The Deserts of the West (NaNoGenMo 2015)

Travel novels were one of the trends in last November’s NaNoGenMo. As  a genre, travel memoirs combine the jumbled juxtaposition of encyclopedia entries with a recurring rhythm. The overall journey gives the novel order, while the organization by location provides the context. Thus, the genre is a good match for current generate text techniques.

Martin O’Leary’s The Deserts of the West begins, like so many fantasy authors do, with a map. The journey across the procedurally generated maps is described in a style that evokes Calvino’s Invisible Cities, while the title is referenced in the Jorge Luis Borges quote.

Like all travel novels, the information is arranged geographically and temporally, with an entry for each place that’s in the order they’re reached in the journey. The descriptions can be a bit repetitive, but that’s only to be expected in a travel guide, so while it is a limitation, it’s the kind of limitation that fits the book rather than fights against it.

The source code is, of course, available. Or you can dive right into reading the novel.