Drawing on a tradition of fantastical and speculative travel writing, Strange Cartographies takes us on a journey through imagined landscapes of the past and unsettling geographies that are emerging across the world today. Our travellers discover disappearing islands in the southern seas, ghost cities of the steppes, ships sailing through an Arctic free of ice, encountering vast hydroponic greenhouses and data storage vaults, the mythical city of Thina repurposed as a vast recycling centre, and they hear the stories of Willem Barentsz, Helena Blavatsky and Eric the Red.

These stories playfully explore discredited historical theories and spurious cartographic visions that have gained uncanny resonance in the era of climate change, all the while asking how we can find our place in a world that we have made strange once again.

Ben Smith is a writer whose work explores climate change and speculative futures. His debut novel Doggerland was a Guardian Book of the Year, featured on BBC Radio 4's Open Book, and won the ASLE-UKI Book Prize. He has run numerous projects bringing the arts and sciences together, working with organisations including Plymouth Marine Lab, UK Future Earth and the Met Office, and he was a contributing author on the first Global Tipping Points Report (GSI Exeter, 2023). He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Exeter and lives in Cornwall. 

Strange Cartographies is illustrated by artist and archaeologist Rose Ferraby. Rose writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 and her artwork has recently been exhibited in the British Museum, Wiltshire Museum and Peterborough Museum. Rose won the Michael Marks Award for Illustration for her work on Melanie Challenger’s The Tender Map and has worked with Susie Campbell on further Guillemot titles Tenter and The Sleeping Place.

ISBN 978-1-913749-79-8 / 104 pages / 190 × 130mm / made with Favini Sparto and Arena papers