If I were to print a business card for what I do as a fantasy writer, in the section called “title” I would put, “Speculative Cosmographer.” Fancy title, eh?
Well, broken down, it really just means fictional world-builder. When I write, as all fantasy writers do, I create a world that is consistent within itself. These “Other Worlds” may have their own languages, beliefs, sciences, social structures, laws, and arts. When the author does this well, as in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, or Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea, the world must rhyme with itself, if you will. It cannot have jarring inconsistencies, or tears in the social or scientific fabric that betray the authenticity of that world. The boundary between that world and our own is clear. Middle-earth has some connection to our world today, but you won’t find it accidentally by taking a wrong turn on Crescent Ave.
There are some threshold worlds that are connected with our own, but separate in key ways. We see this in urban faerie tales, like Holly Black’s work–most accessible are The Spiderwick Chronicles and Tithe–but also in J.K. Rowling’s Hogwartsian world, layering England with unseen magic, or Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet, which plays with concepts of space and time focused around a small New England town. But many of our greatest fictional universes are places set apart from Here-Now, and so will typically have a unique geography.
And with a unique geography comes unique maps, and I love maps!
I do like real maps: pulling down the over-sized Atlas of the World from its shelf and looking up Burundi on a carpeted floor; carefully refolding a road map of Maine; pouring over the complex web of lines that make up a Tokyo highway map. I like maps.
But I adore fantasy maps. Half of my time reading Tolkien is spent running my finger along the road from the Shire to Mordor on an onion paper map of Middle-earth I bought at a poster fair on campus. We laminated our coloured map for Narnia for my son’s room as we went through the seven chronicles, and my copy of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist was purchased precisely because the version next to it lacked a map. Maps make fantasy reading so much more enjoyable. After all, what would Discworld be without flyleaf cartography? How would we know where the Woozle wasn’t if we didn’t have a map of Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood?
So it was with delight that I stumbled upon Mara Valderran’s blog on There and Draft Again, entitled “Creating Your Fantasy Bible: A Lesson in Geography.” Mara is discussing how one creates a fictional world:
“Geography plays a more important role than most people realize. Even if you don’t have your characters traveling across the lands on an epic journey with a rag-tag group of hobbits, dwarves, and elves, it is important that you know where your characters are coming from and who their allies might be.”
I agree completely. This is why I began a recent fantasy book with a map–a badly drawn one, but a map nonetheless. The valley in The Curse of Téarian is essential to the story as each of its natural borders–woods, sea, mountain, and plain–individually create a different tension in the storyline. The story is authentic to the geography, or at least I hope it is. I this sense Mara is quite right.
Also included in Mara’s blog is Dan Meth‘s Fantasy World Map. It is, of course, just a fun project–a poster that geeks like me can order from his site. But the map itself shows the tactile nature of world-building. The lands of imagination can be charted, measured, taken from the multidimensional realities of an author’s complex brain and stretched into two-dimensional view. The Land where Oz is north of Middle-earth is the world-builder’s sketchpad, the vocation of a speculative cosmographer.
As someone who studies how people build fantasy worlds, I am in that sense a “Speculative Cosmologist.” That, of course, just a fancy way of saying I love how these worlds come together in language, social structure, physics, and geography. But, besides the great fun of mapping out these worlds, the title sure looks good on a business card. 
Brilliant. Like you, I love fantasy (and historical) cartography. The Narnia and Middle Earth maps are a cornerstone in my knowledge of those lands as truly real places.
Rob, do you have the Middle Earth Atlas? I haven’t come across it yet.
I love maps too, although they are my epic-fantasy archilles heel. I have drawn one truly terrible map for mine, so bad my writing buddy just went ahhh… even she couldn’t think of anything positive to say. Sadly I’ve lost it, or I’d post it as a ‘what not to do’ on my blog. Yours on the other hand looks very artistic!
You always have to keep the terrible. I presume you saw my terrible map below! I couldn’t decide if I was looking from above or the side. Ugh.
I’m not sure if you’re going to count video games as fantasy, but the Strangereal map is one I’ve always loved as an alternative to modern earth:
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130414181451/acecombat/images/5/5f/Strangereal_Project_Aces_Full_Map.png
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110712044506/acecombat/images/thumb/0/0a/Mapdone4vw.jpg/640px-Mapdone4vw.jpg
Absolutely–are they alternate post-Pangaea earths? I mean, what it would look like had the plates shifted a little differently?
Video game writers are professionals at making alternative worlds.
Wow. When I read your line about worlds needing to “rhyme with themselves,” I realized that even as workaday writers approaching the “real world,” we’re often just trying to explore the rhymes. I admire you for your ability to immerse yourself in your created world, and assure their consistency. Loved this article, and thank you for sharing the maps!
Thanks for the compliment, Susan. Yes, the “rhyming world” is an idea I’ve been struggling to work out for a while. The rhyme captures both the rhythm–the pattern–and the melody/harmony–how the pieces of a fictional world fit together.
Readers should note that Susan is a storyteller. Check out her Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/Susan-Call-Hutchison/e/B00AAO97P0/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&linkCode=ur2&qid=1367962428&sr=1-2-ent&tag=reaaloreaalow-20
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Beautifully written. This’ made me think of Thomas Hardy’s maps of Wessex, which I loved.
Thanks for the compliment–and the tip! The Hardy maps are very sophisticated.
I think that fictional world-builder would work for this storyteller myself!
True, true. But I do like to complicate things! 😉
Complicating things makes it even better! http://www.segmation.wordpress.com
Love your blog. When my children were growing up, the four of us would often sit around the dining room table in the evening and just look at maps, think of where we wanted to go…something both my husband and I had also done as children. Even with GPSs, I still love to look at maps. When traveling I still get a better sense of where I am by looking at the larger map. I have often looked at the Narnia map and pictured it in my head (years before the movies). C.S. Lewis was a brilliant writer. It would have been very interesting to have been a fly on the wall at the Bird and Baby pub (The Eagle and Child) when he and JRR Tolkien sat together – I wonder if they ever drew any maps together.
Great question: did they sketch together? Tolkien did his own; Lewis had an illustrator, though he could sketch reasonably well. I think most any of us would like to be a fly in that wall on any given Inklings day!
And great activity. I think we’ll pull out the atlas together tonight.
I remember spending a lot of time looking at the map The Book of Three in the Prydain series by Lloyed Alexander. I spent as much time on The Hobbit’s map, and Narnia’s. To me, maps are an essential and fun part of the Fantasy universe. It is one of the first things I try to create, in order to build the world the story takes place in – and it’s a lot of fun to create mountains to divide nations, rivers to provide transportation and water, valleys and plains for farmland, and, of course, horrible, desolate places for evil to lurk.
I don’t remember the Prydain maps–I had to look them up.
Have you tried any of the map-making software? You gotta have places for evil to lurk!
I haven’t, but I have a friend who has tried the software.
I prefer the old fashioned pen and paper method. There’s something more hand-crafted about it.
I agree, though once I’ve done the pen work I might try one of the mapping programs for kicks.
first let me say i like it a lot…. but do any of you even know what Narnia is really about? What c.s. lewis was really writing about?
I think he was writing about a lot of things. Narnia comes out of the core of his beliefs and worldview, and he created a world that reflected certain aspects (redemption, self-sacrifice, the proud-fallen, good and evil, etc.) and left other aspects out (liturgy, taxes, formal education, etc.). Any good book should be about a lot of things. Perhaps I’m wrong there…
Well said.
Thanks for posting Thorin’s map! I vividly remember when I was in 4th grade and got my copy of “The Hobbit.” Opening it up and seeing that map, I was instantly hooked.
That map confused me a lot when I was younger. I took me forever to figure out it was Thorin’s map! Then I tried to translate the runes…
I know exactly what you mean; it was several years before the light bulb came on for me as well. I think I was most transfixed by that hand. (And a great blog you have – my compliments.
Thanks for the compliment! I’m checking out your blog, but I’ve been bombarded since being Freshly Pressed.
Brenton, Please stop by Red Lane Gardens and visit with the local Earthwarden. Lovely island you have there ! Nice blog.
That’s in Belfast, methinks. I’m a veggie man in the garden, myself, but we have some great Earthwardens here. We used to call Prince Edward Island the Million Acre Farm.
It is a beautiful place. We were there about 5 years ago and enjoyed every moment. Except that bridge over your great moat !
I love that bridge, but the moat is better for swimming.
8P
I loved this. Of course being a retired social studies teacher, who also taught geography some years, I can get into your map concepts. I loved your imagination and creativity.
Thanks for the compliments! I would love to teach geography in school. I’m a geek! I have a masters degree but not a BEd, so I’m not even allowed to substitute teach here. Someday perhaps.
I did teach Global Issues at the university 10 times, which I loved.
I taught Florida History at the college level. Great fun.
Oooh I love this. More maps, please (: And many congratulations on getting pressed!
Thanks! It’s been coo, and a little busy…
Coo indeed 😀
So busy, I can’t afford to type an “l” indiscriminately!
Haha, I understand. Thought you were just being real old school OG.
Tru dat.
Wonderful, and so true. The beautiful, detailed maps of these worlds add so much to the sense of their existence.
I agree. Guy Gavriel Kay commented on this on twitter, and reminded me of the maps in his Fionavar Tapestry–key to reading that series.
love this! maps really do tell their own story. in this world of GPS, etc., i prefer a good road map and now i have stories tied to them. i love fantasy maps as they help me see in my head what im supposed to be seeing. it does make those worlds all the more real, which i love. 🙂
All I can think of is those people that follow faulty GPS units into deserts and have to be rescued by helicopter. That rarely happens with a AAA road map.
I agree, I love the maps in books, and am always bothered if one is not included. I am currently writing my own fantasy novel, and the map has been in a constant state of revision from the start. But with each copy, I like to think it is becoming a bit better, as everything is slowly tweaked and modified to-dare I say it?-eventual perfection. But sadly I have less natural knowledge of geography than I ought, and I know that is negatively affecting my map. Perhaps if I ever finish my book I’ll have to hire a Speculative Cosmologist! Good luck with your own book and your map!
Good luck to yourself too!
I grew up on a farm and know water and woods. But I couldn’t decide on profile, if you look at my awful map!
Ah thanks- now I know where my favourite places are… I just miss Atlantis there.
It’s there, just below the surface….
🙂
Truer words were never written. Maps have always lured me deeper into fictional works! When I was a little younger my favorite distraction was Black Isle studios baldurs gate games, and while the game and story were great i confess I spent a little too much time admiring the world map, so intricately detailed, logically assembled and presented in fine lines on parchment style sheets. The later ice wind dale games had equally spellbinding geographical distractions, with even more outlandish illustrations of “the savage north” with lushly painted backgrounds and various locations shown in snapshot style.
Brilliant description. I have mostly avoided video games–I got lost in them, lost in the worlds, the competition, the next steps. But one of the reasons I loved civ-type games was the maps.
Your map looks medieval, is all. They could never decide between side and bird’s-eye, either.
Just another a map nut here. I have atlases back into the 19th C. Same shape of continents but different world. If you get into older repros — I’m not so sure about those continents.
Have you got *The Atlas of Fantasy*? Great collection there. I love to look at fantasy/sf maps at the places nothing in particular happened and wonder what their stories are.
I’ll take medieval!
I didn’t know about that atlas–I’ve wishlisted it at Amazon. Your last comment made me think of the stories we could right of the places in between.
As a massive map addict and fantasy fanatic I used to get into trouble when I was in school as I would fill my “rough” books (for working out notes and practice test answers) with scribbles of fictional maps .. they were blank pages, I couldn’t help it…
Great story! I think of Asher Lev, sketching pictures in his holy books–frightening other children.
I’m not a sketch-er, but was a mind-wanderer. I don’t know how many times I heard, “Brenton is intelligent, but just doesn’t apply himself.”
I have always felt alone in my fascination with the maps of fantasy worlds. I have been known to purchase a book based solely on the artistry of cartography. It would appear, however, that adoration of maps is a common symptom of a fantasy addict.
You are not alone–though I wouldn’t have guessed how not alone we really are (ift hat makes sense)!
Reblogged this on Storey on a Story Blog and commented:
Maps and adventures go hand-in-hand. The grander the journey, the more fantastic the map.
Great article!! I always fancy myself as a fantasy writer….but alas I’m not. So many of my early starts with world building would be to draw a map. I would start with the continental shelf, the mountains, the rivers, the forests, the deserts, the islands. And then I start to speculate on the weather, and how the terrains have an effect on it. I remember early on, that I started reading about meteorology just to get an idea on how air current move over an ocean and how it will pick up moisture and energy.
I would say that, I’m stumped by all the details and by the time I’m half way done with the map, I just got bored with my fantasy idea….and a couple of months later, a new fantasy theme suddenly pops up, and the cycle of map drawing and non-starters continue…
I suppose the hardest thing about writing is actually writing, actually doing it to the end. Once you’ve done that, you realize the hardest thing is getting it to publication.
Might I suggest you partner with someone? You seem to have great ideas, and can think of details, context, and consequence. Perhaps you need a partner to fill in other parts.
The Curse of Tearian, the map I drew badly, came first from an image, then one character, then ideas, then the world, then the other characters, then the plotline.
Reblogged this on The Oracle of Grooviness and commented:
I love that map of all the fantasy lands together
There is something about a map that just pulls you into a world. I have very distinct memories from when I was six or seven looking at the maps in the front of Lord of the Rings and just imagining myself in Middle-Earth. At some point I think I made a paper-maiche version of it, but I sadly never took a picture. Thanks for the post.
Very cool. Something about your comment here made me think of my own childhood. I actually had map wallpaper–a brown-dominated wall of naval maps and naval symbols and ships. I guess I could have seen this coming!
And here I thought I was the only one who would looked back and forth between map and page whenever Eragon and Saphira went traveling…
Quite the opposite! I wished that there were more Eragon maps–particularly the underground maps.
Love it! For some reason one can feel alone reading Lewis, mainstream media tells you he is all wrong. But it just feels so right! It feels real, and his maps are part of that.
How do the Goo Goo Dolls put it? “I don’t want the world to see me because I don’t think that they’d understand.”
Reading is like that–our favourite authors hidden from the critical world. Our hobbies are like that. Our faith can be like that. Even our love.
But there are others, beyond the haters.
It’s so crazy that I read this post because I just started working on another Fantasy story as well — I had written several but never using maps and I thought — well for this one I would have to b/c I am involving the elements of intergalactic space travel and the universe with magic and enchantment on certain planets — so I created a map of the galaxies that I am writing about — along with a map of the realm that is the center of my story — It has become quite the adventure and has helped me tremendously with coming up with ideas — you know, my favorite thing about that whole process is naming the places and creatures in my stories — that’s the wonderful thing about Fantasy writing — it doesnt have to make any sense! I loved this post — it refreshed me — now I can get back to work on my book! Good Luck to you and I’ll be following! S.
So glad you were refreshed! Have you published your galactic map? I wonder what 3D design could do for SF map-making.
I have not — I actually just finished it the other day!! I will try and post a rough draft of it when I give my preface of the new story I’m writing — I like to have the opinions of other Fantasy writers! I’ll stay posted!! I think 3-D design could help enhance the worlds that we create — those maps especially of Middle Earth — can you imagine how those sections of Middle Earth would be enhanced with 3-D design? It would make for much interesting stories!!
Definitely post it here. I’m following your blog, but I may miss it.
I noticed your blog tagline. Have you read this preface of Madeleine L’Engle: http://apilgriminnarnia.com/2013/01/09/rooms/?
Yes I did and I responded! Great post!!! I will try to post my map here! Let me know what you think of my make believe universe and realm! Thanks again!
Hey Brenton, I’m just about to self-publish my fantasy fiction for younger adults (I wanted my little brother to read Game Of Thrones, but it’s not age appropriate, so I wrote one that was!). I have a national map and a local area map…would you give me your damning verdict if I linked you to them?
That would be fun. Given my own bad map, the bar is pretty low for my enjoyment!
http://quinnface.wordpress.com/about/
There’s a couple of my hand-drawn ones there, not sure if you can click on them to enlarge…not quite figured WordPress out fully yet.
They are midway through being processed into digital versions of themselves.
They are a little small, but I can tell that they are far better than mine! Can you send me the link when you do digitize them, or get them bigger?
Disappointingly there doesn’t seem to be a way of increasing the size on WordPress. However, they are on the facebook page in all their digitalized glory now! https://www.facebook.com/TheForestOfMoonshade
I’ll check it out.
Reblogged this on Chinese Massage.
Wherefore, pray, is Atlantis? Location is absolutely essential — the recent greats (especially Kenneth Grahame and George MacDonald) could ‘see’ and help the reader to see as well.
I quipped above that Atlantis is there, but below the surface. Seeing the invisible is key to great writing, I think.
haha, and to reading enjoyment
How about Kingdom of the Isles, Kesh, Novindus and Roldem?
I spent so many hours in those beautifull lands …
(Kelewan as well, although thats in a different universe …)
😉
I suppose the names of imaginary worlds could go on and on, couldn’t they. If we got into science fiction, they would explode in number.
Indeed, not to mention different dimentions….
I do love the Midkemia map! I am only bothered it stops with the easters kingdoms.
I LOVE YOUR POST! I’m horribly bad at reading maps but I just love looking at the fantasy maps in my novels, or admiring the artistry of medieval maps. I love Feist, Midkemia and Kelewan too but I think a huge challenge would be recreating the lands of the Imaginarium Geographica series, by James A. Owen. If you haven’t read them already, do look them up!
James Owen keeps popping up on my list–I’ll have to hunt that down, for sure.
Thanks for the compliment!
Reblogged this on lyve910's Blog and commented:
Live this
I love this, and I can really relate to it. When I was a teenager and first discovering fantasy, I spent hours poring over maps before doing one bit of reading, memorizing places and names. Maps make the worlds feel so real. I always buy the hardcovers just so that I can have the large, beautiful, fold-out maps!
Marie Anne, what do you think of these map books of fantasy worlds, or encyclopedias or visitor’s guides?
I think they’re a great idea, really fun. Especially for those who want to get more immersed in the fantasy worlds they’re reading about 🙂
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Really nice. Love the maps.
Completely agree with the statement that maps are one the most compelling aspects of fantasy worlds/stories. As a matter of fact, now that I’m all exited again, I think my next painting will be a map of Middle Earth 🙂
I’d love to see that map when you are done!
I love this and I’ve seen the Fantasy World Map before, but somehow I still can’t see Mordor and Whoville being right next to each other.
Nice. It is rough being the Whos with Sauron killing all the clover.
Zlol. Also, why isn’t Hogwarts on this map? Or am I just blind?
I think Hogwarts is a dimensional world–it only works on a map of England.
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“Speculative Cosmologist”. I like that title, plus it sounds a heck of a lot better than “world-builder”! Mind if I use it myself?
I loved looking at all the maps in this post. Thanks! Incidentally, if you like maps and want to check out some really impressive ones, you should browse around the Cartographers’ Guild community and galleries: http://www.cartographersguild.com/content/ It’s a wonderful place, and people who want help with their own maps just might find some excellent tutorials and advice there.
Feel free! Though I threw the words up here, I’m sure someone else has said it before me. We are a world of permutations.
I’ve also followed your blog. I’ll check out that online guild.
Thanks! Hope you enjoy that site.
And I followed you back. I haven’t looked into C.S. Lewis beyond Narnia and the space trilogy, but you’re doing a fascinating project here, and just may inspire me to get into his writing more deeply.
Narnia is classic, but it isn’t his best work. I’m working on the Space Trilogy now, but love The Great Divorce. Till We Have Faces is probably his best book.
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I am a reluctant Speculative Cosmographer. I easily have the big picture of the universe from which I write, and the world, but the details! Maps are so hard for me to create because I want them to be… you know… perfect!
I just wish mine were legible!
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Are the Dreamlands from the Cthulhu Mythos?Cool map the way?
I assumed it was Lovecraft–it’s not anything else, is it?
Tis a cook map.
I like what you guys are usually up too. This kind of clever work and reporting!
Keep up the terrific works guys I’ve added you guys to my blogroll.
Thanks!
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