The new Foreigner book which I am finishing is going to need maps—because we refer to places and we move. There’s a lot of old history raked up. And more recent troubles.
So I am trying to work with the maps. One of the problems is scale. The maps have to be to be visible/legible on the scale of a hardbound, and a paperbound book. We are dealing with a monocontinent. Gondwana. Pangaea. It’s big, it’s wide, and I have to compress the map visually or just show areas, and putting names on the map that can be read in a 5″x7″ space means printing it sort of like putting Moscow in legible size on a map of Eurasia that can fit in a 5″x7″ window. If you can read it, it’s wiped out a thousand miles of surface features, rivers, etc.
But, that’s the job I’ve got. And worse, one of the maps, the one showing part of Mospheira and Dur in our Map Room on this site, the one that has the Marid due south of Ashidama Bay, when it’s about 1500 miles to the east—is the one that gives me headaches. I sketched it, they had a professional artist re-do it, [the map above] and, well, he put in names at the expense of accuracy and moved the whole Marid to the West Coast—1500 miles. It’s actually about 500 miles east and a mountainous 700 miles south of Shejidan. At best a 5×7 map gives you kind of a childlike perspective on the continent, which I assure you, is wider than that. And we haven’t even gotten to the continental divide and the clans west of Malguri’s eastern domains.
I am going to try again. I am asking Jane to take the time to try to render these, because my skills aren’t up to it, but heaven help us if we have somebody else take her map and start compressing things. Section it up and make two maps, maybe—this book is going to need at least 2, anyway. But graphics in any modern book are a pita. Shouldn’t be, but are.
Wish us luck.
There’s the all-important arrow indicating which direction is which – and that doesn’t have to be square to the page, just square to the world it’s in.
The way it’s done there, with the inset that shows more of the continent, is helpful. Of course, doing a really thorough job, you’d end up with something closer to an atlas….
(I used to read maps for a living. It was always fun discovering that the drawings that described reality were mislocated by about a mile. [shrug] Transmission didn’t know where their stations were, but we could usually find where the work actually went. Sometimes it took longer than other – once we weren’t sure till it showed up in an aerial photo. I think that may have been the job where the young condor dropped in on them and they were taking pictures of it.)
Yep, here [map above] they squished Mospheira MUCH closer to the mainland, sectioned off the Marid and rotated it 180 degrees below Ashidama Bay, and moved the Padi Valley MUCH closer to the coast. Sigh. The Padi Valley and Taiben are north of Shejidan a fair piece, and the Marid is south of Shejidan across the mountains an even fairer piece.
A Possibility: One solution would be to provide a global overview map, and then do further pages like keymap pages which would tile together if laid out in their grid form.
Another possibility would be to provide those for the book, and to provide, say, a coffee-table sized book or an 11×17 or 17×22 size print of the map. (Or the ISO European A/B/C/D paper sizes might be more convenient.)
Ebook formats these days still tend to provide a thumbnail and then a rather low-res larger version for any illustrations, and still have a bad habit of putting columnar tables (or matrix-speech) into a danged bitmap image. (Oh, I was not happy to find one foreign language verb book did that, rendering it way less useful, no matter how good a reader’s eyes are.)
Would the publisher be enthused about doing a map supplement as a separate publication? Or a coffee-table format book with illustrations and notes, a sort of encyclopedia or compendium or lexicon, similar to what has been done with Star Trek, Star Wars, Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and a few other popular series? I know Barnes & Noble, for instance, has a nice display bookshelf for their large-format stuff, such as those, or graphic novels and manga, D&D and other gaming books, and they’re popular with collectors.
With as many volumes as the Foreigner series now has, it might be an idea or two the publisher would like and could make some money for them and for you, and we fans would likely go wild for it/them. 🙂
Anyway, the suggestion for map sections within the book could work, and might be a better solution and less headache, both for you and for the publication layout person, their graphic arts department. 🙂 That, of course, makes a very big assumption that they’ll reserve the pages needed for such in the upcoming book. I realize that might already be decided by them. But if it’s still open to design decisions and book length / page count, then it could still work.
Just a possibility.
Hmm, if an entire tiling of the supercontinent / planetary map sections seems impractical or too much fuss, then maybe the overview map, and a few pages for particularly relevant regions in a larger scale; i.e., city or region.
Fun Find: [ citation: behindthename.com ]
Kyō / Kyou
From Japanese 協 (kyou) meaning “unite, cooperate”, 京 (kyou) meaning “capital city”, 郷 (kyou) meaning “village”, 杏 (kyou) meaning “apricot”, or other kanji with the same pronunciation.
Who knew the aliens have a thing for apricots? 😀
It’s more involved, but perhaps section the maps into a few pages at the front or rear of the book instead?
And, a thought- perhaps create a large scale map and put it up for sale as a download on Closed Circle? I’d love to have a map on the wall to get my bearings when I’m reading the story.
I would suggest using the inside front and back cover pages for maps. Possibly one large map across both pages in front (and duplicated at the back), and maybe two one page maps in the back. Doing one large map across both sides of the inside cover means that there is no question of part of the map getting lost in the gutter, which would happen with a two page map sewn into the book. So maybe a continental map in the front, a Mospheira-coastal map on one side of the back, and Shejidan to Tirnamardi on the other (rotated?). Or if you want something really different, you could ask that the full two page map be printed on the back of the dust jacket. All of this of course leaves the question of maps in the paperback up in the air.
Enjoy!
Frank.
I’ve always had questions about the map above. Below the Marid, is that the southern island that got submerged by the big wave?
I kind of like the idea of using both sets of end papers for the major map. East in the front and west in the back or vice versa. Further maps might be in 5x7s depending on how much you need.
Please put in the former location of the islands with the wonderful green glaze if you have that option, but that is suggestion, not an order.
I’m addicted to maps if available. I even had a thin magnetic bookmark that I used to use to mark the map page(s), but I lost it in a library book. (OK, I *found* it in a library book originally, so net gain or loss.:=)
I’d go for an overview map and smaller regional maps, even if they run to multiple pages. Please accept the pain, CJ, maps are *so* useful to understanding the geospatial context.
What projection are you using? (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Maps *must* be hard to organise because they’re often so *bad*, particularly in fantasy novel maps which tend to use an almost unreadable (but oh so stylish) typeface.
Oh, and how about a URL annotation to the map in the book pointing to a reasonably permanent website, with bigger and possibly better maps?
I know this isn’t always expedient, and not every reader likes it, either:
Back in the late 1960s, I ordered a hardbound set of “The Lord of the Rings”. Houghton-Mifflin was the U.S. publisher, and they had a fold out map in each of the 3 volumes. The first two volumes had the same map of Middle Earth, while the 3rd volume had a much more detailed map of Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor, but was the same size foldout as the other two maps.
(As a side note, I’ve noticed differences in the map of Ylesuin and the descriptions in the books, and it’s also highly compressed. I wished for a map of Amefel, too.)
Argh….empty comment…
I really like the idea of a “Foreigner Companion” volume that had maps, linguistic notes, vocabulary, all the little reference bits.
But then you said those magic words: “the new Foreigner book” and we had a reprise of the “Happy Happy Joy Joy” song. . .
Perhaps you could have large online maps as well as the small maps in the book. The URL for the large maps can be in the book. They could be posted on a site like Google Docs or Drop Box, or perhaps the publisher’s site – they always want to drive traffic to their site.
Online maps can be any size, and if they are in PDF form, readers can download them and print them as well as viewing them.
That map up top is a link, and it gets a 404! A link to Erehwon?
All the maps can be found from The Map Room link at the top, right hand column of this page, under Books.
Enjoy!
Frank.
Oh good. I thought I was going crazy following along on the map, and not finding things where I thought they should be. 🙂
I like the double spread across the front cover in a slightly thicker stick-on paper for maps. Or there was one book with a nifty tri-fold map stuck in the front cover – I’d thought it was one of my LotR editions, but apparently not.
I’m also hanging out for holograms so I can have a proper map of Compact space.
I am not so much concerned about the accuracy of your maps. As long as the directions are consistent – a town to the North is always to the North, and travel times are consistent, the map is drawn in the readers mind. I believe we have addressed this before – certainly the Association would not have accurate maps for general use as a military item.
I do not demand complete accuracy or consistency for a series of books spanning a number of years in the writing and covering a number of years in Bren’s hectic life.
Jonathan up here in snowy New Hampshire
I agree with NosenDove. The maps of the continent would be part of the paidhi’s responsibility. As Bren’s understanding of the world improves his ability to map it grows better. Perhaps a notation that these are the new and improved maps of the world based on his experiences and access to satellite imagery and atevi military/naval maps, unavailable to the paidhi when he first took office…. He couldn’t be expected to name towns he had never been to, and without satellite imagery, unavailable until after they regained space (and based on geosynchronous/ geostationary orbits they might not even then be able to image the entire continent), Mospheira wouldn’t even know there was a town there or what its claim to fame was in the first place.
I am a huge map fan. So much so, that a favorite wedding present was the rendition of the LOTR map made for me by my cartographer sister. You could definitely put me on the list for a seperate book with maps. Maybe you could fill it out with pictures of the clothes and house colours. I remember someone else doing that? Was it GOT or the Robert Jordan series?
I also like the idea of a “Foreigner Universe Guidebook”, lol. It would be interesting to get a view of the various associations on the mainland, as well as a view of the world in general.
I like many of the ideas presented, inside covers used and letting readers know of the map room. I scanned the map from one of the books then enlarged it and printed it out on a full sheet so I could have it on the wall separate from the book then I would not have to keep going to it as I read. I also used a little colored pencil to enhance features. Maybe you could sell specific maps sized 20″ x 24″ or larger that could be scaled more to your liking and needs. They could come scrolled in a shipping tube which would be reminiscent of the message cylinders. They could be hung with a two-fold purpose – information/art. I have a small wall in my house that I have covered in maps some are quite decorative and artful, I varithaned them so they are permanent and I just love to look at them. Sorry the idea doesn’t help your needs now.