Mapping Hacks

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Chapter 9, Mapping with Other People

#100 Map Imaginary Places

HACK

HACK

#100

Map Imaginary Places Hack #100

GIS techniques can help actualize your, and others’, imagination.

From the shifting shape of Thomas More’s Utopia, to New World maps los-

ing whole continents between editions, to the introductory maps of J.R.R.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, maps and the imaginary have been intertwined.

Early cartography covered unknown continents with speculative features,

but in these days of satellite photography, everything on the surface of the

earth that can be mapped is.

Where is the unknown to be found? The world of your imagination could

fill a dozen atlases: imaginary landscapes, cities, routes. Mapping them is a

practice known to some as geofiction, defined at http://geofiction.wikiverse.

org/. With the many tools and techniques covered in this book, you can

translate the stuff of your stories beyond paper maps into full-on GIS data

models.

Generate an Ellipsoid and Datum for an Imaginary World

A fictional planet has a size and a shape. Packages such as PostGIS and

Manifold will allow you to define your own ellipsoid or spheroid and will

support novel or obscure reference datums. Manifold already comes with

ellipsoidal or spheroidal definitions for all the planets and some moons in

the solar system, useful when you decide to “Map Other Planets”

[Hack #34]

Some fictional worlds have clearly defined ...