Map of the Verse discussion
POSTED BY: jewelstaitefan
UPDATED: Tuesday, April 30, 2024 08:33
VIEWED: 49136
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Jewlstaitefan wrote:
>"Thanks for your reply. I was hoping for some more from a participaqnt such as you. Can you help clarify which of the perceived discrepancies are actually not, which were considered and accepted as not-so-important, and which were not considered?
No. :-) Sorry, I have no idea without going back through 2 years of emails, comparing all the info with the Serenity RPG, all the epsisodes and the BDM, the white paper, everything posted here... etc 'Aint happening!
>Do you know where or when the white paper is available, for purchase or perusal?
Again, no, not yet. The paper as such is more or less done (this I can tell you is a fan produced item by Chris Boudrier (sp?), supported by QMX) but I have not heard when it will be available. It should be a free PDF in it's final form that was planned to be available from the QMX website. I imagine there may be some licencing issues holding this up, but as I said, I have not heard. An NDA and common courtesy prevents me from making my copy available.
>Can you explain the apparent 2 different meassuring meathods for the 2 scales of map?
No.
>One seems to convert to one set of Au measurements, the other about 2-3 times as many Au, and the distances are not of uniform disparity from one system to another. Is there a reason for this?
No idea.
>Was the ringed world in background of The Train Job teaser (while leaving atmo) supposed to be Baylix, or New Canaan, or another world not shown as ringed on The Map of the Verse?
Wibble.
>Thanks in advance for your further help. We do indeed want to maximize our enjoyment of this shiny product.
Can't we just like it? :-)
Nick
(The Signal: www.serenityfirefly.com)
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Quote:
Originally posted by Lemming:
Jewlstaitefan wrote:
>Do you know where or when the white paper is available, for purchase or perusal?
Again, no, not yet. The paper as such is more or less done (this I can tell you is a fan produced item by Chris Boudrier (sp?), supported by QMX) but I have not heard when it will be available. It should be a free PDF in it's final form that was planned to be available from the QMX website. I imagine there may be some licencing issues holding this up, but as I said, I have not heard. An NDA and common courtesy prevents me from making my copy available.
Thanks for letting us know it is not yet available. Hopefully you will be able to post a linky when it becomes available.
Quote:
>Was the ringed world in background of The Train Job teaser (while leaving atmo) supposed to be Baylix, or New Canaan, or another world not shown as ringed on The Map of the Verse?
Wibble.
???? Wibble??
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Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:Quote:
Originally posted by Lemming:
Jewlstaitefan wrote:
>Do you know where or when the white paper is available, for purchase or perusal?
Again, no, not yet. The paper as such is more or less done (this I can tell you is a fan produced item by Chris Boudrier (sp?), supported by QMX) but I have not heard when it will be available. It should be a free PDF in it's final form that was planned to be available from the QMX website. I imagine there may be some licencing issues holding this up, but as I said, I have not heard. An NDA and common courtesy prevents me from making my copy available.
Thanks for letting us know it is not yet available. Hopefully you will be able to post a linky when it becomes available.Quote:
>Was the ringed world in background of The Train Job teaser (while leaving atmo) supposed to be Baylix, or New Canaan, or another world not shown as ringed on The Map of the Verse?
Wibble.
???? Wibble??
Wibble.
As in "omigodthatstoomuchformybraintocopewithwibblewibblewibble...."
:-)
The reference is from Blackadder Goes Forth, where the accepted method of being invaliaded out of the army by reasons of insanity, as a ruse to avoid certain death on the western front, was to put your underpants on your head, stick 2 pencils up your nose and to go "Wibble" in response to any inquiry.
Well, you asked :-)
Nick
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Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
hey, thanks for reminding me about the acceleration/deccelration. I keep thinking about the atmo travel rules.
but there would be a max speed, tho - can't really exceed the speed of light, can we?
No, but you can keep accelerating forever, getting ever closer to c without ever reaching it. The speed of light in a vaccuum is a 'speed limit' in so much as you can never reach or exceed it, but fuel and propellant willing you can actually accelerate indefinately, so you'll never reach a maximum speed.
Also remember that star systems are dynamic, traveling between planet A and Planet B might take three days today, but next month it could be three weeks.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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Obviously there are differences in distances during the orbital cycles. But when 2 systems are never closer than 100Au to each other, you can't just suddenly say you went from one to the other in the time it takes to travel 5Au. Some distances have a very narrow range of value, like Red Sun and Georgia System, and 2 worlds in the same system, particularly when one is the first orbit around the sun (like Ezra or Jiangyin). Others have widely varying distance values, such as Kalidasa and Blue Sun, which can be as far apart as can be in this verse, but several times per orbit come closer to each other than anything else they proximate (like in BDM).
Quote:
Originally posted by Lemming:Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:Quote:
Originally posted by Lemming:Quote:
>Was the ringed world...
Wibble.
???? Wibble??
Wibble.
As in "omigodthatstoomuchformybraintocopewithwibblewibblewibble...."
Well, you asked :-)
Nick
Yes I did. Could not find a world listed on Map ofnthe Verse named Wibble, not even without rings.
I don't understand the overload problem, tho.
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Don't get me wrong, I appreciate deep geeking as much as the next fan (hence involvement at the latter stages of the Map project) it's just that trying to rationalise every scene where a pretty picture bacground suggested some astronomical fact (which at that point would in no way have been worked out in *anyones* mind or on paper) is a bit much for the time of day you posted :-)
So, "wibble" :-)
Most fantasy universes evolve. Writers rarely start at basic fundamentals of phsics and work up...I'm reminded of Carl Sagan's lovely quote which was something like "To bake an apple pie, first, create The Universe..." It doesn't work like that. Writers who do, are rarely good writers. Story first IMO.
So to expect a background artist, working on a hastily written second pilot to even be thinking about a cosmology that didn't even exist yet, in someone elses mind....is stretching it a bit far even for me :-)
Fanwank it all you like (thats the fun bit after all, no argument there) but there's almost no way anyone could give a definitive answer that fitted both what was seen on screen in 2002 and with a licenced product years later that is an admitted compromise on a number of fronts and is based around something from a seperate (related, but seperate) project anyway.
Nick
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OH.
I would have thought that the references in the shows and scripts would have been the basis for the locations and applied names of the different worlds.
I did not realize this product was not intended to reflect what was in the show & film.
The discussion can still find and reveal discrepancies, we'll just have gobs more of them.
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Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
OH.
I would have thought that the references in the shows and scripts would have been the basis for the locations and applied names of the different worlds.
I did not realize this product was not intended to reflect what was in the show & film.
The discussion can still find and reveal discrepancies, we'll just have gobs more of them.
Well of course it was intended to reflect what was in the show and the film. Wouldn't have been much point otherwise! :-)
Indeed a lot of world positions were rearranged after the initial plans, precisely in order to take account of this. My point is, that it is impossible to take into account *every* single visual or script reference and make it work in a consistent construct, because there *was* no consistent construct at the point of writing/filming of Firefly. It looked good, so they used it, never mind that it might be contradicetd later in the series or in the (at the time) unmade film. (Which is why I balked at trying to go back and unravel the unravelable for that particular example)
In this case, Serenity canon trumps Firefly canon (although that was accomodated as much as possible and in the vast majority of cases, I believe that it is a reasonable fit) because a)it was more thought out and b) Universal is the one granting the *Serenity* tie in license, not a Firefly tie in license (which would have been Fox)
The Map is an example of "as close as we can get it at the moment" I'm not disputing for a minute that there are things that could have been improved or that given double the budget and more time would have made it even better, but you could spend your whole life trying to fit everything into an internally consistent and logical framework. (Which wasn't there in the first place)
The Verse does of course have a believability and solidity to it that is very appealing, but the truth of it is that this is more to do with the characters and stories. The larger physical appearance of the place is mostly window dressing. The Map is an attempt to get around that inconvenient fact, but there will always be inconsistencies no matter what you do.
Understand that I'm not trying to discourage pulling apart the framework and kicking it to see where the holes are. Fans have those sort of brains and it's part of the fun :-) But there comes a point where I at least have to just shrug my shoulders about a particular point and let it go. It doesn't spoil my enjoyment of a beautiful thing as I've already suspended my disbelief and bought into the whole idea.
Nick
(The Signal: www.serenityfirefly.com)
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Ok, after some delays (by me), onward to things on the Map.
Regarding the 2 measuring systems for the 2 versions of maps.
In the upper right, 51mm=100Au, so each 1mm is about 2Au.
In the rest of the Map, the scale is stated to be 1inch = approx 5.88Au.
Comparing the same orbital size from one scale to the other reveals discrepancies.
For example, the small version shows Lux having an orbital radius of about 15.3mm, or 30.6Au and on the larger version Lux measures an orbital radius of 6 17/32, or 38.4Au. This is a difference with a factor of 1.24 (larger version represents more Au for this orbit than the small version).
Likewise, in Kalidasa System, Heaven shows about 1.7mm radius on the small version, for about 3.4Au, and on the large version is shown with 1 inch radius for about 5.88Au. This is a difference with a factor of 1.73.
For the Core, the factor of difference seems to be about 1.25.
For the Georgia System, the factor of difference seems to be about 1.6.
For the Red Sun, the factor seems to be vary, from about 1.5-1.7 near the Sun to about 1.25 at Jubilee and 1.1 for Himinbjorg and Heinlein Protostars.
For the Kalidasa System, the factor seems to vary from about 1.5-1.9 for the mid and inner worlds to about 1.2 for the outer worlds.
For the Blue Sun, the factor seems to range from about 1.0 to about 0.7 (meaning the large map shows less Au orbital radius than the small map).
For the orbital radius of Georgia and Red Sun from White Sun, the 11 1/2 inches equates to about 68Au, which is the defined distance, and is the same as the smaller map (34mm)
What might be the cause of these discrepancies? I don't know. Some of the issue may be the use of perspective in the large map. The Blue Sun is shown in far perspective, so maybe that is why it has the only factor less than 1. But then the Kalidasa is shown in foreground, so it's factor should then be much greater than the other factors, but it's about the same distortion as the Core orbital radii, about 1.25 at the outer orbits.
So how should the maps be measured, since they do not mesh and corroborate, and their scales/legends are faulty?
Let's consider to farthest orbit of the Core, that of Pelorum (ignoring it's Inhabited moon Kaleidescope) orbiting Lux which orbits White Sun. According to the large map, Pelorum regularly circulates through 42.7Au orbital radius from White Sun.
Also considering the closest orbit of the Georgia System, that of Shadow (ignoring it's 3 Inhabitable moons) orbiting Murphy, which gets as far as 28.5Au away from the Georgia Sun, and thus circulates as near as 39.5Au from White Sun.
I seems clear that this measuring system is not valid, or else Hera, Bullet, Eris, Aphrodite, Sturges, Hill, Thornley, Anton, Shadow, Branson's Mark, Ossolambria, Summerfair, Persephone, Hades, Renao, Pelorum, and Kaleidescope are all going to have a galactic slugfest on a regular basis (and all are inhabitable except Hades, Bullet, and Shadow). So that seems unlikely. And that's only one location of celestial conflict.
Alternately, using the small version, Pelorum would only get as far away as about 34Au from White Sun, and Shadow would only get as close as about 50Au to White Sun. So this seems more reasonable.
Therefore, we can consider that the smaller version map is the accurate measuring scale for orbits around Suns, and that in the large version of Map, each System's orbital sizes are magnified to varying degree, beyond it's actual dimensions.
The smaller version does not include moons, or worlds orbiting Protostars. The large Map shows the orbits of these worlds, but not the moons. For measuring the orbital radius of these worlds, the inch scale can be used and then multiplied by the factor used for that system, or that Protostar.
I think this a reasonable method of evaluating and measuring with these maps. Anybody disagree on these points?
This has nothing to do with the massive discrepancies regarding scale of the Sun sizes, or world or moon sizes - that's for another time with much more
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Assuming this above post is correct, then the farthest reaching worlds of each system (not including moons) would be:
Pelorum for Core (White Sun), at about 34.45Au from White Sun.
Shadow for Georgia System, at about 18.26Au, getting as near as 49.7Au and as far as 86.3Au from White Sun.
Silverhold for Red Sun, at about 23.25Au, getting as near as 44.7Au and as far as 91.3Au from White Sun.
Salisbury for Kalidasa, at about 15.4Au, getting as near as 105.6Au and as far as 136.4Au from White Sun.
Miranda for Blue Sun, at about 27.29Au, getting as near as 152.7Au and as far as 207.3Au from White Sun.
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