Fictional Calendar System

[Black Razor]

Ok,

So, I'm looking for some ideas for my fictional calendar system. Terra is five times the size of Earth, and very much like earth. So by my current logic, and my theory will change with the evidence, that a year in Terra will be 60 months long, unless I can figure out a way to divide it.

I need some ideas. Also, I need a significant event to use as the Epoch for the calendar system. I am not sure if it should be a natural event or a battle of signifigance or what. Anyone?

CULW and CRISPY calling on you, are you there?

[PTeppic]

Are you looking for "realism" in the world? Five times the size with its increase in gravity will make the people different from us and probably change the atmosphere mix.

Ignoring that, have you decided on the anything astronomical? Having more than one sun and/or more than one moon, or a VERY regular asteroid or comet would allow for those being used as part of the calendar.

Incidentally, why should the size of the planet affect the number of months in the year? You'll need to decide on distance from the planet to the nearest sun(s), and from then the number of days within the year; I'm guessing you still have days? What about hours or equivalent for sub-dividing the days? Got distracted... You're seeming to need more months by making the planet bigger - is that needed? The "month" is simply the number of days (variable or fixed) which the local people (or probably their long distant ancestors) chose to make. Or, like Earth, there could be several competing sets of month? Obviously, if you ARE moving the planet out in orbit, away from its sun, the temperatures are going to drop correspondingly, to the point that carbon-based life probably won't live.

[ice.monkey]

Black Razor, the size of the planet doesn't define it's length of year - it's how long the planet takes to orbit it's sun(s). This depends on how far away from the sun it is. So in our solar system, Mercury has a shorter year than Earth's and way shorter than Uranus'.

In effect you can just arbitrarily decide on how long you want your year to be.

Looks like PTeppic got there just before me!!

[Black Razor]

Well, heres what I'm looking at so far.

First of all, Terra, my fictional planet, exists in a parrallel galaxy to the Milky Way. In this galaxy everything is pretty much identical to our existing system. There are a few differences, for the simple reason of being interesting, although I deeply care about realism. I prefer to stay true to science-fictions core, and stray only from the real science of things when neccessary as a storytelling element.

Here is what I have written so far...

I have a name for the two major periods of time. The equivalent system to our Gregorian calendar is called the Apukyrian System (A.S.), which was invented by the polymath Apukyra. She was the first person to create a heliocentric model of the the Viala Galaxy.

Her system is an observational system, and it makes use of the fact that Terra has two suns, and a single moon.

The other System, which is based somehow upon something to do with a group of people known as the Cypaesa, is called the Cypasaen System (C.S) This serves as my Epoch, but I am not sure exactly what took place.

So historical events in my world would be annotated by AS or CS. They way I envision it, if I can figure out how I want to divide the year, is something like this: 021-34-XAS or just somehow a hypenated system with multiple components.

I'm ignoring the effects of gravity for the sake of storytelling, so Terra is just five times as large as Earth, yet its composition is a little different. Its actually about 65% Land Mass and 35% water. However, this bodies of water are huge, and still manage to support life just like on earth.

There is a reason for this. I dont want a re-hash space opera, so instead of multiple planets, I am making one giant planet to which I have a lot of room to play with.

I am still using Days, Weeks, Months, and Years....but I may change their names and possible their length. I dont know yet if doing so would support my story or distract from it, but hey the easy part of writing is you just replace words if something doesnt work.


I was thinking I would divide the year into 36 months, and there are only three 12 month seasons instead. Each season is symbolic of Life, Death, and Rebirth.

Thats about all I got for now, and I will continue to work on it...

Lemme know what you think.

Culwhch and Crispycate where are you?

[vintagefury]

So, gravity.

If it has two suns it's going to have a lopsided orbit. Does it rotate around two stationary suns? Does one sun orbit the other and the planet orbits one of thsoe suns? Which one? How large is their sun (bear in mind the sun is, in fact, not a very huge star)? How far out is the orbit?

Also, in response to PTeppic above, about gravity being different, not necessarily. The mass of the planet affects the gravity, and if your planet has as much mass as earth, you could have the same gravity. Other things would be affected, like escape velocity, etc, but I'm not sure what bearing that would have on your story, if space travel is there or not.

[Black Razor]

I like that idea about one being stationary and the other rotates around the planet. But now that I think about, maybe I should give it two moons instead and a single sun? I dunno much about this. Anybody?

Hell, I got so much more I have to work out. The State Power Triad, Theory of Money, State vs. Society, and Religion.

How did Tolkien do it all? Oh, thats right he spent years!

Eh, I'll be ok. Cause I'm Supafly!

[vintagefury]

If you have one sun orbiting another, you're probably going to have to be very careful about the size of the two suns. Also, is your planet between the two suns or is it outside of them? This will affect your days as well as the ambient temperature of the planet. Also, multiple moons will affect tides differently. Do they have the same orbital velocity or different ones? This will affect tides, as well as the ammount of light at night, which will probably do a lot to alter animal activity at the very least.

[lin robinson]

A year is not intrinsically composed of months, which are either lunar or arbitrary. It IS composed of a number of days.
So you are using it's size orbit and some astro-tinkering to figure that out...basically a ratio between length of orbit and rotational speed. That's your given, you can whack it up as you please.

By the way I was quite taken by a Paul Goodman proposal in Habitus... that we establish a year based on 12 months of 30 days and celebrate the remaining days as a sort of "all bets are off" party period like Carnival. Whose length can be effortlessly adjusted for precision without buggering up our work calender. It's so sensible that any world other than ours would probably do it.

[Black Razor]

Its so peculiar that you would mention that, as I had just had the idea earlier this very day to have a celebratory period between the seasons.

[lin robinson]

Yeah, right. You'll hear from my lawyers soonest.