The Forgotten Map

There was a time when the edges of the world were filled with monsters.

I bet if you follow that map it’s going to lead to adventure.

If you look at the old mappaemundi—those medieval maps drawn not for navigation but to illustrate the shape of the world—you'll find lions, manticores, dragons. Sea serpents curled like question marks along the margins. Winds personified. Angels steering the stars. The Garden of Eden rendered just as tangibly as Jerusalem.

Here there be monsters.

But in some of those ancient maps, tucked far from the comfort of familiar cities and trade routes, you'll also find something more disturbing: places labeled as the “Land of Gog and Magog.” Walled-off regions of the world where unspeakable things were said to reside. Places meant to be hidden.

The domain of the Antichrist.

What fascinates me is how reverently people once treated these sketches of unknown spaces. Hand drawn, hand labeled, there was a strong sense that the cartographer was genuinely afraid of what waited just beyond the edge of all that was known. A mystery can inspire the mind, and in the ancient world, inspiration often drifted into the dark.

Maps in the old world weren’t just charts—they’re a way to express a theory of everything. They presented a worldview. They were sacred manuscripts encoded with the collective fears, dreams, and mythologies of entire civilizations. The further out you went, the stranger things got.

Which makes me wonder… what did we lose when we lost the unknown?

When I was writing The Antarctic Forgery, I played with the idea of maps that lie—and maps that tell the truth, even when no one believes them. In that story, Dan Kotler and Roland Denzel chase down a forged map of Antarctica that turns out to be something else entirely—a gateway to a secret Nazi base hiding a weapon meant to end the world.

As part of the fun, I folded in some real-world cartographic mysteries. Most notably the Piri Reis map, which famously depicts Antarctica centuries before it was “officially” discovered—and without its modern ice cap. A land of verdant landscapes, rivers and trees and, more astounding, ports and towns. Life, abundant, in what is now the most desolate place on Earth.

The Piri Reis map is real—as in, it exists. You can see it today in the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. And to this day, no one can quite explain it, either to verify to or to refute it.

Just like no one can fully explain how early maps like the Hereford Mappa Mundi or the Ebstorf map blend the literal and the allegorical so freely. You’ll find biblical events sitting right alongside physical landmarks. Pilgrimage routes carved in ink next to warnings of cannibals and giants. Geography becomes theology. Cartography becomes a cautionary tale.

It’s easy to dismiss all this as superstition. The remnants of a pre-scientific world, and minds addled with malnutrition and the rigors of daily life without electricity or running water. But I think there’s something more going on.

Maps used to be invitations to wonder. And we’ve forgotten all about it.

Today, we carry satellite-guided navigation in our pockets. Type an address, follow the blue line, you have reached your destination on the left. No monsters. No lost cities. No warnings scratched in the margin. Just traffic patterns, turn-by-turn directions, and estimated arrival times.

I’m not saying I want to go back to the days of getting hopelessly lost in the woods. I do remember being able to navigate even the most complex city landscapes and back-country roads using nothing more modern than a thirty-year-old key map. I can’t, however, remember how I did it. I can only pray the skill comes back to me, if we have a technological apocalypse.

But something changes when we believe every inch of the Earth has already been seen, measured, and catalogued. When there are no more dragons to slay, no forbidden kingdoms to discover, no Terra Incognita to sketch in the blank parts of our mind and the margins of the page.

The thing is… maps still lie.

Google maps swears the only way to get to my house from the grocery store is to take a long, convoluted route that has me cut entirely across our neighborhood, just to circle back almost to my staring point and take the shorter road. Maybe that’s not a lie, but it ain’t right. And I’m pretty sure I passed a mermaid the other day.

Ancient maps told us what we believed to be true, not what we knew. In that way, they were far more honest than a GPS. They showed not just the world—but the limits of our understanding of it. And if you ask me, that’s the kind of map we could use more of these days.

So maybe the next time you pull up your phone to find the nearest coffee shop or gas station, take a second to imagine what might lie just beyond the screen—just off the map. A hidden ruin. A sealed gate. A remnant of some long-forgotten age.

And maybe, just maybe, that blank space is still waiting for someone brave enough to chart it.

A NOTE AT THE END

Recently I saw a thread on social media about typewriters. There’s a movement of sorts, at the moment, for people to re-embrace typewriters, and their digital equivalents, for “distraction-free writing.” I confess, I have a certain affection for this idea.

I don’t really need “distractions free” writing tools, though. I’m actually quite good at focusing and concentrating, when it’s writing time. So good, in fact, that my dog and my wife both have to remind me of my household duties. I am usually filled with mild resentment at having to stop my work and go do something else.

That isn’t distraction. That’s the point of life.

However... I do have a love for both typewriters and gadgets. Writing gadgets, in particular. And I often find myself fantasizing about taking one of my many typewriters (I believe I own six at this point), and using it to do my daily word count.

Several things stop me.

One, I’m not sure any of the ribbons in these things are any good. Most of these typewriters sixty or seventy years old at a minimum, and for all I know the ribbons are, too.

Second, despite having learned to type on a typewriter, and having written much of my earliest work on one, I’m not sure I could physically do it anymore. Not with any real accuracy or speed. Especially if it’s one of those old manual typewriters. My hands ache just thinking about it.

Which probably means it would be good for me.

But that just brings me to third: My writing workflow these days involves a whole lot of technology-dependent stuff. Autocorrect does come into play, but at the very least I have an app that shows me when I’ve misspelled something or made a grammar gaff or used the wrong word. I also depend on the web for research—and increasingly, that task is being handled by AI. I can easily get into the weeds when I’m researching a topic for one of my books, but these days I can just ask my digital virtual assistant to go look something up for me real quick, and I’m in business. I don’t even have to buy her coffee.

So what I’m saying is, I’m spoiled.

And as nostalgic as I find things like typewriters and maps and landline telephones, I simply don’t need those things anymore. Worse, going back to using them would cost me, in terms of workflow and productivity. I have entered an era where I can, finally, put all of my energy, effort, and concentration into the writing, and everything else is just art and aesthetics. Background noise and white balance.

I sort of miss all of that old world tech, sometimes. But I’m perfectly fine and happy with my GPS, AI, and smartphone.

Even if here there be monsters.

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Writing is my only source of income. So when you do things like buy one of my books, or become a paid subscriber, you’re helping me pay the light bill and put food on the table. So I just want to say “thank you” for that. I appreciate it on a level I can never fully express.

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Thank you again!

That is a rally old laptop.