Post by Aedh on Oct 13, 2006 11:50:41 GMT -5
Hey ... I've brought this over from a discussion in the "army" thread because it may be of wider interest to others. My infamous Librian calendar system has been commented upon before, so I thought I would drag it out for all to see.
For dating events that have to do with Libria and Equilibrium, most people seem content to use the Gregorian calendar that we use today. For my writing about Libria, I have postulated that Father returned the population to (a slightly modofied form of) the Roman Kalendar, in order to deprive people of emotional associations associated with days, weeks, and seasons. (In my Libria, Father is a bit of a nut about Rome anyway ... bestowing Latin nicknames, for example, on himself and his closest associates.) Something which happened on Monday, October 22nd, for example, in this scheme, would fall on the Twelfth of the Kalends of November instead.
The Roman Kalendar also has the distinct advantage of doing away with AD/BC (CE/BCE) style for years, and plunges everyone into the system of indictions. With this we are not confronted with the idea that a certain event happened (for example) in October 2161, with all the instinctive associations with real and imaginary history that that suggests. Under this system, said event would have happened in the first month of the fourth indiction. I think that is is a suitably Grammatarian and Clerical way of referring to time, and provides an anchor for events suited to all but the most wide-ranging narratives, in which case an AUC year can be given--AUC 2914, in our example. The same sort of concept has been used to great effect in "Star Trek," with the mysterious "Stardates," a calendrical system intelligible only to characters, but which nevertheless serves to anchor events within the story.
So, to complete the example, the hypothetical date, Monday, 21 October, AD 2161, would (under the slightly modified system I employ) be written: 12K9/1/4 -- and if it seemed to be something of permanent significance, the reference AUC 2914 would be added. In ordinary parlance it would be referred to as the Twelfth of the Kalends of November, and, perhaps, when remembering it later, be said to be in the first of the fourth.
For dating events that have to do with Libria and Equilibrium, most people seem content to use the Gregorian calendar that we use today. For my writing about Libria, I have postulated that Father returned the population to (a slightly modofied form of) the Roman Kalendar, in order to deprive people of emotional associations associated with days, weeks, and seasons. (In my Libria, Father is a bit of a nut about Rome anyway ... bestowing Latin nicknames, for example, on himself and his closest associates.) Something which happened on Monday, October 22nd, for example, in this scheme, would fall on the Twelfth of the Kalends of November instead.
The Roman Kalendar also has the distinct advantage of doing away with AD/BC (CE/BCE) style for years, and plunges everyone into the system of indictions. With this we are not confronted with the idea that a certain event happened (for example) in October 2161, with all the instinctive associations with real and imaginary history that that suggests. Under this system, said event would have happened in the first month of the fourth indiction. I think that is is a suitably Grammatarian and Clerical way of referring to time, and provides an anchor for events suited to all but the most wide-ranging narratives, in which case an AUC year can be given--AUC 2914, in our example. The same sort of concept has been used to great effect in "Star Trek," with the mysterious "Stardates," a calendrical system intelligible only to characters, but which nevertheless serves to anchor events within the story.
So, to complete the example, the hypothetical date, Monday, 21 October, AD 2161, would (under the slightly modified system I employ) be written: 12K9/1/4 -- and if it seemed to be something of permanent significance, the reference AUC 2914 would be added. In ordinary parlance it would be referred to as the Twelfth of the Kalends of November, and, perhaps, when remembering it later, be said to be in the first of the fourth.
hehehehe. They might not celebrate, but surely for some circumstances, knowledge of a citizen's age would be neccessary. And it's often a thing used towards identification.