Tyler van Opstal "Here There Be Dragons"

     In Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet, when the protagonist has his revelation about the nature of Space and its true identity as the Heavens, he is realizing that the maps of the storytellers are more accurate than any map that science can produce. And if the storytellers can chart the stars better than the physicists, then perhaps the storytellers also charted the seas better than the satellites have. 

    Many older maps feature creatures and gods. Even when the explorers had discovered the world was a sphere and that there was not a giant cliff at the end of a flat world guarded by dragons, storytellers continued to etch their maps with "Here there be dragons." The winds remained portrayed by the four wind gods perched in the map corners, and the sketches of great serpents in the oceans were kept. The storytellers understood that it did not matter whether there were literal dragons and wyverns lurking in and above the ocean, the danger they represented on maps was still real. And reading accounts of ships trapped in those storms that form deep out in the ocean, it seems far more accurate that the ships were battered by ferocious beasts and the breaths of gods than from atmospheric changes and temperature fronts (words that for all the science behind them are functionally meaningless compared to story). 

    It is a sad truth that most modern maps of the world are incredibly dull. The storytellers have been largely replaced by scientists in the world of mapmaking, as in many other fields. The dragons are still there in the oceans waiting for victims, and the wind gods are still blowing with all their might, but not nearly as many people care anymore. It is much less likely to see them now after all, with modern technology ships largely are able to go around the dragons which appear large and red on overhead satellite imagery. This is in all a good thing, if seeing fewer dragons comes at the cost of fewer people being killed by them than it is a worthy trade. But to forget or deny that the dragons are there, as the teachers of Ransom in Out of The Silent Planet have forgotten or refused to tell him that space is actually the Heavens, is a great tragedy.