When one opens a fantasy fiction novel and is immersed in the text of the world presented by the narrator, one feels transported to an entirely other world. The world-building of fantasy fiction is open to infinite possibilities, marking it as both the most subversive as well as the most disorienting genre of literature to engage with. Readers find themselves excited to explore these exotic worlds populated by impossibilities, but are also confused by indeterminacies and inconsistencies in the text. Some series, such as the Malazan Book of the Fallen, intentionally exploit this disorientation effect and make it part of the appeal of reading experience, opening the literature up to fan interpretation and theorization. But some readers want the world-building to be consistently and transparently organized out for them by the author. Such organization is literalized in the form of the map or maps fantasy fans have come to expect at the beginning or end of a fantasy novel.
Like so many of the traditions within the genre of fantasy fiction, maps can trace their origin back to Tolkein with his mapping out of Middle Earth and the travels of his characters upon its textual surface. But what was once considered original with Tolkein has now become a tired trope for the genre of fantasy as a whole. Literally mapping out the narrative of his characters as they traveled across Middle Earth on their quest made sense for the quest narrative he had constructed. But now many authors feel compelled to provide a map to their fantasy world, even when the narrative of that imagined world is restricted to a single geographical location and where location is considered secondary to characterization. Despite the superlative quality of contemporary fantasy cartography, I hesitate to advocate for its abandonment as it remains a rich opportunity for the genre if appreciated beyond its representational utility.
The benefit provided by maps typically cited by fantasy genre fans is that they aid the visualization of the fictional world by laying out its prominent features of geography and civilization. If the act of reading fantasy is akin to navigating a foreign world, it is no wonder readers feel more comfortable with a map in their possession. But fantasy maps are far more than mere visual representations of the fictional world and to limit their appeal to that quality alone is to waste the radical potential they open up for the author and reader. Valued as a purely visual representation, maps fail in comparison to the complexity that can be captured in a detailed illustration. What provides a more immersive visualization of Sanderson’s world of Roshar from his Stormlight Archive series: the map of Roshar or the illustration of his character Shallan herself involved in capturing the world around her through her own artistic talent? I am biased towards the latter for good reason. The illustration is more complex, informative, and naturalistic than a map could ever be; an illustration can represent characters, cultures, landscapes, creatures and events in a way that are categorically impossible for a map.
It is admittedly difficult to imagine the more exotic fantasy worlds of the genre without some form of visual representation acting as a foundation for our imagination to build upon. But this admission only emphasizes the greater significance of maps to the fantasy genre. Since we routinely rely upon maps to navigate our own environment, we expect an analogous representational aid in the navigation of fictional space within the imagination. If we require maps to navigate space, real of fictional, consider the equal necessity of maps to the inhabitants native to a world of fantasy fiction. Such maps are not merely about the fictional world, but they are of it. Mapping out the fantasy world makes it more realistic for the reader, not merely because it visualizes the world for us, but because such visualization is an essential part of our routine experience. The map takes on an additional aura of realism once we identify this experience with that of the inhabitants imagined within the world-text itself. Authors can manipulate their maps to better exploit this reflective effect to explore the possibilities it opens up for their world-building and readers’ appreciation of it.
We can distinguish within a work of literature between the role of author, the narrator, and the characters, even if these categories overlap with one another and identify the same perspective. In considering the map as text, we can ask from which of these perspectives is the map drawn: is it by the hand of the author, the narrator, or a character within the narrative? This raises subsequent questions regarding the significance of the fictional map and the relationship between the map, the narrative, and the text. Are thematic or narrative elements present on the map? Should these fantastical maps appear as if they belong within the world-text of the narrative? Should they be restricted to the artistic capabilities and geographical understanding of the characters native to the fictional world itself? Or should they reflect an objective perspective of the world from outside of the text itself? There is likely no definitive answer to such inquiry for most contemporary fantasy literature, but that is because most authors have squandered the opportunity to utilize their maps in such a manner.
Maps in fantasy fiction need not be mere representations of the fantasy world, they have the capacity to be representations of how the native inhabitants of those worlds represent their own world. The latter may not be apparent, but it is far more interesting when considered and implemented. Fantasy maps provide an opportunity to present the language, iconography, and implied ideology of a fantastic culture in relation to the reader as if it was a part of a document out of that world. A fantasy map need not be read only under the gaze of an assumed absolute authority. It can be explored with curiosity as if it were a fragment of the fantasy world impossibly transplanted into our reality, containing the traces of its native culture. It takes upon the aura of an artifact that communicates the aesthetic and linguistic styles and symbols of a given culture. Mapping the fantasy world is not merely an exercise of building the world in the imagination of readers; it is itself a product of the world-building project.
Any map which intends to take advantage of such an appearance must therefore be created in accordance with the techniques and apparent materials presumed to be available to the people native to the respective fantastic world. This contradicts the aesthetic of the average contemporary fantasy map which reflects a degree of realism uncharacteristic of the capabilities of the native people. Such realism doesn’t map onto the fantasy world itself but rather imposes our world onto that world, restricting its horizons for us rather than providing us with a means of navigating them. It is a reductive approach to fantasy that prioritizes the literal, empirical and natural of this world against the values of the fantasy world, which tends towards mystical and metaphorical representations.
A fantasy map intended to be immersive considers not only the capabilities of its native creators but also their ideological motivations for mapping their world. Ideology can be discerned from the map through objects the map prioritizes and the language and symbols used to represent them. Different cultural and political perspectives will not only utilize distinct phrases and symbols, but will concern themselves with different aspects of the world. An imperialistic culture may be concerned with the cartography of resources and the distinction between civilized and barbarous territories. In contrast, a map drafted from the perspective of a religious minority may focus upon routes of pilgrimage, holy sites and cities of significance to their faith. The world, even a fictional world, is too complex to be credibly depicted on a map. A map is always constrained by the priorities of its creator, and these priorities reflect their ideological commitments. Maps therefore represent an opportunity to communicate these cultural ideals to the reader outside the core narrative of the text, as if they were drafted by members of the culture native to that world.
If we can distinguish between author, narrator, and character in both narrative and map, we can question whether the narrative and map share the same perspective. For example, the character may be implicated as the creator of the map, but another character is the narrator of the text. The distinction between perspectives entails a recognition in the differences between the ideologies that inform each. The narrator of the text may be a rebel soldier, but the designer of the map may be a member of the imperial hegemony the aforementioned narrator is fighting against. A map is not merely supplemental to the text but it is itself a text, of a sort: it is open to its own interpretations. Being open to interpretation, a map may be intentionally misleading to the reader who expects it directly reflect the world the author has built over the course of the narrative. Remember the cautionary aphorism of Korzybski that “the map is not the territory”. Any self-conscious work of fantasy fiction should be aware of this and exploit it to its advantage; it should allow for multiple interpretations from different, if not conflicting, perspectives. The instability between opposing frames of reference to the world presents the reader with an unreliable narrator and thereby empowers the reader to formulate their own perspective.
The potential of fantastic cartography should not be constrained only to imprint the mental map of the author onto their audience. Nor should such an imperialism of the imagination be equated with a realistic or coherent representation of fantastic worlds. Maps authored explicitly from outside the perspective of the text are automatically inferred to be a direct communication between the author and their audience, leading the latter to assume the objectivity of the perspective of the former. A map doesn’t simply provide us with a visualization of the world, but provides the security of how the author visualizes the world, and with it the assurance that this is the true world insofar as fictions can have truth attached to them. There is a seductive danger in diminishing the reading experience by this sense of false security. This is the treachery of images that results in a passive approach to literature, an irresponsibility with art we are not entitled to. There is no assurance that the author is providing us with their perspective, we are imposing our perspective on the author-function to reinforce our own prejudices and excuse the need to critically examine them. This is a failure of the imagination and therefore a betrayal of the potential the fantasy genre presents to its audience.
The contradiction of this approach to fantasy literature goes unrecognized and therefore un-criticized for its inauthenticity. Fantasy literature is associated with the vice of escapism; its fans being accused of seeking false comfort from reality in the confines of a fictional secondary world. Such an accusation falsely assumes that fantasy worlds provide a sense of ideological security to their audience. Whether explicit or not, all fantasy worlds are inherently unstable due to their fictional nature. They are bounded by the limits of the world-building present in the narrative, past the horizon of which they are open to further theorization and interpretation. The narrative itself has its own implicit instability insofar as its fictional content has no real referent against which it can be judged true or false. It is only out of an assumed convenience that readers acquiesce to the comfort of an uncritical approach to the narrative.
The inclusion of a map does not alleviate the discomfort of this uncertainty, however much fantasy readers may assume it does. Rather it is just another form of unstable dialogue between the imagination of the author and the reader, open to the ambiguities of interpretation and further speculation. For all that fantasy may be applauded as a literature of an unrestrained authorial imagination, its readership often appears inclined towards the codification and confinement of these territories of the imagination. Ironically, the more meticulous and literal a fantasy map is, the less immersive the experience of reading into it is. The more stylistic a fantasy map is, the more it appears to come from the world it depicts, the more the reader is drawn into that world. Fantasy is most realistic, most immersive, when it opens up a world before us to explore without forcing us to walk a narrow path through its landscape.
A map, despite its depiction of that landscape, is also a part of it, and may be explored and questioned in turn. Unlike “realistic” fiction, fantasy fiction lacks a convenient referent readers can conform to and project their prejudices upon. Fantasy fiction may offer an escape, but it is a far-cry from assured comfort. The world-building and reading of fantasy are not simply the work of the author but constitute a conversation between the author and their audience of readers. As readers of fantasy we are responsible for our every interpretation and assumption, creating the world simultaneously with our exploration of it. Fantasy maps need not define how we imagine fantasy worlds, but rather it is the imagination, of both writer and reader, which determines the significance of a fantasy map. Fantasy worlds are ultimately spaces within the imagination, not reducible to text or map, which are simply ways of navigating us to those uncharted territories of infinite possibility.
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