Can anyone help with this? I'd like to know who the illustrator was for this map of Wonderland, which I believe appeared in an early issue of the Alice fanzine. TIA.

{EDITed for stupidity}

faro wrote:*coughs*. I'm saying nothing for now... Could you come back in a few days, please.

Hey, it may be miserably flimsy, but it's still a very rare map. Whatever the overall condition, you have to admit it has nice borogoves.

Catch any lobsters today?

Clearly I missed a good Alice in Wonderland joke while at the con this weekend?

grodog wrote:Clearly I missed a good Alice in Wonderland joke while at the con this weekend?

Ya, and you missed the pic of the original map posted.

Fantastic win!  I love stuff like this.

faro wrote:Yeah, except that you didn't mention that, but instead slinkily attached the reprinted monochrome version that was reprinted in the mass-publication books US side (apparently!). Good try, but that was never going to hold back any serious RPG-side Leiber fan from figuring out what was up.

Yes, for about 1/2 second I thought I was being slick. But at that point I was half-tempted to post it in the "Interesting non-TSR Items Currently..." thread, as I figured I didn't have a chance of winning it. By the time I realized I was being a dumbass and came back to delete my OP, you had responded .

A nice win, indeed: suffice to say $185 would have been /way/ too cheap IMHO and the final price was still pretty darned good given how widely that's been published in the past 49 years and the relevancy of the subject matter to a wide range of interests.

Thanks. Oh, I'm quite happy with the final price. My snipe (with 20 or so seconds left) was much higher than what it went for, and I would have happily paid it. Two other bids came in afterwards, IIRC. The map has been published in the Gregg Press editions (don't own these, but I tracked down a credit on eBay in two of the volumes), the SFBC omnibus edition Swords' Masters of the 2nd three "Swords" books, and as the front and rear pastedowns in the first three volumes of the White Wolf/Borealis F&GM books from the '90s.

(Thought I was doing well to try to give ya a shake within 3 minutes, so was somewhat dismayed that you'd done a "hit and run" on the post and didn't come back to read/edit for over an hour. Thanks, Mark, for not spoiling that!).

Yes, heartfelt thanks, Mark. If this had been better advertised (my own advert aside   ) and the seller had named the illustrator (who is fairly well known), this could have gone for a lot more.

aside: I'd personally say that it's barely less of a "gaming item" as Barker's original "Tekumel" works: even if it wasn't lifted /quite/ so directly into later gaming products, there are indirect influences (via RPG founders reading those books) and useful comparisons that can be drawn on how Nehwon was eventually presented over time in a gaming context.

Being the only pre-AD&D map of Nehwon that I'm aware of, this was undoubtedly the template for the (somewhat sketchy also) map of Nehwon by Diesel in the "City of Adventure" book and later TSR offerings (which I no longer have).

It's also interesting (at least to me) to note which place names are not present on this map, as it was drawn in '61 before about half of the F & GM wordcount was penned by Leiber (e.g., The Swords of Lankhmar, the stories comprising Swords and Ice Magic, some of the internally chronologically "earlier" stories such as "Ill Met in Lankhmar", etc.)--the absence of Rime Isle being the most obvious thing.

Oh yeah, I had totally forgotten about the board game. That's still way later than 1961 (1975?). Any others that you know of?

And does anyone know which issue of Amra this was published in, exactly? I know it was from 1961 as it's credited as being used by permission of George Scithers and Owlswick Press/Amra from that year (hence an early-ish issue from Vol. 2, there was only one issue in Vol. 1). I'm interested to know if there were any accompanying notes or commentary by Cawthorn or Leiber. I doubt it was just printed in a vacuum, though this is certainly possible.

faro wrote:
You'd do better throwing that opening a bid wider (board /and/ beyond) since I'd have to dig books out of boxes that I haven't had space to unpack for eight years or so, sorry. :/

Okey doke. You've completely lost me.

I hadn't realized that Leiber (presumably w/ input from H. O. Fischer) had drawn up anything as early as '37. Evidently I need to brush up on that aspect of the history of Lankhmar/Nehwon.