An Atlas of Imaginary Worlds 10: Pellucidar and Others

Before I continue looking at Pellucidar and some other assorted maps I have turned up recently I have to put in a recommendation for the Fantasy Maps blog: http://fantasymaps.wordpress.com/ On here you will find a thorough coverage of many fantasy worlds. It is a real delight to wander through and see what they have. In addition, as the blogger notes, it is an excellent resource if you happen to be reading a series and want to check up on where everything is.

This posting has been rather postponed. It was triggered by the release a couple of weeks ago of another movie version of 'Journey to the Center [sic] of the Earth', I thought it might be an idea to dig out some maps I ran across while looking for stuff on Pangaea and Antarctica. 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' was written by Jules Verne in 1864. There has been a previous movie made in 1959. Edgar Rice Burroughs most famous for the 'Tarzan' series, he also produced the Barsoom Mars stories. In addition he wrote a series of books based in Pellucidar another world in a 'hollow' Earth. The movie 'At the Earth's Core' (1976), is based on the first book in the series, with the same title, which Burroughs published in 1914. It features the US actor Doug MacClure (1935-95) who seems to have made quite a career out of these fantastical movies which were a fad in the mid-1970s. He was in 'The Land That Time Forgot' (1975), 'The People That Time Forgot' (1977) - both based on Burroughs novels (both published in 1918 and both available online through a Project Gutenberg; there is a third in the so-called Caspak series called 'Out of Time's Abyss' published the same year) and featuring a lost island where dinosaurs still exist. He was also in 'Warlords of Atlantis' (1978) though that was initially a screenplay rather than a book, it was very much in the same ilk with a Victorian scientist travelling into an underworld environment with fantastical creatures. Anyway, I came across a whole slew of maps of Pellucidar (the word 'pellucid' means that something allows light through it or derived from that it is clear in meaning, I suppose it is related to text or speech being 'lucid') on the following website: http://www.bouncepage.com/Pellucidar/maps.html

The site is interesting as it shows how maps for fictional worlds evolve and are re-interpreted as it features maps from 1915 (when what would become the novels were first serialised in magazines) to 2000. Pellucidar fits with views of the Hollow Earth that I have looked at on this blog before, having both an inner sun and a polar opening. I include here some for discussion, and the usual hunt for inland seas! For some reason this first map appears as a negative on the blog, but if you click on it then you can see it as black on white as it should be.

Empire of Pellucidar (1915)

This one was the first and shows just a little of what would later be revealed as the world of Pelludicar. It is shows the North-West coast of some sea filled with quite a few islands and numerous, unnamed cities, Mahar, being the people who inhabit them. I like the Unfriendly Islands which seems charmingly naive as is Land of the Awful Shadow and one would almost expect this world to be for a children's book rather than an adult one. The style is also remininscent of the one of Mongo that I have featured in a previous posting.

Map of Pellucidar (1929)

This one was also drawn by the author but he seems to not be very confident in expanding the world. We may be looking at an inland sea to the North-West of the map or one to the South-East. It is a bit disappointing that so much is unknown or unexplored. Perhaps he did not want to tie himself down. I also find 'Scale Unknown' to be irritating, but foregiveable. There is always a challenge in fantasy stories that you want huge sweeping continents, but then it takes months for your characters to cross them. I think he should have stuck to the peninsula he first features, but I suppose reader and publisher pressure led him to expand.

The World of Pellucidar (1966)

This tells us as much about reader expectations as developing ideas of the stories, especially in the 1960s when 'fantasy' as opposed to being a sub-set of science fiction, was coming into its own. The unexplored areas are now named and we still might have two inland seas, but they may just be long gulfs. The styling, in contrast to the simple maps of the pre-war era seems to try to indicate the fantastical nature with the creatures pictured on it.

Map of Pellucidar (1965)

In contrast, from the previous year is this very scientific map which, like the flag of the United Nations gives a picture of its world from hte North Pole. It also shows how comparatively small the original region that Burroughs featured was. In addition, the bodies of water one might thing were inland seas turn out just to be the ends of vast oceans, with more closed in seas elsewhere on the globe.

Pellucidar - From the 'Dictionary of Imaginary Places' (2000)

I used to own a copy of the 1980 German version of 'The Dictionary of Imaginary Places' by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi, apparently it was reprinted in 2000 in English. I saw a similar book back in 1985, in English, but foolishly had no money to buy it and have never seen it again. This blog might be very different if I had taken some money with me that day. This map like the following ones focuses on the key continent of the novels. It is never clear if the term Pellucidar represents the whole world or just this continent. Again you can tell the date of this one by the style. Gone are the monsters but we have a pattern somewhere between scientific and artistic. I think there must be a challenge for fictional mapmakers not to make their islands look like creatures, we seem to have a hare at the southern end of the map and a pointy-nosed crocodile (sea predators 62 million years ago on our world) at the northern end.

The Empire of Pellucidar by Bruce Wood (2000)

This again reflects the kind of maps you can find in real cartography online with a sandy colour for the land and a bright blue for the sea. This again shows the main continent but portraying it much slimmer than the version above. It almost looks like some lost Greek island. It emphasises the dominance of the oceans over the land in Pellucidar, so in some way moves us away from Burroughs's focus.

Pellucidar Mapped on to Earth (1970)

This is perhaps the most 'scientific' of the Pellucidar maps by Frank J. Brueckel who has drawn lots of maps of the world. It tries to overlay it with our world. There is a difficulty with this because, if Pellucidar is within our Earth then its diameter must be less than ours. I do not know whether Brueckel took this into consideration. If you went straight up from two points on Pellucidar and came out our Earth, those two points would be farther apart than down on Pellucidar as the arc between them would be wider.

The Discworld

The Discworld is the setting of Terry Pratchett's (born 1948) incredibly long-running comedy fantasy story series, of currently 36 novels. The first was 'The Colour of Magic' (1983), though Pratchett had featured a similar flat planet in 'Strata' (1981), though it was a science fiction story the inhabitants of the planet did not know it had been artificially created. Pratchett features ideas from across numerous mythologies and popular culture. This planet rides on the backs of four elephants themselves on a huge turtle 'swimming' through space. Physics is very different on the planet with light flowing across the Discworld like a liquid rather than a beam or wave.

The Four Corners of Civilization

In contrast to most of the maps you find on the internet, this one is from a pretty new novel, in fact the next two stories in the series are not out until 2009-10. They are the Kingkiller trilogy by US author Patrick Rothfuss (born 1973). The books are: 'The Name of the Wind' (2007), 'The Wise Man's Fear' (scheduled for April 2009) and 'The Doors of Stone' (working title, scheduled for 2010). They are a fantasy auto-biography of musician-wizard called Kvothe. Rothfuss wrote it in 1991 as 'The Song of Flame and Thunder' but publishers felt it was far too long (even for a fantasy epic) and so he was advised to break it down. This map looks as if it could have come from a book published in the 1950s and I adore the pencil drawn styling. Peninsulas seem to be these days, but notice numerous large lakes (possibly inland seas?) and certainly a candidate for an inland sea in the South-West, there is also another archiepelago up in the North. Rothfuss could probably be seen as an uber-fantasist, given that he wrote such an epic by the time he was 18. I guess there is hope for all of those teenage geeks to put aside their Gor books and start writing something for themselves. As such Rothfuss draws on a culture which is well established and all good to him. I look forward to his future worlds.

The World of Malaz

This one comes from Steven Erikson (born 1959; pseudonym of Steve Rune Lundin which actually sounds a more fantastical name; maybe he thought having 'rune' in his name would make people think it was fake). This world is home to the stories in the cycle the Malazan Book of the Fallen. The core books of the series are: 'Gardens of the Moon' (1999), 'Deadhouse Gates' (2000), Memories of Ice (2001), 'House of Chains' (2002), 'Midnight Tides' (2004), 'The Bonehunters' (2006), 'Reaper's Gale' (2007), 'Toll the Hounds' (2008), 'Dust of Dreams' (forthcoming) and 'The Crippled God' (forthcoming) as well as some novellas. There is so much detail about this world, that I might as well point you directly to the wikipedia entry for the world (rather than the novels): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Empire have an empire born out of city-states which then becomes a colonial power and over-stretches itself, so a nice mix of Greek and Roman history, of course with magic and pirates.

This world looks like a bunch of islands, but you have to note the scale and the fact that it is actually a collection of spread out continents. Malaz is in the centre and pretty small. There looks like one inland sea on the western continent and there is an archiepelago beyond that to the North-West. I am bit concerned to see an area called Jhag Odhan, because in the fantasy novel I wrote in 1988 I had an Ijahg City (soon to be featured on this blog).

Eladraigne and Namarre on Erith

I encountered more along this line on a rather cobwebsite, Daelstrom's Melted Maps: http://daelstorm.thegraveyard.org/maps.php which does not seem to have been updated since 2006. This has a very Celtic feel to it (and an inland sea or is it just a lake? Mirrinor), though the North-Eastern Nenian Sea presumably counts. There are two small archipelagos too. Anyway, this one comes from a female author, not that common, though as I began to think about it with Le Guin, Macaffrey and so on, there are a few. This is from The Bitterbynde triology by Cecilia Dart-Thornton an Australian author. The books are: 'The Ill-Made Mute' (2001), 'The Lady of the Sorrows' (2003), and 'The Battle of Evernight' (2003). There is not a lot online about this world, though there is already an online role-playing game set on the world. From the game you can see a range of races, with a mix of barbarians and more calmer peoples and elvish like races too, the 'Faeran'. The world as a whole is called Erith and Eladaraigne is the main kingdom which houses the Feorkind with its capital Caermelor (clearly reminiscent of Camelot). Namarre is inhabited by barbarians. So, it seems steeped in Celtic/early Anglo-Saxon culture.

Continent of 'The Way of the Tiger'

Rather than coming from a novel, this comes from a series of game books written by Jamie Thomson and Mark Smith called 'The Way of the Tiger' series. They were: 'Avenger!' (1985), 'Assassin!' (1985), 'Usurper!' (1985), 'Overlord!' (1986), 'Warbringer' (1986) and 'Inferno' (1987). Their world is called The Orb. They were like the Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks (and in fact one in that series, 'Talisman of Death' (1984; republished 2006) also by Thomson and Smith also features The Orb), in that you select options and go to the relevant entry. There is a simple combat system that allows you to battle opponents using dice. Effectively they were a role-playing game for people travelling or had no friends. The interesting thing about this series is that it has an unashamedly Japanese setting, with the player being a ninja and he can draw on 'chi' (as in Tai-Chi; it is the Chinese for the Japanese word 'ki' as in Aikido) which is a mental/spiritual force used in Chinese martial arts. Despite these references to our world, the setting is fantastical with barbarians, an Assassins' Guild, rangers, paladins and a whole series of gods, many related to war or evil. I like this map which is very North-South orientated (perhaps to match Japan itself) but the large fjords of the Great Valley Reaches seem reminiscent of Norway. It is not clear if this is the extent of the contient or if The Sea of the Star is an inland sea. There are no archiepelagos visible.

The World of Xylae

This one I can find out little about, it came off another blog hosted on blogspot, by someone it seems is called Tang. Despite the name, this seems to have Nordic and Italian, rather than Chinese influences. It has a hand-drawn 1930s feel, though the waves and mountains look put in by computer. There are stories on the blog, but I did not stop to read through them and there was little reference to this place except its name and I have no idea how you would pronounce Xylae (maybe it is like 'Skylar' which I know is now sometimes a girl's name, I believe, particularly in Australia). One reason I picked on it is because it has a mega-inland sea and a whole chaos of archipelagos. This Latchader Sea seems closed at both ends and at the bottom, the Romund Sea could be another inland sea, though if that is a cape, I guess not, it is just another gulf in a larger ocean. Clearly the West is most inhabited, though if this is set on a globe then the cities to the East of the map might be quite close to those in the West. You would have expected a bit more about Romundland. The title describes it as the 'known world', so if it is a typical fantasy setting, then maybe there are more 'undiscovered' continents.

An Atlas of Imaginary Worlds 4: The Earth Within

Whilst searching for maps of imaginary worlds on the internet I have come across many maps for places which people believed existed but no longer do, notably Atlantis, its rival Lemuria and Mu the equivalent in the Pacific. Another interest is in the theory that the Earth is actually hollow and that there is another world inside this one. This has been a popular theme for authors. Jules Verne wrote 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' in 1864 and I have mentioned Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) Pellucidar series: 'At the Earth's Core' (1914), 'Pellucidar (1923) [both of these are available in full online], 'Tanar of Pellucidar' (1928), 'Tarzan at the Earth's Core' (1929), 'Back to the Stone Age' (1937), 'Land of Terror' (1944) and posthumously, 'Savage Pellucidar' (1963). More recently Rudy Rucker wrote 'The Hollow Earth' in 1990 which features a fictional expedition by Edgar Allen Poe to the South Pole in 1836 to discover entry into the Hollow Earth. There is a list of more than 20 hollow Earth books on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Hollow-Earth-Madness/lm/166ZTL24C1WYA

Though the Hollow Earth has been a popular idea for fiction for decades, I was intrigued to find that there were many who held it to be based on fact. There are a variety of religious groups of the internet who quote extensive biblical and other references which they feel point to a Hollow Earth. There was even an exploration planned for this year 26th June-9th July, organised by a man called Steve Currey. The plan was to travel to 84.4 N Latitude, 141 E Longitude and they had charted a Russian icebreaker 'Yamal' to take them there along with up to 100 people who applied at http://www.voyagehollowearth.com/ Unfortunately Currey died before the mission began and it was cancelled.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries there have been reports of people travelling in the Polar regions discovering warm winds and other indications that there is a more temperate location up (or down) there. There is disagreement about what the worlds inside our Earth are like. A key difficulty for people is how it would be lit. One could envisage there may be deep underground caverns, possibly even with entrances at the North and South Poles as some believe (plus other entrances such as Mato Grosso in Brazil and Mount Epomeo in Italy even under the Egyptian pyramids) but they would be rather dark and bleak places, whereas most who believe in the Hollow Earth think there are rich, advanced civilizations down there. The Nazis believed in the theory of the inverted or hollow Earth, termed 'Hohlweltlehre'. The mission to Ruegen Island in April 1942 by Dr. Heinz Fischer was focused on the belief that we were actually on the inside of a concave world. Ironically Nazi Germany's developments in rockets would lead to disproof of that. There are myths of Nazi leaders (presumably led by Martin Borman who disappeared) escaping with 2000 scientists from Germany and Italy who were apparently missing at the end of the Second World War and up to 1 million other people into the interior of the world. This line has been followed in the story, 'Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth' by Max McCoy (2003) which features Indiana and the Nazis racing to find a hidden civilization within the Earth.

There is a group called the International Society for the Complete Earth (ISCE) (http://www.hollow-earth.org/welcome.html) which was set up in 1977 by a former German Second World War submarine commander who, amongst other things, apparently, helped recover the Holy Lance in 1969 and assisted the Hartmann Expedition to Antarctica in 1979 to recover a treasure of Hitler's. The trouble with things on the internet is that this could be a real group (it claims 1000 members across 9 countries) or it could be entirely a spoof for a book or a movie or something, it is so difficult to tell. If it is not a spoof then it would be a great organisation to feature in some modern technology version of 'The Da Vinci Code'.

As I discussed with the inland sea of Australia, in an age when we know all about the World people remain keen to find out that there is more, something that has been overlooked, and certainly in the expectation of advanced civilizations, societies or models of society which are fairer or more decent than our own (or far less decent if they are made up of old Nazis) as an element of hope in our violent selfish world.

A website called Xenophillia has 5 pages of different evidence which proves that a Hollow Earth is impossible: http://www.xenophilia.com/zb0008.htm To me, putting aside issues of the density of the Earth and its structure, there seem basic logistical problems of civilizations inside Earth which appear to be as follows. Without sunlight there cannot be plants and so no food supply for animals or humans to live. I know molluscs can live at volcanic vents deep in the sea and there are blind cave fish but you would need a lot to sustain more than a handful of people for a long time. Authors have suggested that the magma inside the Earth would provide light like the sun, but it is not known to do so in any deep caves any humans have visited. Without plants there would be a lack of oxygen and any creatures would soon die from the carbon dioxide they would generate. I know there are supposed to be large vents but basically any settlement would have to be ground around these and then why not live on the surface where all of this stuff is so much easier? We are always discovering new species, they thought the coelacanth was extinct but then they caught one in 1938 again in 1952 off South Africa and in 1998 off Sumatra. Then in 2005 remains of the so-called 'hobbit' race alive in Indonesia up to 18,000 years ago, about 12,000 years after the Neanderthals and Homo Erectus had gone. So, I am not saying there are not mysteries to be discovered, but that the logistics of a hollow Earth just do not add up. The Earth is probably about 80% the size it was once it first gained a crust due to internal cooling. There is also evidence to suggest it has expanded and contracted throughout its history suggesting it is a ball of molten rock at least gradually cooling. Below are illustrations of different views of how people think a hollow Earth would work:

This model below comes from John C. Symmes (1780-1829) who, like Edmund Halley (1656-1742 - discoverer of Halley's Comet) envisaged a series of concentric spheres inside the Earth:

Photos from Apollo 8 and Apollo 16 suggest to some people that there is a big chip in the North Pole which opens into the interior. This certainly makes Earth look like a soft-boiled egg. There is also a map of where people think the entrance will be:

An Atlas of Imaginary Worlds 2: Large continents and deserts

Now, aside from Middle Earth and Narnia most imaginary places have far less mapping. I have been unable to find a single map of Ruritania (though you can find a print font called Ruritania, very ornate) featured in Anthony Hope's 'A Prisoner of Zenda' (1894) and 'Rupert of Hentzau' (1898).

In terms of the nature of the worlds drawn, probably the most similar to that of Tolkien and Lewis is in the Conan the Cimmerian (aka Conan the Barbarian) stories (Conan was the name of four of the Dukes of Brittany in the Middle Ages) initially by Robert E. Howard (1906-1936). They are robust epic adventures of a barbarian warrior. There are over 50 novels and other stories written by a number of authors (including L. Sprague de Camp), so search the internet if you are interested. Anyway, these stories are set on the world of Hyboria (or Hyborea). It has large continents for lots of riding across. One fascination as you can see, has been by fans to map this world over our own. Many of the names of places in the world come from our own history such as Stygia (Hercules was supposed to have cleaned the Stygian stables), Aquilonia (is reminiscient of Aquitaine, a region of South-West France), Kush (as in the Hindu Kush), Asgard (which is where the gods lived in Norse myths), the Pictish Wilderness (the Picts occupied Scotland at the time of the Romans), Corinthia (Corinth was a leading city of Ancient Greece), Argos (was the name of Jason and the Argonauts ship and is now a retail store in the UK too), Shem (is a piece of text that powers golems in Jewish legends), Ophir (is a wealthy country mentioned in the Old Testament), Iranistan is pretty self-obvious, Vendhya (like the Vindhya Mountains in west-central India; Vindhya Pradesh was a state of India 1948-56), Khitai is like the name the Byzantines gave to China and so on.

These maps of Hyboria transpose our world and our Europe onto the main imaginary continent:

A more recent world is the one created for the online gaming environment World of Warcraft which started in 2001. It has three large continents: Kalimdor in the West, Northrend, not surprisingly in the North and the Eastern Kingdoms (Lordaeron, Khaz Modan and Azeroth) in the East, with an huge maelstrom apparently between them. There are no apparent archiepelagos but lots of large islands. The Eastern Kingdoms seem particularly well endowed with no less than three inland seas with islands in them. I imagine these locations allow 'zoning' of particularly tough creatures or missions in the game. This is the world that millions of people directly or indirectly are involved in, making it have as much impact, probably, as Middle Earth and Narnia.

This seems to be the 'Underground' map of the World of Warcraft showing its transport links. From what I gather there is a steampunk element and that continents are connected by both traditional sailing ships but also airships named Zeppelins (presumably in this world Zeppelin was a gnome technician or something) and people can also fly on large bats and manticores between certain towns.

Another a large single 'continent' is a place called the Isle of Lodoss. This started as records of role-playing games in Japan from 1986 onwards but under Ryo Mizuno has evolved into manga comics and fantasy novels by various authors under the sort of umbrella designation of 'Record of Lodoss War'. Given its background in 'Dungeons & Dragons' it is probably unsurprising that it has a similar outline to Hyboria. It is difficult to judge scale and given the title 'Isle' or 'Island' maybe this would be more accurate placed in the islands and archipelagos posting, but I will leave it here for now:

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950; the author of 'Tarzan') envisioned civilizations on planets in our solar system, notably Barsoom which was their version of Mars. Here are a couple of maps of what he envisoned its geography to be, the latter with an overlay of actual places on our Mars with their names in red compared to the Barsoomian blue ones. The books were serialised in comics shown by the first sate but then turned into novels which are the second dates I give for them: 'A Princess of Mars' (1912/1917), 'The Gods of Mars' (1913/1918), 'The Warlord of Mars' (1913-14/1919), 'Thuvia, Maid of Mars' (1916/1920), 'The Chessmen of Mars' (1922/1922), 'The Master Mind of Mars' (1927/1928), 'A Fighting Man of Mars' (1930/1931), 'Swords of Mars' (1934-5/1936), 'Synthetic Men of Mars' (1939/1940), 'Llana of Gathol' (1940/1948). Then John Coleman Burroughs took over: 'John Carter and the Giant of Mars' (1941/1964) and 'Skeleton Men of Jupiter' (1943 - no novel). Burroughs also produced a series set on Venus and there have been seven novels set in his Pellucidar, a land at beneath the Earth's crust, in line with the hollow Earth theories of the first half of the 20th century, including even a crossover with Tarzan going there. Burroughs also produced 'The Land that Time Forgot' (1918) and 'The People that Time Forgot' (also 1918) turned into movies in 1975 and 1977 respectively about an island inhabited by dinosaurs and cavepeople (very much like Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World' (1912) and more recently 'Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time' by James Gurney (1992) and 19 sequels and other books set there by him and other authors that have followed).

The science ficiton and fantasy author Michael Moorcock has said he was very influenced by Burroughs and once edited a Tarzan magazine. However, as we will see, Moorcock's world of the Young Kingdoms is in sharp contrast to the desert Barsoom. More in that category is the world of Arrakis, created by Frank Herbert (1920-1986) in the 'Dune' series. In his books (and as with other successful science fiction authors others have taken up his world after his death), 'Dune' (1986), 'Dune Messiah (1969), 'Children of Dune' (1976), 'God Emperor of Dune' (1981), 'Heretics of Dune' (1984) and 'Chapterhouse: Dune' (1985) he featured this desert world and much of the culture draws on Arabic and Islamic culture with words like Padishah (similar to the Turkish and Egyptian leaders called Pashas and the Persian/Iranian Shahs though it is portrayed as a dynastic name), Fedaykin (from the word Fedayeen for an elite guerilla fighter, which is coming back into use in current affairs, outside Herbert's worlds because of its use by Islamist fighters) and Sardaukar coming from Arabic language (though searching the internet these days you would have thought Herbert invented them himself), Zensunni (which combines Zen Buddhism with Sunni Islam).

It is quite refreshing to have a world not so shaped by North European-North American outlooks. There are a few other influences such as in the Landsraad (reminiscent of the German Landsrat parliament) and the rival Houses are rather like those of Renaissance Italy. Though there are masses of websites devoted to the Dune setting, few seem to run to maps, I suppose a huge desert does not open up many opportunities for the kind of rivers and mountains fantasy mapmakers love. This then is a map of the Arrakis, central to the Dune cycle; followed by the one from the board game produced by Avalon Hill in 1979 which is much more colourful:

In terms of availability (and you can tell when you have lots of fans because they will map your worlds for you), probably tied next with Howard et al and Hyboria, is Anne McCaffrey with Pern - her world of dragonriders which features in a whole series of novels by her and her son Todd: Dragonflight (1968), 'Dragonquest' (1970), 'Dragonsong' (1976), 'Dragonsinger' (1977), 'The White Dragon' (1978), 'Dragondrums' (1979), 'Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern' (1983), 'Nerillka's Story' (1986), 'Dragonsdawn' (1988), 'The Renegades of Pern' (1989), 'All the Weyrs of Pern' (1991), 'The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall' (1993), 'The Dolphins of Pern' (1994), 'Red Star Rising' (also known as 'Dragonseye', 1997), 'The Masterharper of Pern' (1998), 'The Skies of Pern' (2001), 'Dragon's Kin' (2003), 'Dragonsblood' (2005), 'Dragon Harper' (2007), 'After the Fall' (2008). There have been short stories and some of these books are anthologies. The stories mix science fiction of arrivals on a planet with fantasy elements of dragon riding. As you can see, McCaffrey's world has large continents but also sea and that moves us into the next category of world's which I will look at in the following posting.

The final one which seemed to me pretty much like Pern is Glorantha. This was the setting of the game 'Runequest' a fantasy role-playing game which was the second most popular after 'Dungeons & Dragons' and aimed to have a more distinctive culture from the reliance on elves, dwarfs, trolls and dragons. Note that Pern has its 'Passes' as eras and you can read about Middle Earth in its Third Age, well Glorantha was set in its Second Age, possibly to reflect that it was modelled on Bronze Age rather than Medieval culture, (which I guess could be seen as a continuation of the Iron Age in terms of metallurgy so the third age after the Stone and Bronze Ages) used in so many fantasy worlds. Like Pern there is a central sea and large continents North and South, but like the worlds seen in my next post it also has islands. The third map is a political one of the northern continent, Genertela.