The Island of Fiction

The Island of Fiction is an interactive map of a fictional island. On this Island of Fiction there are five states, 'Crime', 'Horror', 'Science-Fiction', 'Romance' and 'Fantasy'. In each of these five states are a number of cities, each of which is named for a best-selling author, who has written within that genre.

The idea for the Island of Fiction came from an Alan Levine article on using fantasy maps, generated by Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator, as the base map layer in a Leaflet.js interactive map. Essentially Alan's article explains how you can use the Fantasy Map Generator to create a fictional blank map which you can then use as the basis of an interactive concept map.

Using the Leaflet mapping library you can add markers and place-name labels to your fantasy map to create a map of any concept that you desire. Using the options in the Fantasy Map Generator I created a map with five states. In Leaflet I used the tool-tip tool to add place-name labels to these five states, naming each one for a fictional genre. I then used smaller place-name labels to name cities within each of these states, for famous authors who have published works of fiction within each genre.

My Island of Fiction was created in a couple of hours for the #30DayMapChallenge. With a little more work I think this could be a very interesting map. For example, I could add more authors to the map - so that as you zoom-in on a genre the names of more writers appear on the map. I could also make each author's name interactive - so that if you clicked on an author's name you could view a photo, biography and a list of their major works.

This concept can of course be used in many different contexts. I am sure there are thousands of different concept maps which could be created using Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator in conjunction with an interactive mapping library.