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I'd bet few readers would notice or care though - Edit 1

Before modification by Isaac at 17/07/2013 05:27:02 PM


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View original postNow I'm going to need to google up chronophone, I know of if it as the widget they used to use in early films to synchronize the film to the audio, now I'm envisioning something akin to a Carillon.


View original postMy chronophone doesn't really have anything to do with the actual chronophone, which, as you say, was a French device that synched up film with audio back in the early 1900s. But the two parts of the word, chrono and phone, essentially mean time and sound. My world is an enormous city with a giant clocktower in the middle, and every clock in the city is synched to the clocktower. People pay for clock subscriptions the way they pay for tv in our world. People who can't afford private clocks rely on the chronophones, which are public bell systems spread throughout the city, chiming on the hour.

Good to know, I spent sometime last night trying to dig up an 'ancient Greek chronophone' to no avail and it was driving me nuts trying to figure out what such a device would be. Now you've got me curious as all hell, "How much would you pay to be on time?", of course the flatworld reference has me thinking of a Terry Pratchett book "Thief of Time" too. It's tricky to imagine a setup where people needed to be accurate with time to the point of paying a subscription but if you pull that off it would be fairly new ground I think, a place that featured accurate timekeeping as significant sector of its economy, beyond the normal ground of the clockmaker and pocketwatch. I won't pry for details though.


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View original postGreeks a nice one cause you can bust out 'Archon', one of those titles that sounds properly bad ass and isn't as overused as Emperor or King. It sounds interesting, its alway more fun to read stuff by people you know. I'd offer myself as an alpha reader but my only two modes are usually 'I liked it' or the sorts of extreme nitpicking that don't help a story, I think last time I unloaded on someone for their insistence on having railroads, which typically weigh about a hundred tons a league, but having steel armor so incredibly expensive only nobles could afford it even though the odds of a reader giving a shit were minimal, and I'm about ten times worse with sci-fi.


View original postArchon is a good one, it's true. Also, I think it would bug the hell out of me once someone pointed out a thing like that. I don't mean that I'd be annoyed by the person who did it, but that I'd be annoyed by the inconsistency in my world. Worldbuilding is pretty challenging sometimes, at least for me. I'm sure there are things I miss, no matter how much I try to think them through.

I think that's almost inevitable, and honestly I'm probably in the worst 1% at noticing such things and they rarely screw with my enjoyment of the book as much as plotholes or bizarre behavior from the characters. In a way I almost think the danger comes from an author trying to explain something, because having brought attention to it the reader thinks about it. A floating city is cool, nobody demands to know why it floats or how the nightmare of bringing in food is dealt with, its cooler if that explanation works, but if it doesn't then one has just wasted a few pages on exposition in order to highlight a flaw.


My world has some peculiarities to its essential design. If you remember, a while back I asked some questions about flat worlds. I phrased it so that it sounded as if it applied to a constructed world in space, but that was a misdirect. My world isn't in space, but it is flat. That, plus the other basic elements (which are secret for now) have presented me with lots to think about in terms of where the world would be technology-wise, which things they might have that we wouldn't, and which things we would have that they wouldn't (for example, there's an in-world reason why they don't have computers, televisions, or radios; they use a different style of boat than we do — a sort of modified paddle-wheeler — but they still have cars, and use elevated train tracks involving magnets, because by the time they got to trains the city was too crowded to lay tracks on the ground). I have to think about how the setup would affect geography, history, exploration, all that stuff. It's good fun, but I'm sure I've missed some things.

I remember that post. The fun thing about technology is that it really isn't some sort of inevitable pathway of converging ideas people often think of it as and because of economy of scale and perfection through long use there's all sorts of stuff that could never be invented or never be used because something else came first. Or things people assume, by date of invention, must be very complex, like a fridge, when in reality one could be built using tech from ancient greece and powered by just having a piece of its circulation system built into a fireplace or oven, the Einstein Fridge, or running water in a house simply by having a rain barrel cistern up top, just decently higher then the sinks, a concept frequently employed in one way or another even back in antiquity. And one could even use that to drive appliances on. I think almost any tech that came into use after electricity tends to get lumped in as too modern to use, which is a pity.


View original postThanks for the offer of reading, though the book is actually already in a beta read stage (in which some of my beta readers are reading very, very slowly). I've been writing a second novel, a mythological historical murder mystery, in the meantime, but once I finish it I'll be moving on to a third draft of the first book. I've actually thought about you for some of the snaggier aspects of the world, which is why I brought the flat world question here.

If you're already late-stage I'd not be of much use, catching a major flaw in setup at that point generally limits one to just hanging a lantern on it, e.g. flat and/or moonless world "Why do we have tides?" "It's a great mystery, many scholars have tried to explain it, moving along"

Well anytime you're of a mind to, just NB me and I'll send you my email. Especially when it comes to designing or contemplating bizarre world setups and the sorts of secondary results of such a setup I always get a kick out of it.


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