June / July '17 Lite Challenge: Inspired by Malacandra

[Mouse]

Clive Staples Lewis (C S Lewis) was a member of the Inklings - a group of writers that included Tolkien.

While Lewis is far more famous for his Chronicles of Narnia, he also wrote a science fiction trilogy most usually known as the Cosmic Trilogy. The trilogy never seemed to do very well (and it does get progressively more strange as you read), but I've read all of them, and the landscape of Malacandra as it was described in 'Out of the Silent Planet', the first in the trilogy, has made an indelible impression in my memory.

Unfortunately when I checked my library I discovered they had cleared out a lot of the older titles to make way for new ones, so I can't refer directly to the text any more for useful instructions. That is why this map is going to be merely inspired by Malacandra, rather than an accurate representation.

...

The basic form of Malacandra is similar to Mars, except that it is Mars as it was imaged back in the late 1930s by C S Lewis - a planet that was once as green and beautiful as Earth, but which has suffered the loss of half its atmosphere as a result of an interplanetary war between the respective God-like rulers of both these worlds.

As a result of this loss, Malacandra's life has retreated to the very bottom of the deepest ravines, while the surface is as cold, airless and dead as we know the real Mars to be.

No picture yet, but I decided not to bore you with a blank bit of paper while I try to work out how I'm going to draw it

EDIT: ok I lied about the picture - here is a piece of paper I made for the map

[Diamond]

This is a book that's been in my to-read stack for literally decades! I'm excited to see what you do here...

Also, here's a free electronic version you can read, Mouse:

http://fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20140326

[Mouse]

Thanks D

Now I can revise my intentions and try to map the layout properly according to the story

[Bogie]

Welcome back to the Challenge Sue!!

[Mouse]

Hey Bogie

This map won't go quite as fast as the last one. I have to read a book as I go! LOL!

[Mouse]

Ok. I'm starting the reading

EDIT: In addition to the free book you identified for me, D, I've found a set of free podcasts on iTunes (I'm totally lazy about reading). The soundtrack is so '1940's BBC English' in nature that it makes me chuckle - and I AM English.

If you are interested in hearing it you have to download and install iTunes (if you haven't already got it), and do a search for 'Out of the Silent Planet', then look under podcasts. Its very well disguised as a series of 8 podcasts by 'Scifi Friday', but the names of the podcasts will give them away.

[Mouse]

A bit of background, since reading/listening is taking a while. I did a search for existing/official maps of Lewis's Malacandra, and came up with nothing. But I did find a slide show on SlideShare (which I'd never heard of before) that gave perhaps the most important clue of all.

I had been thinking of using an early 20th century map of Mars to use as a sort of pattern to base the shape of my 'oasis' on - one of the ones that show canals, but it was this quote, and the conclusion to the slide show that made me realise Lewis was basing his imagination of Malacandra on common myth far more than on any map, and that the directions given in the actual text of the book really are the only thing I have to make sense of the spatial relationships between things on Malacandra:



Unfortunately, Lewis had a tendency never to say left or right, but only mention that A was to one side, and B to the other!

Well, that certainly leaves a LOT of room for interpretation and artistic licence! LOL!

EDIT: Oops - this is the source/credit...

[Mouse]

I'm having a bit of difficulty with the basics of the colouring scheme.

Lewis has pale bluer-than-blue water, pale pink ground plant vegetation, greenish-whitish rock/cliffs, purple trees with fronds that are each the size of a lifeboat (they sound a bit like giant kelp) down in the canals, and up on top he has dead forests of the purple trees that are bleached out in some way, so that they resemble huge heaps of pink foam...

Well. I'm still working on it

[Wired]

Well, doesn't sound like a challenge, not at all. j/k

That'll be interesting to see, Mouse, especially for someone like me who's usually terribad with color composition. Looking forward to what you come up with.

[Mouse]

No sooner suggested than attempted

I think I may have been a bit liberal with my interpretation of the word 'pink', but it just doesn't go with anything else unless its a very salmon pink (orange in other words)...



This is just a colour test btw - not the actual map.

EDIT: There we go! Now I have an actual picture on this thread at last!