On Mapping the World

Clover-shaped map of the world

In Xenon: the world is made of a map that’s created by the World Player as the travelers leave their home behind. Technically, the map is a relationship map with broad categories. The Xumph prey on the Canwana. The Canwana raise the Xumph for ritual sacrifices. The Canwana trade Kogantaw wax with the Feihun, who return to them Choum that they steal from Yikl merchants on the Siaia Way. The Canwana are at war with the Treloudon and their kings Protu, Behun, and Goksh over the idol of Great Nadwhu, the primordial Xumph.

Now, what’s neat about that is that you wind up with a physical map of the world in the process. Just writing down a people on the map gives them not only their relationships to others, but also where they are in the world, how far you have to travel from a place to get to them.

Consider the map at the top of this post. It’s a Renaissance European map of the world. Note that the cartographer is under the impression that Europe is as big as Asia and Africa. He’s drawing it from his perspective. It’s not literal, and the guy knows that you couldn’t navigate by it, because the real world is much more complex than all that (never mind not knowing about three whole continents and only knowing the tiniest amount about one, which is shown as an amorphous mystery at the edge of the world-ocean), but it conveys what you need to know.

I’d like to see a lot of map making in Xenon: and will probably take a page from The Dragon Killer in that regard.

Ellie Arroway speaks

It’s no secret that I love the movie Contact.  Ellen Arroway, played by Jodi Foster, is one of my favorite scientist characters in fiction. She’s clever, moral, complex, and her motives are deeply human. I had always assumed that she was based on some real life character, but I didn’t know who. It turns out, she’s based on this year’s TED prize winner, Jill Tarter.

I think her fundamental thesis — that the Universe is far larger and weirder than we know, and seems probable that some of the weirdness in that vastness is living weirdness — is excellent. The search alone tells us a lot about ourselves, not to mention what the possible eventual discovery will tell us.

She makes a mistake though, and it’s one I hear often from my fellow intellectuals in positions of privilege: that if we could just set aside the things that make us distinct from each other, we’d be able to somehow work together to achieve enlightenment. But in setting aside those distinctions — those philosophical and procedural differences that make cultures distinct from each other — then we will have lost what makes us human. It is not our ability to agree on a single best mode of thought that makes us great. It is our ability to pull truth and beauty from distinct, often contradictory perspectives.

It is not the dissolution of distinctions that can make us enlightened. It is the recognition that distinctions are lines drawn on the surface of the Universe, not the Universe itself. Erasing the lines just deprives us of the map.

How skidding works

I’m happy to say that this is pretty much how skids work in Burning Rubber. Also, you see how, on a lot of these corners, the dude is laying down tread? That’s where he’s skidding. He’s still in control of the car, but he’s skidding. And you see how all of a sudden, the car snaps and the tire tracks stop and suddenly he’s accelerating? That’s where he’s lined up his car with his vector.