Timeline Issues

[Peter Murray]

I started on a timeline by making notes of when things happened in the first two books. Since Deep Wizardry gives dates in 1985 for the days that the Book was left with the Eldest, and the day that Ed died*, it's not difficult to come up with dates for the actual events in those two books.

I put the notes I've got so far in my webspace if anyone wants to disagree. You can agree too, of course.

* If I was in the US now, it'd be the 15th of July, the anniversary of Ed's death. Just thought I'd say that.

[Birdhead]

*applauds* This is very neatly done. Congratulations.

[Nathan]

Nice job, Peter! It's very thorough and well laid-out.

I do feel obligated to mention, however, that, while Deep Wizardry is the only book to give the year it's set in explicitly, to my knowledge, Dilemma, Holiday and Wizards at War (and possibly Alone, I can't remember) * all give the Julian date of at least one event in the book, as I've commented on in the past (see, e.g., my post "Of Laser Disingenuators, Julian Dates and Color Variables" in "The Nitpickery"). The USNO Julian date converter gives a painless way to convert these Julian dates into Gregorian dates (and DD is kind enough to link to it off of YW.com). While you may know this and are just being very precise, some of your posts in "This is going to be the greatest book in the series!" (in the "Wizards at War" section of the forums) led me to believe otherwise.

If you don't know about these, I must warn you that you won't find any self-consistency with these dates and character ages, though, as the series appears to be set in the 'eternal present'. DD comments on this in the afterword to the 20th anniversary edition of SYWTBAW, and she kindly provided a [the?] pertinent extract (I haven't gotten a chance to read the afterword) in response to queries on similar timeline subjects in the thread "So we can actually discuss the book now (SPOILERS WITHIN)" in the "Wizard's Holiday" section of the forums:

"As of 2003, Nita is fourteen in her world, but it's taken twenty of our years for her to reach that age. I doubt she'd be overly concerned by this seeming paradox, assuming that she ever came to perceive herself as fiction (and in wizardry, stranger things have happened.). In Nita's world, as in mine, it's always now."

Nathan

* Yes, I know that I'm a bit inconsistent with my title abbreviations --don't make me quote Emerson at you...

[Peter Murray]

Well, the fact that Dairine gets younger between books already makes me suspect continuity may be a problem .

I'd forgotten about Julian dates - I decided the simplest way to do this was to go through doing it one book at a time, and haven't got to those books yet.

I have this vague idea of pushing the eternal present back to 1985 and just after, to start with, and then doing something more absurd when the list gets somewhere.

When I was trying to find the rumoured archived timeline thread, I saw the laser disingenuator thread, but didn't spot its relevance, so haven't read it yet.

[Birdhead]

and possibly Alone, I can't remember

The julian date is used during Nita's trip into Darryl's universe to try to find Kit through lucid dreaming. Unfortunately, and I appreciate I'm not entirely congnisant of the twists and turns of the Julian date system,* I don't think it gives enough information to actually tell the date: when Nita leaves "It's just past 303.3. You get until .55..."

Er, yeah. W00t for quoting, though.

*ahaha, in other words "I don't know what the heck it means at all, in any way, shape or form."**

**Nathan, you made me use a footnote. *hits* bad!

[Peter Murray]

I've updated my webpage with High Wizardry and the beginning of A Wizard Abroad. I was surprised to see how short a timespan HW covers - I thought it was more like a week.

Drastic adjustment of dates with blunt instruments and a shoehorn has been needed to get the timeline this far. I didn't think it was going to be easy, even if that's the impression I managed to give Nathan. It's interesting doing it, though.

I also pulled the calendars out into a separate file, on the grounds I need them for reference, but they just clutter up the timeline page.

[Evangelion999]

Really the entire time frame is thrown off since they have 90's technology in the books (like Kit's DVD player) while the series was originally set in the 80's, so really no timeline can be made unless you want to count months with no specific year attached to them.

[Kathy Li]

Just out of curiousity, Peter, are you thinking of working the Cat Wizards books into the timeline, too? (she said, with an evil cackle).

[Peter Murray]

Evangelion: I know. I sort of have a fiendish plan, but I can't do anything about it yet.

Kathy: Well, they're in my list of book titles in the timeline . Whether there's enough evidence to do it or not remains to be seen. Having some of the dates in the 19th century should complicate things no end.

I've decided I like A Wizard Abroad, it's being nice and cooperative so far. I started it on a reasonable-sounding July 26th, and what happens when I get up to the 31st? Aunt Annie announces that tomorrow will be August 1st. Ooh .

[talkingbeast]

Well, I just kind of assumed that the YW books were set in the same universe as Madeline L'Engle's...also the eternal present. It would fit if Charles Wallace was off on errantry, wouldn't it? Very nice work, Peter!

[Nathan]

Originally posted by Birdhead:
[The times for Nita's lucid dreaming outing in A Wizard Alone] "It's just past 303.3. You get until .55..."

Thanks for digging this up for me, Tui! You're also entirely correct that we can't get the date from this as it stands. However, it's possible to get the date quite easily with the addition of a very reasonable assumption: that the 'present' in a given book lies in the time during which DD was writing the book (which, at least for the recent books, has indeed been within the year of publication, congruent with Peter's statement on the timeline) --this assumption is borne out by the complete Julian dates in other books, as well as the date in DW, to a lesser extent. With this assumption (i.e., that the date lies in 2001/2002), we get full Julian dates of 2452303.3 and 2452303.55, corresponding to 2:12PM and 8:12PM EST, respectively, on Monday, January 29th, 2002. This seems reasonable (especially as PK mentions that Alone is set in January in her post "So we can actually discuss the book now? (SPOILERS WITHIN)" in the "Wizard's Holiday" section of the forums), though I don't remember whether Nita was sleeping during the day for her lucid dreaming excursion, so DD might have forgotten to change from GMT (i.e., UT) to EST before converting to Julian dates * (which she has been known to do --see the 'laser disingenuators' post).

**Nathan, you made me use a footnote. *hits* bad!

What's wrong with footnotes? *innocent expression*

Peter: If you want a somewhat more definite date than "early" for Dairine's extraction of the starsteel, I would suggest circa 600 million years (from the 'Big Bang' --subject to obvious readjustment with new data, of course), as recent observations (see this Sky & Telescope 'mini-article') indicate that galaxies started forming around then, if not sooner (and you'll get enough carbon and iron for a spearpoint out of a massive star pretty soon [astronomically speaking] after it enters the main sequence).

Nathan

* Note that the time of day isn't affected by the integer part of the Julian date, so this conclusion holds regardless of the validity of the previous assumption.

[Peter Murray]

I've made a note of that Julian date calculation for when I get to Alone, thanks.

I've added the "early" correction, changing "billion" to E9, as I assume you mean a US billion, not a UK one. E12 sounds rather long, though I'm out of touch with stuff like this.

[Nathan]

A US billion is still too long! I mistyped and didn't catch it on the first edit (and my second edit obviously occurred after you read my post) --it's supposed to be 600 million (i.e., 600E6) years from the 'Big Bang', which corresponds to 13.1E9 years ago (using the generally accepted age of the universe of 13.7 billion [US] years).

Sorry for the confusion,
Nathan

[Birdhead]

Monday, January 29th, 2002. This seems reasonable...

*nods* I agree. I'm not actually sure where PK got January from, but we know it was definitely after Christmas, while still cold enough t snow. That says January to me. (Well, actually it says July to me, but we all have to make these little adjustments from time to time...)

What's wrong with footnotes? *innocent expression*

Nothing, per se. You're just not supposed to use them in a forum post, is all. They're reserved for history projects and other such evils.

[Peter Murray]

Nathan: Oops. Fixed. And I just noticed I invalidated the whole concept by not updating the date I last changed the file - who's going to believe me if I can't even get that date right ?

Tui: I expect PK is just making one of these wild assumptions, to get January. Or possibly reading the word "January" on p16 of the paperback...

January was too new for any lengthening of days to be perceptible yet*

... but I'm just guessing there.



* of course, in the NZ edition, it may say July...