One person asked, rather impertinently I thought, if RJ had ripped off Tolkien’s Middle-Earth map when he created his own.
Of course, RJ denied that, and said that after he had handed in The Eye of the World , he was asked to provide a map. “Why do you need a map?” RJ asked, and he was told, “Tom Doherty likes maps.” So, RJ slapped a couple pieces of paper together and drew in the mountains, then scattered the countries around, added some cities rivers and other geographical features and sent it off to Tor. Tor revised it a number of times until Elise Mitchell produced the version that became part of The Eye of the World . RJ also stated that if you look at a map of southwestern Saudi Arabia you’ll see two mountain ranges that intersect at right angles.
When asked how aware of geography he was while writing, RJ said that he created the city maps whole, but only roughed out the larger ones. The bigger ones were then polished by the people at Tor before being printed in the books. I took it to mean that he wasn’t all that concerned with larger geographic features, which might explain some of the geographic discrepencies in the story.
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