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I immediately thought of Bill Mudron's gorgeous maps of classic videogames (Zelda, Super Mario, Castlevania). The easiest way to view most of them is the page where he's selling prints: http://mudron.bigcartel.com/

His homepage has a few more, http://www.billmudron.com/, if you go to "For Me" and click on the bottom right for the gallery.

Does he somehow own the rights to the NES and SNES Zelda content? I would think those are art assets owned by Nintendo, and reselling them would fall under some license agreement.
I do not know the legal status of his work. However, the term "art assets" implies, to me, particular works. In that sense, he is not reusing "art assets" - these works are his own, but obviously inspired by work that Nintendo owns the copyright to. I am unsure what legal status fan art in general occupies: it's original art, but obviously derived from something someone else owns.

Trademark may be a clearer case: he's clearly reusing trademarked terms in a context that could cause someone to believe they are from the trademark owners.

Anyway, I hope he's allowed to continue making and selling them. They're amazing, and should exist.

Yeah, I'm not trying to get him to stop making them, they're awesome, I was just struck by how they look to use a lot of art that's not his in their content, and he's charging for prints. It just struck me as odd.
Can anyone recommend this book? I really admire Eco, but I've found his most recent novels to be generally disappointing.
I never read this one but I can recommend on the topic of imaginary places: "Invisible cities" from Italo Calvino and "Labirinths" from Jorge Luis Borges.

These books were a must read when I was an architecture student. And if you are really into this topic you can also read "The poetics of space" from Gaston Bachelard.

Also Rossi's Architecture of the City and Habracken's Structure of the Ordinary are another two of my favorites in somewhat similar [to me] conceptual spaces.
Eco is one of my favorite authors, but I have to be in the mood for reading his books. I can't just look and say "Oh goody, he's written another book" then immediately sit down and read it. Perhaps I enjoy him more because of that...that feeling of having to adopt a certain mental stance in order to enjoy him and that consequently I really enjoy his books when I enjoy them and can't slog through them otherwise.
I really think his novels are 50% hit or miss.

"Foucalt's pendulum" was great, "the island of the day before" meh, "Baudolino" was great, "queen loana's flame" was disappointing (I haven't read "Prague's cemetery" yet).

But: this isn't a novel, so different rules apply. Also, amazon has 12 reviews for it all with 5 stars :)

While there is no english preview, as far as i can tell, anyone who can read italian may be interested in the preview at http://www.amazon.it/Storia-delle-terre-luoghi-leggendari/dp...
I loved Foucault's Pendulum, really liked The Island Of The Day Before, and quite liked The Name of the Rose. I have been meaning to get round to reading Baudolino for fifteen years.
"Prague's Cemetery" has its moments. It's better than "Queen Loana", but that's not saying much. I wouldn't recommend either.
A fun little essay by Eco:

http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_mac_vs_pc.html

Well, Palmanova at least isn't really imaginary.

http://www.turismofvg.it/ProxyVFS.axd/popup/r11207/file-jpg?...

Eco's book is called "The Book of Legendary Lands": Legendary places don't have to be fully imaginary or fictional as at least half of the examples are more or less generalized versions of real world locations. The T-O Map, Tabula Peutingeriana, Iceland are all depictions of the world.

There is however this other genre of curiosity maps:

http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/...

http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/...

it's also shown in James Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed", episode 5 from what I can gather.