Safehold: Map and story integration

What an interesting bunch of comments. I really do enjoy the Safehold books and Weber's other series. I am (92 years old and beginning to lose it in some ways. I would like to say David is my favorite Sci Fi writer but I am distantly related to Murray Leichester and I fear family takes first place. Keeps the books coming (with better maps). Bill

runsforcelery wrote:

Billmullan2 wrote:Thanks for the welcome, but I don'tthink you will like my remarks. The kindest adjective I can use in regard to the maps in Heaven's Foundations Quiver is "inadequate. There are many locations cited in the prose that do not appear on the maps. I am the kind of guy that keeps one finger on the map while I am reading. It is a losing proposition with this book. I suggest someone other than the author read the book and make sure that they show the places named in the text. A sample of what I mean is the battles often center around canals, but few of them are depicted on the maps.

How much space I get for maps is a production decision made by TOR, and I've never gotten as much as I really wanted. There are physical and economic reasons for the limitation, of course, and within those limitations they generally try to work with me. I provide detail maps that cover every campaign and major battle discussed in the books. TOR then tells me how much space I can have, and I have to make decisions about which ones actually go in. In this case, the production people screwed up and left out 4 maps which we had agreed would go in and my editor didn't find out in time to do anything about it before the books printed.

I will be sending the complete map file to Joe at Jiltanith shortly, and he will be posting an updated scalable version as of the end of HFQ. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but I talked to him about it at a convention over the weekend and it will happen sometime soon. In addition, TOR was supposed to set up an online site where all of the maps which I had handed in would be available in the same graphic format as the maps printed in the books. I.e., they would not be jpegs, they would not be scalable, but they would be complete. Unfortunately, that also hasn't been accomplished yet and the link for it was not inserted into the hardcover. It should be inserted into the paperback.

And, in answer to the original question on this thread, I created the entire planet of Safehold before I began deciding who would go where and exactly how the political/military/economic framework would be structured. When I say that areas are still to be fleshed in, that's because the mapping software that I use – which I like, although if I were starting from scratch today I'd probably shop around — will let me zoom down to a scale in which features are measured in yards or even feet. So I created what you might call the macro geography before I ever started writing. The micro geography is still being worked out as the story progresses.

Does that help?

It does indeed!!
I/we await the maps with MUCH interest.

I had felt that the HFQ maps were a bit on the thin side compared to LAMA, and this explains it.

Thank you.

runsforcelery" "Billmullan2 wrote:Thanks for the welcome, but I don'tthink you will like my remarks. The kindest adjective I can use in regard to the maps in Heaven's Foundations Quiver is "inadequate. There are many locations cited in the prose that do not appear on the maps. I am the kind of guy that keeps one finger on the map while I am reading. It is a losing proposition with this book. I suggest someone other than the author read the book and make sure that they show the places named in the text. A sample of what I mean is the battles often center around canals, but few of them are depicted on the maps.

How much space I get for maps is a production decision made by TOR, and I've never gotten as much as I really wanted. There are physical and economic reasons for the limitation, of course, and within those limitations they generally try to work with me. I provide detail maps that cover every campaign and major battle discussed in the books. TOR then tells me how much space I can have, and I have to make decisions about which ones actually go in. In this case, the production people screwed up and left out 4 maps which we had agreed would go in and my editor didn't find out in time to do anything about it before the books printed.

I will be sending the complete map file to Joe at Jiltanith shortly, and he will be posting an updated scalable version as of the end of HFQ. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but I talked to him about it at a convention over the weekend and it will happen sometime soon. In addition, TOR was supposed to set up an online site where all of the maps which I had handed in would be available in the same graphic format as the maps printed in the books. I.e., they would not be jpegs, they would not be scalable, but they would be complete. Unfortunately, that also hasn't been accomplished yet and the link for it was not inserted into the hardcover. It should be inserted into the paperback.

And, in answer to the original question on this thread, I created the entire planet of Safehold before I began deciding who would go where and exactly how the political/military/economic framework would be structured. When I say that areas are still to be fleshed in, that's because the mapping software that I use – which I like, although if I were starting from scratch today I'd probably shop around — will let me zoom down to a scale in which features are measured in yards or even feet. So I created what you might call the macro geography before I ever started writing. The micro geography is still being worked out as the story progresses.

Does that help?[/quote]

David,

Thanks for the answer... I understand that bean counters have their fingers in every pie and they decide how much space can be dedicated to maps (in this case)... perhaps the maps can be inserted in the story at a point of use rather than in the front cover as reference material.

I don't know... I only ask

"Finding the right answer is a function of asking the right question" A. Einstein

Perhaps if we got a 'little' less backmatter TOR could afford a few more maps?

Randomiser wrote:Perhaps if we got a 'little' less backmatter TOR could afford a few more maps?

I will agree that having the maps would be wonderful. But,the thing I miss is a simple table of contents at the beginning for a listing of the chapters.

StealthSeeker wrote:

Randomiser wrote:Perhaps if we got a 'little' less backmatter TOR could afford a few more maps?

I will agree that having the maps would be wonderful. But,the thing I miss is a simple table of contents at the beginning for a listing of the chapters.

With my epub edition I found the table of contents at the back, which I thought was odd...

Don

n7axw wrote:

StealthSeeker wrote:
I will agree that having the maps would be wonderful. But,the thing I miss is a simple table of contents at the beginning for a listing of the chapters.

With my epub edition I found the table of contents at the back, which I thought was odd...

Don

Formally, it's the same for my Kindle version, but I had never noticed till now because the main way of accessing it is through the menu where it also appears, down at the bottom.

n7axw wrote:Don

Formally, it's the same for my Kindle version, but I had never noticed till now because the main way of accessing it is through the menu where it also appears, down at the bottom.[/quote]

Kindle version is easy to find though. There is a link right at the beginning, plus if you hit your library access button in the upper left corner, the table of contents are just an easy scroll down.

And this explains why the maps in the Ebook don't match the maps in the Hardcover.Not that either of them have as many as I would like.

runsforcelery wrote:

Billmullan2 wrote:Thanks for the welcome, but I don'tthink you will like my remarks. The kindest adjective I can use in regard to the maps in Heaven's Foundations Quiver is "inadequate. There are many locations cited in the prose that do not appear on the maps. I am the kind of guy that keeps one finger on the map while I am reading. It is a losing proposition with this book. I suggest someone other than the author read the book and make sure that they show the places named in the text. A sample of what I mean is the battles often center around canals, but few of them are depicted on the maps.

How much space I get for maps is a production decision made by TOR, and I've never gotten as much as I really wanted. There are physical and economic reasons for the limitation, of course, and within those limitations they generally try to work with me. I provide detail maps that cover every campaign and major battle discussed in the books. TOR then tells me how much space I can have, and I have to make decisions about which ones actually go in. In this case, the production people screwed up and left out 4 maps which we had agreed would go in and my editor didn't find out in time to do anything about it before the books printed.

I will be sending the complete map file to Joe at Jiltanith shortly, and he will be posting an updated scalable version as of the end of HFQ. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but I talked to him about it at a convention over the weekend and it will happen sometime soon. In addition, TOR was supposed to set up an online site where all of the maps which I had handed in would be available in the same graphic format as the maps printed in the books. I.e., they would not be jpegs, they would not be scalable, but they would be complete. Unfortunately, that also hasn't been accomplished yet and the link for it was not inserted into the hardcover. It should be inserted into the paperback.

And, in answer to the original question on this thread, I created the entire planet of Safehold before I began deciding who would go where and exactly how the political/military/economic framework would be structured. When I say that areas are still to be fleshed in, that's because the mapping software that I use – which I like, although if I were starting from scratch today I'd probably shop around — will let me zoom down to a scale in which features are measured in yards or even feet. So I created what you might call the macro geography before I ever started writing. The micro geography is still being worked out as the story progresses.

Does that help?

Oddly (or maybe not-who knows?) the maps in the hardcover version of the book are definitely NOT the same maps that are in the ebook (Kindle). I thought that I would read the ebook for the sake of my eyes and the $2.99 offer from Amazon. And Use the maps in the hardcover to correlate the place with the words. Nope! The ebook has better maps for this volume of the series, but they can only be enlarged within the frame of the device which makes things more than just a bit clumsy. The maps in the hardcover just plain stink!

Billmullan2 wrote:Thanks for the welcome, but I don'tthink you will like my remarks. The kindest adjective I can use in regard to the maps in Heaven's Foundations Quiver is "inadequate. There are many locations cited in the prose that do not appear on the maps. I am the kind of guy that keeps one finger on the map while I am reading. It is a losing proposition with this book. I suggest someone other than the author read the book and make sure that they show the places named in the text. A sample of what I mean is the battles often center around canals, but few of them are depicted on the maps.