Puneet Varma (Editor)

Land Beyond the Map

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Cover artist
  
Jerome Podwil

Publication date
  
1965

Pages
  
136 pp

Author
  
Kenneth Bulmer

Country
  
United States of America

3.5/5
Goodreads

Language
  
English

Media type
  
Print (Paperback)

Originally published
  
1965

Publisher
  
Ace Books

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Genres
  
Novel, Science Fiction, Speculative fiction

Similar
  
Kenneth Bulmer books, Keys to the Dimensions books, Science Fiction books

Land Beyond the Map is a short science fiction novel written by Kenneth Bulmer. It originally appeared in the magazine Science Fantasy in 1961 under the title "The Map Country". It was subsequently enlarged and published by Ace Books in 1965. It was published in an Ace Double, which also contained another short novel, Fugitive of the Stars by Edmond Hamilton, on the opposite side.

Plot summary

Roland Crane, a wealthy map collector and dilettante archaeologist, is visited by Polly Gould, a cousin of an army friend who has disappeared. She is obsessed with locating a map of Ireland, torn down the middle, that her cousin discovered just before he vanished. This same map had formerly been in the possession of Roland and his family, and transported them into a strange alternate dimension. Polly believes the map holds the key to recovering her cousin, and that Roland can help her find it. Roland reluctantly agrees to help.

The two travel to Ireland and begin their search, soon learning that someone else, a mysterious and sinister man, also seeks the map. The mystery deepens when they witness the apparent abduction of another man by a strange "eye" in the sky. Finally they are offered the map at an enormous price by an old man who speaks of having used it to travel to another place, full of both treasure and terror. He fears to go back himself, as his son-in-law was trapped there.

Accepting the challenge, Roland and Polly buy and follow the map, and when they reach the place corresponding to the tear in the map, they are transported into the alternate dimension hinted at.

Though this novel bears some thematic similarities to Bulmer's later Keys to the Dimensions series, it is otherwise unrelated.

References

Land Beyond the Map Wikipedia