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(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Main.Microts 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Main.Microts, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license) |
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If an alien character doesn't use their own measurements, but instead uses Earth measurements in a jarring manner, they're talking in terms of [[Two of Your Earth Minutes]]. If these units are used across multiple worlds or civilizations, they are [[Standard Time Units]]. See also [[Fantastic Measurement System]] for other fictional units.
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
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** Many fans have been confused by the combination of the above and Moiraine's conversation with Nynaeve about when she began channelling, where she asks if Nynaeve experienced certain things in "a week or ten days." So apparently she meant [[You Are the Translated Foreign Word|"a week, i.e. ten days"]].
* In Steven Brust's ''[[Dragaera]]'' novels, a Dragaeran week is 5 days. Humans/Easterners still use seven-day weeks, and even fortnights (14 days), which Vlad (raised in Dragaera) thinks is a really weird period of time to have a name for because it is "...one day shorter than three weeks."
* Most of L.E. Modesitt's novels, [[Same Story, Different Names|even those in entirely different settings]], have "eightdays" instead of weeks and use "kays" for distance.
* [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]' ''[[Barsoom]]'' stories. Martian civilization used the following time units: 1 Xat = 200 tals, 50 xats = 1 zode, and 10 zodes = 1 Martian day. Mars has a day almost identical to Earth (24 hours 37 minutes), so 1 zode = 2 hours 28 minutes, 1 xat = 3 minutes and 1 tal = .9 second.
* ''[[Gor]]'' (based a lot on Barsoom) measures 80 Ihn (seconds) to the Ehn, 40 Ehn (minutes) to the Ahn, and 20 Ahn (hours) to the day.
* [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s books that take place in Valdemar call an hour a "candlemark". In her ''Obsidian Trilogy'', characters from a certain city reckon time in units of "bells", each of which is two hours.
** The whole "candlemark" thing comes from [[Truth in Television|a real-word form of clock from the medieval period]], which was simply a candle made in a length which would (theoretically) take X hours to burn down. The candle was striped in hour-long segments, so you could tell by looking at it how long it had been since you lit it. Obviously there was much potential for imprecision in the real world; in Valdemar they've got it down to a bit more of a science.
* The Race in [[Harry Turtledove]]'s ''[[
* The giant, moving [[Base On Wheels|city on rails]] in ''[[The Inverted World]]'' uses "miles" as a measure of time. Though initially confusing, this is eventually explained when it is revealed that the City has to move 1/10 of a mile per day in order to survive; thus, a character might say "a mile ago" to mean "ten days ago".
* In [[Isaac Asimov]]'s Robot City series (by Rob Chilson, William F. Wu, Arthur Byron Cover, Michael P. Kube-McDowell and Mike McQuay) the robots use normal time units, but since the days in the titular city are of a different length, the human heroes get metric watches dividing the day into decades and centades.
* Often used in the [[Star Trek Novel Verse]]. For example, 6 human months equals about 4 Vostigye ronds, and nearly 40 Talaxian niziks. A Romulan Veraku is about 63 Earth minutes, and a Siuren is roughly 50 seconds.
* At one point in the ''[[Dragonback]]'' series, Alison Kayna notices that the [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Valahguan]] "[[One
* A "week" on [[Discworld]] is eight days long. This could, potentially, have caused difficulties with the ''Discworld Diaries'' line of humorous datebooks, but the quandry was resolved by saving Octeday for amusing anecdotes and character sketches.
** It is also canonically established that a year (a full revolution of the Disc) is 800 days and has eight seasons. This is never respected after being established, so a linked system of “short years” of 400 days and 4 systems was retconned in. If you’re going forward along the turtle’s left side in summer in an odd short year, you’ll be going backwards on the right side in an even summer. To keep things simple, each short year has 13 months.
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