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Here at the End of All Things (2017)

On losing oneself in the geography of fantasy worlds, from Middle Earth to Westeros.

What arrived in these boxes from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, was someone’s dream of our world, and we used it to paper over the tasteful concessions to modernity my friend’s parents had introduced, thumb-tacking the posters into centuries-old rafters. While fantasy settings often mix in some (heavily exoticized) Arab cultures, or bring in East Asian elements, notably few of them include pre-Columbian civilizations (one exception is Aliette de Bodard’s recent novels). When AD&D attempted a pre-Columbian setting, the author suggested it answered “(fantastically of course) what might have happened if the native cultures had not been so totally conquered and overwhelmed by the invaders.” Many fantasy continents are environmentally devastated, but the forces responsible are divine, cosmic, and frequently the bad guys.

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