Fantastic Beasts and How to Write Them

Amazing Stories, January 1949, cover artist unknown, via Wikimedia Commons

Upon reaching the limits of civilised knowledge, the mapmakers of yore would resort to monsters. Hic Sunt Dracones – Here Be Dragons. In truth, cartographers almost never wrote this1, but there’s a reason the phrase has endured. It conjures images of fabulous beasts prowling the margins of the world, of plumed leviathans coiled around galleons daring to cross seas uncharted. Here be not only dragons, but the eternal bounda...