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Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
― Anthony G. Oettinger
There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.
― Bill Watterson
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
― The Doctor |
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Time can be a slippery concept. That is, it can get away from you. Also, if you delve too deeply, you can get into philosophical issues that are above my pay grade.
But in this editorial, I'm not going to talk about the deeper issues. No, I'll save those for another newsletter. I want to be more practical than that and talk about how we apportion out the hours, minutes, and seconds of a day.
This is relevant to fantasy and science fiction writing, because often, we often deal with other worlds than our own, and these worlds can be given more depth and interest by such seemingly simple ideas as changing what a "day" even means.
First, Earth as we know it: A day is based on the average time it takes for the sun to appear to make one circuit of the sky. On any given day, this time may take a bit more, or a bit less, than one standard day, because orbital dynamics is weird. So we take the average, and we call the interval 24 hours, and then each hour is divided further into minutes and seconds.
This is a pretty good system. From what I understand, it's derived from the Babylonians or Sumerians, who were pretty good at the whole "integers" thing, but not so great at fractions. So they used numbers that were evenly divisible by the most other numbers possible. 24 divides nicely by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 12 - while, say, 20 is divisible by only 2, 4, 5, and 10. 20 would make some sense if we were trying to design a time counting system now, with our obsession with base-10, and we also understand fractions a bit better.
But perhaps the most important thing to discuss when considering worlds other than our own is: What time is it, really?
We live in a world where we can, and often do, know the official time out to several decimal places of a second. Such accuracy is needed for GPS - without it, GPS simply wouldn't have any useful precision. The details of why this is true are fascinating, but really beyond our scope here. Point is, that sort of thing is a very recent invention; for most of history, and before it, we had no real way of knowing the precise time of day.
So fantasy set in a pre-technological world that also has precision timekeeping can be a bit anachronistic (pun intended, as always) if there's not a good reason for it.
Another consideration is what we know as time zones - whole swaths of real estate that, by fiat, all run at the same time. This was useful when we started running trains and such between cities, as a way to keep the schedules coherent. But what this innovation does is, to some extent, divorce time from its natural source.
For the most part, it doesn't much matter. The time is what we agree it is, and that's all we need to know in order to show up for work on time, whether that time is before, during, or after sunrise (or sunset, if your job involves preying on the blood of innocents, and now I need to write a story about vampires who clock in and out for their nightly rounds). But what that does is, for the bulk of the time zone, set noon at some other point in the day than when the sun is at its maximum height above the horizon - which is what "noon" is supposed to mean. It'll be different from one side of a time zone to the other. And that's not even getting into the abomination that is Daylight Saving Time.
So, okay, why this matters for what we do: say you're writing modern fantasy, and your characters have to do this old spell they found in a grimoire from hundreds of years ago. Not an atypical situation for fantasy or supernatural stories. But this particular spell specifies that the dessicated heart of a dragon and a fourteenweight of diamond dust must be ground together at midnight. They've carefully researched exactly what a "fourteenweight" meant, and pulled off a jewelry store heist to get enough slave carbon. They've even ventured into the ancient ruins of Atlantis and found the last remaining dragon's heart - so they only have one shot at this. They've gotten everything together, put up a protective circle, faced all kinds of conflict and character-building moments, all leading to this one crucial plot element. The clock begins to strike midnight, and the components are dutifully mashed with an enchanted mortar and pestle...
...and nothing happens, because the creator of the spell meant, literally, midnight, not what we call 12:00 am or 0000 hours.
Or it does work, and I throw the book across the room in frustration because the author didn't take that into account.
Bottom line? Don't assume that timekeeping as you know it is true for all times and places. |
You can spend your time reading these if you like:
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Last time, in "Symbols" , I discussed... well, you can tell from the title.
Quick-Quill  : Most of the good books are based on symbols. Da Vinci code. Robert Langdon's profession is symbolism. The best ones are done so subtly we don't even realize them.
Yes, and it's also possible to go overboard with them.
gingerlyme: I was considering how I might incorporate more symbolism and color into my work when I scrolled down to find that you had chosen one of my stories to highlight in your newsletter. Thanks for the advice in the newsletter and for including my story!
Thanks for writing!
dragonwoman  : Thanks for including the Olive Tree's Story in this newsletter. I write an Easter story every years. So far, one of my favorites is one I wrote that compared and contrasted the two Marys, Mary Magdellan and Mary Mother of Jesus.
It's often good to return to a theme - it can help you see how you grow as a writer.
Burning Thoughts : I appreciate the editorial about symbols.
I'd like to put in that symbols are sometimes noticed by the reviewers rather than the authors, to whom many symbols come unconsciously.
Yes, and some critics put entirely too much weight on them. People who write in the "literary" genre tend to try to out-symbol each other, sometimes to the detriment of readers.
And that's it for me - see you next time! Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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Fantasy: June 05, 2019 Issue [#9580]
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