Jonathan Crowe blogs about maps at The Map Room, reviews books, and writes science fiction and fantasy. He’s been published by AE, Calafia, Mermaids Monthly, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the Ottawa Citizen, Strange Horizons and Tor.com (now Reactor). Past projects include last-place Olympics blog DFL, sf fanzine Ecdysis and
This website archives more than a quarter-century of Jonathan’s online writing, including a selection of blog essays and book reviews, and serves as a portal to his publications, guides and other projects across the web.
To get regular updates on Jonathan’s writing and other activities, subscribe to his newsletter, or follow him on social media.
If you like what Jonathan does and want him to spend more time doing it, consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
2024 in Photos
Recent Publications
- Maps in Science Fiction
The New York Review of Science Fiction 356 (Feb 2022) - Mermaid Care
Mermaids Monthly 12 (Dec 2021) - Celebrating Christopher Tolkien’s Cartographic Legacy
Tor.com (now Reactor), 22 Jan 2020 - Where Do Fantasy Maps Come From?
Tor.com (now Reactor), 23 Sep 2019 - An Exercise in Telling: Sylvain Neuvel’s Themis Files
AE, 10 Jul 2019
Recently Reviewed
Some Essays
- Foreign Affairs (2019)
- When Federal Politicians Talk About Provincial Matters, and Vice ... (2019)
- Status Quo Ante (2019)
- Canada’s Emergency Alerts Are Broken by Design (2019)
- The Ones Who Walk Away from America (2019)
- The Enthusiast’s Blind Spot (2019)
- Mastodon Is the Dreamwidth of Twitter (2018)
- Strategic Voting Is Bullshit (2018)
- Some Half-Formed Thoughts on Short Fiction Reviews (2018)
- T. Rex Machina (2017)
- The Rebel Alliance Has Terrible OpSec (2017)
- More essays
About This Website, and What Came Before It
Jonathan has had a website of some kind since 1996, and at this URL since 2011. This iteration is a return to basics: it abandons blogging in favour of fast-loading, cruft-free static HTML pages, with minimal JavaScript and no embedded external media or resources. Some old blog posts have been carried over to this new version (mostly under Essays and Reviews); most other posts are now so out of date that their public preservation value is questionable.