Francis’ Factbook is a travel journal and reference work founded in 1998 by the Kaskivian writer Micah Francis. It publishes short, illustrated entries on cities, coastlines, transport and local custom across the Nastavak continent, written in a deliberately informal first-person style.
The Factbook is not a formal encyclopaedia, and its entries are frequently interrupted by inset “quick facts”, tables, diagrams and photographs. It is nonetheless used as a reference by travellers and by some regional newspapers, and its entries are cross-referenced to established works of reference such as those on Decelska and Sinj.
History
Francis began the journal in 1998, drawing on a decade of reporting on ports and coastal trade for Kaskivian regional papers. It was originally distributed as a printed pamphlet in San Branik and the Treviglio coast; it moved to an online format as the Kaskinet expanded.
Editions have covered every sovereign territory on the continent, with recurring subjects including the Kaskivian grain ports, the Kakerovecska industrial belt, the northern forests of Severnivaraje, and the pilgrimage routes of Decelska.
Style
Entries are written in the first person and mix practical information — timetables, prices, warnings — with historical and cultural commentary. Francis is known for an unsentimental attitude to hotels and officialdom, and for treating trivial and serious subjects with equal attention. The journal’s recurring instruction to readers is to arrive without a plan and acquire one locally.
Reception
The Factbook has been praised for its readability and for covering places that conventional guidebooks neglect. Kresimirian reviewers have occasionally criticised its “unhelpful fondness for grain ports” and its willingness to mix fact and opinion; the journal’s readership has generally treated this as part of its character.
Francis’ Factbook is published online at /factbook/.