The Books I Read In May

 Fiction

'The Nonborn King' by Julian May

As this was a 2013 re-release I had not realised it was the third book in The Saga of Exiles tetralogy. I had also not realised that like Robin, in the USA, Julian is a woman's name, so had assumed, being British, that the author was a man. I had often come the first book in the series, 'The Many-Colored Land' (1981) but was not tempted to read it at the time. I am glad I did not. This book is almost a stereotype of overblown 1980s fantasy, that I had assumed, due to the portrayal of women, was written by a middle-aged man; May was 52 when it was published in 1983.

It is not really fantasy as it starts as science fiction, with the development of psionic abilities and Earth joining an inter-galactic confederation of species with psionic abilities. However, through a wormhole various people are sent into exile in the Pliocene era 5.3-2.6 million years ago, probably at the start of that era as in this volume we see the Mediterranean basin being reflooded. Travelling back in time, humans from the future meet two branches of the same species of humanoid aliens, the Tanu and the Firvulag that they alternatively combine with or fight

This book is filled with lots of factional battles over 'France', Spain', south-western Germany and parts of the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboard of North America. The reflooding of the Mediterranean is caused by a powerful psionic woman. A powerful human psionic ridiculously called Aiken Drum (as in the song) sets himself up as ruler of 'Brittany' and the book is a rather laboured coming to war of various factions. The psionics like magic and the principalities make it feel like fantasy, though occasional high-tech vehicles and weapons turn up periodically.

Despite being republished in 2013, this book as racist epithets and a generally negative view of women, even down to the myth of the vagina dentata. If I had not known better I would have assumed the book was written by a socially isolated man living in the Mid West living out his pubescent fantasies of time travel and superpowers to secure him women as partners even against their will. I can understand why these books were successful but there was a lot better fantasy around even back in the 1980s, let alone now.

'The Songlines' by Bruce Chatwin

I do not really know if this counts as fiction. Chatwin was a travel writer and it is hard to know if the incidents (there is no plot) that he describes were fictional or real. I guess it counts as 'semi-autobiographical'. Anyway, the book is about an author travelling around central Australia finding out about how Aborigines map the country through songs that allow them to pass on the history and geography of places they move through, the different creatures they identify with, the boundaries between different tribes but also as a shared way of communicating across dialects and languages of the people of the sub-continent. That in itself is interesting. However, the portrayal of the author travelling to various locations to discuss this approach with various people is incredibly seedy. You feel that everything he encounters is worn out and on the verge of collapse, many of the people completely lost in the world, prey to alcoholism or simply the break-down of human impact on such a harsh environment. In the last quarter of the book, Chatwin even gives up on this for a while and simply lists short snippets from various sources trying to portray humans as naturally nomadic rather than settled.

Overall, a very dissatisfying book. I would have preferred to read his analysis of the song lines referring to the people he met and spoke to about them, rather than levering it all in what proves to be a dreary, depressing 'story'.

'Set in Darkness' by Ian Rankin

This is the eleventh book in the Rebus series and I realise I have read so many now, that I no longer look for any of them to be better or worse than the one before, they just are. It is like we periodically drop into John Rebus's life to see how he is getting along. These are increasingly more 'slice of life' novels that happen to be about an unhealthy dysfunctional police officer going about his business in Edinburgh. These sense of the drive of the mystery in these books has entirely faded for me. Three disparate threads and the uncovering of murders involving property developers from the 1970s as a result of the building of the Scottish Parliament (the book was published in 2000), is deftly handled rather than thrilling. There are tropes such as the long-established gangsters and the wealthy family with secrets, so at times, if it were not for the interaction between Rebus and his colleagues, whether friends or opponents, it would feel rather like an episode of a soap opera like 'Dallas'. It is reasonably well woven together and the descriptions of various parts of Edinburgh remain interesting. I still have four more in the series to read of 13 more Rebus novels published since then - there are various short story collections/novellas too. I am content to work through the ones I have but despite copies turning up regularly in charity shops (I now live in Scotland), I am not rushing out to collect them.

'The Ocean at the End of the Lane' by Neil Gaiman

As it explains in an interview in the back of the edition I had, while this superficially seems to be a children's book, featuring a man remembering the fantastical situations that developed when he was living in rural Sussex as a boy. I suppose it counts as magic realism. As noted in the interview some of the horrors have are from an adult perspective which is why I probably found this story far more unsettling than say the Harry Potter stories, even though the protagonist is a 7-year old boy. He falls in with the grandmother, mother and daughter of  a neighbouring house who are a kind of immortal guardians trying to stop misguided rather than evil creatures coming through to cause harm on Earth. It moves along at a pace and for all the fantasy, has a kind of realistic edge. It is set in the late 1960s and I was 7 in 1974, so I can envisage much of 'ordinary' setting and especially the attitudes of adults that are portrayed. It moves along briskly and like all of Gaiman's work is well crafted. I did feel some parallels with 'Good Omens' that Gaiman wrote with Terry Pratchett published in 1990 and 'A Wrinkle in Time' (1962) by Madeleine L'Engle and unsurprisingly it has proven as popular as those two. It has a similar appeal, encompassing the fantastical but rooted in some kind of reality.

Non-Fiction

'The Thirty Years War' by Peter Limm

This is a slim volume which draws on translations of documents of the time to illustrate the points Limm is making. He is no better than anyone else at disentangling the to and fro fighting that raged over western and central Europe in the mid-17th Century. The strength lies in the analysis which follows. There is crisp insight into the impacts of the war, showing how, contrary to many portrayals of it as a real divide in history, it saw many continuities. The war did cause economic harm, but this was actually part of longer trends as were the military developments which it highlighted rather than provoked. Overall this is a perceptive book which certainly, I felt, increased my knowledge of the politics, economy and society of the countries impacted and challenged simplistic assumptions very often seen.

Books I Read In December

Fiction
'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman
I saw that they were televising a series of this book so I thought it might be an idea to read it. Despite being a long book not much happens. The story involves Shadow, an ex-convict who is employed by Odin to aid him in rallying other gods brought to the USA by settlers down the millennia. For much of the time Shadow lives in a small village by a lake when not being employed by Odin and encounters a range of interesting people as well as being bothered by his late wife who he inadvertently raised from the dead and who kills people who threaten him. There is an interesting concept that places and activities are imbued with belief and Gaiman features local attractions which become filled with power because people come to them. The basic concept overlaps with 'The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul' (1988) by Douglas Adams which was published 13 years earlier but relocating to dreary backwater towns in the USA gives Gaiman a chance to add the new twist of old gods against new gods of technology and other facets of contemporary society. While the plot drifts for far too long, there is a decent twist and above all, Gaiman writes interesting characters and portrays unexciting US settings well. Thus, despite the fantastical element there is a real lack of urgency about this book and it is, ironically, best read as a 'slice of life' novel. I cannot imagine this would make exciting watching unless you are a fan of Mike Leigh movies, but I see they are on to the third season of the TV series so I can only imagine they have long ago diverged from the novel.

'Now is the Time' by Melvyn Bragg
I once read an interview with Bragg in which he wished his novels were just a little more successful. He seems to get long listed for awards but very rarely wins. Having read this novel I can understand why. The novel is around the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Bragg shows it from various perspectives on both sides of the conflict and certainly you can learn a lot about what went on and who was involved. I particularly found the descriptions of London at the time very interesting. However, it is all written in an unsophisticated way with lots of telling rather than showing and somehow detached from the characters. Even when Wat Tyler's daughter is raped by London criminals released during the revolt, you do not feel the way you should about this. In many ways the book reminded me of novels by Henry Treece (1911-66) who wrote numerous historical novels for children. Thus, though there are points of interest, there is a lack of genuine drama in the novel and at the end you feel like you have read a lesson rather than a novel. Bragg should look to the work of Bernard Cornwell in how to add that dramatic element to scrupulously researched fiction.

'Aqua Alta' by Donna Leon
In this fifth book in the Guido Brunetti series, Leon returns to two characters from the first novel, 'Death at La Fenice' (1992), opera singer Flavia Petrelli and her female partner, archaeologist Brett Lynch. When Lynch is beaten up, Brunetti involves himself in the case which soon turns into one involving murder and faked archaeological artefacts. It is set against the backdrop of both the 'aqua alta', the flooding of Venice caused by high tides and heavy rain and the sense that those in privileged positions continue to get away with their crimes. This applies to Lynch as much as the antique collector. As noted with the previous novel, Leon appears to have got into her stride with these novels and they rise far about the first couple. The book is brisk, provides interesting details about both Venice and archaeology in China as well as setting the story in the amoral context of contemporary Italy that appears so attractive for crime novelists even those writing in English. I have five more of these novels to read. Leon continues churning them out and the 29th comes out in 2020.

'Counting Up, Counting Down' by Harry Turtledove
Around the time this book came out in 2002, I had been thinking of writing a short story about a man who travels back in time to try to improve his own life. Then I heard of the two stories at the start and end of this book, which in fact are the same story seen from the older and younger versions of the same man, Justin Kloster travelling from 2018 to 1999. The ending of these stories turns out was far more positive than the one I planned which would have ended up rather like 'The Butterfly Effect' (2004) movie. It brought home to me that especially if writing in a particular genre it is easy for authors to come up with similar stories of their own accord. The two stories are reasonable if a little frustrating. One interesting things are what Turtledove (originally writing this as a magazine story in the 1990s) got wrong about 2018, i.e. The Rolling Stones are still touring, 'South Park' is still very well known even by teenagers and the fad for body piercing has not waned in the slightest, in fact it has increased.

The rest of the stories in this collection are quite a mixed bag.  Despite what I have been told about my alternate history short story anthologies, there is demand for such collections. Not all of the stories are alternate history, there is some science fiction and fantasy too. There is far more sex than I had expected from reading other books by Turtledove and with religion this is a key theme through the collection. 'Vermin' about a Christian community struggling as settlers on an alien planet is well done and highlights the grave consequences of seeking comfort just for yourself or your community. Other science fiction ones are oddities, 'The Deconstruction Gang' about philosophers discussing breaking up a road, 'The Green Buffalo' about cowboys slipping through a rift in time to kill a triceratops for food and 'The Maltese Elephant', a pastiche of 'The Maltese Falcon' (novel 1930; movie 1941) are alright but not hugely engaging.

'Ils Ne Passeront Pas' conjures up the Verdun front in 1916 very well, but then, for no clear reason, throws creatures from the Biblical apocalypse at French and German soldiers, ultimately without much changing. This like 'In This Season' a magical realist story about a small number of Jews escaping Poland following the German occupation in 1939 with the aid of a golem, again has religious elements that I probably miss out on. 'After the Last Elf is Dead' is more fantastical, but equally grim, seeing a world where the evil Dark Brother has been victorious and showing the challenges even for his loyal staff which reminded me of Stalin's regime and has a very unsettling conclusion which, though, does show the likely outcome if evil does win in a fantasy setting.

Seemingly more light-hearted than those grim stories is 'Honeymouth', a fantasy story about a disreputable rider of a unicorn and while sex features in the other stories it is right at the front in this fantasy one as the title might suggest. 'Miss Manner's Guide to Greek Missology #1: Andromeda and Perseus' is interesting in reversing the roles in the stories, but I always find attempts at humour in these situations is laboured and dates poorly. 'Goddess for a Day' despite sounding like a story title set to primary school children is the best of the fantasy stories, showing the challenges of a woman employed to act as Athena, in an actual event which occurred in the 6th Century CE.

Two reasonable stories focused on religion are set in Turtledove's Videssos fantasy setting, similar to the Byzantine Empire on which he was a scholar. The first, 'The Decoy Duck' about a missionary to a nordic style land will remind readers of a very similar sub-plot in the TV series, 'Vikings' (2013-20) and given it was written long before that may have been an inspiration for it. The second, 'The Seventh Chapter' is unexciting, largely a procedural that primarily tells us more about the world Turtledove has created and religion within it.

Of the alternate histories, 'Must and Shall' set in 1942 but one in which the Union was far harsher on the Confederate States following the shooting of Abraham Lincoln in 1864, is well done as detectives seek the German weapons being sent to southern states to trigger an uprising. 'Ready for the Fatherland' is set in 1979 in Croatia in a world where Field Marshal Manstein assassinated Hitler in 1943, held back the Soviet counter-attacks and crushed the Anglo-American landing in France so a stalemate developed across Europe with the Germans and their puppet states persisting. There is a nice reference to a scene from 'The Guns of Navarone' (1961) movie and a passing one to 'Force 10 from Navarone' (1978). 'The Phantom Tolbutkin' features another similar scenario but with Ukrainian resistance fighters in the occupied USSR and turns a good twist.

Non-Fiction
'Unreliable Witness: Espionage Myths of the Second World War' by Nigel West [Rupert Allason]

This book is probably unnecessary now, but when it came out in 1984 it proved a good corrective to the numerous books that had been appearing in the 1970s and early 1980s about spying during the Second World War. It showed me that 'Bodyguard of Lies' (1975) which I have on my shelf is riddled with errors. It also shows how without care historians can perpetuate mistakes through successive books. West looks at a number of claims in books of the time, among others, that a German spy in Orkney Islands allowed the sinking of HMS 'Royal Oak' when berthed there, that Admiral Canaris, head of German military intelligence provided material to the Allies but had also met Mata Hari, who was behind the Soviet spy ring in Switzerland during the war and whether Churchill had foreknowledge of the bombing of Coventry in November 1940. Most of the cases prove to be less dramatic than historians have made out and often came down to a combination of human, signals and codebreaking intelligence. As time had passed since the war, more identities of spies came out, also allowing corrections of misapprehensions. 

This is another book which would have been better for me to have read when I bought it 30+ years ago. M.R.D. Foot, the historian of S.O.E. (who I met once) was rather sniffy about this book, in part I think because West highlights some mistakes Foot made. Thus, you rather feel this book is a bit of revenge by West against authors who have too easily accepted certain stories without doing the necessary cross-checking. Allason himself is now 68 and Foot died in 2012 at the age of 92, so that element is largely irrelevant now. What I would suggest is that this short book (166 pages) should be given to people starting History degrees to alert them to how easily it is not simply to make errors, especially when based on assumptions, but to perpetuate them. If like me you are working your way through old books on the Second World War, it is also useful to have this as an accompanying corrective especially to the more exciting claims made in those books.

Books I Read In November

Fiction
'Neverwhere' by Neil Gaiman
There are apparently three versions of this book.  It began as a television series (1996) prompted by comedian and actor Lenny Henry and written by Gaiman.  He then went on to write a book of the series and then a version for American readers who did not understand many of the London references, before this version which is the most comprehensive.  A movie was planned in 2009 but never came to anything but a radio series was broadcast in 2013.

I saw the series when first broadcast and watched it last year on DVD.  However, I still enjoyed the book which is close to, but does not precisely follow the series.  Gaiman has more time to fill in the background and he uses the novel form to really paint the locations and characters of London Below very richly.  The book focuses on Richard Mayhew a Scot living in London who goes to the rescue of a young homeless woman, Door.  Helping her means he is subsequently invisible to people in London and he is drawn into London Below in an effort to recapture his old life.  London Below mixes literal translations of London places, e.g. Old Bailey is an old man who keeps rooks; Earl's Court is a train on which an earl holds court; the Black Friars are friars who are black and so on.  It features exotic characters such as the Angel Islington, Mr. Croup and Mr, Vandemar assassins and the amoral Marquis of Carabas, named after a character in the 'Puss in Boots' story.  Henry and Gaiman did not want to glamourise the lives of the homeless and so as well as having fantastical elements such as the Floating Market, the Beast of London and the Velvets (as in the Velvet Underground) life is cheap and people Mayhew encounters are tortured and killed with little thought.

Overall it is a modern fairy tale and shows fascinating imagination as you would expect from Gaiman.  I enjoyed the book and recommend it if you are looking for something a little different in your fantasy reading as it has elements of many fantasy tropes, but shifts them into a grown-up and gritty context.  It may seem very different if you are unfamiliar with London, but I feel it would still be engaging as the places of London Below will be even more unfamiliar.

'Master Georgie' by Beryl Bainbridge
This is an episodic book laid out in reference to a number of photographs taken between 1846-54.  The chapters rotate through the three perspectives of people who associate with George Hardy of the title, a rather spoilt young, gay, doctor who has photography as his hobby.  Despite his shortcomings he seems to instill great loyalty in his friends and associates.  Consequently they move from London to the Crimea as spectators and increasingly participants in the Crimean War.  There is very minimal plot.  The book is about drawing in great detail the lives and characters of four people, anchored by the focus on Hardy whose perspective we never see.  This is very much a 'slice of life' book which is effective in portraying London in the mid-19th century and the squalor and difficulties of the poorly-executed British effort in the Crimean War.  It was engaging on that basis, but I like a plot and so finished it feeling a little: 'so what?'.  The quality of writing is very good and the historical detail too.  Yet, it was not really the book for me.

The Strange Delight Of Lost Corners

This is another of those postings of me thinking back over quirky things that have caught my attention down the years and probably mean very little to anyone else.  However, perhaps I am wrong and my fascination with areas that I term 'lost corners' may intrigue others too.  When I was a boy at secondary school I was once on a school trip to London.  I was sitting in a coach somewhere like Wandsworth probably heading to the Imperial War Museum, maybe somewhere else.  Anyway I was on board a coach which was stuck in a traffic jam.  I was sat next to the window, uncommon for me as I generally sit in the aisle given the length of my legs and my concern about escaping from crashes.  Anyway, I looked down at a metal railing fence that enclosed the garden of a large house.  I was looking at the bit that came up to a post which marked the end of the wooden fence that surrounded the garden next door.  The garden with the railing fence was terribly overgrown, I remember.  Consequently I assumed that no-one ever went up to that corner of the fence, no-one picked up the litter there or did anything with the railings from that side let alone the concrete pole.  However, there had to have been some day when all of this had been important to someone.  Somebody had worked to erect the fence, to dig the hole and insert the concrete pole and yet now it seemed unlikely that anyone would ever set foot in that corner, perhaps for decades perhaps for even longer.  Of course, someone may have cut back the rhododendron and demolished the railings and removed the fence post later that day.  Even if they had, here was a space in which no human and probably few birds or other animals had been.

That was the day I realised that I had a fascination for spaces which were not invisible, but certainly lost to humanity for the foreseeable future.  It made me think that even in cities where we believe that every corner is jammed full of people, there are many areas which are untouched by people.  It reminded me of the UK as a whole.  We have some of the densest populations in Europe but there are large swathes of the country, vast areas of Scotland, Wales, the national parks, much of the South-West and the northern English counties, that are in fact almost empty of humans.  We are all jammed into quite restricted areas and there are these other spaces in which we do not go into.  I think it would be fascinating to map areas, particularly in London, where no-one goes.  I think this was one of the reasons why the Open House scheme has proven so popular.  Every year buildings to which the public and in fact very few people in general have access, are open for free.  I have been inside Marble Arch and down into Aldwych underground station plus various water pumping stations.  Typically those places for which you see a door but one that presents a blank face, a door as a wall in effect.

I have often thought this too about television and movie dramas when people come to London or some other great city trying to find someone.  Generally they do not experience how it is in reality.  Even if you manage to find the person among the teeming millions, you might reach their building and simply be faced with a door that will not open, through which no-one will let you.  So much of our cities are like this.  Wherever you walk you go passed location after location after location into which you could never gain access no matter how hard you tried.  I do wonder if one of the appeals of Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry's 'Neverwhere' (series & novelisation, 1996) was that there was an entire 'London Below' (in fact, often above as well) that could be accessed by forming doors in those very blanks walls.  I have a feeling that Gaiman and Henry saw such spaces, especially in London much as I have done, though saw a way through rather than for me, just feeling repeatedly rejected by them.

That silent rejection, I feel is different to the lost corners.  Of course, someone may have had the intention to close them off; fenced them around.  Yet, for me the best of them have become a lost corner because they have become overgrown or simply because they are no longer important.  In the house I currently rent a room in, from the kitchen I look at the back of another house, set at right-angles as it opens on another road.  I have never seen the residents, but the entirety of the back of the house, is overgrown and blocked from the side of my house by an old iron fence.  Once that space was important, part of a building site for the house, perhaps a location where children sneaked around the house as I used to go between my parents' house and my neighbours' down the narrow gap.  Certainly for many days people tramped around that space and at some time, maybe then, maybe later put and iron fence in, presumably along precisely defined lines.  The space is still there and plants inhabit it, and yet whilst I can see it, without great effort I could never be in that space.  It reminds me too, of the wonderful views you see while driving down the motorway knowing that however beautiful it is, there is no way you can capture that precise view certainly not without a severe risk of death and being arrested, perhaps in the reverse order.

I think it is that fact, 'so near, yet so far', like the eyots you see from the trains as you go over or alongside the Thames.  You would love to go on to them.  There would be very little on most of them and one or two are protected, but it would be that excitement of stepping somewhere no-one has been for so long.  Maybe I am wrong and they would be full of leftovers of drunken student parties.  I wonder if it is a little like what motivates people to climb mountains or explore jungles, to go into spaces which you feel are rather outside the flow of time.  Reflecting on this interest of mine, I know that it is not restrained to overgrown gardens or disused yards.  It also stems to those rooms you see on the top of old buildings, equipped with windows and yet with no-one to look out of them.  You see them all over old cities, London, Oxford, Bath particularly among them.  Does anyone go into those spaces and what do they contain, bar dust?

My feelings about lost corners is one of wistfulness, feeling perhaps because they are not entered and walked across, that they retain a small scoop of the past of some days when they were something that warranted the attention of people, even if just the workers sent to put in a fence.  A teacher of mine explained how when he had gone to Arizona and saw so much of it as it would have looked many centuries earlier, he felt unnerved.  Returning to Britain he realised it was the starkness of the American South West that alarmed him in the very fact that it was wild, it had not been softened, worked on by humans.  Britain, in contrast, is very different.  You can go almost everywhere in this country and see the trace of humans.  Many rural fields have tumuli dating back millenia; others have Roman roads or forts or banjo enclosures or filled in quarries or torn up railtracks.  As 'Time Team' has shown seemingly ever corner of Britain has been impacted upon directly by humans, not simply in terms of pollution but messing around with it.  Archaeology programmes show us that not only has our back garden been part of centuries of structures but even on remote Scottish islands the trace of humans is there; the rolling valleys of the Yorkshire Dales were deforested before there was a written language.  I have never been anywhere as untouched as my teacher, but I imagine I would feel as unnerved as him.  This is why, I guess I am fascinated by these corners that show human intervention, but unlike the average stretch of pavement or even garden, that intervention has ceased and it is as if we are walking past a snapshot from some particular time, not out of time, but somehow on a parallel rather than bisecting path to the spaces we habitually go into.  I have wondered whether to take photos of some of these places and put them up on this blog.  However, I guess that is taking being a nerd just that little too far and instead will confine myself to the wistful enjoyment of such forgotten corners whenever I see them.

An Atlas of Imaginary Worlds 5: Worlds Beside Our Own

Having span off into the world of the Hollow Earth, there remain a couple of worlds set on or rather beside the Earth we know that I thought were worth mentioning. The first comes from the movie 'Time Bandits' (1981). This was produced by former Beatle, George Harrison and written by Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam (who also directed it) who had been in the cult comedy 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' and in spin-off movies like 'Jabberwocky' (1977) and 'The Life of Brian' (1979 - which has gone from being condemned by Christian groups as ungodly, to now since even the early 1990s having clips used in children's history programmes about the Romans). Most of the 'Pythons' attended with Oxford or Cambridge university, one of them, Terry Jones, since 1984, has been writing books such as 'Chaucer's Knight' (1984) and producing programmes on medieval history and Palin has gone on to be a successful adventurous travel writer with books and programmes amongst others, 'Around the World in 80 Days' (1991), 'Pole to Pole' (1992), 'Sahara' (2002) and 'Full Circle' (2004) so their historical facts tend to be very solid as can be seen in their films).

Anyway, 'Time Bandits' is a popular blog topic. It is really a children's film about an English boy from 1981 called Kevin and 6 dwarfs who work for the 'Supreme Being' and have a map of flaws in the universe which allow them to jump through time and space on Earth. Portals open up for a limited amount of time, giving an urgency to their explorations as seen in this blurred image from the movie:

They are supposed to be repairing them, but use them to go round stealing treasure. The map they use is bigger than any one of them and I think some of the appeal of it, is its aesthetic. It looks as it should, cryptic and mystical, but practical too, though with potential for misinterpretation. Below are some images of the map as seen in the movie and now available to buy. The fact that people still want it 26 years later, suggests it has a pretty iconic status. Like a lot of Gilliam's work, notably 'Brazil' (1985), 'The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen' (1988), 'The Fisher King' (1991) and his abortive Don Quixote film, it is about preserving fantasy and excitement in a world obsessed with rationality, and especially in 'Time Bandits', consumerism. In Gilliam's view, it appears such ability to engage with the unreal is what keeps us free.

The map as seen in the movie:

This one was a similar map produced by the artist Jennifer Diane Reitz in the early 1980s. See: http://www.pasteldefender.com/news.html for more about her and her work, a lot of which falls into fantasy categories:

I had hoped to be able to find a Neverwhere map. 'Neverwhere' (1998) was by Neil Gaiman, the (graphic) based on a television series by him (and the comedian Lenny Henry) of the same name in 1996. It envisages a parallel world within London; London Below. All those mysterious doors you pass that no-one ever seems to open or those windowed spires on the top of Victorian buildings, actually go into this different world, inhabited both by tribes of homeless people and by fantastical creatures. All the places on the London undeground map relate to real things so an earl has a court at Earl's Court, there is a black smith at Hammersmith, there are black friars from Blackfriars (and the female vampires, the Velvets come in, as in The Velvet Underground) and there is an angel at Angel Islington and so on. I know there are lots of closed down stations on the London underground, but I suppose Gaiman's Neverwhere map would be the same as the London Underground one anyway. So I found some other unusual or faked underground railway maps, including one for the planet Gallifrey the home planet of the Doctor in the television series 'Doctor Who' (intermittently 1963- Now). The first is a map which shows the geographical rather than schematic map of the routes which usually is seen. Another one to look out for is 'The Great Bear' (1992) by Simon Patterson a conceptual map based on the traditional London Underground map outline:

The final one for now is a 'map' that seems to be all over the internet maybe influenced by the very speculative ones drawn by explorers in the 19th century, but certainly one which could provide a model for those seeking to create fantasy world maps now. Note both the inland sea and the northern mountains and wastelands:

On reflection, though, I think that this was not supposed to be satirical in the way it now seems to be portrayed, rather it was probably an aide-memoire for Victorian children to show them the generic elements of what they would find on a map. However, it would be tempting to write over the labels and use it as a fantasy world.