Sunder: Day 42

Sense of place is important to me in novels, especially in science fiction novels where the settings are generally places we have never been: futuristic cities, space stations, starships, alien planets or the interstellar void.  Wherever it is, I want to feel the fiber of the place.  One of the best sci-fi novels I have ever read is also one of the best ever written: Dune.  I have read that novel so often it is dog-eared and the spine is curved.  The rest of the novels in the series are not much better off. 

Frank Herbert's masterpiece is an excellent example of sense of place.  I have stood with Mua'dib under the white glare of the relentless desert sun, suffered the dry wind as it sucked the moisture out of my pores, endured the grit and dust fine as talc that found its past the seals of my stillsuit and marveled silently at the wind-carved beauty of the dunes.  Frank Herbert, through careful research and persuasive writing, was able to give all his Dune novels a sense of place. 

Another novel with impeccably wrought detail is Perdito Street Station by China Mieveille.  When you read it, you can feel yourself on the banks of the River Tar or hiding in the Glasshouse, wary of the fearsome Cactacae or looking up in wonder and awe at The Ribs soaring up out of the ground and curving over you like the empty ribcage of a dinosaur.

I'm trying to achieve the same effect with Sunder and the rest of books in The Titan Artifice.  Part of how I'm preparing for that is through maps.  If I don't know where I am in the novel, how can I convince a reader? 

Most of Sunder takes place inside a massive space habitat, but it's largely empty at this point.  I've roughed in the synopsis and named a few odd places, but a lot more work needs to be done before it can have the "sense of wonder" I hope to achieve.  I spent most of the night drawing a new, expanded map of the interior of The Wheel, trying to get the dimensions right, working out the placement of major transit ways (The Wheel is 5 miles in diameter and 3 miles wide from edge to edge for a total internal area of about 45 square miles) that link residential, commercial and industrial districts.  I had names for those places on the other maps, but the districts were blank--no roads, no buildings, no landmarks to speak of.  Tonight I filled in some of those blank spaces so that when it comes time to write, I will be able to do so with a sense of place.

Tired now so it's off to bed.  More work tomorrow.