No, they would have been exceedingly logical and rational, and never done anything other than Standard Time, which would have seen local noon line up as close as possible with solar noon.
Because why call it “noon” if it’s more than a half-hour out?
The very first BattleTech novel, Decision at Thunder Rift, tried this.
It’s set on a planet in fairly close orbit of a red dwarf star, so its year lasts three local solar days, and the whole thing takes like four Earth weeks. There’s a whole section near the beginning of the book that explains it.
Most of the rest of the series uses the modern Gregorian calendar.
I mean Starfield, for all its many flaws, tracks local time for your current plant and location and universal time. Didn’t see why that wouldn’t be the standard. Anyone who only interacts locally only knows the one, but most people just always have two clocks that don’t match.
Starfield is an interactive video game, you can render the sun(s) in the sky, hang clocks on the walls, do all kinds of things with GUIs. And the player can look for the information they need at the moment.
Decision at Thunder Rift is a novel. It goes on and on about the orbit of this planet and its effect on the weather, and they still have to convert to days/weeks/months for the benefit of the reader. The very next book doesn’t bother; it’s a direct sequel to the first with the same author and main characters, and I don’t remember it even mentioning the local timekeeping system, other than maybe talking about “long summer evenings” or some such.
By the time you get to the Blood Of Kerensky trilogy every chapter starts with something like “Luthien City, Luthien, Pesht Military District, Darconis Combine. March 12, 3050.” They might occasionally mention “local winter” or something but seldom delve into how the local clocks and calendars work.
Also even though events take place light years apart, it doesn’t bother with stuff like relativity. It’s March 12 everywhere at once.
I’m not sure I understand what point you’re trying to make? Separate clocks like this are so complicated even the Battletech books stopped using them? It’s easier to do environmental storytelling in video games than it is in novels? Just looking for an excuse to talk about sci-fi conventions?
Well kinda looking for an excuse to talk about sci-fi conventions. I mean that’s the entire point of this community, right? to talk about Sci-Fi especially Star Trek?
But I think the broader point I’m trying to make is that Sci-Fi creators realized that creating exotic clocks and calendars isn’t worth it. It’s just a waste of the audiences and the authors time. “We interrupt this exciting action story about a daring dashing young robot tank pilot and his plucky band of mercenaries to bring you a ten page lecture on exochronology.”
Even in a series that tries to be as hard sci-fi as Battletech (no magic, no telepathy, no sentient aliens (okay there was that one time and it’s still technically canon but we don’t talk about that), no god-like aliens etc. everything is science, technology and physics) the authors kind of gave up bothering the audience with how the clocks work on every little planet, other than mentioning “long nights” or something. Star Trek doesn’t do it often either.
Well kinda looking for an excuse to talk about sci-fi conventions. I mean that’s the entire point of this community, right? to talk about Sci-Fi especially Star Trek?
Well why do you think I brought up Starfield?
I like the addition in Starfield, if for no other reason that it shows how unwieldy and difficult it is when it’s easy to implement. Stellaris has a standardized calendar with a 360 day year of 12 30-day months. I don’t think it’s an addition that makes a novel any better usually (they almost never mention toilets, either) but I do think they can add something to a game or even a movie as part of a set piece. I think the stories where it’s a plot detail are… Less engaging.
The usefulness of daylight saving very much depends on your latitude. In the winter in the north of Scotland you’d have children walking to school on the pitch black without daylight saving time.
I’ve heard that argument before, but really if it’s an issue, just change the school hours. I had to get up and go to school in the dark as a child and really, I was so sleepy the first few classes they were wasted on me anyways.
I live in Belgium (so South of Scotland) and with ST and a 8:30-15:30 schedule the sun has set by the time kids get to their first extracurricular activity (16:30).
As for getting to school, do not worry because kids still get there at night regardless and the sun rises just as the kids get forced inside the classroom underneath the neon lights.
The further North you go the more people pine for permanent DST because it’s our only chance at getting a bit of winter sunlight during our free time (the rush from bed to school/work doesn’t count IMO) and of not wasting summer sunlight at 4 am that is much better used for the 10 pm BBQ.
It’d be GRAND if we got rid of DST and all work/school institutions collectively decided to start an hour earlier in the summer instead. But that’s just DST with extra steps, and we know institutions are anything but flexible so it will never happen.
Permanent ST is my own personal hell. If that ever happens I genuinely think I will go freelance and become a hermit.
I recall reading that in the states the public (official) reasoning was for school children and farming but in reality it was commercial interests that actually linked for the change so there’d be more daylight for shopping after work hours
I regret to inform all of you that it is technically Daylight Saving Time and not Daylight Savings Time and now you must suffer with this information with me
Man i can’t wait to be insufferable in a whole new way! Rather than my suffering you have given me the power of pedantry. And i will use this power for evil
Even with the loss of an hour, it’s daylight until 9:30 pm here during the summer. I’m okay with losing an hour. What’s rough is that the sun goes down at 4pm in the winter, even with the gained hour.
It’s the other way around. The hour “gained” (shifted from morning to evening) in the evening is in the summer. Permanent DST would mean sundown at 5pm in the winter for you.
In all honesty i don’t mind daylight savings, since most of the clocks i have that i need to change the time manually are imprecise enough that by the time i need to change the clock they have shifted by a decent amount.
Tldr: for me it also acts as a remider to set my clocks in sync again since they tend to get out of whack after a while.
Daylight savings time practices have been linked to increases in deadly traffic accidents, workplace injuries, medical errors and overall mortality.
In 2018, researchers in Spain penned a letter that was published in the journal Epidemiology regarding a link between deadly car accidents and daylight savings shifts. After collecting data from capital cities in Spain between 1990 and 2014, the researchers found a 30% increase in fatal traffic accidents on the day clocks sprang forwards. On the day clocks fell backwards, they saw an increase of 16%.
[...]
One of the serious health concerns related to time shifts is acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack. Researchers in Italy wrote a 2018 review published in the journal Internal Emergency Medicine investigating daylight savings' potential effects on heart health. They reviewed seven existing studies from the United States and Europe looking at more than 80,000 cases of acute myocardial infarction. They found an increase, from 4% to 29%, in heart attacks after clocks sprang forwards.
Incidence of stroke may also increase after a clock shift. For a 2016 study published in the journal Sleep Medicine, researchers in Finland investigated the connection. They analysed more than 3,000 hospitalizations from 2004 to 2013 that occurred in the week following seasonal clock changes. They next compared those cases to a control group of 11,000 expected hospitalizations. The findings showed that hospitalizations for ischaemic stroke, the most common type, increased by 8% in the two days following a daylight savings shift. When looking at the whole week post-shift, the increase was 3%. The association was stronger for people assigned female at birth and those who were older.
All this evidence is against time shifts, not against daylight time. The click shifts are undeniably bad, but the evidence against permanent DST is weak.
This would be a Warhammer 40K thing.
On all ships of the Imperium, using complex mathematics and ancient tomes to achieve synchronisation across the galaxy and even inside the warp, the clocks are changed by one hour twice a year, in an elaborate ritual.
No one dares ask the reason behind it, but it must be done, to appease the machine god.
Floridian here. Wtf we finally do something right and vote to stay on DST year round and Congress won’t let it happen? It’s been YEARS that it’s been on the table with Congress. I will give them an excuse for not getting any work done on Hang Mike Pence day, but really this is getting a bit annoying.
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