If, like me, you often wonder how far out radio signals can be detected before they’re drowned out by cosmic background radiation — for example, you’re working on a science fiction story that depends on being able to detect such signals from other stars — then, like me, you’ll be interested in this Ask MetaFilter thread and the SETI range calculator. Short version: broadcast radio signals fade out pretty fast thanks to the inverse square law, so it’s pretty unlikely that space aliens will be along to demand explanations for our 1950s television programs.

Infrared astronomy is the bomb. Here’s an infrared look at the Helix Nebula, a planetary nebula some 700 light-years away — which is to say, not all that far as these things go — in the constellation Aquarius. This was taken by the VISTA telescope at the ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. Compare with how it looks in visible light: infrared brings out all kinds of interesting structure. Image credit: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit.

I have not forgotten my Maps in Science Fiction and Fantasy project, though it’s lain fallow for a bit while I juggled other things. Here are a few short stories about maps that I’ve encountered over the past few months.

“The Map” by Gene Wolfe (Endangered Species [New York: Tor, 1989], 20-36) belongs to the universe of The Book of the New Sun (one of my favourite works) and features one of its secondary characters. A former torturer named Eata now captains a boat along the river Gyoll. He is hired by a man with a map seeking treasure in the dead parts of the great city Nessus. The Book of the New Sun belongs to the dying Earth genre, and Wolfe’s Urth is extremely old and layered; as such the map may no longer be reliable.

Those spidery streets might — or might not — be the very streets that stretched before him. That wandering line of blue might be a stream or canal, or Gyoll itself. The map presented an accumulation of detail, and yet it was detail of a sort that did nothing to confirm or deny location. He committed as much of it to memory as he could, all the while wondering what feature or turning might prove of value, what name of street or structure might have survived where there was no one left to recall it, what thing of masonry or metal might yet retain its former shape, if any did. For an instant it seemed to him that it was not the treasure that was lost, but he himself. (30-31)

In the event he has to be rescued; Eata seems to be of the opinion that maps are rather good at getting their owners into trouble, and not much else. The map, in this story, is a symbol of obsolescence.

“The Mappist” by Barry Lopez (Light Action in the Caribbean [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000], 146-162) is neither science fiction nor fantasy, but has genre appeal. Matthew Cheney (more on whom momentarily) considers it an homage to Borges; I’ll let him describe the story: “it tells of a narrator’s obsession with a pseudonymous author of remarkable travel guides and maps, works of such detail and care that they capture the ‘essence’ of whatever city they describe. The narrator eventually tracks down the creator of these works, the reclusive Corlis Benefideo, and visits him, viewing new maps Benefideo has created, maps of remarkable depth and brilliance.”

When he placed the next map in front of me, the summer distribution of Swainson’s hawks, and then slid in next to it a map showing the overlapping summer distribution of its main prey species, the Richardson ground squirrel, the precision and revelation were too much for me.

I turned to face him. “I’ve never seen anything that even approaches this, this” — my gesture across the surface of the table included everything. “It’s not just the information, or the execution — I mean, the technique is flawless, the water-coloring, your choice of scale — but it’s like the books, there’s so much more.”

“That’s the idea, don’t you think, Mister Trevino?” (159)

Benefideo is capable of mapping impossible things, but he claims it’s just a matter of hard work. “The Mappist” is a quest for “an elegant order [that] has disappeared” (161), but the maps are sui generis, the mapmaker unique.

“A Map of the Everywhere” by the aforementioned Matthew Cheney (Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss, eds. [Easthampton MA: Small Beer Press, 2007], 207-221; Kindle version; audio version) is a beautifully written story that evinces Beckett in its absurdism. Its rather feckless protagonist, Alfred, drifts from job to job until a strange trio sends him to see a cartographer.

“You must dig a hole to China,” one of the creatures whispered.

“I was digging for faith or direction,” Alfred replied. “I have no interest in China. I couldn’t even find it on a map.”

“Then you have need of a cartographer,” another of the creatures said. “I have known many cartographers.”

“They are a strange breed, cartographers,” another of the creatures said.

“They live in hovels and garrets,” another of the creatures said. “They seldom shave.” (210)

The cartographer Alfred ends up seeing is the questionably gendered Günther Lopez (whose name has to be a tip towards the author of “The Mappist”). Visiting the cartographer does not yield tangible results in the cartographic sense, but in the end, at last, Alfred does leave with a sense of direction, if not literal directions — and that seems to be what the cartographer stands in place of.

Finally, I want to mention “The Dala Horse,” a delightful story by Michael Swanwick (Tor.com, July 13, 2011) that isn’t about maps, but it does feature a talking map, as well as a walking, talking knapsack, both of which accompany a fleeing Swedish girl who is trying to find her grandmother’s house.

Carefully, so as not to tear, the map unfolded. Contour lines squirmed across its surface as it located itself. Blue stream-lines ran downhill. Black roads and stitched red trails went where they would. “We’re here,” said the map, placing a pinprick light at its center. “Where would you like to go?”

“To Far-Mor,” Linnea said. “She’s in Godastor.”

“That’s a long way. Do you know how to read maps?”

“No.”

“Then take the road to the right. Whenever you come across another road, take me out and I’ll tell you which way to go.”

It sounds like a fairy tale, but it isn’t; this is a tale in which technology is indistinguishable from magic, where “we taught things how to talk and think”; Swanwick’s map is a satnav in fantasy clothing.

Update: Since this post is getting a bit of attention, I should mention that these are only the map stories I’ve encountered most recently. See The Map Room’s Fiction About Maps category for earlier examples.

This animated map from NASA (Flash-only, sorry) illustrates global temperatures since 1880: “reds indicate temperatures higher than the average during a baseline period of 1951-1980, while blues indicate lower temperatures than the baseline average.” News flash: the planet’s getting warmer. More information here.

Previously: Global Temperature Changes by Decade.

A new paper published in Biology Letters reports that boa constrictors respond to their victims’ heartbeats during constriction, and adjust their coils and apply bursts of pressure until the heartbeats stopped. Now I’ve kept two boas who ate frozen/thawed mice (which don’t have much of a pulse); they constricted their dead prey for a good long while, more so than the colubrids did. But what these researchers found, using dead rats with simulated heartbeats, is that their boas, both wild-caught and captive-bred, constricted for a longer period of time, and made more coil adjustments, than they did with ordinary, pulseless, dead rats. Via Scientific American.

Kansas-based herpetologist Joe Collins died of a heart attack over the weekend while on a field herping trip; he was 72. Collins was the author of a number of books on North American reptiles and amphibians; he was also the director of the Center for North American Herpetology, whose frequent changes to snake taxonomy, it must be said, have been a source of irritation. More: Reptile Channel; photo gallery (Wichita Eagle). Via @REPTILESMag.

Today Jennifer asked at the town hall and discovered why the sidewalks along Route 148 haven’t been plowed: the town’s plow would tear up the grass along the edges. When the sidewalks were built, the landscaping was done so that the turf was above the pavement, rather than level with it (the dirt was level with the sidewalk, and then they laid the turves on top of that). This wouldn’t be a problem if the plow’s blade wasn’t four inches wider than the sidewalk. Apparently they didn’t check with the town before they built them. The town is trying to get a narrower blade to deal with this. Yes, you may shake your head.

I’d been given to understand that antique pianos weren’t worth very much, either monetarily or musically. That belief was reinforced by encounters with old pianos in poor condition. But this post argues the opposite: that the best pianos ever made were built a century ago.

The finest pianos in the world were built about a hundred years ago. Due to evolution in engineering, exhaustion of raw materials, and flagging business standards, we will never see their like again. Some people may build very good pianos; new forms of the instrument may exceed (in narrow ways) the magnificent machines built a few decades either side of the year 1900. But, from a musical perspective, there will never be a “better” piano than the typical concert grand of a century ago.

Now I suspect there are a lot of ways to qualify this argument. The author is talking about the best acoustic pianos; it was quite possible to build a mediocre piano a century ago. That piano mouldering in your grandmother’s parlour isn’t necessarily what the author has in mind (for one thing, it may not be as old as you think). And old pianos will almost certainly need restoration to fulfil their potential.

It’s also important to remember that pianos a century ago were considerably less affordable than they are today. As I discovered in my research, piano prices ranged from several hundred to as much as two thousand dollars; in the area I studied, the average annual salary in 1901 was about $840. Do the math. Mass-produced pianos of the second half of the twentieth century were cheaper, even if they were, you know, cheaper.

Via Kottke.

This stunning view of Messier 16, the Eagle Nebula, is a composite image that combines far-infrared wavelengths captured by the Herschel Space Observatory and X-rays from the XMM-Newton space observatory. Obviously this is a false-colour image: these wavelengths are invisible to the human eye. For a visible-light view of the nebula, see this image from the ESO’s La Silla observatory — though it’s just a grey smudge if you look at it through a small telescope. The Eagle Nebula was also the location of the famous Hubble “Pillars of Creation” photo (also a false-colour image showing chemical emissions), and you can sort of see it in the above image as well. Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Hill, Motte, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium (infrared); ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC/XMM-Newton-SOC/Boulanger (X-ray).

Last Saturday Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, had an experience very similar to ours: a raptor taking down a bird right outside his house. Also similar: some confusion, and considerable discussion, as to what species the raptor in question is (in his case, red-tailed vs. Cooper’s hawk).

It’s been three weeks since our own raptor experience and we’re still not entirely sure what bird it was: neither peregrine falcons nor merlins are really supposed to be here, especially at this time of year. On balance we still think it’s a peregrine, due to the size of the bird and the fact that merlins are supposed to be migratory, but we’re a long way from metaphysical certitude on this issue.