Is the map in all editions though? I have the special edition with the glossary (neither as useful nor as spoilery as the AV Club peeps seem to think, except as a kinda pointer on how to start understanding Riddleyspeak), and Hoban's sample of early-Riddley in plain English (dreadful*), and the map - wasn't sure if it came as standard in all versions.
Anyway, I thought Hoban admitted somewhere that speculative places were because he had got the location slightly wrong of a few villages he had only whizzed through in the wee small hours. But I might be disremembering the results of a booze-fuelled late-night trawl through fansites.
*on language: a possibly obvious thought that anyway only just occurred to me is that a modern-language Riddley would've been not just terrible but impossible. You just can't have that - is "gnostic" the word I want? - mindset where there are hidden truths to be uncovered through visions and rites and rituals and Aiding the Quiries in a world where everyone appears to talk and think just like us. In the early versions Riddley spoke like an educated, articulate 20th-century Westerner, and we know how that goes; soon people will be making rational and rigorous inquiries into things, then they'll reinvent the scientific method, and sooner or later they'll have all the old civilised glories back again (possibly shortly before exploding themselves all over again, too). The finished book leaves it open what's going to happen - reinvent science and maths and world war? keep scratching along at not much above subsistence level? - and I don't see how that could have been done without the language jolting us out of our familiar notions of how human progress goes.
no subject
Anyway, I thought Hoban admitted somewhere that speculative places were because he had got the location slightly wrong of a few villages he had only whizzed through in the wee small hours. But I might be disremembering the results of a booze-fuelled late-night trawl through fansites.
*on language: a possibly obvious thought that anyway only just occurred to me is that a modern-language Riddley would've been not just terrible but impossible. You just can't have that - is "gnostic" the word I want? - mindset where there are hidden truths to be uncovered through visions and rites and rituals and Aiding the Quiries in a world where everyone appears to talk and think just like us. In the early versions Riddley spoke like an educated, articulate 20th-century Westerner, and we know how that goes; soon people will be making rational and rigorous inquiries into things, then they'll reinvent the scientific method, and sooner or later they'll have all the old civilised glories back again (possibly shortly before exploding themselves all over again, too). The finished book leaves it open what's going to happen - reinvent science and maths and world war? keep scratching along at not much above subsistence level? - and I don't see how that could have been done without the language jolting us out of our familiar notions of how human progress goes.