Geography: Map Tale

Extract from “Who’s Who in New Elenna”

The Pobbering-Whytes

....of course no account of the family’s history would be complete without mention of the infamous Lord Karlton Pobberington-Whyte III. Labelled variously as a visionary, madman, hell raiser, genius, poet, scientist, dreamer, inventor, pioneer, hero, idiot and drunk, he is perhaps most well-known for his best selling “Journye to the Moones” (available in 17 volumes from Wayfarer Press). This account of an epic balloon journey into the heavens was widely ridiculed by critics of the time of its publication. It was nothing more than the infantile ravings of a drunken sot, they claimed, as devoid of literary merit as it was of truth.

Naturally it became an instant bestseller, and its author was proclaimed the Wold’s greatest living adventurer by the general public. The critics countered by claiming that the book’s success was primarily due to the erotic encounters between the hero and the “Mystikal Maidens of the Moone” described at (perhaps unnecessarily) great length in volumes 3, 4, 5 and 6. The fact that these volumes outsell all others in the series by a factor of 12 might have lead some to lend credence to the critics’ views, but the general public were not so fickle; they dismissed the critics as jealous, talentless and embittered old hacks, and threw Lord Karlton yet another party.

In the years since his death (the cause of which is a subject of considerable conjecture, and beyond either the scope of this book or stomach of this author to examine) Lord Karlton’s works have become hugely collectible. Of particular rarity is the map which accompanied the collected first edition set of “Journye to the Moones”. Lord Karlton claimed to have drawn this map whilst floating many miles above the Wold, and that it was consequently the only entirely accurate map of the Wold ever drawn. Although it has since been the subject of furious debate amongst cartographers fortunate enough to gain access to a copy, to date no-one has definitively disproved the veracity of the map.

Lord Karlton is succeeded by his 14 known sons and 11 known daughters and his long-suffering wife Nancy (97). The House of Pobberington-Whyte is currently in legal proceedings with a further 74 alleged offspring of the great man.