Fiction Tourists

In April of 1995, David West Reynolds, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Michigan, traveled to Tunisia to rediscover all the old Tatooine set locations from the first Star Wars film. Armed with photos he'd taken of the movie on his television, rough ideas of locations and towns, and some vital factoids printed on the back of the Star Wars cards he'd collected as a kid, Reynolds was able to locate most of the old sites and a few pieces of the sets. In one case, a local farmer had used the evaporators from Luke's home to build a chicken coup.

Later that year, Star Wars Insider magazine published "Return to Tatooine," Reynolds' account of his journeys. His adventured ignited passions for similar "Star Wars Archeology" expeditions in hundreds of fans. Small groups of a new sort of Fiction Tourist scoured Tunisia, as well as the redwood forests and southwest deserts of the U.S., searching for artifacts.

A decade later, thousands of fans of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy were flying halfway around the world to tour the sets in New Zealand. Companies sprang up to organize package tours and a few are still going strong.

Fiction Tourism centered around big budget, blockbuster movies may be relatively new, but literature has inspired people to visit specific settings for much longer. How many travelers have gone looking for 221B Baker Street, walked through the moors of Bronte Country, or paid someone on a Dublin street corner for a James Joyce tour? How many beatniks spent their last dollar on gas in the 1960s to retrace Jack Kerouac's transformative path across America?

I just read about the Star Wars Archeology phenomenon in an article in the March 2009 edition of Harpers (Yes, I'm a little behind on my magazine reading) and it started me wondering if I might be a Fiction Tourist.

My wife and I have discussed a trip out East, and I've thought about stopping in Providence and visiting some of H.P. Lovecraft's haunts - but that would be more to get a sense of the author, not his fictional creations.

Ah, but I am a Fiction Tourist! I remember now. In April of 2006 my family traveled in England. We started in Bath, then rented a car and drove up through the Cotswolds into northern Wales. I made sure our route took us through Shrewsbury. We stopped, and there I stood among what remains of the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in the very spot where one of my favorite fictional characters lived - Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael. I even have a pamphlet entitled "In the Footsteps of Brother Cadfael," with a map that notes all the places mentioned in the books. It's no Tatooine Evaporator, but it does fit nicely on my bookshelf.

Real Me and the abbey of Fictional Cadfael

"Return to Tatooine" by David West Reynolds, Star Wars Insider #27
"Raiders of the Lost R2" by John Mooallem, Harper's, March 2009
Star Wars Locations, H.P. Lovecraft Sites, In the Footsteps of Brother Cadfael