Atlas of Imagined Places: from Lilliput to Gotham City

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From Stephen King's Salem's Lot to superhero Wakanda, from Lilliput of Gulliver's Travels to Springfield in The Simpsons, a wondrous atlas of imagined places around the world. Locations from film, tv, literature, myths, comics and video games are plotted in a series of beautiful vintage-looking maps. Atlas of Imagined Cities: Who Lives Where in TV, Books, Games and Movies. by Matt Brown, Rhys B. Davies and Mike Hall is out now from Batsford. And on the far side of Costa Rica, we discover Isla Nublar, and the nearby island cluster known as Las Cinco Muertes – the Five Deaths – well named indeed, for here are the lost worlds of Jurassic Park, where genetically re-created dinosaurs once again rule the Earth! The 14 cities covered are Berlin, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Paris, Rio, San Francisco, Sydney, Tokyo, Venice and Washington DC. The map was created by Matt Brown and Rhys B Davies. We'll list the names of anybody who suggests a fictional location that we decide to use.

I stumbled across this and I got so enthusiastic sending in ideas and suggestions of fictional places that he took me on as co-creator.

Typical bloody Londonist, ignoring the outer boroughs. They have fiction too, you know. Never heard of Peep Show?

The maps feature fictional buildings, towns, cities and countries plus mountains and rivers, oceans and seas. Ever wondered where the Bates Motel was based? Or Bedford Falls in It's a Wonderful Life? The authors have taken years to research the likely geography of thousands of popular culture locations that have become almost real to us. Sometimes these are easy to work out, but other times a bit of detective work is needed and the authors have been those detectives. By looking at the maps, you'll find that the revolution at Animal Farm happened next to Winnie the Pooh's home. Londonist editor-at-large Matt Brown, and co-author Rhys B Davies, have taken the concept to the entire planet in their Atlas of Imagined Places. The authors of this charming book have invested years into researching and identifying plausible geographic locations for thousands of towns, cities and countries as well as mountains and rivers, oceans and seas, featured in your favorite popular books, films, TV series, comics or even video games.

Yes, we have. The master file of this map goes all the way out to the M25. It doesn't look the prettiest at the moment, because much of it is blank space, but we'd love to fill that in. Please do send us your best suggestions for Bromley, Sutton, Bexley, Havering and the rest, and we'll get mapping. Who helped? Robert Louis Stevenson may not have invented pop culture’s vision of the Golden Age of Sail, but he certainly codified it. His classic adventure Treasure Island bequeathed to the world a romantic paradigm best encapsulated in Long John Silver, the ruthless sea cook complete with peg leg and parrot. Besides the city maps, artfully drawn by illustrator Mike Hall, the book also includes plenty of mini-essays exploring the fiction of the 14 cities. These explain how the authors sleuthed their locations. Often, it's obvious from the source material, but sometimes a bit of detective-work is needed to pinpoint a fictional home, business or event.

from Lilliput to Gotham City

The maps also include fictional infrastructure, such as the great sea wall round LA from Blade Runner 2049, and the anti-Kaiju wall of Sydney from Pacific Rim. You'll also find the routes of fictional car chases, speedboat pursuits in Venice, the pilgrimage path of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and much more. Fictional London mapped Inner London If such thoughts have kept you awake at night, then the Atlas of Imagined Places: From Lilliput to Gotham City (Batsford Books; 2021) is just the book for you. Written by Matt Brown, editor-at-large for Londonist, and co-authored by Rhys B. Davies, this gorgeous book builds upon Mr Brown’s idea to map approximately 1,000 fictional British places, earlier depicted in Londonist’s ‘Fake Britain’ map ( more here), which now is expanded in this volume to include more than 5,000 fictional locations around the world. A map on this resolution, though, can only scratch the surface of fictional London. For that, you can always browse our map of the Unreal City, which contains hundreds of fictional places in the capital. From the Ghostbusters HQ in New York to Nemo’s fish tank in Sydney, from the Phantom of the Opera’s Parisian lair to scenes from Grand Theft Auto in LA, this is an amazing atlas of imaginary locations in real-life cities around the world. Locations from film, TV, books, computer games and comics are ingeniously plotted on a series of beautiful vintage-looking maps.