No map

When I was younger, before the Internet was so robust, I often had to fly to a client's site to install software. Sometimes the weather didn't cooperate. Sometimes the flights were diverted to an odd place (like Minneapolis) and you had to stay overnight in a motel before going back to the airport the next day to get to your final destination.

When those events occurred (and they weren't that often), I always found it completely disconcerting if I didn't know where I was. I would often grab the phone book and look in it for maps, just to see where I was. When you think about it, such a token act wouldn't really make any difference. I was still in a hotel and somebody would still take me back to the airport regardless of whether Minneapolis was near the Wisconsin border or halfway to Canada.

When you are writing novels such as Rome's Revolution and you want your characters to have a three-dimensional feel, it helps to build in human frailties. So when Rei first set out in the woods with Fridone, before he knew he had sonar vision, he found the whole experience disconcerting because I would. Here is the passage:

     Rei looked up again trying to get his bearings but he gave up. He realized he didn’t even know where on the continent they had set down. He found his lack of knowledge very disorienting. The star charts that he memorized weren’t coming in very handy right at this point. When he was younger, back on Earth, there were some times when he had to fly to a far-off city. He always tried to find a map, to figure out where he was. Not that it made any difference but it just made him feel better. Now, here he was, 12 light years from Earth on an alien world, in the pitch black. No map would comfort him this time. Strangely, it actually seemed easier to walk with his eyes closed, a condition which made no sense. He just concentrated on following Fridone and not falling.

At least he wasn't in Minneapolis!