“It’s another installment of Entropist, a sci-fi culture column by futurist design maven Geoff Manaugh, author of BLDG BLOG. The British branch of Penguin Books recently premiered a new website called - a bit lamely - We Tell Stories. The basic idea is that six authors will tell six stories over a period of six weeks. More interesting, however, is the fact that story #1, “The 21 Steps” by Charles Cumming, was told using Google Maps. So combine this same strategy with today’s urban sci-fi, add a few more cities - and you’ve got a way to map science fiction across the planet. Could there someday be a Google Maps of Sci-Fi?

In Charles Cumming’s story, inspired by John Buchan’s old novel The 39 Steps, we follow a man, watching from above, in an omniscient satellite view. Someone is tracking his movements through London, as well as his trips south and north across the country. At one point, for instance, our narrator wakes up on a beach, unsure of where he is or what the date might even be. A loose piece of newspaper came cartwheeling along the sand and wrapped itself around my legs. I picked it up and looked at the date. Two days had passed since I had arrived in Edinburgh. The newspaper was the Evening News. So I was still in Scotland. If the story is about a man being tracked and followed, then it is also told in a way that allows us to track and follow, clicking onward through maps of the man’s experience. But what are the possibilities for science fiction?” Continue reading Google Maps of Sci-Fi by Geoff Manaugh, io9.