From a lecture on Maps in Fantasy Novels at Readercon.

[xiphias]

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.

Comments

[yendi]

I think that's a bet no one's going to take.

I wish I'd been able to make that lecture (I enjoyed him during the maps in fiction panel the night before), but the nature of ReaderCon is that there are always multiple good things happening at once.

[mcwetboy.livejournal.com]

I've heard that from a few people. But it went over well enough that I think I'm going to try to present it at other conventions, if they'll have it. So you might have another chance.

[redbird]

Nitpick: the Nielsen Haydens don't have a hyphen in their surname. (Most one-character typos I would ignore, but that's a persistent one and in people's name.)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Edited to remove hyphen.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Yes, pretty much true.

The map's on my website, and I think it's a jolly useful map. A version of it appeared in th Australian edition of the books.