galaxies and calendars?

[shamguy4]

im writing a science fantasy book -blah blah blah (i write the same intro when I start a new thread...)

Im not writing a heavy science fiction. Its more magical.

I started coming up with years when things happened. Im actually trying to stay away from large numbers, as its so common and intimidating. I figure my galaxy has more advanced beings and they start counting from an epoch only 10,000 years ago.

Now do I actually have to create my own calendar? days of the week?
it would be easy to use sunday... but perhaps thats not realistic?

what if in the beginning of the book I write:
for the sake of convenience, this book has been formatted into english, and the dates changed to match the gregorian calendar.

How do others conquer their calendars and stuff?

 

[The Judge]

If you're writing from the POV of the aliens and they are talking to each other, I think you will have to bite the bullet and do some world-building for days and months etc. Those words might or might not then be translated into English -- eg they might have a Moon-month, or it might be Svtrzzst -- but in either case you'd need to give some indication of what that actually means, ie in two months' time (and somewhere else an idea of month length), or in the summer. What you mustn't do, of course, is info-dump it all at once.

If the aliens are talking to humans, then you can get away with things like "That happened in the month equivalent to your August" or "in your 2045".

For my SF alien world, I worked out year length, month and seasons, and how they wrote the date eg on letters, for birthdays. So far, I've only slipped in one mention of one month and that was a translation (Mid-Spring -- I wasn't very imaginative when I did it...).

For my fantasy I am resolutely not mentioning months or days of the week, save for the Lord's Day, which actually gets a bit complex, because no one can say something like "On Saturday" it's all "The day after tomorrow" or "in a few days".

 

[thaddeus6th]

Given the variability of planets they might well all have individual calendars (imagine living on Venus [were it possible] and trying to use an Earth calendar for everyday living).

However, they'd probably have a galactic calendar, if only to co-ordinate things collectively between planets.

TJ (makes me think of Stargate Universe now): I could be wrong but I think the Romans had three main days of the week (nones, and, um, two others) and used to refer to other days often as being (effectively) two days before nones or a day after. Bit clunky, but you could have Lord's Eve.

[I ended up having a 5 day week for one calendar, and by chance made another 5 day week, with each month have six weeks. I don't use the calendars much but it's nice to know they're there].

 

[shamguy4]

I should menton the POV is of a human and it does not take place in this galaxy.

 

[Mirannan]

StarTrek (original version) handled this quite well, IMHO. When aliens were talking about dates, time periods and so on they mentioned things like "Earth years" or "your year 2045" for example.

It's quite likely that automatic date conversion would be part of any language translation software. The problem is actually bigger than the one you started off talking about; after all, there is no real reason why the aliens should be using base 10 numbers, either.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I could be wrong but I think the Romans had three main days of the week (nones, and, um, two others) and used to refer to other days often as being (effectively) two days before nones or a day after. Bit clunky, but you could have Lord's Eve.

And I could be wrong, in arguing with this, but I have read two full series of Roman mysteries and I believe the three things you're thinking of were monthly references rather than weekly -- the nones, the ides, and the calends, which I have always assumed translated at least roughly into beginning, middle and end. So the Ides of March, for example, were (I think?) --or would that be "was"-- the middle of March. Or possibly it was like first quarter, full moon, last quarter, a week apart from the center? Unfortunately I've never had to know, or cared enough to look it up for precision.

 

[thaddeus6th]

TDZ, I must admit, I think you're right. Oh well. Now I feel like a turniphead.

 

[The Judge]

TJ (makes me think of Stargate Universe now): I could be wrong but I think the Romans had three main days of the week (nones, and, um, two others) and used to refer to other days often as being (effectively) two days before nones or a day after.

I was puzzling about that, because I thought that nones were month things, but I see TDZ has already spoken!

Bit clunky, but you could have Lord's Eve.

Good thinking! That's one day sorted, at least!

I should menton the POV is of a human and it does not take place in this galaxy.

So, is he living with the aliens or something? If I were living in a foreign country that used a different counting/naming system, then I'd probably continue to think in terms of Monday/Tuesday, March/April etc, but in conversation I'd have to use the foreign terms if I wished to be understood. But that does rather depend on the days being the same length, the seasons being the same etc.

If he's on a world where the day, lunar month (if there is a moon) and year lengths are all very different, and the artificial constructs of time such as hour and week are based on different factors, then he'll have to use the local ones.

 

[prizzley]

So far, I've only slipped in one mention of one month and that was a translation (Mid-Spring -- I wasn't very imaginative when I did it...).

I've used that for simplicity and clarity.

 

[Vertigo]

Bear in mind that periods such as months are tied to our natural lunar cycle. If the alien planets have no moon then they might not create such a time division or create one that matches some other natural cycle.

 

[Mirannan]

Bear in mind that periods such as months are tied to our natural lunar cycle. If the alien planets have no moon then they might not create such a time division or create one that matches some other natural cycle.

Yup. Even on Earth, there have been serious proposals for a "seasonal calendar" with 4 subdivisions of the year (each of 91 days) with something called Year Day at the year divisions - and, of course, leap days at appropriate times.

That's what would possibly happen on a world with seasons. If the axial tilt and orbital eccentricity are both low enough for there not to be any seasons either, then it becomes a lot more difficult. In fact, in such a case there wouldn't be any clear demarcation of years! (Not for anything that really matters, anyway - of course, the constellations visible at night would vary.)

 

[StilLearning]

If you are dealing with a number of worlds across this galaxy then wouldn't it make sense to write in one world or group conquering most of said galaxy, and imposing it's time keeping, at some point in the past? It's clunky, I know, but at least it only leaves you with one calendar to deal with?

 

[shamguy4]

sorry i have not been able to reply. I went away over the past few days and had no internet access for 3 days!!!
3 days! thats a world record for me....

anyhow yeah I probably will stick with a standard calendar based on one planet and its solar system.

Otherwise I might stick with my original idea of beginning the book by saying the book has been translated to english and some terms have been changed for your convenience.

I dunno.. I do not plan on writing too much about dates, but its good to have them in my mind. It clarifies when things happened in my story.

 

[alex_riveiro]

When I was working on the chronology of my universe (which spanned several hundred thousand years) I came up with a universal system to measure time based on the length of a human year (to avoid making things overly complicated) and divided in epochs based on when the civilizations left their home planets, or significant events.

Once that was done, I just created a simple converter to the human calendar. So, the human year 1914 on my universe is for the alien races the year 19491 of the second galactic era.

In short... you can use whichever measure of time you want as long as it's something you can use reliably if the measure of time is important for what you're writing. If it's not, and dates are of little to no importance, you can have as many calendars and time measurements as you want.

 

[JoanDrake]

StarTrek (original version) handled this quite well, IMHO. When aliens were talking about dates, time periods and so on they mentioned things like "Earth years" or "your year 2045" for example.

It's quite likely that automatic date conversion would be part of any language translation software. The problem is actually bigger than the one you started off talking about; after all, there is no real reason why the aliens should be using base 10 numbers, either.

However they also started each episode with the famous "Captain's Log, Stardate..." and the Stardates were deliberately made completely inconsistent with each other.

You could use Festivals and other events. "Two days before Maidensrut" or, "A week after the ice in the rivers broke" etc.

or maybe "...upon St. Crispin's Day"

How does Martin do it btw? What with a major plot point of the seasons being years long and there being a council that determines it, he must mention days and dating somewhere

 

[Ursa major]

If you are dealing with a number of worlds across this galaxy then wouldn't it make sense to write in one world or group conquering most of said galaxy, and imposing it's time keeping, at some point in the past? It's clunky, I know, but at least it only leaves you with one calendar to deal with?

Yes, there has to be some sort of standard (as we have here on Earth), given that worlds have different lengths of: years, days, months (if they have them at all), season (if they have them), etc.

Being a civilised species (when they aren't butchering, and sometimes eating, members of some of the other intelligent species they... er... meet), my aliens have, underlying their various calendars and clocks, a universal time based on the capital (Tawhuu) of their multi-star-system state: T-time.

 

[Gordian Knot]

However they also started each episode with the famous "Captain's Log, Stardate..." and the Stardates were deliberately made completely inconsistent with each other.

Actually that is not quite correct. Trivia Time!!!!!

As they filmed each episode, they added a few numbers to each star date so that they were indeed chronological.

Only problem is that it ended up that the episodes were not televised in the order in which they were filmed. Hence the hodge podge.

I remember a famous story Roddenberry told about giving a talk before a group of scientists; physicists and the like. And they asked him this very question. How come the star dates were out of order.

Gene made up something on the spot referring to where in the galaxy the ship was at the time, etc. The scientists just nodded like that made sense, and Roddenberry was glad to have gotten away it!

All of which has nothing to do with the thread. So I now return you to your regularly scheduled topic.

 

[Asphodel]

I have invented a new calendar for my world, as well as time of day. This is all explained in an appendix, but I am a bit worried that it may be confusing, especially the times of day, which start at the time of dawn on the equinoxes as 0 hours. To make things easier, my world travels around its sun in 360 days, thus giving 12 months of 30 days. I do agree, however, that this is a tricky one.

 

[Ursa major]

The bit about starting at dawn is fine. After all, our noon is, apparently, based on the Roman's ninth (nona) hour, which was three in the... er... afternoon (), because they counted from dawn**.







** - Well, from 06:00 or thereabouts, which, I suppose, is approximately the average time of dawn (in places where the sun reaches its zenith at 12:00).

 

[chrispenycate]

In Earth analogues I've done several using thirteen months of twenty-eight days, with a day and a bit off for good behaviour (Saturnalia style, but short) at the end of each year, at winter solstice. A close match for lunar and solar calendars, if you don't start with the (somewhat ridiculous) basic idea that time will be based around 3 X 4, or 2 X 3 X 4, or 3 X 4 X 5, which might be very neat, but doesn't work too well except with artificial divisions like seconds. Like the renaissance "everything must be perfect circles, because God is perfect, and an ellipse is imperfect falls under the heading of humans telling God how to do his job which, surprise, have never been too successful.