Maps in Fantasy Books

I think of the presence of maps in genre fantasy novels as a function of needing to establish that the fundamentals of physics are the same in the particular fantasy realm as in the real world. Yes, the fantasy realm has magic and gods and demons and what have you, but if it can be mapped it can’t be that different from our own world! The map indicates to the reader that they’re not going to have to work too hard to understand the system of the fantasy realm.

And, of course, the map indicates that the author has done the appropriate world-building work, and that the social and cultural forms will be worked out with a similar degree of detail.

In the previous post I cited an online essay about maps in fantasy novels. I thought people might like to read some other commentaries. So, here’s a download from the database of works I’ve noticed over the last decade. Have fun!!

Here are online essays about maps in fantasy novels (I hope the links all still work):

Aaronovitch, Ben. Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett. The Guardian. 27 November 2013.

Anonymous. Grown Man Refers to Map at Beginning of Novel to Find out where Ruined Castle of Arnoth Is Located. The Onion. 25 April 2014. ** short, but sweet **

[update 50 May] Cep, Casey N. 2014. The Allure of the Map. New Yorker. 22 January 2014.

Crowe, Jonathan. The Territory Is Not the Map: Critiques of Fantasy Maps Have More to Do with the Shortcomings of Fantasy Worlds than the Maps that Depict Them. The Map Room. 27 September 2017.

Crowe, Jonathan. Fantasy Maps Don’t Belong in the Hands of Fantasy Characters. Tor. 28 May 2019.

[update 26 April] Greenlee, John Wyatt, and Anna Waymack. In the Beginning Was the Word: How Medieval Text Became Fantasy Maps. Historia Cartarum: Meditiations on the Historical Production of Spaces. 2019.

Grossman, Lev. Why We Feel So Compelled to Make Maps of Fictional Worlds. Literary Hub. 2 October 2019.

Macfarlane, Robert, Frances Hardinge, and Miraphora Mina. Wizards, Moomins and Pirates: The Magic and Mystery of Literary Maps. Guardian. 22 September 2018.

Mitchell, David. Start with the Map: A writer’s lessons in imaginary cartography. New Yorker. 13 September 2018.

O’Conner, A. J. On Maps in Fantasy Novels. BookRiot. 24 August 2015.

Tam, Nicholas. Here Be Cartographers: Reading the Fantasy Map. Ntuple Indemnity. 18 April 2011.

[update 13 May] Vargic, Martin, and Rachel Dixon. 2020. Fantasy map-making: “I like vintage style with a modern twist.” Guardian. 13 May 2020.

Whitehead, Alan. Maps in Fantasy. Atlas of Ice and Fire. 21 February 2016. ** one blog entry within a site dedicated to the maps of the Game of Thrones series **

And, for those who might still have some library access, some works in print as well:

Crowe, Jonathan. 2013. “Here Be Blank Spaces: Vaguely Medieval Fantasy Maps.” New York Review of Science Fiction 25, no. 12/300: 14–16.

Ekman, Stefan. 2013. Here Be Dragons: Exploring Fantasy Maps and Settings. Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press.

Ekman, Stefan. 2018. “Entering a Fantasy World through Its Map.” Extrapolation 59, no. 1: 71–87.

[update 30 May] Habermann, Ina, and Nikolaus Kuhn. 2011. “Sustainable Fictions: Geographical, Literary and Cultural Intersections in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.” Cartographic Journal 48, no. 4: 263–73.

[update 30 May] Harpold, Terry. 2005. “Verne’s Cartographies.” Science Fiction Studies 32, no. 1: 18–42.

Lewis-Jones, Huw, ed. 2018. The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Puerta, Marta Garcia de la. 2007. “Cartography and Fantasy: Hidden Treasure in the Maps of The Chronicles of Narnia.” In C.S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy, edited by Bruce L. Edwards, 2: (don’t have page numbers). 4 vols. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

Tally, Robert T., Jr. 2014. “In the Suburbs of Amaurotum: Fantasy, Utopia and Literary Cartography.” English Language Notes 52, no. 1: 57–66.

Tally, Robert T., Jr. 2016. “Tolkien’s Geopolitical Fantasy: Spatial Narrative in The Lord of the Rings.” In Popular Fiction and Spatiality: Reading Genre Settings, edited by Lisa Fletcher, 125–40. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

[update 13 May] Waymack, Anna Fore, and John Wyatt Greenlee. 2020. “In the Beginning Was the Word: How Medieval Text Became Fantasy Maps.” Studies in Medievalism 29: 183–99.

Enjoy!