I wonder if some kind people who have time and can lay hands on certain books would scan in some maps from the various series: these are a reasonable thing to have as a feature on Wave, so people have access to the maps, since Kindle doesn’t render graphics. If you’d scan at 300 dpi, and size it for full page display, so the words are legible? I think I’m right. But whatever would look good…
An idea…maps…
by CJ | Nov 14, 2011 | Journal | 33 comments
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Which ones are you after?
I have a scanner, fairly complete collection and am happy to help if I can 🙂
I note that the progress bar for the next Foreigner book just crossed the 50% line. Congratulations! From the year you’ve had, this is a hard-won milestone. May the next 49% go much more quickly.
Thank you! That was a struggle, but we’re moving now!
Same as Jonathan – I have an OpticBook which does a nice job right into the gutter, I’m retired, and the library is just a couple of blocks away… The Judith Merril Collection is more complete, and a little farther, but I probably can’t set up my scanner in their reading room 🙂
Let us know what you want…
Hm. I’m behind you on he learning curve, but it would appear that Kindles will display images as long as you get the formatting right (certain size, 4 colours).
I’ve also discovered that Apple’s ‘Pages’ writes the cleanest epub ever. After testing a lot of conversion tools, I swooned for days – the only thing that’s left is to insert some of the tags, and the file is good to go!
I think ideal would be any maps, diagrams, the sort of graphic front matter that some readers won’t handle. I think on the Kindle, it may depend on several things—one, that the preparer just didn’t put the maps in; two, that they may not be in a compatible format; and three, that the device doesn’t read.
But when I put maps in a book, I intend more than decoration. I know there are maps in the Gate books, in the Rider books, even in the Chanur books, and in Fortress, and in the Foreigner books, and diagrams in Downbelow Station, etc.
Tell you what: if you want to do a particular map, volunteer for it, and I’ll depend on you for that map-set, with “scanned by…” We’ll lump them by world and universe, and we can just have a new section of the blog that is all maps.
Deal.
I’ve got Fortress of Owls (which has the map of Ylesuin [all the fortress ones seem to share that] and a map of The Zeide),
Excile’s Gate (I right now can’t find my omnibus of the first three – ARGH)
the Chanur series (they all seem to have the same Map of Compact Space)
Cyteen (the double-hemisphere map)
(I mean, I have more than those, but they’re the map-containing books I could find right now.)
I’ve also got Cloud’s Rider, but that map – with its incredibly dense lines – won’t scan very well. I would suggest redrawing it to show only the boundaries, placenames, and maybe indicate elevations differently. I’d be willing to give it a whirl (trust me. I’m a cartographer).
What is a good general format to scan to? JPG? PNG? I gotta scanner and I’ve got every book of yours I can lay hands on. Kindle can handle PDF, I know.
Jpg is good. I’m going to post them on this site. Green Knight, I could’ve used a cartographer when I did that sucker. 😉 Go for it!
My omnibus edition of the Morgaine Trilogy hath not map! AARRGGHH!
Oh my. Many moons ago, I’d scanned, straightened, and converted formats for the Map of Compact Space that appeared in the Pride of Chanur. Hang on, I’ll just need to put that on a web page so you can have links and filenames without overflowing your inbox. The cleaned up scan is not absolutely perfect, but I did a fair bit with it.
Also, I know a couple of fans have had ideas of fan-created maps to further enjoy at least the Foreigner universe. There is at least one thread at Shejidan’s forum, if not more.
If my skills with Illustrator were anything like as good as they were with Macromedia Freehand, I could help out (slowly) with recreating graphics from scratch or some scan-and-trace. Please keep that in mind for a later date.
My keyboard is currently suffering from a case of “incorrigibly encourageable cat wants to sleep on my hand and keyboard in order to get across just how unbearably in need of attention he is.” (Never mind that they are both shameless and shamelessly spoiled.)
It should only take a few minutes to get what I already have onto a web page by itself and linked into my site for your convenience in obtaining them. ….Which, of course, is rather silly, since they’re yours (and David’s and possibly Michael Whelan’s) by copyright in the first place….
Shall I email them to the same email address that you emailed me using?
Here you go:
http://grundlepod.blogspot.com/p/c-js-maps.html
I’m also going to attach the jpg files them to a couple of emails and send them to you.
CJ, please see: Map of Compact Space for large and small scans of the map from The Pride of Chanur paperback.
I’m taking a note of this, but I’ll go ahead with the others unless someone else already has the files.
(Also, I am *still* using Freehand. I use Freehand under Snow Leopard where it is decidedly not working as intended – you can’t create a new document, so I have to use an old one and save as – but it’s a small price to pay for having Freehand. I can’t work out why I’m so much more efficient with it than with Illustrator – I have both – but there’s a marked increase in productivity with Freehand.)
Nice job, WOL and BSC!
I know a member—I recall the avatar, and I think it’s Ragiatheart—did a really nice graphic of the Cyteen maps, and if I can get that, that would be nice: anyone who wants to improve on these maps, most of which I did, or for which my information can be blamed by the artist that prepped them for print, I will be very happy to post those as well: more than one map of various places is not a bad sort of thing at all.
I found the Map Room but where are the maps or links to them? Am I missing something? The pain meds are still interfering with simple everyday activity…
No. I’m too stupid to load a picture. 😉 I’ll get Jane to help me.
I have spend a LOT of time studying the map of Compact Space. A new book set there would be WONDERFUL !!
I have the Company Wars boardgame which, if I recall correctly, has some maps of Compact Space etc. I’ll take a look when I get home and see if there’s anything there that’s not in the books.
If I could get my scanner to work, and it won’t work with Windows 7, I’d try the Fortress series of maps. I can never find places in the maps in the books, especially if I’m trying to puzzle it out from the text in the book. I get a bit dizzy trying to figure out where Cefwyn is in relation to Tristen and where everyone else is at. I think some smaller maps with detail would be great.
Is Ilefinian northeast of Amafel? Where is Ynefel in relation to say, Emwy?
Would it be more successful to copy or trace the maps onto fresh white paper, with darker ink. When you scan, you lose resolution. So scanning from paperback pages.. resolution will probably suffer.
for ebooks- would be good to make those maps interactive.. mouse-overs, pop-ups etc and perhaps interactive timelines.