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I bet the Vulcans never tried to "Save Daylight" by changing the clocks twice a year
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this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Imagine how fucking complex it would be arrange an appointment with somebody on another planet.
"See you at 11 o clock then?"
"Eh, we've only got 10 hours in a day. Spins like a motherfucker."
The very first BattleTech novel, Decision at Thunder Rift, tried this.
It's set on a planet in fairly close orbit of a red dwarf star, so its year lasts three local solar days, and the whole thing takes like four Earth weeks. There's a whole section near the beginning of the book that explains it.
Most of the rest of the series uses the modern Gregorian calendar.
I mean Starfield, for all its many flaws, tracks local time for your current plant and location and universal time. Didn't see why that wouldn't be the standard. Anyone who only interacts locally only knows the one, but most people just always have two clocks that don't match.
Starfield is an interactive video game, you can render the sun(s) in the sky, hang clocks on the walls, do all kinds of things with GUIs. And the player can look for the information they need at the moment.
Decision at Thunder Rift is a novel. It goes on and on about the orbit of this planet and its effect on the weather, and they still have to convert to days/weeks/months for the benefit of the reader. The very next book doesn't bother; it's a direct sequel to the first with the same author and main characters, and I don't remember it even mentioning the local timekeeping system, other than maybe talking about "long summer evenings" or some such.
By the time you get to the Blood Of Kerensky trilogy every chapter starts with something like "Luthien City, Luthien, Pesht Military District, Darconis Combine. March 12, 3050." They might occasionally mention "local winter" or something but seldom delve into how the local clocks and calendars work.
Also even though events take place light years apart, it doesn't bother with stuff like relativity. It's March 12 everywhere at once.
I'm not sure I understand what point you're trying to make? Separate clocks like this are so complicated even the Battletech books stopped using them? It's easier to do environmental storytelling in video games than it is in novels? Just looking for an excuse to talk about sci-fi conventions?
Well kinda looking for an excuse to talk about sci-fi conventions. I mean that's the entire point of this community, right? to talk about Sci-Fi especially Star Trek?
But I think the broader point I'm trying to make is that Sci-Fi creators realized that creating exotic clocks and calendars isn't worth it. It's just a waste of the audiences and the authors time. "We interrupt this exciting action story about a daring dashing young robot tank pilot and his plucky band of mercenaries to bring you a ten page lecture on exochronology."
Even in a series that tries to be as hard sci-fi as Battletech (no magic, no telepathy, no sentient aliens (okay there was that one time and it's still technically canon but we don't talk about that), no god-like aliens etc. everything is science, technology and physics) the authors kind of gave up bothering the audience with how the clocks work on every little planet, other than mentioning "long nights" or something. Star Trek doesn't do it often either.
Well why do you think I brought up Starfield?
I like the addition in Starfield, if for no other reason that it shows how unwieldy and difficult it is when it's easy to implement. Stellaris has a standardized calendar with a 360 day year of 12 30-day months. I don't think it's an addition that makes a novel any better usually (they almost never mention toilets, either) but I do think they can add something to a game or even a movie as part of a set piece. I think the stories where it's a plot detail are... Less engaging.
The clock starts at 0300 and ends at 1300.