Mapping Fiction's Greatest Journeys

Christopher Nolan's epic film adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey opens soon, bringing to the big screen one of fiction's greatest journeys. From Odysseus' ten-year voyage home after the Trojan War to the road trips, quests and adventures of modern novels and films, the journey has long been one of storytelling's most enduring narrative devices.

Reading Maps celebrates these fictional journeys by plotting the real-world routes taken in more than 40 famous books and films. The project maps the journeys in a wide range of classic novels & moves - and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. 

Each fictional route has been painstakingly compiled from the original source material, with every journey broken down into its individual land, sea and air legs. Sea voyages are particularly impressive. The map uses A* pathfinding across a land/ocean grid. This ensures it generates realistic coastal routes rather than simply drawing straight lines across continents. 

The concept of mapping the locations in novels and movies has been around since Google first released the Google Maps API. Over the years I've seen countless maps similar in concept to Reading Maps. Where Reading Maps could gain traction is through allowing user submissions. In a ;Reddit thread about the project, the developer suggests they are working on a simple data format that would allow users to submit their own mapped journeys. If that happens, Reading Maps could grow into a fascinating crowd-sourced atlas of fictional travel.