[LEAPSECS] Post-apocalyptic time-keeping story...

[Michael Spacefalcon]

mc235960 <mc235960 at gmail.com> wrote:


> I wonder if the author did his sums before putting pen to paper.

> The Lorekeeper, Fin Lerisas implies that there are -ve leap hours every year.


I don't think that's what the author meant - instead he (the author)
is simply making a mockery of a different form of time violation,
namely the abomination commonly known as DST.  (Notice the reference
to the "artificially created hour" being compensated for by another
hour "disappearing" in the early spring - so that nothing is actually
saved by this DST abomination.)

USA just went back from DST to temporary natural time today, in the
wee hours of 2013-11-03 local time.  Notice how the "timers" in the
story display their time in the silly "AM" notation used by Americans,
rather than the sane 24-hour notation used by the rest of the world.


> That would indicate that the tale takes place somewhere around the 80th =

> to 100th millennium. The rate of increase in the leap period during that ep=

> och and the apparently distant "Lost World" would also point to the "Timers=

> " having quite a bit of "mather" power in then to enable then to keep in sy=

> nc with astronomical cycles.


I doubt that the author put any thought along the lines of leap seconds
or hours or the like, just DST, so I don't think the time of the tale
taking place needs to be that far out.  But there is a different
problem in this tale along the lines you are thinking of:

The description of the various "sunblessings" seems to imply that one
can keep a device away from sunlight for a while (i.e., its solar-
recharged battery will discharge fully), then bring it out into the
sun, and "Then they worked various miracles."  If the solar-powered
"timers" went through periods of not being recharged, where would they
get their "True Time" from?  Surely in the world described by the
author there was no more operating WWVB...  And even if the "timers"
were *continuously* maintained in a good supply of sunlight for their
*entire* post-apocalypse life (so there was no nuclear winter then?),
just how much accuracy can one expect from what once were low-end
consumer cheap quartz oscillators in free-running operation for a few
centuries?  (The reference to Fin's uncle etc seems to suggest that a
century or two post-apocalypse is what the author had in mind.)


> He also has a lot more confidence in the survival of the human race

> than I have.


I personally find it far more amazing that the "mathers" and "timers"
(i.e., things that were originally built as cheap throw-away consumer
gear) can work at all (forget about correct time for the moment) a
century or two post-apocalypse, and not fail due to tin whiskers or
other bad solder joint failures caused by the RoHS idiocy...

SF