Magic Mapmakers' Masturbation

But copying and disseminating maps has always been difficult and expensive in the age before the spread of the printing press.

Great geographical discoveries fed maps full of Fantasy elements: mermaids, cynocephals, imaginary peoples, Dragons, Kraken, Amazons, and the Fountain of Eternal Youth. Often eroticism was implicit in the narratives: peoples composed only of naked and lustful women, peoples of males in female clothing, and peoples who practiced group sex, polygamy, or any other kinky perversion.

At that time, it was difficult to distinguish between reality and fantasy, between realistic and imaginary tales. Some Explorers were also Pirates. Very soon, chronicles of the Conquistadors (with their maps, more or less realistic) were mixed with novels about Corsairs (with their maps, more or less legendary).

Among the books that described the adventurous and magical exploits of privateers and buccaneers, a special place is occupied by Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Swift's Gulliver, and Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.

JRR and GRR made maps an inescapable ingredient in Fantasy publishing. A famous joke goes "if the book contains a map, it's Fantasy; if it doesn't, it's Sci-Fi" (regardless of the doses of magic and technology). So much so that in the series "Brooklyn 99", when an actor has to pretend to have read a Fantasy novel in its entirety, he assumes there is a map (season 5, episode 8, Return to Skyfire).

In Fantasy novels, maps fall into two broad categories. There are maps that the Omniscient Author provides to the readers, but which the characters do not know: for example, Arya (hungry, frightened, and cold) is lost in the forest and unable to interpret a map she has stolen, while the reader, sitting comfortably in her couch, knows very well in which direction it would be best to go.

Then, there are maps that the Author provides to some characters, but not to all. For example, the Elf kings are familiar with the location of Orthanc, Edoras, and Minas Tirith, while the dwarf Gimli seems to be lost on almost every page. Gandalf shows Thorin (and Elrond) the map containing the information for the Reconquest of the Treasure: no one else in that world knows that information, even though it is conveniently available to the Reader sitting on the couch.

I hope that this unerotic and very boring story of mine may suggest that other authors consider providing maps to the characters in the stories as well, and not just to the readers.

English is not my native language, please forgive the mistakes.###