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Re: teaser Galaxy Map underway
Posted By: Stephen L. (SoundEffect) <soundeffect@hotmail.com>Date: 2/10/12 6:44 p.m.

In Response To: Re: teaser Galaxy Map underway (Paused)


: See, this is why a project like this both greatly intrigues me, and makes me
: want to run a mile. If things mostly fit with RL, you can have the fun fan
: wank discussions about the little plot inconsistencies. But when major
: problems like...

: ...come up; makes me think that this project, as I understand it, is
: complete. It has proved facts of the RL universe compared to the Halo
: universe do not match up. Thus logically the Halo universe must have a
: 'geography' different to our own, right? And thus a perfect map, that I
: really want to see, that is made with all the canon and RL information
: combined can me made a farce by one novel, a waypoint entry, or even
: something the RL Hubble telescope picks up.

: I really want to see a Halo map made, and the canon stick to it... but
: considering what we already know (ignoring retcons) is this the best way
: to go about it?

It's a rough thing to do 10 years after some bad decisions. Since they started with stars in the Milky Way, they should've stuck with it. Astronomy is not as well known to average Joe like movies or sports, unfortunately.

The equivalent would be an author writing about a person walking from New York to Los Angeles in an afternoon, or worse, a fellow waving to a friend from one city to the other. That's what's been done in the Haloverse as far as colony locations have gone. Now most people know the distance between those two cities in my example, but when something like that shows up in the Halo galaxy, I cringe in the same way.

They are starting to make better decisions now, but authors need to do some research before making some of these choices. Sigma Octanus? No, Sigma Octanis. It's a real star with a real correct spelling. What's Ectanus 45? There's no constellation called Ectans. And if there were it would be 45 Ectanus. Are these just typos that were never corrected or just authors who had no clue about anything astronomical?

I know they sometimes make up star systems to keep distances and such vague. I see it as a cheap 'out'. It's not too bad though, and sometimes the location of the star system isn't important to the story. Where it becomes a problem is if you (the author or creator of a work) don't know really where the place is and reference it later on, you may end up having to retcon something because the location wasn't known (even if just internally).

It's NOT even good enough to just Google star distances from Earth without knowing what you're actually looking at. You can choose a star like Procyon (Arcadia) which is 11.4 light years from Earth and then find another star like 61 Cygni which is also 11.4 light years away. To an uninformed author, well, they're both about 11.4 light years from Earth, so they must be very near one another. Wrong! They are almost on opposite sides from each other compared to Earth and the actual distance between them is 20.8 light years. Not really near each other at all! But this is what's been done in the Haloverse.

Here's the map again for example:

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Message Index




Replies:

teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/8/12 8:27 p.m.
     O.OZackDark 2/8/12 8:57 p.m.
           Re: O.OStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/8/12 9:10 p.m.
                 No GPU?ZackDark 2/8/12 9:16 p.m.
                       Re: No GPU?Stephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/8/12 9:50 p.m.
                             Re: No GPU?ZackDark 2/9/12 10:02 a.m.
                                   Re: No GPU?Stephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/9/12 11:42 a.m.
                                         Re: No GPU?ZackDark 2/9/12 12:05 p.m.
                                               Re: No GPU?Stephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/9/12 1:54 p.m.
     Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwaySeraph XXVII 2/8/12 10:21 p.m.
           Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/9/12 5:40 a.m.
     Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayDEEP NNN 2/9/12 6:31 a.m.
           Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/9/12 6:50 a.m.
                 Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayDEEP NNN 2/9/12 7:02 a.m.
                       Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/9/12 8:01 a.m.
     Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayDragonclaws 2/9/12 6:25 p.m.
           Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/10/12 6:35 a.m.
                 Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayPaused 2/10/12 3:23 p.m.
                       Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayZackDark 2/10/12 5:09 p.m.
                       Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/10/12 5:14 p.m.
                             Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayPaused 2/10/12 5:39 p.m.
                                   Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/10/12 6:44 p.m.
                                         Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayPaused 2/10/12 7:55 p.m.
                                               Re: teaser Galaxy Map underwayStephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/10/12 9:45 p.m.
                                                     An alternative presentation...OldNick 2/10/12 10:49 p.m.
                                                           Re: An alternative presentation...Stephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/11/12 9:01 a.m.
                                                                 Re: An alternative presentation...OldNick 2/11/12 11:52 a.m.
                                                                       Re: An alternative presentation...Stephen L. (SoundEffect) 2/11/12 12:24 p.m.



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