If a world was three times as large as Earth, how long would a day be?

[Worldwalker]

You can be as "original" as you like. There are plenty of people who are. There are not, however, plenty of people who read their books, because they read them and say "hey, this doesn't make sense."

The classic example is a mystery story. In your normal mystery, all of the clues are presented to the reader, or at least the detective is seen to acquire them, so that when the culprit is found, the reader says "I should have seen that all along!" Would you want to read a mystery where, after you've gone through a few hundred pages of the usual clue-searching, character-interviewing, and sneaking around, the detective who has been doing all this says "I was actually looking through the window when Mr. Boddy was killed, and the culprit was none of these people; the butler did it"? That would be a lousy book, because everything the author told you turned out to be meaningless in the last ten pages. You feel like you wasted your time -- because you did. The same is true of a fantasy story that doesn't make sense. If things can happen just because the author wants them that way, with no ramifications in the world (what does happen when that water turns around and goes the other way?), then nothing you know, or think you know, has any bearing on the story ... and nothing the author tells you does either, because he might change it on the next page. There's nothing solid to hold onto, nothing you can understand, and nothing that makes any sense. It's like trying to follow the stream of consciousness of someone on drugs: it might make for a good trip, but not a good book.

Let's take my water flowing upstream example. You think that would be a good idea. Okay, in our new fantasy world, water flows upstream. What keeps it in the streams? Water that flows downstream stays in its streambeds because they're the lowest path it can follow. Dig a hole, and it pours into the hole; that's lower. To this upstream-flowing water, the "hole" is everywhere above it -- the sky, for instance. What keeps the water from flying straight up? It clearly isn't being confined by gravity, or it would be flowing downstream, so it will act like a whole stream full of Danny Dunn's anti-gravity paint.

Maybe you don't care. Maybe you've never thought about the fact that water flows downstream because gravity makes it do that, and for it to do anything else, the laws of gravity would have to change, or the attributes of water would have to change, and not-downstream equals everywhere else. But most people do think of things like that. "Why doesn't it just fly everywhere?" is the obvious question. If you make water behave contrary to gravity, you've got steam in your stream.

So we'll call it "magic" and say that it acts just like water normally does, but it runs backwards on alternate Tuesdays, and because it's a BookCat novel, it doesn't have to make any sense. Okay, so our water is now running backwards today ... and that town that has required the local tannery to set up downstream now has a tannery spewing crud upstream instead. Phew! And there's that farmer who wants to pour a bucket of water for his horse ... how is the water even going to get out of the bucket, since it's flowing uphill today? If the author ignores this, the readers are going to wonder what's going on; the author has to address this weirdness. And, like Chekov's shotgun on the wall, it has to mean something.

Exactly how you see the only options as being total disregard of reality or "cancer, or nuclear catastrophe" just boggles my mind. It's entirely possible to write a book that isn't "gritty" but still makes sense, and many, many people do it every year. I buy their books.

Incidentally, long ago in a D&D game, I did have a small stream running backwards. It wasn't just window dressing. The characters, seeing this and knowing that it was nominally impossible, investigated how that stream happened to be doing something so uncharacteristic, met the student wizard responsible, and the whole next series of adventures stemmed from there. That wouldn't have worked in a world where facts are meaningless, as you advocate. Because water behaved like real-world water, except in this case, its actions meant something, and some very real people had a whole lot of fun finding out why (it was the student's term project) and how (a temporary time reversal), and then dealing with a whole mess connected to the school. Structure (including respect for facts) is a framework, not a straitjacket, and you can build things a lot bigger if you have a solid framework to hang them on. There is a reason there are no amoebas the size of elephants.

Would Dr. Who be any fun to watch if the Doctor could just pull out a big "I WIN" button and push it, and everything would be done for him? It would bore everyone to tears. It has, maybe not science exactly, but consistent principles behind things, and has done a moderately good job of sticking with them over the course of decades. Take that sonic screwdriver: it postulates force fields of some form (to do the actual unscrewing) controlled by a microprocessor system (to figure out what needs to be done). It can do pretty much anything you'd do with a screwdriver-like tool, and I suppose that would include a lockpick. But it can't shoot laser beams. It can't teleport its user to Mars. It can't turn into a whale. And viewers would complain if it did ... "so why didn't it shoot laser beams last week, when the Doctor needed something that did that?" And that's a TV show known for (at last for the last few Doctors) playing painfully fast and loose with reality. There is a reason, given the show's stated technology, why things in it could work.

If you just make stuff up, you don't have a story; you have a daydream. I have plenty of those of my own, and don't need to buy anyone else's.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by jehane

...
THe important thing here is that size is *not* the only factor determining mass. The density, which is determined by the composition of the planet, is a huge factor. Hence the differences between the rocky planets (inner 4) and the gas giants (outer 4).

Even within the group of rocky planets the impact of density shows. Mercury, which is rather dense, has about the same surface gravity as the distinctly larger Mars, which is less dense.

[Worldwalker]

I'm still not clear on what "three times as large as Earth" constitutes. Three times the diameter? Three times the volume? Three times the surface area? Three times the mass?

I still think the story could work with an Earth-sized world, which would do away with all the problems about mass, density, and gravity. When you think of how long it took Europeans to find the Americas, and how long travel between the continents was once they did, those dragons will have plenty of space. If necessary, oceans could be partially replaced by landmasses.

And, again, the best way to handle this is offstage. If the size of the world is never specified or mapped, it can be big enough without raising any difficult questions. If your dragon flies about the speed of a galloping horse, say 30 mph sustained (I figure it has to glide a lot), and a dragon's territory is as far as it can fly out and back from a central point in one day (12-hour days for easy bookkeeping), you could have dozens of dragons (37, to be exact) in Europe alone. If the dragon's territory is smaller than a 180 mile radius from that central lair, add more dragons accordingly.

Going back to our galloping horse, that has to follow roads or trails; the dragon can fly overhead. Dragons would be the fastest sentient beings around, and unless there is some fast way of transmitting information (crystal balls?) they can fly ahead of warnings about them. You don't need a huge world if you have dozens of smart, fast dragons in Europe, and expand as necessary (by about 15x) for the rest of the world.

JRRT's Middle-Earth was only one small part of the real world. He didn't feel a need to use the whole world, let alone create a larger one. Just say "there are dragons" and work out the necessary mechanics (how fast does information travel? what exactly do dragons eat? where do their hoards come from?) and let the world take care of itself.

And remember unreliable narrators and maps that say "here there be dragons." The characters probably have no idea how big the world really is or what it's like somewhere else. Just because the author knows there's an ocean here and a desert continent there and a whole lot of ice somewhere else doesn't mean the characters have to. They deal with what's relevant to their own lives, and what's happening in darkest Africa or far Cathay is of little concern.

[John Carroll]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I'm still not clear on what "three times as large as Earth" constitutes. Three times the diameter? Three times the volume? Three times the surface area? Three times the mass?

Three times the . . . surface area or diameter. I hadn't really decided. The truth is that it doesn't matter at the time. Twice the size or three times the size are arbitrary amounts that aren't necessary. I was just trying to figure out if size would directly effect the length of the days

I still think the story could work with an Earth-sized world

Yes, you are absolutely right. However I want mine to be bigger.

And, again, the best way to handle this is offstage.

It is definitely being handled offstage. At no point in the books does it say anything other than "The world is vast". It is done in a way to give the reader an impression of size, which, in the context of the book, does not lead the reader to question specifics of how or why.

As far as the rest goes, the characters know more about their own world than I do. They tell the reader what's relevant to the story.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

Three times the . . . surface area or diameter. I hadn't really decided.

If your sphere has 3x the diameter of the Earth, its surface is 9x the size of Earth's; its mass is 27x that of Earth (though, since you're also further out from the center, gravity is only 2.9x Earth's -- that is, a 150-pound person on Earth would weigh 435 pounds there). If it's 3x the surface area of Earth, on the other hand, it only needs to be 1.7x the diameter of Earth, and the mass would be much more manageable -- people could walk, at least. I'm not sure how well those dragons would fly, though!

I was just trying to figure out if size would directly effect the length of the days.

Which is why people have suggested you read up some on the topic.

Yes, you are absolutely right. However I want mine to be bigger.

Suggestion made over my shoulder: Stop being a piker; throw in some gravity generators and use a Dyson sphere! (I am not responsible for this suggestion)

As far as the rest goes, the characters know more about their own world than I do. They tell the reader what's relevant to the story.

The characters don't know jack about their world. They know about their immediate surroundings. You should be the one who knows about their world, and how it works. That's part of what the whole author thing is all about.

[John Carroll]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

The characters don't know jack about their world. They know about their immediate surroundings. You should be the one who knows about their world, and how it works. That's part of what the whole author thing is all about.

Interestingly enough, the characters know more than I do. They've lived there all their lives and I'm just a visitor telling a story about the moments of their lives. I honestly don't even know how things are going to end. It's all very exciting.

They are also vastly more interesting than me.

Thank you very much about the note about the surface area. I will make the surface area approx. twice as large as Earth, but only for my own knowledge. That will make things reasonable I believe.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

Interestingly enough, the characters know more than I do. They've lived there all their lives and I'm just a visitor telling a story about the moments of their lives.

Answer the following without looking them up anywhere:

What is the diameter of the Earth?
What is the mass of the Earth?
What percentage of the Earth's landmass is your continent of residence?
What percentage of the Earth's landmass is Antarctica?
How far from the Earth is the Sun?
How far from the Earth is the Moon?
And some trivia:
What is the approximate location (latitude and longitude are best, but even "about 80% of the way north from X" would be acceptable) of the following:
...the homeland of the Tswana?
...the homeland of the Munduruku?
...the homeland of the Khanti?
...the former location of Qashliq?
...the location of Timbuktu?
...the location of La Muy Noble y Leal Ciudad de Nuestra Señora Santa María de la Asunción?
...the location of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula?
...the capital of the smallest (by population) state/province/etc. in your country?
What is the capital of Turkmenistan (no, it's not Turkmenbashi-anything)?
What is the capital of Yemen?
What is the capital of Malta?
In what regions or countries can the following animals be found:
...the echidna (spiny ant-eater)
...the emerald tree boa?
...the green tree python?
...the tuatara?
...the muntjac?
...the addax?
What location is famous for the worst weather in the US?
What European country has the most miles of railroad track?
What is the per-capita GDP of Mali?

No, I don't expect you to know most of those; hell, I had to look up a few, and I'm the one writing them. But your average medieval peasant will know exactly zero of them. He doesn't know much about his world. He may know a lot about the particular part of the world he lives in, and how the things he deals with on a daily basis work, but that's all he knows.

Few people realize how much more the educated person of 2010 knows than his predecessors. People today have access to information that our ancestors could only dream about. Looking around me, I can see thousands of books. Prior to the printing press, dozens of books constituted an astoundingly large library, within the reach only of institutions (mostly monasteries) or very wealthy individuals. About half of my books are filled with knowledge -- they're references of some type. And that's just touching the surface of what I can find out because this computer in front of me extends my mind to hitherto undreamed-of lengths. I know more about ancient Rome than a scholar in the Renaissance would, despite only a dilettante's interest, because so much more is available and accessible. I don't spend my days in subsistence agriculture (and dodging dragons) either, and I have artificial light, which together give me the leisure time to read those books.

An ordinary person from your world is going to know about what he does to make a living, and he's going to know a fair bit about his immediate environment ... places within walking distance of home. But he couldn't answer those questions about his world. He doesn't know the equation for the volume of a sphere or know what tidally locked rotation is.

You do.

You know how the world works. You know where the countries are, and what's across the ocean, and what kind of people live over there. You know what kind of geography is present, where the major mineral deposits are, how much a dragon needs to eat, and all the rest. Or you should; if you don't, you'd better figure it out before you realize your story is going to require a mountain here and you've written about people all around there who have never seen anything but plains.

It's not a real world. They're not real people. You're not visiting a place that exists. They're your creation, and you owe it to your readers to know everything that might be relevant about that world, and to create it to fulfill the readers' expectations and desires. That includes knowing a whole heck of a lot more about that world than anyone who lives there possibly could.

[John Carroll]

I honestly don't know the answers to any of those questions either for this world or theirs and I'm okay with that.

First of all, I want you to know that while I may seem obstinate, it's not my intention to upset you. My mind simply works in vastly different ways than yours. I respect your position greatly.

Here's the thing. I care about the science of my world only to the degree that it does not appear completely silly to the reader, and believe I have succeeded for the most part.

As far as the rest, the characters really do know more than I. I am merely a figment of their imagination with the golden opportunity to narrate their extraordinary adventure.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

As far as the rest, the characters really do know more than I. I am merely a figment of their imagination with the golden opportunity to narrate their extraordinary adventure.

No.

They are figments of your imagination.

When you forget that -- when you blur the line between fantasy and reality -- then you're also blurring the line between writing and daydreaming.

[BookCat]

WW, please don't insult my intelligence. I used to be an avid reader of whodunnit novels and hated the character who appeared in the final scene and turned out to be the culprit. I'm also aware of the "if there's a gun in scene one it should have gone off by act three" (paraphrased), rule. Maybe it's out of bullets!
When reading novels or watching films there's a degree of suspension of disbelief, where the viewer or reader enters a state of dreaming, not criticism. Critical reading is left to second run throughs. My degree was in Literature and, yes, we pulled books to pieces in relation to their themes, characters, symbolism, etc etc. But this wasn't CREATION.

Taking the example of the water running upstream - please don't insult my intellect with such a basic explanation of FACTS - a fantasy author could easily explain this, if you feel an explanation essential, by saying that, regarding h20 (imagine they're subscript) gravity behaves in a way which draws bodies of water, as opposed to droplets, upstream, requiring the people on that planet to go to mountains for water supplies, or to devise a system which forces water from reservoirs in the mountains downwards through a series of pressurized pipes.
Once thinking outside of the box begins, it presents all kinds of interesting ways to solve various issues, giving rise to more fascinating plot. Stay inside the box and that's what you'll write: just what has been written before you by better authors.

To John Carroll, just look at how much controversy your yet to be written book has generated. Go with your big world; readers won't stop arguing about it and in the process create more interest in the book. You'll be the next er.. Dan Brown

[John Carroll]

Originally Posted by BookCat

To John Carroll, just look at how much controversy your yet to be written book has generated. Go with your big world; readers won't stop arguing about it and in the process create more interest in the book. You'll be the next er.. Dan Brown

Actually, the first book (along with a couple of short stories) is published and the second one is written and in the editing process.

Originally Posted by WorldWalker;

No.

They are figments of your imagination.

When you forget that -- when you blur the line between fantasy and reality -- then you're also blurring the line between writing and daydreaming.

As far as reality goes, I'm totally in touch with it. The emo bunnies have assured me that I'm totally sane.

I also believe that writing is the physical expression of daydreaming.

[BookCat]

Quote:
Originally Posted by WorldWalker;
No.

They are figments of your imagination.

When you forget that -- when you blur the line between fantasy and reality -- then you're also blurring the line between writing and daydreaming.

As far as reality goes, I'm totally in touch with it. The emo bunnies have assured me that I'm totally sane.

[John Carroll]

Emo bunny smilies! How did I miss those?! Yay! Thank you.

[Worldwalker]

I did not insult your intelligence. I replied to your post. I don't know what your intelligence is, only the words you write. Also, I'm speaking to many people here -- on the average, 90% of MR users aren't logged in, and since it has perpetual login (and annoying ads), it stands to reason that most of those aren't registered -- so I have to address everyone, not just one person. If I was only talking to one person, I'd send a PM.

Originally Posted by BookCat

Taking the example of the water running upstream - please don't insult my intellect with such a basic explanation of FACTS - a fantasy author could easily explain this, if you feel an explanation essential, by saying that, regarding h20 (imagine they're subscript) gravity behaves in a way which draws bodies of water, as opposed to droplets, upstream, requiring the people on that planet to go to mountains for water supplies, or to devise a system which forces water from reservoirs in the mountains downwards through a series of pressurized pipes.

So gravity works in reverse for bodies of water. How large do those bodies of water have to be? Rivers, after all, are merely the convergence of numerous smaller streams. If the bodies of water run backwards, with seas pumping their water into rivers (what happens to the salt?), rivers flowing into streams, streams into trickles, etc., does it go all the way back to the original seeps, where water slowly oozes out of the soil? If not, what happens when the down-flowing water hits the up-flowing water? If so, what happens with things that contain large amounts of water -- humans, for instance? What about buckets of water: there's certainly more water in a bucket than there is in a little trickle feeding into what will some day become a river. If that bucket of water counts as a body of water, shouldn't all the water conform to this gravity reversal and shoot straight up into the air? For that matter, why do bodies of water stay in their beds? Shouldn't a whole river just go airborne? Why should it stick to the ground and flow backwards instead of either following the normal law of gravity or the reversed law of gravity? Water flows downhill because that's what gravity makes it do, and water stays in its beds because that's what gravity makes it do. If gravity doesn't work on water, it's going to just take off -- not obey the law of gravity in one aspect (flowing along the ground) but not another (not flowing downhill).

Further, imagine a river which flows past a dry watercourse -- a stream channel that is eligible to hold water, but only drains its watershed, and hence fills up with water, during the annual rains. They're common in the western parts of the US, for example. If the water is flowing backwards, how is it going to know that it shouldn't flow into that desert watercourse at this time of year, but it should flow into it at some other (rainy) season? In its current form, the whole thing is self-working: when there's rain, the dry watercourse fills up, and the water flows into the river; when there isn't any rain, it doesn't. Nothing has to be figured out, it just follows the natural laws and works automatically. But with our backwards water, somehow it would have to know when it should be going one way and when it should be going the other, in a way that has more in common with a farmer opening and closing irrigation gates than with a river just flowing.

Why would the people in that place need to go to the mountains for water? If you have a town by a river that, with normal water, flows north to south, with your reverse water it would flow south to north. If you're going to get into the river taking off and heading for the sky, or being full of salt because it's emptying the ocean, that starts getting into the difficulties I've already described, not any specific to water just flowing uphill instead of down. And they'd only need one pump for the town -- just to pump the water down into the underground cistern it flowed (backwards) out of, the equivalent of an elevated water tank where water flows normally. This being, of course, in a town with running water; in your typical medieval town, I'm not sure how it would work where the water would come flying out of wells, and you'd have to catch it in covered buckets on its way by.

And then there's rain. That, I take it from the description, would fall down. What happens at the sources of rivers, then, where those rivers are pumping water from the seas and water is falling from the sky as well? And what do the resulting floods do -- which way do they go?

How do droughts work? With ordinary water, if there's no water falling in a watershed (i.e., there's a drought there) it gets dry, but areas downstream of it can be fed by other watersheds. The Atlantic Ocean hasn't dried up yet because of the Sahara Desert. But what happens when the ocean is endlessly pumping out water into a drought-stricken area? Does the ocean eventually dry up trying to keep it wet? Does it stop before that? How does it know?

The point I'm trying to make is that things are interrelated. Water's flowing-downhill nature isn't somehow separate from its staying-in-streams nature or its staying-in-buckets nature. If you change it, everything to do with water changes.

Of course you can write a story where the laws of physics are strange, different, or just plain whacked. David Brin, among others, has pulled it off brilliantly. But you can't do it without working out every ramification of your changes, because when things work differently ... well, things work differently. All of them. That's why I commented earlier about the fools who built the game Shadowbane and expected that players would conform to medieval models because of their medieval surroundings, rather than using their renamed phasers, transporters, telepathy, and so on, to the best effect. People don't conform to their environment; people use it, and if you don't foresee the results of that, you'll get what Wolfpack had: a bunch of Star Trek outlaws sacking a medieval world.

To John Carroll, just look at how much controversy your yet to be written book has generated. Go with your big world; readers won't stop arguing about it and in the process create more interest in the book. You'll be the next er.. Dan Brown

Controversy is not quality. Take -- since I'm currently ranting about games -- the Star Wars online game, and its "improvements", called SW:NGE. As a short version for those who don't know what I'm talking about, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) made drastic changes to a fairly popular game, leading to a loss of the overwhelming majority of the paying customers; the customer count never recovered. SW:NGE generated quite possibly the largest controversy the gaming community has ever seen, with the players saying "SOE stinks" and SOE defending their "enhancements". People still talk about it to this day. Heck, I've never played it, and never had any interest in playing it, and I can give you a fairly detailed rundown on what happened (PM if you care) just from what I've read on news sites and from player statements. It led to a huge amount of buzz ... and sales plummeted.

A million people saying "that game stinks" will not produce a hundred times the sales of ten thousand people saying "that game rocks." SOE had to learn that the hard way. I don't want John to have to do the same.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by John Carroll

Interestingly enough, the characters know more than I do. They've lived there all their lives and I'm just a visitor telling a story about the moments of their lives. I honestly don't even know how things are going to end. It's all very exciting.

You, the author, don't know how it's going to end? How do you know which clues to drop to the readers along the way? How do you keep on track with the story? Have you plotted it out at all?

I don't want to sound like a Debbie Downer, but it's pretty much a guaranteed let-down when I read books that haven't been properly plotted. I want to see a story that is so seamless that it's clear the author wasn't outlining as he went.