Jared Lando’s How to Draw Fantasy Art and RPG Maps (Impact, August 2015) is a step-by-step guide to fantasy cartography. That it professes to teach how to draw “authentic fantasy maps” is as clear evidence as any that fantasy maps have a clearly defined style that is difficult to deviate from. This is a book I need to track down, stat. Amazon, iBooks.
Author: Jonathan Crowe
Jonathan Crowe blogs about maps at The Map Room. His essays and reviews have been published by AE, Calafia, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the Ottawa Citizen, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. He lives in Shawville, Quebec.
A Map Error Roundup
A demolition company tore down the wrong house in Rowlett, Texas thanks to a Google Maps error that directed them one block over. As is often the case in new subdivisions, the street names were extremely similar: Cousteau Drive and Calypso Drive. [via] Something similar, though not quite map-related, happened on Sunday in Gatineau, Quebec (just down the highway from me), where fire crews rushed to Rue de la Terrasse-Eardley to fight a house fire, which would have been fine except that the fire was at a house on Rue de la Terrasse.
British military maps are being redrawn after a fighter jet nearly collided with a microlight: the maps had mislocated the civilian airfield by half a mile.
Apologetic Thief Returns Maps to MSU
Michigan State University’s Map Library received an anonymous package in the mail yesterday . . .
We received an anonymous package in the mail today. pic.twitter.com/UvNxZNRn3R
— MSU Map Library (@MSUMapLib) March 28, 2016
There’s a story here, and it’ll almost certainly never be told.
The Tube Map of Lost London
City Maps: An Adult Colouring Book
Gretchen Peterson has announced City Maps: A Coloring Book for Adults. Adult colouring books have rapidly become a Thing; Peterson once wondered why there weren’t any map colouring books (which is a damn good question: the closest I’d been able to find is Splendid Cities) so she made one herself. “I’m excited about this because normally I make maps that are more scientific, regulatory, or otherwise government oriented but this is a collection of maps for everyone. And what’s more, everyone can color them just the way they want to!” Available now from Amazon.
Women in Cartography (Part 4)
Laura Bliss and Carlyn Osborn continue their series of blog posts on women in cartographic history at CityLab and Worlds Revealed, respectively. Bliss looks at 20th century women, including illustrators Louise E. Jefferson and Ruth Belew as well as seafloor mapper Marie Tharp; Osborn looks at Dutch mapmaker Anna van Westerstee Beek (1657–1717).
Previously: Women in Cartography; Women in Cartography (Continued); Women in Cartography (Part 3).
The Chang’E-1 Topographic Atlas of the Moon
Universe Today has a review of The Chang’E-1 Topographic Atlas of the Moon (Springer, February 2016) a book of lunar maps based on digital elevation model data and stereo imagery from the CNSA’s Chang’e-1 spacecraft. (The first edition was published in Chinese and English in 2012.)
Women in Cartography (Part 3)
CityLab’s Laura Bliss has a second post on women and cartography, this time focusing on the work of 19th-century women cartographers, geographers and educators in the United States. The Library of Congress’s map blog, Worlds Revealed, focuses on the work (and maps) of one of those women, Emma Hart Willard.
Previously: Women in Cartography; Women in Cartography (Continued).
The New York Tube Map
Cameron Booth’s latest project is a New York subway map in the form of the London Tube Map: “A little while ago, someone asked me on my Transit Maps blog whether I had ever seen a map of the New York subway system in the style of the London Underground diagram. Rather surprisingly, I hadn’t actually come across one, so I decided to draw one up myself.”
I’m surprised someone hasn’t done one already, but then there’s the problem of service pattern complexity unique to New York, which Cam handles by simply not handling it—making this a design exercise rather than a usable map. “The map certainly looks attractive, but the Tube Map’s style is ill-suited to the intricate working complexities of the New York subway system.”
Previously: Redrawing the London Tube Map.
McCutcheon’s View
Three years ago, the Newberry Library posted a note about a 1922 cartoon from the Chicago Tribune: “The New Yorker’s Idea of the Map of the United States” by John T. McCutcheon bears a strong resemblance to Saul Steinberg’s famous 29 March 1976 New Yorker cover, whose inspiration is often traced to Daniel K. Wallingford’s A New Yorker’s Idea of the United States (1937). See the gallery below.
John T. McCutcheon, The New Yorker’s Idea of the Map of the United States, 1922. Newberry Library.
Saul Steinberg, cover for The New Yorker, 29 March 1976.
Daniel K. Wallingford, A New Yorker’s Idea of the United States of America, 1937. David Rumsey Map Collection.
Talking About Map Thefts
Here’s a profile of Thomas Durrer, the University of Virginia detective assigned to the Gilbert Bland map theft case, in the spring 2016 issue of Virginia, the university’s alumni magazine. [via]
Bland’s career predated Forbes Smiley’s (he lacked Smiley’s ostensible pedigree) and was the focus of Miles Harvey’s 2000 book The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime (Amazon, iBooks).
Smiley was, of course, the subject of Michael Blanding’s 2014 book The Map Thief (Amazon, iBooks; see my review). Blanding is on a bit of a campus speaking tour at the moment, discussing the Smiley case. He’s at the University of Florida tonight, the University of Miami tomorrow night, and more college campuses in April and May.
New Gravity Map of Mars
A new gravity map of Mars, based on data from three orbiting spacecraft, has been released. “Slight differences in Mars’ gravity changed the trajectory of the NASA spacecraft orbiting the planet, which altered the signal being sent from the spacecraft to the Deep Space Network. These small fluctuations in the orbital data were used to build a map of the Martian gravity field.”
The data enables the crustal thickness of Mars to be determined to a resolution of approximately 120 kilometres. Here’s a short video explaining the significance:
Women in Cartography (Continued)
On the Library of Congress’s map blog, a post about the women cartographers employed by the military and government during World War II—the so-called “Military Mapping Maidens.”
The Guardian has a brief item on ocean mapper Marie Tharp.
CityLab’s Laura Bliss presents a selection of maps by women mapmakers like Mary Ann Roque, the Haussard sisters and Shanawdithit, the last known member of the Beothuk people.
Previously: Women in Cartography.
Kenneth Field’s Map of Mars
Another online map of Mars, this one titled (Is There) Life on Mars? and produced by Kenneth Field using ArcGIS. On the information pane he says, cryptically, “There’s a hidden element on the map that explains why I really made it. Happy hunting.” [via]
Crowdsourcing Street Photos of Dar es Salaam
Point Google Maps or OpenStreetMap at a city like Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and you’ll get a reasonably good map. What you won’t get is Street View or street-level imagery—or, necessarily, the data that comes from a street-level understanding of the territory. NPR’s Nadia Whitehead looks at a joint project of the World Bank and Mapillary, a company that crowdsources street-level photos, to produce those images. “Volunteers are mounting camera rigs to their tuk tuks—three-wheeled motor-powered vehicles—to snap pictures as they cruise Dar es Salaam’s dirt roads. Others download the Mapillary app on their smartphones and capture images as they walk or hitch rides on motorbikes. In all, more than 260 people have volunteered.” [via]