Ursula K. Le Guin's Tau Ceti

[skymandr]

I made some maps of the twin planets Urras and Anarres from Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Dispossessed", meant for a future publication of the book in Swedish. The geographic features were defined in Le Guin's original maps and I have tried to stay faithful to those while still adding my own touch and interpretation. I've already written about them at great length at my blog [0] (where you can also read about their license), so I won't go into great detail about their construction here, however...

In brief summary, they were made using the azimuthal equidistant projection [1] in the style of Erwin Raisz' "trachographic method", and I consider them an homage to both Raisz and Le Guin. The maps below are versions I made where, after some intense but fun geographic detective work, scouring the book for geographic clues, I have tried to add (almost) all places mentioned in the book. The extra locations make the maps more realistic and interesting, I think, but will probably not be the published version since the placing of the locations are not canonical. The maps were made entirely using free and open source software - Inkscape and Gimp mainly, assisted by the excellent drawing program Krita and a few home-brew Python scripts for going between projections and similar. The fonts are also free and open source fonts from Arkandis Digital Foundry [2]. With the choices of iconography, layout, projection and fonts I tried to find a compromise between a fantasy and an SF look for the maps, but in hindsight I think they are probably closer to the former than the latter.

I will likely tweak them a bit in the future, but for all intents and purposes these are the final versions. All feedback welcome, however!

All in all, I am very pleased with the result, and I hope you will like them too!

anarres_en_all.png

urras_en_all.png

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[0]: Lots of text about the process of their construction, projection considerations and sketches to be found at (in reverse chronological order):

• https://eintrittverboten.wordpress.c...i-cartography/ The final versions and lots of text.
• https://eintrittverboten.wordpress.c...s-an-addendum/ Animations of spinning "globes" using the orthographic projection [1]. Mostly for fun, though I want to try to make proper paper globes in the future.
• https://eintrittverboten.wordpress.c...netary-survey/ My first sketches. Mostly by hand and not very good. Lots of text on everything from hermeneutics to map projections and beyond.
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ The license for these works is CC: BY-NC-SA, with additional clauses as stated in the links above.

[1]: http://www.map-projections.net/singl...uidistant-hemi An excellent resource for comparing projections!

[2]: https://arkandis.tuxfamily.org/ There are some really beautiful fonts here!

[onez]

Cool! I haven't read the book but the maps look beautiful. Simple and clear.
I also admire the sheer amount of research and effort you seem to have put in the project.

On a last note, it's good to see more fellow cartographers from Sweden!

[Ilanthar]

Nice maps! I like this kind of projection and the clarity of your maps. I think the second one has my preference.

[Diamond]

Those are beautiful maps. Something about the crispness of the black lines just does it for me.

[skymandr]

Thank you for your kind words! The black and white aesthetic was a conscious choice of course, since the print will probably be in black and white. I've seen too many gorgeous maps in colour or grey scale be ruined by poor print quality [0], though black and white is in no way safe in this regard - I'm afraid that maybe I have a few too fine details in the maps. It is difficult balancing clarity of features and level of detail, and I think that in particular the labels on Urras could probably be improved, but it is definitely a challenge I can recommend. I have to admit, however, that though I am an amateur in all regards when it comes to map making, colours and shading are areas where I feel particularly less confident, so I probably wouldn't have made the maps in any other way regardless!

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[0]: This one comes to mind unfortunately: https://www.tor.com/2016/08/02/mappi...f-vellitt-boe/ I love this map for its subtle colours and the technique of contrast without contour lines, but unfortunately in the printed book (at least the edition that I have) this has been completely ruined.

[DanielHasenbos]

I like the super minimalistic style of this. You usually see this map projection with a ton of decorations and details. It's very nice to see it done the other way, and very good too!

[Samstego]

I agree with Daniel, the minimalist style definitely lends itself to the projection and information displayed. Great job!

[writingpixie]

I like how clear they are.