Re: units of measurement problems and solutions

Lucy Kemnitzer <ritaxis@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:i3pne11t6r4rmb3pafs4h98r0m37th28np@xxxxxxx:

> Well, time, anyway. If your civilization is multiplanet -- or even
> concentrated on some other planet with different periods than Earth's
> -- you aren't necessarily going to have 24 hour days, 7 day weeks, 52
> week years, right? But maybe you aren't necessarily _not_ going to
> have those either, if the civilization is derived from Earth and the
> people are pretty conservative about this sort of thing.
>
> So it leaves me unsure how to make the timelines and dialogs work out.
> For _Esperanza HIghway_ I decided it was useful to the plot (such as
> there was) to confront the different timekeeping on two planets --
> there was a common calendar, but the exact day wasn't always in synch
> (as it's frequently Monday for England when it's still Sunday for me).
> And then there was the march of seasons on the planet of the story,
> which did not correspond to the calendar dates, which meant that
> calendar holidays showed up at different seasons and gave me
> opportunities to develop little details and no wonder the book is so
> long.
>
> In the current book, though, I'm only dealing with about a third of a
> planet, and I really don't want to get into figuring out the calendar
> or the clock. But I feel awkward about referring to seven day weeks
> and 24 hour days, I really do, so I've ben vigorously suppressing
> every instance where I might be tempted to do so. In my timelines I
> have numbered the years and days backwards and forwards from zero
> points -- different timelines for different parts of the book. And
> I'm not talking about what time it is, ever. "In the morning" or
> "later, when it was really dark" is what I'm doing. But I do worry
> that this advanced-tech world with cultivated turf tarmac and living
> walls could end up seeming very primitive in its timekeeping.
>
> Short of vac*** the cat with a calendar and a clock, does anybody
> have any suggestions for less clunky timekeeping?

YOu could always go with a world that, rather than generally settling on
the standards we adopted, didn't. "Month" is derived from "moon cycle"
and a lot of places used to dervice their calendard locally - "the 7th
year of Herod 2's reign" and so on. Using some familiar terms like
"hours" can work if you throw in a bit early on to make it clear they use
a different hour - they have large time units that might or might not be
the same as ours, and perhaps mark the change in a different way ("the
fourth hour of the day" being the fourth hour of sunlight, and so on).
SOmetimes throwaway lines help (I'll meet you at the second hour after
sunset) work, sometimes they don't.

But for those of us who dont mind vacuuming the cat (I'm currently
working on a muulti-planet book where only the Standard Second is a
systemwide measure) it's hard to convey precision in a society without
very precise measurement.

Maybe showing the precision some other way?

cd

--
The difference between immorality and immortality is "T". I like Earl
Grey.
.

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