James Nicoll Reviews

Suppose you are a science fiction author and further suppose it suits the goals of your narrative to dramatically illustrate how radically the world has changed by dividing some currently continental scale nation into smaller units. Where should one draw the new borders?

I can think of several solutions, each of which I will demonstrate using the continental United States of America, on the grounds most people will have heard of the USA, if not necessarily in the present tense, and maps of CONUS are easy to find.

The obvious answer is along existing sub-national divisions. Pretty much every nation has existing smaller scale administrative units, either because it was assembled out of them or because some management tasks are more efficiently handled locally. It’s not hard to find a map of the US that details the states. All one has to do is make the borders a little darker, perhaps with a sharpie.

The cost of convenience is that visually, it’s not so different from the current arrangement. It’s boring.

Let’s come up with some more innovative maps.

Interstate compacts

For various reasons, American states found it useful to coordinate crisis management with each other in 2020. The particular nature of the issue is irrelevant. What’s interesting is that the compacts that emerged hint at what might arise if the Federal government were not around.

Unfortunately, this leaves vast swaths of territory outside recognized interstate compacts and visually, it’s not too different from the previous approach. At least it provides a hint about natural fracture lines.

Language

It’s not unheard of for borders to align with linguistic differences¹. Applying this to the US requires some ingenuity. A map tracking first language in each state isn’t going to look much different from the current US, as English is very dominant. A map of the most common second language isn’t much more interesting as that language is almost always Spanish². Most common third language is more promising or at least it produces a more intriguing map of post-America than ​“the US minus Alaska and Hawaii”. However, the linguistic characteristic I would use is regional slang terms for soft drinks, which produces this visually pleasing graphic.

Pornhub search terms

The staff at Montreal’s Pornhub produce intriguing statistical analyses of viewer habits, because when Canadians see naked people having sex, their reaction is ​“Hey, guys! Let’s create spreadsheets and informative maps!” Apparently. The results are educational, entertaining, and sometimes alarming. They are also fruitful source material for futuristic maps, which is probably not the oddest purpose for which Pornhub’s stats are used.

The maps are also incredibly not safe for work, unless you work at Pornhub. I am not even going to bother providing an example. If you do use Pornhub’s maps as inspiration, remember to either rename the regions or have a ready explanation as to why there is a Republic of Milf³.

Watersheds

The most interesting option that came to mind was natural features, specifically watersheds. Water is a vital resource, so it makes sense it would shape borders. Watershed maps are (or were, at the time of writing) easy to come by. Best of all, the result is entertainingly different from the current state of affairs.

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Those are five options that came to mind. Are there better alternatives, ones that might inspire even more interesting maps? Feel free to mention your favorites in comments below.

1: But only somewhat. For example, yeah, there’s an English/French division along the Ontario/Quebec border, but there are still Franco-Ontarians and Anglo-Quebeckers.

2: I have only myself to blame for focusing on CONUS, because both Hawai‘i and Alaska seem to have second languages that are not Spanish.

3: Which my surprisingly naïve spellcheck tried to correct to MilSF.