A Realist's Guide to Fantastical Places: Foreword

It is in the nature of these books to begin with something of an autobiographical nature. Not being one to break with tradition, I find myself at something of a loss. The obvious beginning is to detail where I am from, yet in my case that question is very difficult to answer.

Perhaps you wish to know where I was born; or, possibly, in which nation I grew up. Both of these are different places, and different again is the nation in which I have spent the majority of my life. Instead, you might wish to know all about where I currently live, or else where I perform my daily work. Different still is where my mothers call home, and different again is where they each are from.

Truly, “from” is not so simple a word as it may seem. Indeed, the Farseers of Raiy do not have the word ‘from’ in their language. Instead, they have the word eres, which might be better translated as “grows out of” or “pulls from.” For them, the ’now’ is a hungry beast, feasting on countless experiences and influences such that there is no extant past ‘from’ which to come. The past has created the present like a child building with blocks.

I, however, am not a Farseer, nor have I lived in Raiy. Instead, I am a widely traveled lover of life and the exotic, the curious and unfamiliar. I have spent my life traveling this world, from the Americas to all the countries of Asia, from the wondrous lands of Africa to the quiet plains of Australia, and more exotic places besides.

Where am I from?

Perhaps the question is best answered with where I was last, before I sat down to compile a lifetime of travel into what will surely only be the first of many volumes.¹ If this is the case, I should mention Tandy’s Café; a small tea-and-coffee shop off Oak Street in downtown Albany.

I have, in deference to privacy, changed the name and location of this café, but I have no doubt you know of it’s like. It is a tiny place, owned by a single proprietor who delights less in offering a service than she does in providing a home.

It is inescapable. Her manner is such that even locals who have never so much as shared more than a glance on the street speak like old friends. Once you have returned more than twice, it feels less like a store and more like a spare living room, dislocated from your house and placed in the middle of a less-traveled street few people bother to visit. The café is rarely patronized by anyone but regulars.

Tandy herself is not so much a shopkeep as she is an old friend who delights in providing fresh and simple teas and coffees for her guests. You pay for the service, but it feels less like a transaction than an offer to split the bill.

For me, Tandy’s Café is a home away from a home I do not have. As a regular traveler, I currently have no fixed abode. I spoke with Tandy about this, one cool autumn afternoon, and she found herself perplexed. She had little use for far-away places and foreign countries. She was sure, she said, that they were mostly full of people just like her; people trying to get by; wanting little more than enough food to survive, a roof for comfort, and a drink for joy. Nothing but communities of friends and loved-ones doing their best.

I was at once struck by how perfectly correct and completely wrong Tandy was.

It is not her fault: she had never traveled further than the edge of Albany in her life, and has carefully cultivated a life of quiet domesticity. She loves her café, adores her regulars, and has spent a lifetime making her little corner of the world perfect for both herself and others.

I had taken only one further sip of my tea when the truth of the matter hit me — there were far more people in the world like Tandy than there were of me. I am, in a word, a dilettante. Thanks to a particularly large sum of currency bestowed to me by my diligent and fortunate ancestry, I had never truly wanted for money. My parentage was distant enough that I had grown up neither expecting nor desiring the stifling confines of the same four walls, the same stretch of trees, the same smiling faces, or the same streets day after day. I do not begrudge those who desire it, but I was — in a word — free to imagine better.

It struck me how few people had ever traveled to the places I had visited all my life. Few enough traveled to France, Niger, or Rome, had never visited Dubai, Santiago, New York, or Beijing. But beyond these wonderful places, it seemed unthinkable, then and now, that places such as the Yellow Bypass and the Effervescent Palace were unknown to even more people of this fantastic world — a world full of imaginative delights that even the most jaded and cynical realist, who cares nothing but for their own corner of it — out of either necessity or inclination — cannot help but marvel.

Before I had finished my second pot of tea, I had nearly drained my notebook of paper, so possessed I was with making notes and annotations about what places deserved mention, sections, or perhaps whole chapters of their own.

The most difficult and disappointing part of this project was going to all the libraries and book stores I could find, and crossing out every location on my list that had already been covered sufficiently by other travelogues. It became very clear to me that certain places were well favored by the vacationing class; Europe and North-America were both well covered,² and Asia would not benefit from my attention. It was with some great trepidation that I crossed off the sections I had considered devoting to the South Americas and Africa, as I thought there was a great deal more to be said, but I resolved to save those for later books.

It became very clear what my purpose of this book had to be, as there were countless locations and regions that had been resolutely — perhaps even purposefully — ignored by the travel industry. I cannot for myself fathom why this is true, if not for some hidden bias against these places and their supposititious natures. It is these regions and landmarks that I resolved to highlight.

I spent many years writing and annotating my travels. I pulled out old maps from my early years, notebooks that had been gathering dust in attic trunks, and pictures I had taken over multiple decades of travel. It took even more time to properly translate my notes, as I developed the habit of learning and writing in the local language of wherever I visited.

At last, I finished what I can only call my magnum opus, my travelogue, my Realist’s Guide to the Fantastic World. It is possible — I dare say likely — that you, dear reader, may never get the opportunity to travel to many of these places. Some may be too expensive, or require the services of increasingly rare currency exchanges that deal in their currency. Some require unique methods of transportation that are — I was sad to discover — are no longer in operation. One place in particular that I wished to include no longer exists, due to a political upheaval and redrawn borders.

Regardless, whether you have the chance to see the Floating Forest of Flororenghashst or the rolling fields of Gnatted Hollow; whether you are able to speak with the people of There-Upon the Bannen, or enjoy the festivals of the Land of Many Corners; whether you desire the majesty of foreign lands and exotic peoples, or if you are content with the magic of your own backyard, I invite you to use this book as your travel-guide.

If I can help you travel to these places that I love, if only for a moment, then I have done more than I have ever hoped.

~ K. Jamley