This past weekend I came across a reference to a short story titled “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu, in the anthology Unnatural Creatures edited by Neil Gaiman. “Naturally” this was something I had to check out and I am so glad I did. It’s a fabulous short story that manages to evoke fantastical imagery and Steinbeck-style powerful, omniscient dialog into a 10 to 20 minute read with themes ranging from politics to war strategy to environmental ethics, and of course, to the power of mapping.
The story spans multiple generations of bees and wasps. The wasps are academically more advanced than the bees, with whom they need to share resources, but also more aggressive. Their academic prowess is most notable in the cartographic arena, enabling them to pick up and move under adverse conditions due to their detailed mapping abilities, while the bees are more limited (but, crucially, not completely without the ability to learn and change).
I’m not going to write any more about the story, as it is short enough for you to pick it up and read it yourself. However, I can say that I am more than pleased to see a reference to “beautiful cartography” in the story. And the great thing is that the phrase “beautiful cartography” is used in its fullest, least trite, sense: beautiful means not only aesthetic, but also elucidatory and abundantly detailed. These are indeed the qualities that I’m always pushing us all to strive for in our maps.
#1 by Barend Köbben on May 29, 2013 - 1:12 am
If you like this, you’ll love Neil Gaiman’s “The Mapmaker” – a very short story included in the introduction of his collection “Fragile Things”. It tells of an Emporer who commissions a map of his empire at large scale. Then is not satisfied at the detail level and wants yet a greater scale, and so on until the whole empire is busy creating a 1:1 scale map of itself (and meanwhile decays into oblivion)…
#2 by Gretchen on May 29, 2013 - 9:37 am
@Barend: Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll definitely read it!
#3 by andrew zolnai on May 29, 2013 - 12:03 pm
Hi GP, Neil Gaiman is my favorite author after William Gibson and Neal Stephenson (who presaged Google Earth, must look up which novel)! Thx 4 urging me to read his short stories… Most SF have cartography built in for time space travel, we have a way to go until maps disappear into the fabric of our universe.
#4 by Marc Graham on May 29, 2013 - 2:54 pm
Another nice map related short is Barry Lopez’ “The Mappist” You can find it in audio form here: http://castroller.com/podcasts/PriSelectedShorts/2354218
#5 by Gretchen on May 29, 2013 - 5:23 pm
@Marc and @AZ Thanks for your input and suggestions!
#6 by John Duncan on June 3, 2013 - 5:29 am
It’s not mapping related, but Clarkesworld has another E. Lily Yu short story in their current issue/podcast. http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/audio_06_13/