So I sit here with Scrivener open, contemplating writing (contemplating writing is always so much easier than actually writing) and my mind falls to my world of Shade and maps. Should I map my world? Then I remember that I had contemplated this three years ago and even written some posts in which I used Bryce and Photoshop to create a maps of the chasm city of Shade.

Wow!

So much has changed in that city and in my mind.

Back then I did not know how to link posts together as series, so I have now done that and created a series called Mapping Shade that I shall add to from time to time. This post will be one such addition.

OK – brain dump time.

When I first envisaged Shade it was just as any other planet, albeit a ghost planet with a surface comprised mostly of ruins and wrecked star ships. The chasm – then and now – was the only place where humans might live safely. So in that respect not much changed.

However since then Shade changed. I increasingly saw it as a constructed world – an artificial sphere in space. So as I found myself today reading a novel with maps, I thought “Should I go back to mapping Shade?”

My mind then did what it normally does – send me off on a wild goose chase looking at what other people think on the matter. Blah!

Once those hours had been wasted and my mind could not escape actual thought, I began drawing up this strange map made up of geometric shapes. Why? Well if it is artificial then obviously it is all straight lines etc. Blah! (Yes, my second blah). How stupid am I? (Don’t you dare answer that)

Mathematicians, scientists and hobbyists have been playing with fractal landscapes for a couple of decades now, so obviously any world sculptor in the far future will too.

My mind leaps to the works of Douglas Adams:

Slartibartfast: You know the fjords in Norway? I got a prize for creating those, you know.

So there I go. I am once more unburdened and able to create fractal maps for Shade.

As an aside, I will get around to showing you soon some of my ideas for my current graphics project.

Thanks for reading.

Greg