Question about dating my story

[kongo204]

I'm building a world right now set in the distant future in which people have the technology to build entire planets in a mater of years using space ships that are the size of a continent. About how far into the future would you put this? A few thousand years? A few million?

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Do you need to be specific?

 

[tinkerdan]

There might be some reason that you have to know the date. If there isn't I would try not force it to become an issue.

If it turns out to be vital to the story then you'd have to try to extrapolate on known data such as the speculation long ago that by now we'd be colonizing the Moon and Mars. We don't quite have the technology but were close and the real problem has been more one of the economics of the situation.

If things continue like that I'd say the 1 thousand years is conservative you might need more depending on what you think is a good size continent. On the other hand remember that Blish had entire cities going into space and that seemed pretty much a handful.

 

[AMB]

I was so disappointed with the thread title. I was expecting something rather different.

Seriously though, it depends. In the last 50 years we've made a quantum leap in technological advancement. Same thing happened with the Industrial Revolution. Something happened and suddenly things got so much more advanced in a rather short space of time. We don't know what the next life changing discovery will be, or how much it will change our world. Sure, we are seeing a lot of new things now, but many of them are the next logical step from the big event.

So you have to decide: did your world get there by continuously following the next logical step throughout history, or was it interspersed by great leaps in technological discovery an growth? The former would almost certainly take a lot longer than the latter.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

To actually build a world you need significant technological advances. And of course there's always the obvious question - where are they getting the mass from?

The only obvious way I could think to do it would be to have mastered some form a gravitational technology. Something that will mean that when you push large hunks of rock together, say asteroids etc, they will stay together - long enough at least to add more hunks and slowly develop a gravitational field of their own.

Then you've got to presumably fire the core in some way, so that the centre melts and you get a crust around the outside which can form into usable land. Some sort of fusion perhaps? And how do you speed up the crust formation?

After that we've got questions like atmosphere and making sure the planets in a good orbit and has the right spin etc. A magnetic field of some sort created by spinning an iron containing core?

Building a world like that seems like a major undertaking. And to do it in only a few years seems almost miraculous.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[kongo204]

Thanks. To people asking if it matters, it wouldn't except that right now I'm just building my world (haha). I don't have plans for a story, yet. I don't know where/when I will set it. I built a general time-line and I've set it a few thousand years into the future. Thanks for your input!

 

[Mr Orange]

unless the difference in dte between now and then is important, i would give the story a different date system (e.g."the year QB7563") and not worry about it... maybe vaguely referring to what happened "millenia ago"

 

[Montero]

In a galaxy far, far away.......

 

[tinkerdan]

you can date my story AMB, that's if you like girls.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

If you like boys mine might be better.

If you have a world that has major conflicts followed by periods of cold war it might happen quicker. Humans seem best able to come up with technology when they need it to hurt each other.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I wouldn't suggest dating my stories -- many of them are underage.

My method would be, as suggested above, to change the dating system and not worry about correlating them too closely. Every time something big happens, the calendar gets adjusted -- and going into space, where the years are not governed by our trips around the sun, would be a perfectly reasonable place to start a new calendar system.

 

[ralphkern]

Seems like a lot of effort to me. Surely it would be easier to just use a perfectly fine decent world already in the 'Goldilocks' zone of a star?

According to this article (and obviously this is theoretical), there are enough habitable planets in the Milkyway alone for everyone alive at the moment on the Earth to have one each and still have some spare.

8.8 billion habitable Earth-size planets exist in Milky Way alone - NBC News.com

Even if it's not habitable, it would be far easier to terraform a suitable candidate. If humans want to demonstrate their capability then mega structures would be the way forwards, such as a Dyson ring etc.

Megastructure - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

However, that's not what you asked. This might provide some good background reading. It covers something called the Kardashev scale, a means of grading a race.

Kardashev scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[MistingWolf]

I agree with Mr. Orange. Invent your world's dating system. It has worked for many.

 

[Aquilonian]

This doesn't answer your question- but if I were reading your story I'd want to know (a) How did they continue to advance for long enough to achieve that level of technology, ie without regressing due to catastrophic conflict, exhaustion of resources, dysgenic deterioration of intelligence, climate or ecological disasters? (b) Why would they want to physically build a new planet rather than terraforming existing ones?

 

[Aquilonian]

And in answer to your question- from an "in-world" perspective, your characters would surely have their own dating system? And they would probably not know what the date was in any other calendar, any more than well-educated folk today would know what year it was now in the Julian (Roman) calendar.