From a lecture on Maps in Fantasy Novels at Readercon.

I don't have the exact quote, but the sense of it was,

"One of the primary purposes of a map at the front of a fantasy novel is to signify that it's the kind of fantasy novel that has a map at the front of it."

With the claim that papersky had a map for THE KING'S PEACE/THE KING'S NAME, but the Nielsen Haydens had her NOT put it in, because it WASN'T that kind of fantasy novel, but it was similar enough that, if it DID have a map, people would expect it to be, and that would set up the wrong expectations and mess up people's appreciation of the book.

I don't know if that's true or not, but I bet papersky does.

The general takeaway from a lecture on dystopian economies:

SHADOWRUN is actually pretty plausible, except for the orks and trolls and stuff.

Also, the only real way to prevent evil corporations from taking over the world is strong government regulation.

And the United States Federal Reserve's ability to devaluate currency by printing more of it is their biggest weapon against multinational evil corporations: "don't mess with me because I can destroy the entire world economy" is a pretty blunt club, but it actually DOES seem to keep some of the multinational investment banks at least SOMEWHAT in line.

Individuals don't have a whole lot of power against corporations, but one thing that we CAN sort of use is that our time is less valuable than CEOs. CEO compensation in this country is obscene, but it DOES mean that, if I can waste one hour of a top CEO's time, I've just cost the company $10,000. Yes, top CEOs have compensation that comes out to between $5k and $25k per hour. This means that there is a HUGE incentive for corporations to pay people to go away. Which, in turn, means that pestering CEOs can be hugely profitable.

Which is what makes unions work, basically.

Oh, also that, by the numbers, the United States is already a dystopian corporatocracy.