m. c. de marco

Via the Website at the End of the Universe: io9’s The Curious Art of Science Fiction Road Maps shows some of the Fictional Road Maps of Adrian Leskiw.

Via Daring Fireball: Election 2008 as seen in Mark Newman’s cartogram maps of the results. He also has a page about his cartogram software and related programs.

Once again, someone posted to the NaNoWriMo forums looking for mapping software, and I replied.

Wired has a short article on abstract planetary maps made by the US Geological Survey. I’m a sucker for a good map, but some commenters challenge their alleged beauty.

Galaxiki is a wiki for a fictional galaxy, in which you can buy your own solar system or edit unclaimed planets.

Via SFScope: The RAND Corporation has released its legendary report, Habitable Planets for Man by Stephen H. Dole in PDF format.

An attempt to make an estimate of the probabilities of finding planets habitable to man, where they might be found, and the number there may be in our own galaxy. The characteristics of a planet that can provide an acceptable environment for man are presented in detail. The stars nearest the earth, most likely to possess habitable planets, are itemized.

Libnoise is “a portable, open-source, coherent noise-generating library for C++,” with which you can generate random planets. Here’s a gorgeous example of what you can do using Terragen and Celestia for rendering the libnoise output.