We live in a strange science-fictional universe. And I am not talking about Eve Online. Every single day the real world becomes slightly more fantastical. The problem is, from a perceptional standpoint, it is happening extremely slowly. So slowly in fact, that it is often impossible to know it is happening.
Mars is populated by robots. And while we don't have flying cars, because let's be truly honest here - the flying car thing is a really bad idea. Our cars can park themselves and know where they are based on real-time feedback from orbiting space computers. We have live video in our pockets, we can talk to a hand-held device, and makes friends with people we've never met from around the world. And the examples don't end there.
But this post isn't about technological wonders. It is about a book about a technological wonder and the increasingly easy way in which we make real friends with people we've never met. The book is going to be called "A History of the Great Empires of Eve Online" and you can pre-order it right now.
It is being written by a person I've never met. HIs name is Andrew Groen. I cannot independently confirm or deny that he indeed exists. It appears he does from all available sources, he writes me emails, sends me Twitter messages, and has raised a lot of money on Kickstarter for this project. So I'm reasonably confident he exists.
I hope so, since I just spent about 60 hours creating a huge baseline map of all of New Eden in multiple layered vector glory for his book! Andrew is going to use this art to help illustrate the moving, flowing and turbulent history of Null Sec Empires in Eve during the last decade. For my part it was a great excuse to finish a project I've wanted to do for a long time - and provide the community a vector based, fully editable, map of New Eden.
Andrew has agreed that around the time of the book's release, or slightly before, we will release the map completely open-source for all of the community to use as they see fit. Simply print a giant poster for your basement wall, or take it and edit it to your hearts content. It will be free to download, both in hi-res PDF and in native AI file formats.
In the meantime, check out the links above and order your copy of the book. Here is a sneak peek at the map until then. I do not yet have a timeline on when it will be released, but I will let you know when I do.
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| Click to embiggen! |
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| And a detailed section tease |
And yes, every region, every section, is on its own editable layer. Cause I'm awesome like that.