The Sword and Laser discussion
Units of Measure in Fantasy
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Mike
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Dec 08, 2011 03:30PM
Fantasy authors often make up their own units of measure for their worlds, or use units that have fallen out of current use (leagues, stones, etc.). What do you think of this practice? Would it seem weird to read a fantasy novel that used kilograms and kilometers? What about hours and minutes? Are miles better than kilometers? Why (not)?
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HAHA. I've often had this thought.Like when you're reading a book set in the middle ages and they say to meet at 4 o'clock, as if everybody wears a watch.
It seems weird to me, but I think I'd be even more confused/out of the story if they used a made-up unit of measure that I had to try to figure out how it related to things I know.
I don't mind made up units as long as they are not vital to the story. If I need to know then use something I can understand. When I come across 'it was 20 stones high' I gloss over it and assume it doesn't matter.
Everitt wrote: "As for words or neologisms, I'm fine as long as the author didn't try to change the phonology of the English language. That's one of the main reason's I'll stop reading a book. Abuse of vowels seems especially prevalent in fantasy, which is probably why I've not read much of it."Why does the author need to stick to English phonology? As long as all the words from a single culture have a consistent phonology, I see no reason why a made up country can't be called Tsutladanoi.
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In some cases the structure of the world may necessitate made up systems. For example, Alien worlds wouldn't have time periods that mirrored our Earth based time measurements.
As far as which system is best. I find that the Imperial System works best for Fantasy and the Metric System works best for Sci-Fi.
I would find metric measurements in historical fantasy out of place and I find Imperial measurements in a futuristic setting just doesn't seem right.
The weight unit of a stone is still in current use and is a precise weight (It is 14 pounds).
A lot of older Australian still use Imperial measurements instead of/ or as well as the metric system.
We rarely used the American standard of referring to our weight in pounds only.
Someone who is 200 pounds here would have (and some still do) referred to their weight in Imperial units as 14 Stone 4 pounds.
I don't worry too much about the phonology of made up worlds. English is such a bastardised language that certain groups of letters can have multiple pronunciations.
-ough has at least 10 different pronunciations, more if you include place names and surnames.
There isn't even one single set of rules for English spelling and pronunciation.
In English speaking countries we each spell and pronounce certain words differently.
I use gaol, catalogue, draught, programme and cheque.
You may use jail, catalog, draft, program and check.
I pronounce Lieutenant as lef-tenant instead of loo-tenant.
Our language has been shaped and influenced by the languages of the invaders of Britain (which were in turn shaped by earlier languages), changes over time and colloquial use.
We cannot expect a fantasy or alien world to have had the same influences.
Sort of like the idea of using "555" in phone numbers in movies, made-up measurements immediately take me out of the story. I often wonder how necessary it is to give precise measurements when telling a story. I would also argue it's bad writing.For example, saying, "The ship was 50 meters wide." or "The castle was 100 feet tall." takes away the opportunity for the author to describe how large the ship appears to the character, or how imposing the castle seems. So for example, "The ship seemed larger than the moon."
A similar example was used in this week's episode of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, to cite my sources.
So, generally, yes, it pulls me out of the story, whether it's reality-based or fantasy-based units of measurement. I much prefer it to be descriptive than quantitative.
We actually use stones and pounds for weight measurement in the UK if you didn't know. There are 14 pounds in a stone. The pound is the same as the American pound. It's only ever used for human weight the same way feet and inches are.Interesting and irrelevant tidbit :D
It has never really bothered me. Different times, trades, and cultures have differing ways to measure distance, time, area, mass, and weight - why should a culture in a far flung galaxy or time be any different? What is a nautical mile, a bushel or a peck, an acre or a rod, etc. They are artificial constructs placed on the physical world to describe them, no different than a name for an animal, place, or object. I do agree that when these "constructs" become difficult or pull you out of a story, they do not project the story forward, but pull the reader out of the story.
terpkristin wrote: "Like when you're reading a book set in the middle ages and they say to meet at 4 o'clock, as if everybody wears a watch."I grew up in a small town in England and could tell the time without a watch. That's what church bells are for :)
There's a logic to the different chimes a grandfather clock makes, especially the ones that chime every quarter hour. The chimes are subtly different.
Today, in most of Europe if you order a pound of something, like cheese or coffee, you will get half a kilogram (500g).
Made up distances don't bother me any more than made up money. I don't usually care how many coppers are in a silver, just the relative values.It would seem weird to me to read a fantasy with meters. As well as a fantasy that used dollars. Those would be anachronisms if they are set in medieval society.
Looking it up, dollars were around in the 17th century and meters in the 18th.
Dollars and meters are somewhat different. A dollar is a purely abstract measure of value, so even if you use the word "dollar" in your fantasy world it has to refer to a different entity than "dollar" does in the U.S. It won't tell your reader much to write, "The dagger cost Siri five dollars" unless you also tell the reader much more about your world's economy, to the extent that you could use any other word than dollar without any loss of meaning. However, "kilometer" in your fantasy world can refer to the exact same thing as it does in our world: a certain distance. The advantage of using "kilometer" rather than "turn" (some made up unit) is that the reader actually has an idea of how far it is. So if you write, "They managed to hike through 25 kilometers of rough marshland that day," the reader has an idea of how far that is, and if the reader has done some hiking themselves will understand that that really is a long way to hike through marshland in a day.
Doing a little research, it looks like Tolkien used "miles" quite often along with "leagues" (which it turns out is 3 miles), but also uses "lar", which is a Númenórean league and slightly shorter than 3 miles.
Finally, I don't get the anachronistic worry. For one thing, it's a fantasy world, not historical fiction. For another, measurements are only technology in a very abstract sense. It's not like having a firearm in a world of bows and arrows. "Meter" seems no more anachronistic than characters that speak in modern English. In theory it's all a "translation" from whatever language your characters are "really" speaking anyways.
I have to admit, encountering miles, kilometers,feet, inches, or any other real world measure will probably pull me out of a story. When I write, I use measurements like hands or body lengths, but avoid them altogether when I can.
In the last show Tom said that in fantasy he likes imperial measurement better than metrics because they are older than metrics. I think this poses more of a problem in countries were metrics are a newer unite and has only really come into use within the last generation or two.I live in Denmark, where foot and inches was banned from use in 1912 - it became illegal to use inches to measure wood - a law that is by the way still on the books.
I read a LOT of books in English and I always have to convert everything into metrics in my head anyway, so I personally do not care if they use a made-up unite or imperial measurements - both are strange to me and I have to convert them in my head.
So... what I am trying to say is that the unit you are most familiar with sound more modern to you. In France they have used metrics since 1799 - so it would hardly seem modern to them. In Denmark we also got standardized unites of measurement around that time - which had a huge impact on commerce. So if you want it to sound really medieval - you would want to use a non-standardized system of measurement both for weights, lengths and time. In the olden days an hour had different lengths during the day and during the year. A night time hour was not as a day time hour and a winter hour not the same as a summer hour. Talk about unit-confusion then.
I would personally use the unite of measurement that I normally use if I were to write a sci-fic or a fantasy novel - because that would be how I thought about it and most likely how my reader would think about it as well.
Sorry for the wall of text - I will shut up now.
I was researching this topic on Google and this page was one of the top search results. :)Here's what I decided for my novel: Even though I am American, I will be using the metric system. My fantasy world has many nature-centric elements, but its people are advanced. They may walk two kilometers to get somewhere, without a second thought, but they could develop transportation if they felt motivated to do so. They like the outside (even worship it), so they don't.
Feet and yards seem a bit arbitrary to me, and I'm not convinced that my fantasy world would have come to that system of measurement away from this world that we live in. The metric system, on the other hand, is said to based on the speed of light in a vacuum. That's a good deal less arbitrary, so I feel better suggesting that the people in my world got there on their on.
But of course, every fantasy world is different. A less technologically advanced people may not be able to measure so precisely. But I'd rather read about measurements I can understand, even if it seems a bit of an anachronism. (The meeting at 4 o'clock example may be a bit too much for me though, in many cases.)
I don't think the metric system is any less arbitrary in its basic units than the imperial system. While the meter may be defined in terms of the speed of light, there is nothing about the speed of light that determines how long a meter should be. Someone simply took the length of a meter, figured out how long it would take light to travel that far, and then redefined the length of a meter in terms of the speed of light. As far as I can see there are two reasons you might use metric rather than imperial to convey something about your world. First, imperial units are human-centric: they are based off things like the length of a body part, or a person's walking speed. Metric units are based of the natural world -- the size of the Earth or the mass of water. Metric thus has a more objective connotation. Second, the metric system is based on multiples of ten, so it is mathematically more tractable, and thus feels more rational. It would also make your world stand out more---as someone above mentioned, most fantasy uses imperial units if they use real world units at all, so it's something your readers would probably notice.
In terms of writing, I think metric tends to feel more cold and scientific rather than natural. While we currently define it using the speed of light, it is only because we now have more precise means of measuring length. As Mike mentions, it was not the original idea behind the meter. A cursory Wikipedia search shows it was based on the distance from the equator to the North Pole. This technically requires your story to take place on our planet. There are also arguments over whether a base 10 system is natural or better (we tend to do it because we have 10 fingers).Neither system really "makes sense" in a completely fictional universe, so really whatever you prefer should fit.
I personally enjoy when fantasy worlds use fictional systems that have obvious correlations to either real system. The real goal (I think) is to convey distance to the reader without pulling them from the universe.
I prefer books where the unit of measure is in gnomics. I myself am 4.2 gnomes tall and weigh in at just over three thousand kidney stone. When it comes to distance, I am a big fan of the potty break system. As an example I recently set off in search of some mystical berries and three pee's and a crap later (14.6 miles on foot), they were mine.
I think not being pulled out of the story is the most important part, and new words are fine as long as they don't need an explanation outside of context. I do love it when writers include science fiction elements with a strong basis in todays technology, only made better in fiction.
Ryan wrote: "I prefer books where the unit of measure is in gnomics. I myself am 4.2 gnomes tall and weigh in at just over three thousand kidney stone. When it comes to distance, I am a big fan of the potty b..."Isn't this 2 systems of distance (gnomes and potty breaks)? Does this system subscribe to the metric prefixes? I like to think there's a Gigagnome out there somewhere...
I would like to see a "Giganome" before I die.
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Isn't that just.... Us?
