Camestros Felapton

2022 Hugo Award Finalist

Category: Maps

  • An aside about prototype theory

    This is more of an I’m putting this here to come back to it later sort of thing rather than a well thought out point or endorsement. I’ve an ongoing interest in classification and meaning and the complexities thereof — given the name of the blog and the identity I write under that should be […]

  • Hugo Map Addendum: the territory is not the map

    In the last post on making a Hugo map, Steve asked “could you encode that information geographically, somehow? Like maybe contour and elevation? From the jagged peaks of Fanzine down to the great rolling plains of Novel, something like that?” https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2020/12/08/making-a-hugo-map-part-3/#comment-53490 Not only could I do this, I had already done it! Unfortunately, I wasn’t […]

  • Making a Hugo Map Part 2

    Thanks for all the suggestions in Part 1. Time to make some progress. The main decision I needed to make at the end of Part 1, is which numbers to use control the area of each Hugo “country”. I wanted to include all the current categories and that pushes me towards using 2020 stats rather […]

  • Making a Hugo Map Part 1

    I do like to make maps and visual representations of things but sometimes it is hard to know where to start. I had an urge to make a map the other day and my first thought was to make an island that represented the Hugo Award categories. I ended up doing something else because I […]

  • A map for modern times

    People ask me how I find my way around the confusing and hateful sections of the internet. Naturally I have a map.

  • Sorry that you cannot go to Wellington, so here is my impression of it

    CoNZealand has announced that the 2020 Worldcon will be virtual: A very understandable decision. I think this could be an exciting and maybe even a positive step forward. The big challenge will be keeping the essence of the event while making it virtual. I don’t know if that is possible but that’s one of the […]

  • Plot Geography: Labyrinths and Libraries

    This post was meant to follow directly on from this one but I forgot to finish it. I can only think of one library that is literally also a maze and that is the library at the unnamed monastery central to the mystery in Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose (see here for some of […]

  • Fantasy Bicycle

    Of course MAGIC solves almost any problems we might have with a bicycle in a high fantasy setting. I think the secret is to not just use a little magic but to use a lot. So here is my fantasy bicycle crafted by some kind of druidy/forest-magic peoples. The frame is wood from a magically […]

  • How Fast Do Hobbits Go?

    According to this resource http://lotrproject.com in The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo leaves Bag End on September 22 and arrives (almost dead) at Rivendell on October 20 or 21. That same site has a neat distance time graph for both The Hobbit and Frodo’s journey in Lord of the Rings. http://lotrproject.com/timedistance/ Looking at both the […]

  • Bicycles are the fantasy hero’s friend

    One thing that became rapidly obvious looking at a day’s travel time is just how good bicycles are. It ran against my assumptions about horses being an obviously ‘better’ form of transport on the grounds that the horse is doing a lot of work for you. That assumption doesn’t play out for several reasons. Firstly, […]