Trees with birds are cool. I get it! 
Christ, what an asshole.
What, this is about maps? Oh yeah, they’re real bad or something, I guess.
The beauty of Tolkien’s maps isn’t in the geology and geography, it’s in the linguistics of the place names.
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Agreed. It’s all about narrative. Tell a good story and nobody needs maps. And the best map can’t make Conan the Barbarian any better.
One of my favorite examples of pointless science is the supposedly “amazing” ecology of Dune. Amazing in that it describes a planet with one animal species and zero plants. The science is terrible, which is fine, because the story is so damn awesome.
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Meh. If you want otherworldly content that doesn’t strain suspension of disbelief, there’s only one genre where any real effort in that direction is expected.
I bought this great glossy book about creating fantasy maps but it is so frigging intimidating. So I resort to the birds and trees style I’ve been using for 35 years. Or the Squished Millipede mountain style:
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Carpathians had me going until Norway looked too familiar
Theres fiction of the Flatland variety but Fantasy/Swords & Sorcery doesn’t tend to be that.
A map can be a handy way of avoiding exposition text that doesn’t advance the plot and also saves the reader from having to remember geographical details explained in passing 45 pages ago.
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I agree, and I feel there is a good reason that this kind of book is rare.
There is a fine line between writing a fantasy book and writing a treatise on how physics work in a universe where elves are real. And while I can see where some people in here are coming from (as a biology teacher, I’m often a bit cross with some of the “facts” used in scifi and fantasy) but I feel it comes down to suspending your disbelief and realizing that while YOU might enjoy reading sixteen pages worth of socio-economic explanation for how the dwarves mine Mithril, the book isn’t written for you alone.
On the other hand, it’s no excuse for some really shoddy maps and explanations, but I don’t feel it’s worth getting so worked up over (he screamed at the horde, alone on an empty field).
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I guess for some, the War of Wrath only happened to other people.
(And then there’s the Jewelry. I think if you can have Rings which can be used to make unbreakable foundations there’s not much to stop you from putting mountains wherever you want. Sort of emphasizes that the villains were essentially minor gods.)
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I think there are two or three plant species mentioned(plus the genetically engineered anchor grass that was supposed to be part of the imperial planetologist’s terraforming proposal); and some bats that get mentioned exclusively so that ‘distrans’ can encode messages into their teeny bat nervous systems to be cooler than homing pigeons.
That said, the parts of the ecology that matter are “abusive kleptocrats”, “sandy fundamentalist knife crazies(incidentally; why does the planet where kinetic shields are impractical breed l33t stabbing skills, rather than, say, effective marksmanship?)”; and the “sandtrout->vibration seeking drug lab->God emperor of mankind and also Tleilaxu” lifecycle of the only really cool species on the planet
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If I remember correctly, the Discworld Mapp came about after Stephen Briggs went up to Terry Pratchett and said something like:
"Your Discworld geography makes no sense, you’ve put the driest region next to a mountain range, so it should really be full of swamps!"
To which pterry replied "Can you draw a better one? Great! You’ve got the job!"
And thus the Mapp was born.
I wonder where my copy has got to.
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There are date palms in Arakeen, and presumably there are mice, given that the Fremen understood what “the mouse shadow on the second moon” referred to. I seem to remember there are some birds too. But all of these are introduced species - the worms/spice/sandtrout are the only native life as far as I remember.
Yea, I don’t think the sandworms survived thousands or millions of years just eating the desert mice that would some day be brought from Giedi Prime.
@phuzz Isn’t Death Valley right next to the Sierra Nevada?
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What if it’s a spaceship? They’ve already crossed swords n’ sandals with Peyton Place, let’s get crazy!
One good tip is to look at it from watershed pov. Start at the bottom of the river where it meets the sea, and determine the ‘edge of the bathtub’ which that river drains.
The thing that never hangs together with fantasy maps for me is when rivers cut through mountains, and have plains on either side. That doesn’t happen really unless the water builds up behind on one side, and cuts through one side. Sure there are plateaus that have been elevated over time, and been downcut by existing rivers, but no proper granitic mountains that work that way.
This locale is the exception to a general rule about hydrology which seems to pose a problem for many fantasy maps:
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Really the last thing I would read is some kinda Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser’s Adventures on the Star Destroyer.
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That sounds like something exactly what I would read.
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So, @Mister44 has dibs, and @Israel_B we will set that one aside until you’ve done all your other reading. 
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Those fantasy maps are suppose to be like a character can found, aren’t they ?
Maybe it’s hard to make accurate maps in a pre-industrial or pre-age of exploration world. Maybe they have shitty cartographers. Maybe it’s just a little something to stimulate your imagination on the first page of the book.
Maps are hard : exhibit A Martellus world map, around 1490
The Earthsea maps is good because it is a good setting for the stories Le Guin wants to tell. Not because it’s plausible or accurate.
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