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65dBnoise

Anyone reading Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars Trilogy" or any part of it quickly realizes that while the novels are full of technical details, there are very few maps and those that exist are very coarse.

Here are some maps I made while reading the books several years ago, showing cities, places and plot info. The background is a USGS Topographical Map from Wikipedia: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia

Corrections and new locations will be posted to this thread.

I've localized with certainty the landing site and base built by the First Hundred on Mars in September 2027, called Underhill. That's of course in Kim Stanley Robinson's SciFi Mars Trilogy, [Red | Green | Blue] Mars.

The key for this is the phrase:
"One day they came back excited, having reached Ganges Catena, a series of sinkholes in the plain a hundred kilometers to the southeast", around page 97 in Red Mars.

And here are the maps 🤓 :

Here is a real image processed by @andrealuck with some of the cities from the Mars Trilogy novels superimposed.

Andrea's original: mastodon.social/@andrealuck@fo

Localization of the Transverse Highway, crossing Valles Marineris, from 's ; the annotations are from the description of John Boone's drive from Argyre through Melas Chasma to Underhill and then Echus Overlook.

The fourth image shows some traces of the fallen Space Elevator carbon fiber cable, as described in reports received during that sol, near the end of the novel.

#SciFi#KSR#Mars

Localization of the first trip to the North Pole in 's , with a stop at Chasma Boreale, where an Ice Miner was dropped by air at coordinates 41 W, 83 N to extract water for use in Underhill.

The first map is a polar projection showing the trip from Underhill to the North Pole.

The second map is a detail of the approach to the pole, drawn on an image processed by @andrealuck , from here: mastodon.social/@andrealuck@fo

@65dBnoise Do you have a simple list of coordinates for each location? I can put them on an interactive map.

@slowe
Hm, no, though they can be extracted from the maps. I made those maps several years ago while reading the books, but didn't have in mind to make them public. I've started rereading the stories, this time concentrating a lot more on geography and hopefully better organized for the task. It'll take some time.

@65dBnoise Well don't worry about it. I've done my best at transcribing them.

@65dBnoise Ohhh, yes! It would have been SO much more interesting had there been maps in those books!

@Judeet88
I faintly remember watching a video or listening to a podcast where sounded annoyed by the question, why there are no maps in his trilogy; it was intentional, IIRC. But of course we can disagree 😃

@65dBnoise Well I'm biased because I love a good map, but saying that they wouldn't have come out so well on my Kindle and I doubt I'd have gone and bought the books in a bookshop.

@65dBnoise
Cool. KSR should have included maps in the trilogy! 🙂

Well, *all* books really should include maps! 😦

I forget if there was a reason they named it "Underhill"...

@tom30519
I freshened my memory with this exercise: Nadia built an underground habitat with pools and saunas and everything, so they would be protected and feel right at home 😀 So, even if the name appears out of the blue without any explanation, Underhill sounds quite appropriate, I think.

@tom30519 @65dBnoise He DID include maps. They were bare-bones editions, but the maps were there.

@DEWLine @65dBnoise
Hm. No maps in the Kindle editions that I have, alas.

@tom30519 @65dBnoise Interesting in a disturbing way, that news about the Kindle editions.

@tom30519 @DEWLine @65dBnoise This is a screenshot of the Apple Books version of “The Complete Mars Trilogy”.

@65dBnoise Maybe time for a re-read?

It's been a few years.

@steinarb
Maybe. But this time I will concentrate on places, distances and times, not just plot 😀

@65dBnoise I wish had these when reading the series (close to a decade ago now). Thanks for doing this for future readers!

@65dBnoise @slowe could you adapt your new tiled map for this?

@65dBnoise That’s great, thanks!

I re-read the Mars trilogy every couple of years, and every time they affect me differently. Currently I’m near the end of Blue Mars as an audiobook, but somehow that doesn’t convey the same vivid sense of place. I’d been thinking that next time I should look at some recent maps.

@65dBnoise oh I found also a good one of Hellas Planitia from Mars Express HRSC! Coming soon

@65dBnoise Love this! Wish I had it when I read the books (when they originally came out)! Still will enjoy them now.

@joewynne
I'm glad you and others enjoy them. Will try to revise them, in time.

@65dBnoise do these exist as one big image?

Also can you recommend a good recent map for understanding mars with lots of place names and landing sites and so on marked? I'm having trouble finding such a thing.

@xenogon
Look up Mars in Wikipedia and USGS. There's many maps showing all kinds of data there. That's where I got those maps in the first place. In one piece 🙂

@65dBnoise
I want to re-read the trilogy with the aid of your maps - someday! I have a stack of waiting books, though. Too many books, too little time! 📖 📖 👓

@tom30519
Too much focus on technical details may reveal, um ... issues in the "Sci" part of SciFi novels 😎
But I won't go into such things.
My maps are constantly updated because there are numerous cross references and localizing each place is like triangulating for Perseverance using Jezero's rim 😀

@65dBnoise
IMO, as long as the technical details are at least plausible if not accurate, then literary license applies and the reader should be willing to overlook them. 🙂

@tom30519
deserves additional respect because he used the best satellite imagery he could find to write his novels, and the IAU nomenclature for names, which is what makes them be so close to reality.

But the maps in the trilogy books are like sketches on napkins from memory. Maybe it was a retired old Sax Russel who sketched them for his (?) grand grand grand children?

@65dBnoise @andrealuck
Somehow, while reading the book, I thought that the Ice Miner was not that far north, but obviously it was, at 83º!

@tom30519 @andrealuck
That's the good thing with maps, isn't it? The other good thing is that KSR was writing with a map open in front of him and the Viking images close by. Haven't heard him say it, but there is no other way he could be so accurate in his descriptions.

@burritojustice @andrealuck
Cool, thanks! I'm documenting and cross referencing the locations from the books, so we'll se how your GeoJSON cities compare with the rest. I'm also using IAU and USGS nomenclature and coordinates for names and features.

@65dBnoise @andrealuck cool! there are a couple of CSVs at the top level too but if I remember correctly I generated all the geojson from those, with some editing afterwards

@burritojustice @andrealuck
Yes, I see them. Good descriptions for cross referencing.

@65dBnoise
Thank you for the book tip. Books are ordered. 📚 😃

@BettinaKoza
Great, you'll love them! If when you'll be reading them come across some feature/city etc that has a good description and is not in the maps, please drop a comment.