sturgeonslawyer: (Default)
sturgeonslawyer ([personal profile] sturgeonslawyer) wrote in [personal profile] james_davis_nicoll 2025-06-18 04:36 pm (UTC)

Once again ReacTor is not letting me post.

In The Left Hand of Darkness, we are told that on Gethen (or maybe just one of the countries), it is always Year One -- when a year ends, it becomes the first year of the past and the new year is One. This strikes me as a possible source of confusion for historians, but Gethenians don't seem to be all that much into their own history anyway, except as legend and myth.

There are examples scattered through Golden and SF of that tradition, in which a new calendar era is created to start in 1945 (the Atomic Age) or 1957, 1961, or 1969 (the Space Age).

And can any such discussion be complete without Star Dates?

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