Atlas of Imagined Places

Charting
The Uncharted

Atlas of Imagined Places -
From Liliput to Gotham City
by Matt Brown and Rhys B. Davies
Illustrated by Mike Hall
Batsford ISBN:  9781849946414

Ever wondered exactly where the island from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is, or just where it is in proximity to the passage to the centre of the Earth? How about the location of the wrecked stealth ship from Tomorrow Never Dies and how close that is to Tin Min from It Ain’t Half Hot Mum?

Look no further then because the excellent coffee table book Atlas Of Imagined Places - From Liliput To Gotham City, written by Matt Brown and Rhys B. Davies, with fantastic illustrations by Mike Hall, will tell you all this and more. The book pretty much does what it says on the tin and presents the reader with a selection of 18 sets of maps presented as an atlas, which detail literally thousands of fictitious places which the authors, quite cleverly in some instances, have managed to pin point as an area in the real world.

The book starts off with a section which details just what kinds of places you wont find, by breaking things down into a number different fictional place categories, many of which are included but some of which are not. These range from fictional places (not used in the book because they don’t occur in correlation with our world), fictional places on Earth and fictional surrogates etc. The chapter titles are labelled thusly: 1. The USA - Altered States, 2. 2. Canada and The Arctic - Green Gables and Gold Nuggets, 3. Central America and the Caribbean - The Old New World, 4. South America - Cities of Gold and Banana Republics, 5. Western Europe - The Old Countries, 6. Eastern Europe - Science and Sorcery, Shtetls and Soviets, 7. The Nordic Countries - Here Be Dragons (and Trolls), 8. UK and Ireland - Fake Britain and Sham Rock, 9. The Middle East and Central Asia - Beyond The Silk Road, 10. South Asia - From Peshawar to the Peninsula, 11. Africa - Things Come Together, 12. Southeast Asia - Wilds, Waves, Worlds and Wars, 13. Japan - The Land Of The Rising Gundam, 14. China and North-East Asia - Journey To The East, 15. Australia and New Zealand - The Original Land Of Oz, 16. Antarctica - The Nightmare Continent, 17. The Pacific Ocean - Island Hopping and 18. The Atlantic Ocean - Lost Worlds Of The Western Sea.

Each chapter is broken down with a two to four page introduction, written like a travelogue but with a lot of in-jokes for various fictional locations (some of which I got and, due to the sheer range of literary invention looked at for this tome, some of which I didn’t). This is followed by the map itself over another double page spread and then another section which gives another couple of pages talking about a number of the places you will find on that particular map and, in some cases, how hard to pin down they were and what process led to the authors identifying them where they have. So lots of places like Westworld, Springfield (The Simpsons version), Bedrock, Asterix’s village and Blofeld’s volcano retreat from You Only Live Twice are all flagged but, other things you will need to scour the maps for on your own or check out in the vast index in the second half of the book to find them in situ. For instance, I had to look up places like Midwich (from The Midwich Cuckoos), Antonio Bay (from The Fog) and Tilling (from E. F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia books) myself to cross reference them on the maps.

But the book is a sheer delight. The UK (where I’m from), for example, has a wealth of places including Summerisle (from The Wicker Man), The Village (from the prisoner), Brigadoon and Walmington-On-Sea (from Dad’s Army). The remit is fantastic and takes on not just books and movies but also TV, video games and even real life hoaxes. I now know where the Antarctic base from John Carpenter’s The Thing is in proximity to the Snowcap Tracking Station where the Cybermen were up to no good in the last of William Hartnell’s Doctor Who stories, The Tenth Planet, for example. I also know how far Castle Frankenstein is from Castle Wolfenstein and even how far the mountain that gave birth to The Monkey King is from the Severnaya Satellite control in Goldeneye. Not to mention the Swiss Spaghetti Farm from the famous, 1950s Panorama April Fools Day broadcast.

Now, as the writers admit themselves, there’s always going to be some stuff which seems like it’s missing in action for some people and I do have one big problem with one of the locations in the maps. That being the inclusion of Superman’s Fortress Of Solitude. All well and good but, there’s no mention of Doc Savage’s similar Fortress Of Solitude in the tome and, frankly, this is a big exclusion because it was, along with a fair few things about ‘Clark’ Savage Jr’s adventures, what the version in Superman was obviously based on (stolen from)... Superman debuted in 1938 and Doc made his debut in 1933. It’s a bit of an oversight in my opinion but, hey ho, can’t have everything, I guess.

Ultimately, though, I really enjoyed having a peruse through the various locations of the Atlas of Imagined Places - From Liliput to Gotham City and it was a real treat. I especially liked that the last map in the series shows the location of Pepperland, from the Yellow Submarine movie... not to mention the various seas glimpsed on that particular fictional adventure. It’s all good stuff.