliar world. It’s not for nothing that the fantasy novels that come with maps tend to be secondary world epic fantasies: their immersive detail desperately requires a map to keep track of where everything is happening. A map is part of the fun, along with the coats of arms, dramatis personae, family trees, languages, and other marginalia—the paratexts—that frequently accompany an invented world.
A reader who’s lost track of where things are happening may stop and flip back to the front of the books to check the map (incidentally, a much harder thing to do with ebooks). Faramir and Cersei are doing the visual equivalent in their scenes. Not for nothing do Faramir and Cersei walk through the relevant geography (in Cersei’s case literally). These scenes are the geographical equivalent of “as you know, Bob”: they know full well where everything is located; it’s the viewer who might need reminding. Here is the stage on which we set our play.
But in-universe, a map like Faramir’s would not be worth carrying around. Like most fantasy maps, it’s not particularly information-dense: mostly empty space, designed to be legible on the big screen (or the small page). A denizen of Middle-earth, or any other secondary world, would not use such a map. They would not understand such a map. And for the most part they would not need such a map, because the fantasy map’s specific purpose—to ground the reader in the secondary world—is superfluous to someone living in that world.
Inside a fantasy world, a fantasy map is basically useless.
Maps and the Medieval Mind
Which is not to say that the denizens of a fantasy world wouldn’t use maps. But those maps would look different, and they would be used for different purposes.
Fantasy maps—which, again, are mostly modern—don’t much look like premodern maps: I wouldn’t be the first person to point that out. But the differences in style and appearance reflect differences in modes of thought. Premodern people, very few of whom travelled any significant distance, had different conceptions of space and time, and their maps were a reflection of that. As the French historian Patrick Gautier Dalché argues, medieval maps could have both a spiritual and a functional purpose: whether it was a mappa mundi hanging in a cathedral or a map of the Holy Land, a map could situate its observer in both sacramental and corporeal worlds, and aid in prayer as much as it could in travel. And while portolan charts might lack the mathematical rigor of later cartography, traders and navigators still relied on the charts’ networks of windrose lines to keep them on course.
Mappae mundi are a case in point. They were never meant to be accurate; they were schematic, diagrammatic repositories of knowledge encased in a map-shaped object—strictly speaking, in the form of a T-O map, which divides the known world into three rather abstract continents, with Asia (and east) usually at the top of the map and Jerusalem at its centre. The 13th-century Hereford Mappa Mundi, for example, included text and visual information that were not strictly cartographic: not just geographical locations, but scenes from the Bible and from classical mythology.
It’s more of a diagram than a geographical map—something you’d never expect to be geographically accurate. Sort of like the Tube map depicting the lines of the London Underground, if the Tube map also happened to be encoded with a library’s worth of additional detail. Also, using the Hereford Mappa Mundi as a map in the modern sense, to find your way around, would be magnificently beside the point, as comedians Jay Foreman and Mark Cooper-Jones make clear in an episode of their Map Men web series:
A single map from medieval Europe can’t be representative of all of premodern mapmaking, but it can serve as a useful example for the point being made here: that it’s a mistake to think that premodern people used maps in the same way as we do.
It’s reasonable to assume the same for denizens of a premodern fantasy world.
Fantasy vs. History
But hold on a minute, you might be saying. That’s history; we’re talking about fantasy. Historical accuracy in fantasy isn’t an absolute requirement: history, after all, doesn’t have wizards or dragons. Why should it be any different with maps?
That’s a fair point, and one that has come up whenever someone advocates a more realistic, historically informed approach to fantasy worldbuilding.
In this case, I’d say it depends on what kind of fantasy world we’re talking about.
If the fantasy world in question is a self-aware Fantasyland that knows full well what it is, one that plays with tropes in a self-aware, satirical or metafictional fashion, if it’s more like Derkholm, Fillory or Landover than it is Middle-earth or Westeros—if it’s in on the joke—then by all means have the locals use the default fantasy map style. It may even be essential that they do so. In such fantasy worlds anthropomorphic maps have even acted as characters: see, for example, Mr. Map in Catherynne Valente’s Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.
If, on the other hand, your fantasy world has aspirations to realism—if you’re concerned about diseases and crops, trade routes and weather patterns, legal codes and currency systems—then your characters’ maps should probably eschew the default fantasy map style and adopt something more realistic.
That’s not to say that the maps of a fantasy world should resemble real-world premodern maps. “Realistic” does not automatically mean “real-world.” Depending on how that world has been built, a mappa mundi or portolan chart might well be just as out of place as a fantasy map.
But it is to say that maps are a product of civilization. They do not exist in isolation. For your adventurer to have a map in their hands, a number of things have to be in place first. The existence of that map raises questions: it implies the presence of bodies of knowledge, technologies and even entire industries. Answering these questions can make a fantasy world richer and more interesting.
What Maps Tell Us About a Society, and Vice Versa
Let’s start with the physical map itself: the paper the map is drawn or printed on. How is that paper made? What is it made of? How expensive is it? Who produces it? If it’s papyrus, amate or some form of wood pulp paper, it’s relatively inexpensive but delicate; if it’s vellum, it’s durable but rare and expensive; if it’s linen-based paper, it’s somewhere in the middle: cheaper than vellum but not as cheap or as plentiful as modern (19th-century and onward) wood-pulp paper.
Next, is the map drawn or printed? If it’s printed, that presupposes the existence of printing presses, and everything required to make printing presses. If the map is drawn, then it’s a scarce and valuable artifact, one to be treated with great care. Copies would have to be made by hand, either as needed in the field or by scribes—are there scribes or copyists in this world? Is there a master copy of the map? Is it the only copy? Where is it kept: in a library; in a monastery? Where are the repositories of knowledge in this world?
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And how was that knowledge acquired? In order for a map to be drawn, the mapmaker needs to know what goes where. A map is the end result of countless measurements in the field. How is surveying done in this world? Precise surveying involves some fairly involved mathematics and equipment, neither of which may be available to a premodern society. Pacing out distances and astronomical observations can involve significant margins of error (and forget about using astronomical observations if your fantasy world is a flat earth).
Maybe the fantasy world’s mapmakers could recruit talking eagles to do their surveying for them. Maybe the fantasy world’s mapmakers are eagles. (What a story detail that might make.) Barring such supernatural help (which in fantasy cannot be ruled out), premodern maps will by and large not be very accurate. Which could also make for an interesting and surprising story detail, especially since modern audiences tend to assume that maps are accurate.
We also tend to assume that maps are unbiased—that they will not lie to us. If it’s on the map, it must be there. Is that the case? Does this fantasy world’s maps have the equivalent of trap streets? Could false maps be distributed by the enemy as part of a disinformation campaign?
Which brings me to the next question: how well-known was the information on maps? Is that information a secret, as it was during the Age of Discovery, when maps could be state secrets and unauthorized possession could get you executed? A top-secret military facility, a newly discovered territory: information like that can can be valuable, even strategic—far too valuable to fall into the wrong hands.
So it’s worth asking: who would own a map? Who would have reason to have a map in their possession? And beyond that, who would even be able to read a map? Even today, map literacy is not a given (in 2016 Britain’s Ordnance Survey even launched a campaign to teach map reading skills). But reading maps isn’t necessarily a transferable skill: not all maps use the same symbols or speak the same visual language. The ability to read a navigational chart would largely be limited to ship’s captains and navigators, and would not necessarily be transferable to the maps used by an overland caravan, or to battlefield maps. They might not even follow a common set of design principles; every map could use the private language of its mapmaker.
Anything is possible.
I imagine that in a premodern world, where paper is rare and knowledge is limited, the idea of a general purpose map, one that could be apprehended by the general (educated, privileged) public, would not necessarily occur to anyone: the infrastructure for such a map would not yet exist. What maps that did exist in such a world would essentially be technical documents created for a specific purpose: religious, military, trade, navigation. They would be specialists’ tools requiring specialists’ skills to parse and decipher. A ship’s captain would have a certain kind of map, a spy would have another, a priest still another.
And each of those maps would encode so much information about the society that produced it. To have a map without considering how and why it was made, and by whom, would be a missed worldbuilding opportunity.
Even so, it’s one thing to imagine how different a fantasy world’s map would be, or the economics and technology behind its production. But if it doesn’t appear on the endpapers, would such a map ever be seen by readers? And if it appeared there, would we, as readers in the real world, be able to understand it?
Jonathan Crowe blogs about maps at The Map Room. His nonfiction has appeared in AE, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the Ottawa Citizen and here at Tor.com. His sf fanzine, Ecdysis, was a two-time Aurora Award finalist. He lives in Shawville, Quebec, with his wife, their three cats, and an uncomfortable number of snakes. He’s on Twitter at @mcwetboy.
I admit that maps as in-world artifacts are tricky to pull off in books, especially fantasy novels–who created the map?
Why does the bearer have the skill to interpret it? Where did they learn it?
I think cartographic illiteracy gets really downplayed. I am trying to think of a fantasy novel where someone picks up a map and has no idea how to read it, and I can’t immediately think of one.
Fantasy maps are the perfect resolution for the table map trope. The one with the counters on it indicating troop positions and numbers.
M.A.R. Barker’s Tekumel had a fascinating and, AFAIK, relatively unique approach to maps — on the one hand, you had “high cartography”, where instead of paper, a nation would be represented by a solid object — a gemstone, e.g. — with detailed information recorded as tiny grooves or other surface features; and nobody who wasn’t trained could read them. (The explanation: Back in the old, high-tech days, the map stones were some kind of high-tech data storage devices that could actually communicate telepathically with their holders; now, that tech has been lost, so the form has been adapted to meet current limitations.) I know it’s not remotely practical, but I still think it’s cool.
There’s also discussion of paper “maps” used by some merchant clans, but they’re more like annotated flowcharts than actual geographic representations.
The map in The Hobbit is read by Elrond in order to get vital information to the traveling party and is therefore important to the plot. In LoTR Meriadoc studies the maps in Rivendell and that is a minor plot point.
Game of Thrones presents script in modern English, and showing maps in modern formats is no more jarring than that (in fact, less so, because “Kill the Masters” was written in English in the East, and the books in Westeros were also written in English, even though the inhabitants of the two lands speak different languages).
I have no problem with maps being used by characters in fantasy, especially military officers, explorers and mariners. The formats may have been different, but maps have been used by folks in those professions for millennia.
I disagree. And I’ll admit up front that because this is a very long piece, I didn’t get through the whole thing. But I disagree with its premise so fundamentally that stopping halfway doesn’t feel like a cheat.
Without England, nobody would be speaking English. And yet all the characters speak English. Likewise for maps. It is silly to think that there would be no maps in a Fantasy world because maps go back millennia and these are pseudo-Renaissance periods we’re talking about. Of course, they have maps. What, then, should the maps look like?
They should look like Fantasy maps. Because these are Fantasy stories. It doesn’t matter that Fantasy maps don’t look like real-world Renaissance-era maps because a ton of things that we accept in these things don’t look like accurate Renaissance items. Why single out maps?
If you want to sell the world as a Fantasy world and not some sort of alternate history work, then Fantasy maps are fine.
@1 – map illiteracy? In the real world, I’d agree. But this is Fantasy. And even if it weren’t, highborn and any educated people should be able to read something as simple as a map – especially Fantasy maps, which tend to be greatly simplified compared to a modern map. The shape of the land mass, the location of cities, mountains, and rivers. That’s basically it. Quite simple compared to a modern map.
@6 – You probably should have read to the end, because I do address that very point. You may not agree with how I address it, but I do address it.
Sometimes they even eat — and may god forgive me for using this word — potatoes.
Exceptional article. Spot on in so many ways. And I did read to the end! :)
As you do get around to pointing out (if indirectly perhaps), a properly done map would contribute to the worldbuilding. And to the character definition. And, likely, would be hard for readers to understand — which would be part of the point!
I think this article needs more examples of pre-modern maps. Especially ones not intended to be physical representations of the territory. I’m just trying to think of what shape would I give Ontario (my home province) if I’d never seen a map of it. Especially if I only had limited data on the spatial relationships of various points of interest.
While fantasy maps seem intuitively readable (as they are stripped of any technical or obscure content), that may only be true for people who see maps all the time or who need to understand the shape of a territory in order to live there.
This is an arabic world map from the 1500s:
And here is a region map from the 11th century:
I’m not sure its reasonable to conclude that a fantasy world that isn’t our own (and therefore not subject to the exact progression of technology our own world took) would be unable to produce such a work.
Remember, just because its in the story, doesn’t make it accurate to the story. We can’t see the actual world, after all, only the representation the map gives us.
@11 Neat! Do we know what it was used for? ETA: The world map, I mean.
Still ETA: What the region map show?
Long live real books!
I do think a good fantasy book needs a fantasy map
@12:
The website I got that from didn’t specify: http://www.1001inventions.com/maps
great article! lots to think about.
Fictional worlds are fictional worlds. They don’t need to be “accurate” to medieval maps. Characters can understand them drawn in whatever way they’re drawn because its a work of fiction.
Nor are all fictional worlds psuedomedieval worlds. There are other settings beyond medieval inspired ones.
I think it’s good advise to suggest any aspiring writers or filmmakers to think long and hard before including maps in any scenes, but to say “don’t,” as in don’t ever, just seems like another arbitrarily inflexible rule creators are given that ends up causing more damage than it fixes.
One final point — criticizing the use of something because it stands in more to benefit readers/viewers than the characters is something I get, but it’s *okay* to include the occasional scene that is more about helping readers/viewers keep track of everything than something that’s more accurate to the setting. Again, fictional works are fiction. They don’t have to be 100% accurate to what would happen in the real world because they don’t exist in it. It’s okay for Faramir to be showing characters what’s on the map, even if it’s more about helping viewers than anything else.
@8: Nothing wrong with potatoes… if your story takes place in fantasy!South America. (I would like to see, just once for a change, a standard kings ‘n’ swords fantasy in, say, a pseudo-Australian setting. Bonus points for prehistoric megafauna like marsupial lions and megalania monitors).
Uh, Thror’s Map?
That’s hardly “accurate” …
Glenda Larke when she wrote as Glenda Noramly had HAVENSTAR, wherein the main character was a maker of fantasy maps. Which, if done right, and main character doesn’t know how but learns, fix the mapped portion in place so chaos doesn’t get it. It seemed a plausible fictional take on how cartography works, too. But I don’t know that much.
Speaking as someone who uses a variety of nautical charts and topographical maps on a regular basis, I completely agree. The kind of map we see in the front of a book is a Political Map, it shows the vague geographic outlines of the nations, and the major cities, and perhaps a river system or two. It’s fine for the big picture, and ideal for the floor of a capital as a demonstration of power, but is utterly useless for navigation or practical purposes.
If you’re running a strategic combat, you’d have a map broken up into numerous territories a-la Europa Universalis, where you can keep track of exactly where the front lines are. For tactical combat you’d have a physical map of the immediate area, with as much of the major features marked out as your scouts could provide. For general shipping, you need to know currents, tides, prevailing winds, depths, suitable anchorages and bottom types, hazards, navigation marks and port facilities.
None of these are very interesting from the pov of a book endpaper.
The other interesting thing to consider is *who* made the map – where is the map centred? Ironically the Shannara map is one of the best for this, because Paranor is dead centre and the map was made by the Druids, so of course they’d be in the middle.
On the whole I think you’re spot on, but I’m willing to cut TV & movie producers a little slack.
Here’s a hypothetical: one of the characters in the book you’re adapting has a map in the form of quipu recording an ancient traveler’s caravan journey. They refer to it at a couple of key junctures in the plot but it’s only seen those couple of times. Your choices for those shots are to make the map instantly recognizable to the audience as a map, or to shoehorn in some exposition explaining the whole quipu thing. Sometimes it’s better storytelling for the audience to immediately know it’s a map (even one that’s out of place in that universe) than to have to explain it.
@20 – Thank you for mentioning that. I’m looking for examples of mapmakers in fantasy worlds.
I very much enjoyed this – maps have a lot of interesting uses, and in a way, are reflective of the society around them.
Which is not to say I wholeheartedly object to the use of the ‘fantasy’ map in the narrative as shorthand for the reader. To me it’s like one of those ‘lost in translation’ things where probably they’re all speaking in a different language or whatever, but for our purposes we’re hearing it in English and seeing a version of the map that makes sense to us ;)
Still, it’s always neat when authors/artists take some pains to make the maps look a little more ‘practical’ or in world.
@23 – it’s been awhile since I read it, but I believe Stackpole has a trilogy (Cartomancy?) about map makers. ETA – ah, it’s called Age of Discovery. Cartomancy is the second book. Seeing as he’s also very much into military history/fantasy, I would think his take on the subject is probably at least somewhat more accurate than average (not that I have the expertise to say). Or at least, he’s trying to be.
Oh, and also, you’ve hit on exactly why I won’t read fantasy stories in e-book format ;) I find e-books really only work for me with short stories, essays, etc where I won’t be wanting to refer back to it or reference it. Even non-fiction I don’t always like to read in e-book, because if I want to go back to some other section or if, heaven forbid, the footnotes are in a separate portion book…ugh.
“Sire, I believe we took a wrong turn at Albuquerque.”
@24 – Thank you. The Stackpole trilogy (A Secret Atlas, Cartomancy, The New World) is on my list of books to have a look at, but it appears to be out of print now. No, spoke too soon: there are ebooks.
The article seems like an overreach. Fantasy characters would not have much use for a broad overview map such as found in fantasy novel endpapers (megalomaniacs who want to rule the entire world excepted, of course). But they certainly would have some kind of map or chart to tell them where to go. Particularly in any stories with travelers or quests. It might be more accurate to say that fantasy authors and readers should be aware that the standard “end paper” map is not what characters would use on a daily basis.
Thror’s map is an interesting case. It basically has the broadest possible outline (take the road from the Blue Mountains through the old forest, then head north toward Lake Town) along with the secret instructions. It’s clearly not a practical map for a cross-country walk–anyone going to Erebor needs a guide or someone who has been there before–but maybe the “map” part is meant to be a distraction from the secret instructions, so anyone who got hold of it would not be asking “why is there so much white space on a valuable piece of parchment”.
Eh, even a sparse map is better than no map if you are on a quest. Long live the fantasy map, even if they are more for the reader; this reader loves them. Can’t beat a good honest quest, with a prince in hiding, a woodelf, a wizard, and a surly drunk dwarf, and a a dragon to slay. Those guys need at least a map with “here be dragons on it”.
@29 Even if the map only tells you that if you keep going North you’ll run into a river.
@28 that is literally the point of this article – that denizens of fantasy novels would have maps, but they wouldn’t look like the endpaper maps shown to the reader of a fantasy book.
I think Thror’s map is also interesting in that it clearly isn’t meant to be a ‘this is the geography of the Lonely Mountain area’ map. even in story, it has a pretty specific purpose.
@28, 31 – Thrór’s map is wonderful, and if I had gone on and not stopped where I did (this article was plenty long as it was) I would have given it as an example of an in-world map done right. It’s a map for a specific purpose, it uses illustrations and runes and text and symbols that are entirely appropriate to its setting. But it, like the map of Wilderland also found in The Hobbit, it predates the default fantasy map style, which was in large part defined by the (later) map done by Christopher Tolkien for The Lord of the Rings.
One reason I didn’t go on and talk about Thrór’s map is that I’ve already done so in an earlier piece: see this article, which I wrote for NYRSF in 2013.
@12 It looks like that world map is Ottoman, from 1567, by Ali Macar Reis, a seaman, pirate, and cartographer of uncertain background. Translated Turkish Wikipedia page:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Ftr.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAli_Macar_Reis
@12 As to what it was used for, a Journal of Ottoman Studies article, “From Hungary to Southeast Asia: The Ali Macar Reis Atlas in a Global Context” says “when it comes to world maps the purpose remains as mysterious to us today as the manner in which they were produced.” :-)
https://apps.cla.umn.edu/directory/items/publication/316640.pdf
For most books, you wouldn’t know what map characters are looking at, anyway. It’s just some map. Does it look like the endpaper map? Who knows? Different for visual media.
The Numenoreans were advanced navigators (in a flat world…) and vaguely advanced in other ways too; it makes sense to me that they would have proper surveying of the lands we see, leaving maps for Elrond to own, assuming elves couldn’t do it on their own. Hobbits probably made their own maps of the Shire because hobbits.
I think Aegon canonically had a table map of Westeros in Dragonstone. Aegon also had aerial capabilities, though that goes only so far for a South America sized continent *cough*. Dunno what the maesters might have cobbled together in their thousands of years.
Note that Erastosthenes used latitude and longitude, as well as estimating the size of the Earth. Hipparchus developed trig tables, which I think you need for good surveying. Greeks did work on different map projections of the sphere to a plane. I see nothing stopping an in-character map from having at least accurate latitude for everything; longitude is trickier but possible, via surveying, lunar distances, or magical way of telling time.
Very cool article. I remember it being quite an eye-opener when I learned how important map making was in the 1700-1900 years. State secrets that could get you killed!
Related to that, for a time in the later half of the 20th century, surveys of the Arctic circle for local differences in gravity were highly classified because it affected the accuracy of ICBMs fired over the pole.
GPS accuracy can be downgraded in conflict areas.
The SM Stirling/David Drake General series does a good job showing the importance of maps and terrain in early 20th century warfare.
The second map @11 is obviously the Iberian peninsula, Europe and Africa.
The Romans had their version of modern public transport maps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana
@23. I can’t speak for the books, but the TV/film version of How to Train Your Dragon has Hiccup spending years charting an accurate and to-scale aerial map of the archipelago (and environs). He expands it by pasting sheets of paper/cloth/hide to the edges of his existing map. By the third movie (where it plays a plot-critical function) it’s become big enough that he has to unfold it on the ground to get a look at the whole thing.
I’m sorry, but I can’t even get through this article (I’ve tried 4 times). Who was the editor? Could they not make it coherent? (And I’m a bit disappointed Tor published it)
First off, beginning an article by using movie and TV fantasy shows as examples for an article about maps in *books* was confusing. Why start out writing about something that’s not the main point of the article? I could see perhaps adding a little later on, but not at the beginning. It only makes the article start out convoluted.
Secondly, if the author wants to have the people of the world use maps, why can’t they? For one thing, it’s fantasy. Not *realistic* fiction, but fantasy fiction.
Finally, as with any kind of writing, nobody should tell a writer they can’t write a certain way or include certain things. As a published writer, someone can suggest edits (which this article could have used), but to tell someone to not use maps is very much a no-no. As they say, those who can’t write become critics. In this case, a bad one.
@39 (and others) – The point was that characters in a fantasy world shouldn’t have fantasy maps—i.e., the sort of maps that are found at the beginning of the book—not maps full stop.
You and I are using the term “fantasy map” somewhat differently, I think: I’m not talking about “all maps of secondary worlds,” I’m talking about the specific style used by maps of those worlds. (See, for example, my previous piece for Tor: “What Does a Fantasy Map Look Like?”)
Reading all the way to the end would have made clear that I talk about how maps could work in fantasy worlds.
@39 Wow
“Could they not make it coherent?” If you found the article incoherent, I hate to tell you this, but the problem was not with the article.
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Many medieval people did quite a bit of traveling. Canterbury Tales is all about one such trip, for example, which was essentially the medieval version of tourism. And you forgot one very important purpose- to show what you own. Why else the obsession with mapping during the Age of Exploration? How else does a noble know what his taxes are and whom to tax, to go back a bit further? I’m dubious about the scholarship here, although it’s been a bit since I got my master’s degree in history.
While I agree that maps are pointless for the majority of fantasy worlds, I have to disagree with the main point of the article — that fantasy maps don’t belong in the hands of fantasy characters.
As the author stated, there are a number of legitimate reasons for having maps (religious, military, trade, navigation). These four potentially represent a HUGE cross-section of a fantasy world. Navigation and trade (read “land navigation”) covers ship captains and merchants, which represents almost 100% of the mobile economy of a given world. Consider also that a continental military would have multiple commanders, each required to operate in lands that they might not be intimately familiar with.
All of these professions require maps, and life wears maps out, requiring replacements. A wise cartographer would gather (either by exploration or by barter) a huge collection of maps which he could then use as masters. These he would use to generate copies which he could then specialize for specific purposes — tracing the landmass shapes, and using (for example) woodcuts to stamp the details onto the maps, thus creating standardized representations of given areas with minimal time and resources invested in the copying.
@22 and 37 nailed it; what maps look like in adaptations of books to visual media is utterly irrelevant to any discussions of anything to do with fantasy literature. When literary characters refer to map, it is vanishingly rare that the map in question is specified to resemble the one provided for the reader in the frontispiece in any fashion. The map contains (or doesn’t, if the plot calls for them to need to get a different map) the relevant information for the scene/scenario, and is presumably therefore a map of the appropriate type in whatever style is locally customary. What that style is is usually pretty irrelevant, and if it’s not, that will be specified (viz. The crystal maps of Tekumel).
@45/dalillama:
To that point: Karl Schroeder’s “Virga” adventure-SF series (starting with Sun of Suns, 2006) is set in a microgravity milieu, a giant gasbag filled with air and asteroids that orbit a central artificial star. A flat and static map of any kind is clearly inapplicable, so he describes briefly what navigators do use: a cube, with color-coded jewels strung on fine wires which must be periodically adjusted by a navigator, and which encompasses only a small portion of the 5,000 mile-wide space, in part because navies don’t typically traverse the breadth of Virga.
The books themselves contain paratextual diagrams (appendix, not endpaper) of Virga, but they’re schematic not navigational (and the details change in each volumes to reflect the action). The setting is novel, so readers can’t be expected to visualize it from 2D terranic precedent. They’re more like the interstellar maps addressed by James Nicoll in February.
I think this article ignores a very important point – in virtually all cases, the people using these maps in-universe are precisely the sorts of people who would have been using them 500 years ago – kings, queens, explorers, etc. The average citizen of Epic Fantasy Land has no more need for a continental map than a serf in 1520 did, and we don’t see them use one. We see the rulers and would-be conquerors using those maps, because they do have a legitimate reason to use them. Most of these wouldn’t look out of place as the frontispiece to a fantasy novel.
Now, if we were to see, say, EotW Mat Cauthon unroll a map between Baerlon and Caemlyn like I used to use a State Farm US Atlas on college road trips, that would be anachronistic. But for the most part the context we see maps used in-story is perfectly historically consistent.
great post, give me a paper map any day over GPS , real or fantasy![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_CCCCCC/border_DBDBDB/flags_0/" alt="Free counters!" border="0"></a>)
Maps in books, tv shows and movies aren’t for the character. Even if the characters in the book need to look or use a map, it’s still for the readers, and not the characters.
They are for the reader and audience. And as such, they need to quickly and visually represent the world in ways that are quick to understand. So the maps tend to be what people currently think of as a map. How it’s visually represented also gives you a quick easy to understand what kind of world you are in.
Fantasy maps are a form of worldbuilding before you ever start to read the story. And fantasy has really opened up to be more than just elves, dwarves, dragons, and returning jewelry. We see stories set in the wild west, in worlds that mirror our own technology, even in the future. The tone of the map, can give you vital clues as to the world you are about to enter.
So when the term fantasy is used, what exactly does that cover? Can’t you have a fantasy world set in the 1850’s wild west? What about an alternate world, that has our level of technology from the 1970s? But still have magic?
Fantasy isn’t just a society equal to medieval society.
So the maps we see in books and entertainment, aren’t there for the characters, regardless of the type of fantasy society they have. They are there for the reader. They are tools for world building and storytelling. Not historical accuracy.
@42 Moderator
Mea culpa.
lisamarie@25:
That’s interesting. I found myself buying the Wheel of Time and Cosmere books in ebook after owning the hardcovers specifically to use as references, so I don’t have to pull out the hardcovers. I have them on my phone, my tablet and my computer. Basically, wherever I am. And the text is searchable, so I can find what I’m looking for far more quickly. And I can highlight them and copy and paste them for citing.
I find eBooks indispensable for the purpose of reference.
Funny thing is, I don’t always remember the exact phrase I was looking for, but I usually remember the physicality of where in the book I read it. And in general I find flipping through the book (and getting context from whatever is on those pages) easier than trying to use a search function. Especially for something (like a map) where I have to flip to it frequently.
@49
Yeah, I know. I complain about it regularly. It is at the point I cannot find a vaguely pseudo-medieaval fantasy with some elves, a magic forest/castle, a wizard, lost prince etc for all the subversions and deconstructions flooding the market and drowning them out. When everything is a deconstruction or a subversion, then nothing is. We live in the new age of bland where the twist is king and story or character is almost an afterthought. Gimme my damn quest, played straight-no twist. Signal to noise ration in fantasy literature right now is horrendous.
I blame Twilight, I hope nobody from that franchise ever works again.
@1 Iirc, in the novels of A Song of Ice and Fire, Arya steals a map when she escapes Harrenhall with Gendry and Hot Pie, and then the trio wander around the Riverlands mostly lost because none of them can really read it or tell in which direction they’re walking.
Elements of “realism” that interfere with the fun and flow of the game can easily be ignored.
@53. If one type of novel is drowning another type out, it’s most likely because of these factors. The first being, people want the other kind of novel. It’s just a matter of public taste. Publishing history is filled with examples of just this. Books that become popular because it makes a connection with people. That is always going to have an effect on other books.
I know some will say, the publishers are pushing those books onto us, that’s why. Not true. The publishers push those books people respond too. The people working in sci fi/fantasy publishing are pretty savvy at reading the audience. and when new types of stories are what people want, publishing responds by finding authors writing those stories to fill those needs.
The second being, dragons, elves, and all that have been around a long time, and have become acceptable in mainstream. The fans become writers, who grew up reading writers who were like them. Fans who became writers. When that happens, any genre tends to become stagnant in what is done.
Hence, things seem bland. The stories are the same. The characters are the same. The evil is the same. You can’t blame other books for that happening. For example, the current trend in these kind of books is for someone to take their RPG campaign and turn it into a novel, in hopes of publication.
Third. The market has grown. There’s still just as many dragon and elves and dwarf books coming out. It’s just the demand for more fantasy, all kinds of fantasy has grown. So the amount of dragon and elves books hasn’t shrunk. The other types of fantasy has grown. When that happen it can appear like there’s less of the dragons. But it’s not true.
Opening what can be fantasy is a good thing. Even if it’s not what a person personally wants to read. It existing doesn’t take away of the joy that person feels reading about dragons and elves and all that goes with it.
I feel that by and large, Robert Jordans Wheel of Time novels got the idea of in-world maps correct. Maps are seen in one of the earlier novels, made by a professional mapmaker with the help of a lens crafter (who built a telescope). Another book has mention of maps found in the Queens Palace, some extremely old, many not entirely accurate, but usable enough for the characters purpose.
@52 – I’m the same way with books. there are definitely times when I’m trying to look something up quickly that the electronic search would be useful, but I can so often find something by flipping to the correct part. (Not as much now, but I was the designated quote-finder in high school English because the teacher knew I could do it quickly if the exact wording was needed for a point that came up in discussion.)
In books it’s often quite obvious that the maps that the characters are using aren’t the same as the one in the front of the book (it will have roads marked on it, for example). I think I have to agree that we need to give screen adaptations some slack, so that we can recognize that it’s a map. (Also, the iconic maps for Middle-Earth, for example, can help with the “this is Middle-Earth” feel, even if them being there makes no sense.) See also how everyone goes around with a bare head in movies, even if it completely ruins immersion, because otherwise we might not recognize who’s who.
The best fantasy map based story (if you will) is Kevin J. Anderson’s ‘Terra Incognito’ trilogy. One of the primary characters is a map maker and discusses at great length making maps, sketching maps and putting them into the main map room that is a secret of their society.
It’s brilliantly done and the trilogy has heavy politics and krakens to shore up its epic premise.
I agree maps are generally used incorrectly in fantasy shows or stories. Anderson got it right in that his maps are all hand sketched ‘areas’ that are eventually put together in a grand map room (as who has paper big enough to draw the whole continent!).
For some interesting short stories where maps feature in a big way, please enjoy these http://www.unlikely-story.com/journal-of-unlikely-cartography-issue-9-june-2014/
The maps in the Vatican Gallery of Maps, which were painted in the 1580s, remind me of the “fantasy map” style. They’re also huge and painted directly on the wall, so definitely not portable!
Of course these are modern maps, not Medieval; but then, not all epic fantasy takes place in Medieval-ish settings.
Here’s an example, taken from http://romapedia.blogspot.com/2015/02/vatican-museums-gallery-of-geographical_21.html
Define ‘modern map’.
Ptolemy created a grid system in 150 CE and plotted more than 800 locations upon it. It’s certainly recognisable to readers of the 21st century and probably accurate enough to navigate over land. Not sure I’d want to try it for navigating even the Mediterranean but, then, the Ancient Greek sailors had been doing that for centuries even in Ptolemy’s time.
The better question is Who would have a map?
And that’s going to come down to literacy and job description. A scribe may be literate but doesn’t need a map. A general needs both and so does the ruling lord and the rebel.
Medieval rulers were often illiterate.
And yet, apparently, ~100% of the Roman elite were literate.
I have to admit, I was ready to be very upset about this article, and about halfway through my opinion had not changed. Thankfully, I finished the article to the end and I absolutely agree with the author. Fantasy Maps, as written for us, the readers, are not the maps that should be used by the characters. However, I do feel the need to cut some slack to TV and Movie makers who are looking to make something that would be recognizable to the user. Faramir would certainly have a more appropriate map, more akin to Thror’s map, if such a thing had been created for the books. To be honest, it probably wouldn’t have taken that much work to make a recognizable looking map and adapt it for Faramir to use. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the GOT map, but I’m not familiar with the particular scene (I am one of the heathens who has only read the books). It’s being painted on the floor of a rulers castle, it may very well look like a fantasy map if it’s not meant to be functional.
One example of a “mapmaker” is Piemur in the Pern series when he maps the Southern Continent. It’s core to that portion of the story although somewhat of a side story overall, and Piemur himself is not a professional mapmaker. I’m not sure if we ever get a visual representation of his map as opposed to the standard Pern map and I don’t have access to the physical books at the moment. The maps he’s drawn are used by several other characters in the series IIRC.
Thank you for the article. It produced a bit of Jungian synchronicity this afternoon as I was reading Gene Wolfe’s The Citadel of the Autarch.
From Chapter XV–The Last House:
Come to find out, the map leads Severian to The Last House which is out of time, or in the future. Anachronistic to Severian’s time. Not only is Severian confused, I failed to comprehend the spacetime moebius strip that would make it possible.
I haven’t quite finished, so all may be revealed, but I’m guessing that Wolfe made a conscious choice not to include maps. With Severian’s point of view the only one available, he is literally (and literarily) the only orientation we have.
Why do maps have to be on paper? One that’s embroidered on cloth would be a lot sturdier, less vulnerable to spilled whatever, and easier to transport.
In my book, THE DRAGON’S PEARL (ebook only) I have the main map up at the front–but I have little pieces of map in different chapters, depending on where my character has wandered off to. I haven’t heard anyone comment on that feature yet, though.
Plus, I loved the big physical topographical ‘map’ of San Francisco Bay, where they used to model water flows and possible flood effects before they went to computers. I am so stealing that for one of my major port cities.
Fantasy is there to tell a story. Stories don’t work if you include too many things that the audience can’t identify with. Including complete 100% realism for MEDIEVAL times means the story will be FILLED with things that alienate an audience.
Your realism works for history. It does NOT work for fantasy.
@18: I love the idea of a pseudo-Australian fantasy. I am currently working on outlining a pseudo-African fantasy that I hope to write during NaNoWriMo. I am relatively new to fantasy as a reader and would like to find what pseudo-African fantasy has already been written. Anyone have any suggestions?
In one of Barry Hughart’s Master Li/Number Ten Ox novels–I think it’s The Story of the Stone–the characters navigate a maze of caves using a carving of a dragon weaving in and out of a rock riddled with holes and passages; the dragon represents the proper path through the caves. It’s a 3-D map of sorts. As I recall it’s used to navigate two different labyrinths in different parts of the book, which means somebody went to great pains to construct identical labyrinths…
Since no one else brought it up, these wooden maps are really cool.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/greenland-wooden-maps-ammassalik
I love having maps with Fantasy Books. And it’s fine if the characters have them sometimes. Where would Bilbo Baggins be without his map to the Lonely Mountain?
If you look at Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive, there’s a lot of in-universe art, including maps in various representational styles, and I absolutely love it.
I’m completely untroubled by nicely-done maps turning up in film and TV adaptations of fantasy stories. The viewer can’t be counted on to have the book, so it’s a way to share the map art with them in an unobtrusive way. (Or, in the case of GoT’s opening credits, an obtrusive but awesome way.)
Also, the point of the map in the book is to orient the reader. Absent that map, the TV viewer needs the map as a cue to be able to understand the geography. Hence the famous GoT opening sequence, and all the loving shots of Tolkien’s maps in the Peter Jackson trilogies.