Lost Testament of Schueler

shayvaan wrote:

Hildum wrote:Then why is there a blank page in the Writ? You are suggesting it is there for something other than LToS. Perhaps something related to the return?

While there is no reason given for the traditional blank page between Chihiro and Hastings, at this time, it appears to be only a plot device allowing Erayk Dynnys to get out his final letter to Zherald Ahdymsyn and Paityr, which produced such nice problems for their faith in Mother Church.

Actually, blank pages in books are primarily due to the printing process. Books are not printed at the page size of the final book, instead multiple pages are printed on both sides of a large sheet of paper (in the appropriate orientation), which is then folded, stacked with the other pages, bound, and trimmed to the final size. You will typically have 16 or 32 pages printed at once. If the book does not have a multiple of the printed page size pages, you will have extra blank pages. Books are generally laid out so that there are a minimum number of blank pages at the end.
You may have experience the case where you purchased a book with a group of pages missing - but never one page - this is because for some reason the section was missing when the book was bound. The number of missing pages will tell you just how big the printed sheet was.
This would NOT explain the blank page of the Writ.

Hildum wrote:Actually, blank pages in books are primarily due to the printing process. Books are not printed at the page size of the final book, instead multiple pages are printed on both sides of a large sheet of paper (in the appropriate orientation), which is then folded, stacked with the other pages, bound, and trimmed to the final size. You will typically have 16 or 32 pages printed at once. If the book does not have a multiple of the printed page size pages, you will have extra blank pages. Books are generally laid out so that there are a minimum number of blank pages at the end.
You may have experience the case where you purchased a book with a group of pages missing - but never one page - this is because for some reason the section was missing when the book was bound. The number of missing pages will tell you just how big the printed sheet was.
This would NOT explain the blank page of the Writ.

I'll try a theory in conjunction with your point. Each section of the Writ is considered a book in itself. It could be as simple as each book is printed separately before binding into the full writ. Especially if the additions to the Writ were placed somewhere before a previously written book. Considering it is between Chihiro and Hastings and Hastings teaching (navigation and geography IIRC) doesn't sound like something that wouldn't have been in the original Writ. It reads like that is what happened.

Bruno Behrends wrote:

WeberFan wrote:Further to my last, BrightSoul.

Of course, there's a good reference (no credit to me, but full kudos to those who have been contributing to the wiki!): http://safehold.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline

The calendar started at the time of Creation, but the numbering was decoupled from that... So by the numbers, the day of Creation was -77. They're now up to +899. Which would make the total time since creation 976 years. Or about another 24 years. WHEW... His Celeryness doesn't have to explain. On the other hand, I guess he has to begin setting the stage...

EDIT...

In HFaF we hear Merlin thinking to himself after the scene in which they add Paityr Wylsynn to the Inner Circle: "This is the year 895, but they've numbered their 'Years of God' from the end of 'Shan-wei's Rebellion, from the time the Church of God turned into the Church of God Awaiting. The Day of Creation was seventy years - Standard years, not Safeholdian ones - before that. And that makes this year 979 since the Creation. Which means we've got twenty years, give or take, before whatever's going to happen happens."

21 years was in 985. We're now in February 899, 4 years later. So we've got 17 years left...

The conclusion is that these calculations are easy to get wrong. Terran standard years, Safehold years, Day of Creation, End of Shan-Wei's rebellion.

I think I remember some thread some years ago where even his Celeryness himself admitted he had gotten in trouble with them at one point.

What I am getting at: We all seem to be assuming that the Archangels get their 1000-year time calculations right.
What if they don't though? Since everyone else has trouble with them too.
That would be kind of funny if they calculated their 1000-year span in Terran years and Merlin in Safeholdian years or vice versa. Or if there were different dogmatic opinions on which day really to declare the Day of Creation or whatever. Not to mention the possibility they might have used '1000 years' as a synonym for 'long time' instead of a mathematically exact description.

Here's another thing to chew on...

If the clock is in the computer systems bios for all the Terran Federation tech that arrived then the Archangels would need to perform a pretty significant update to the code on every system that would be relying on the new Calendar and clock.

Calculating your course to return in 1000 years on the Hamilcar's systems would need to account for the Safehold adjusted temporal increments. Years, Days, Months etc.

BrightSoul wrote:Here's another thing to chew on...

If the clock is in the computer systems bios for all the Terran Federation tech that arrived then the Archangels would need to perform a pretty significant update to the code on every system that would be relying on the new Calendar and clock.

Calculating your course to return in 1000 years on the Hamilcar's systems would need to account for the Safehold adjusted temporal increments. Years, Days, Months etc.

By the time Safehold was colonized, colonizing new worlds was old hat to the Federation. Traditions would have evolved in order to compensate for colonies having different day and year lengths from Earth.

We actually see this in the form of "Comp Time"/"Langhorne's Watch". That this time period exists at all speaks volumes about how the Federation dealt with different day and year lengths. Each planet has their local days and years and calendars that reflected that; removing January and December probably isn't unusual for Federation colonies with short years. Federation computers will likely reflect these flexible calendars and when asked for a date will likely be able to give you one in both Terran Standard Calendar and Local Calendar... wherever "local" appears to be.

But because Comp Time/Langhorne's Watch exists, hours, minutes, and seconds, etc etc anything short of a day, are fixed. An hour on Safehold is exactly the same length of time on Earth and on Mars and on a starship in the back end of nowhere. These values do not change in Federation computers, or at least are way too much trouble to change for Langhorne's crew.

Now it's POSSIBLE that the whole "return in 1000 years" thing could have been accidentally set to Terran years; it just takes the guy setting the wake up timer to be careless. But I consider it unlikely for one simple reason: Earth is (presumably) dead. There's zero reason for anyone to be still using the Earth calendar instead of the Safehold calendar. As a result, anyone setting a wakeup timer should by default be using the Safeholdian calendar, because every remaining computing system on the planet should already be set to use Safehold Time.

evilauthor wrote:By the time Safehold was colonized, colonizing new worlds was old hat to the Federation. Traditions would have evolved in order to compensate for colonies having different day and year lengths from Earth.

We actually see this in the form of "Comp Time"/"Langhorne's Watch". That this time period exists at all speaks volumes about how the Federation dealt with different day and year lengths. Each planet has their local days and years and calendars that reflected that; removing January and December probably isn't unusual for Federation colonies with short years. Federation computers will likely reflect these flexible calendars and when asked for a date will likely be able to give you one in both Terran Standard Calendar and Local Calendar... wherever "local" appears to be.

But because Comp Time/Langhorne's Watch exists, hours, minutes, and seconds, etc etc anything short of a day, are fixed. An hour on Safehold is exactly the same length of time on Earth and on Mars and on a starship in the back end of nowhere. These values do not change in Federation computers, or at least are way too much trouble to change for Langhorne's crew.

Now it's POSSIBLE that the whole "return in 1000 years" thing could have been accidentally set to Terran years; it just takes the guy setting the wake up timer to be careless. But I consider it unlikely for one simple reason: Earth is (presumably) dead. There's zero reason for anyone to be still using the Earth calendar instead of the Safehold calendar. As a result, anyone setting a wakeup timer should by default be using the Safeholdian calendar, because every remaining computing system on the planet should already be set to use Safehold Time.

That's a whole lot of ass-u-me.

In the case of the TF experience with colonial time adjustments. Yes, they are likely experienced with variable time but in all likelihood they are still using the base Earth Time. After all, the capitol is still Earth and it is the center of their industry and financial markets. Even today we have traders in New York operating on Tokyo time.

I would not be surprised if systems involved in something that needs variable time to have the means to set it. However, not all of them would have it. Not all of their systems would be converted. As for pointing out that earth is gone is moot. More than 90+% of the people on the trip spent it asleep.

I'm not saying I'm right, I'm saying that the possibility is there. Personally I think it would be an amusing twist. Aggravating for the characters in the story to be expecting something within 4-10 years only to have to wait 100 years. That could throw a real wrench in the gears.

BrightSoul wrote: <snip> I'm not saying I'm right, I'm saying that the possibility is there. Personally I think it would be an amusing twist. Aggravating for the characters in the story to be expecting something within 4-10 years only to have to wait 100 years. That could throw a real wrench in the gears.

I can't quite see them getting aggravated over getting another century to pick away, piece by piece, at the anti-tech mindset on Safehold.

Now nervous, OTOH, I could see, especially for the first few years, while they waited for a shoe to drop that didn't.

Of course, WE know that SOME kind of shoe is going to drop, something quite major as a matter of fact, otherwise RFC wouldn't have an opportunity to make a 10+ book series out of an originally planned 3-5 books.

BrightSoul wrote:
I'll try a theory in conjunction with your point. Each section of the Writ is considered a book in itself. It could be as simple as each book is printed separately before binding into the full writ. Especially if the additions to the Writ were placed somewhere before a previously written book. Considering it is between Chihiro and Hastings and Hastings teaching (navigation and geography IIRC) doesn't sound like something that wouldn't have been in the original Writ. It reads like that is what happened.

Doesn't work that way. If it did, there would be a lot more blank pages between the various books, not just the one. Remember, it is bind, then trim. Not bind, trim, bind. (This is the case when magazines are bound into books, but the two binding processes are completely different, and occurs long after the originals are published for entirely different reasons. You would not do this for a book like the Writ for a host of reasons.)

In the case of the Writ, you would have the pages of more than one book on a single sheet before it is folded, bound, and trimmed, just like you have the pages of more than one chapter on a single sheet in a more conventionally labeled book.

BrightSoul wrote:That's a whole lot of ass-u-me.

In the case of the TF experience with colonial time adjustments. Yes, they are likely experienced with variable time but in all likelihood they are still using the base Earth Time. After all, the capitol is still Earth and it is the center of their industry and financial markets. Even today we have traders in New York operating on Tokyo time.

But that's because those traders are still talking to people in Tokyo and are still following developments in the Tokyo markets.

But Safehold? There's NO contact with Earth. As far as anyone on Safehold knows (when they know Earth exists at all), Earth is long dead. It makes no sense for ANYONE to still be using Earth time and Earth calendars except as an alternate setting in their computer systems. All their displays and controls should be set to Safehold time because THAT is what's relevant for their day to day lives. Even what few ships they had left should have their clocks and day/night cycle set to Safehold time to avoid scheduling confusion.

I suppose if they wanted to, some eccentric crewman might have the clocks in their home set to show Earth time and date as well as the Safehold ones, but they'd probably get weird looks from their friends. And that's assuming they're allowed any such advanced tech outside their jobs and carefully controlled enclaves like whatever the original Temple was.

I hope the Lost Testament of Schuler reveals how Seijin Kohdy died. That has never been cleared up. And it bugs me when stuff like that remains unresolved...

Random Thoughts

RE authorship.
I am fairly sure that there is textev, probably in the forums or infodumps rather than the books, that none of the books of the Writ were necessarily written by the Archangels whose names appear on them. Rather, Chihiro was the principal author of all of them and appropriate names were attached according to the Archangel's "specialities". No doubt he consulted on specialised info, but this was a big, mission-critical project and someone had to be in charge. However there was a collective responsibility aspect to this. All the archangels stood behind whatever went out in the name of any one of them. So it doesn't really matter who actually wrote the book of Scheuler; if it went out while he was involved in running the show he stood behind it and is morally and legally responsible for it.

RE Printing
Interesting technical details on multi page printing, but what technical level has Safehold reached on printing? We know they have it. But is it manual and a couple of pages at a time or power driven and 16 or 32 up, or somewhere in between? (I don't know much about the history of how printing advanced in RL)

RE clocks etc
Some New York offices keep Tokyo time only because they do business with Japan and they have "instant" communications with Tokyo, so that business decisions can be affected in real time by what happens across the world. Neither precondition applies to the command crew on Safehold, they are not doing business with earth, and they certainly aren't in communication with it, so there is no reason at all to hang on to Earth time and the danger of a whole lot of confusion by trying.