Counting the Days: Five SFF Approaches to Calendars

[james_davis_nicoll]

So many different ways of measuring history and the passage of time...

Counting the Days: Five SFF Approaches to Calendars

Comments

[james_davis_nicoll]

Tor dot com article 569, 2025 article 38

431 articles to go to article 1000

[petrea_mitchell]

Or at least, how long they claim to have been counting/tracking time. I am sure there’s an example out there of a completely fraudulent calendar claiming great antiquity for the regime using it when in fact the calendar and the regime are only a few years old.

More than a few years old, but both the Mayan Long Count and the Hebrew calendar start from alleged dates of the creation of the entire world. I wouldn't be surprised if there are other calendars that do as well.

[fanf]

The Byzantine calendar, for instance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_calendar

I quite like the idea of the holocene / human era calendar, which for simplicity just adds 10000 years to the christian count. Not quite in exact agreement with the archaeologists or the dating of beer, but not far off. And I think a little more elegant than the Long Now Foundation’s 02025 prefix zero five digit years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar

[sturgeonslawyer]

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?

[scott_sanford]

Taking the Gethen scheme literally, Doctor Who spinoff media includes the Eleven Day Empire, which is exactly what it says on the tin - except that the citizens are excessively eccentric Time Lords, living out centuries and millennia in the same eleven days.

[patrick_morris_miller]

I wish I had the time [1] to jump down the Faction Paradox wormhole. It looks interesting, and the revival series no longer is to me (and finally did something so cruel and gratuitous that I have no intention of ever watching again).

[1] I own my puns. [2]

[2] And a Jolly Roger.

[scott_sanford]

I'm out at the periphery of the Faction Paradox fandom and from my mostly-safe-distance observation there's a lot there. Written science fiction can tackle stories and ideas that don't fit into a TV show's time limits, special effects budget, or the need to show things happening. Add onto that fans who are happy to start with the lore of Doctor Who but chuck out the need for following only one person or preserving a situation for later stories.

"What if Gallifreyan technology but in the hands of tech nerds, theater kids, and assorted kooks?"

So yeah, this is the kind of thing that could easily eat many hours.

[patrick_morris_miller]

I expect it's larger on the inside.

[kgbooklog]

In Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire series, the calendar is part of the battlefield.

[patrick_morris_miller]

Traveller's Third Imperium starts its calendar from its establishment, which is sensible, and has that take place in year 0 to the thanks of historians everywhere. It has no formal month/week structure, just numbering days from 1 to 365 (no leap years because this is in space and anyway Sylea's year is not the same length as Terra's). But stupidly, stupidly, stupidly, GDW had the date format be DDD-YYYY rather than YYYY-DDD, meaning dates don't sort.

[jessie_c]

Last year was the Year of the Moribund Aardvark in the Century of the Anchovy. I haven't been able to find this year's name.
The calendar of the Theocracy of Muntab counts down. Nobody wants to find out what happens when it reaches 0