Listing to Port

1012 Maps
 -1012.1 Maps of real places
    –1012.11 Those that are healthily populated with contour lines
       —1012.111 Those so thick with unclimbable contours they function more as wanderlust porn
    –1012.12 Those that show cities
       —1012.121 Those that show things under cities
          —-1012.1211 Those that show the awful things under cities that should not be, in all their eldritch batrachian glory
          —-1012.1212 Those of subway systems
       —1012.122 Those with trap streets
       —1012.123 Maps of one city which can be used perfectly adequately to naviagte a different city, the result being that the navigator arrives at a tiny, mysterious theatre populated by mice instead of the central station
    –1012.13 Maps used by long-lost explorers
       —1012.131 Maps which were directly responsible for the explorers being long-lost
       —1012.132 Great crinkly maps used as bedsheets by the snoring, farting ghosts of long-lost explorers
    –1012.14 Those that have been used to stop a bullet, and consequently have a singed hole on each fold
    –1012.15 Those made of twigs and leaves, dissolving into chaos at the next rain
    –1012.16 Those written on skin
 -1012.2 Maps of imaginary places
    –1012.21 Containing the post-Tolkien regulated quotas of friendly small towns, cities at war, evil empires, great forests, blasted wastelands and so forth  
    –1012.22 Additionally being surrounded by conveniently impenetrable mountains and the shores of vast oceans, in a rectangular shape of roughly the same dimensions as a paperback book
    –1012.23 A mysteriously blank, safe no-mans-land area additionally existing perfectly half-way across the kingdom in around the place that the page break through the centre of the map falls; this being a place that the troubled inhabitants can gather for a bit of pipe weed untroubled by blasted goblins
    –1012.24 Those having an inn at a crossroads where one may purchase stew and get into a fight
    –1012.25 Maps of imaginary places without stories to accompany them, other than those stories that arise from looking at the map
       —1012.251 Those which do have stories, but are better off without them
 -1012.3 Maps of items, people or concepts
    –1012.31 Maps on items, people or concepts
 -1012.4 Maps of mysteries and unknown things
    –1012.41 Treasure maps
       —1012.411 Having the necessary quota of palm trees, sharks and crosses
    –1012.42 Those that form part of great games
    –1012.43 Those that lead to the buried heart of some great deathless rogue of the fairy kingdom

1. Doris Fnorling-Burteley, 1811 - 1920, is mainly known as the first person to explore Woking. Admittedly many people were there living there first, but this did not stop Doris, whose single-minded devotion to surveying the town resulted in a gorgeous compilation of charts, anthropological studies and illustrative plates known to scholars as the Woking Chronicles. A small plaque near Woking Crematorium celebrates her life and works.
2. Sir Audsley Stephenson, 1820 - 2980 (non-consecutive). Sir Audsley is a curious figure, thought to have been inducted into the secrets of time travel by an inter-temporal jewel thief who he caught and seduced in the act of trying to steal his ancestral opals. Although a keen reader of traveller’s tales, Sir Audsley was an almost obsessive refuser of spatial travel. Some have speculated that he experienced motion sickness of unusual severity. Instead, Air Audsley explored his West London mansion and grounds through time, initial concentrating on a single temporal dimension but subsequently making excursions in several others. Unfortunately, nearly all of his works are classified documents and many are considered too pornographic for general consumption. After his death, a selection of monographs were declassified under the strict understanding that they must not be transported back in time. A small detatchment of the neo-Venusian time police in 3011 was dedicated to shadowing Sir Audsley and his works and eradicating the many paradoxes his careless time travel created.
3. Jane Cook, 1831 - 1871. Mrs. Cook was an otherwise unremarkable Victorian housewife who dedicated her life to exploring maps; that is to say, many hours of her time were spent with a magnifying glass, paper and pencil, obsessively documenting the minute ridges, furrows and flaws across her well-worn map of central York to create a new map at double-scale. Subsequently, she mapped her double-scale map and the resulting quadruple-scale map, returning to this exercise another five times before being crushed by a mound of stray paper at age 40.
4. John ‘Cartophage’ Russell-Johnson, 1837-1920. If his tales are to be believed, John Russell-Johnson single-handedly accomplished many of the greatest feats of exploration of the Victorian era, including navigating the Northwest passage, reaching the North Pole, and the discovery of a lost city in the Amazon rainforest.  Sadly, however, his persistent habit of eating his maps, documents and usually shoes when faced with adversity on the return journey means that no documentation or proof of his exploits is available.