The Lay Of The Land

I have a fairly healthy interest in maps. I wouldn't call it purely an academic one, you understand. It's the real implications of them that draws my attention. Those which represent fictional places are of use only to the extent that they illuminate the fiction, and I wish nonetheless that the author had managed to craft his prose in such a way that no supplementary material were necessary. Maps which depict reality elicit from me no such caveats. I pored over maps of Chicago for months before I went there for school. The same is true for any place that interests me in any such way.