Re: Is there any way to make the solar system in Firefly/Serenity make sense?
The only way I can not laugh hysterically every time they refer to that as a solar system is to pretend they said "sector" or "galaxy" or something else.
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Re: Is there any way to make the solar system in Firefly/Serenity make sense?
Wikipedia has some sort of explanation of the Firefly solar system.
Still makes no sense. If most of the worlds are moons, they would have long periods without daylight, when the planet is between the sun and the moon. Yet this has never been referred to, and there is no reason to believe that all those worlds don't have a normal, twenty-four hour (!) day/night cycle.
Re: Is there any way to make the solar system in Firefly/Serenity make sense?
Understand it as a narrative conceit?
The planet in sci-fi is more or less the island in earlier fiction, or the town in a western.
It's a hermetic locale the protagonist travels to, things happen, and do not affect other islands/planets/towns.
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Well, the bastards can just tell themselves shooting people with bullets is just a social construct and bullets are just metaphors so they can be criticized as text.
Re: Is there any way to make the solar system in Firefly/Serenity make sense?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toxoplasma
Understand it as a narrative conceit?
The planet in sci-fi is more or less the island in earlier fiction, or the town in a western.
It's a hermetic locale the protagonist travels to, things happen, and do not affect other islands/planets/towns.
Ding! We have a winnnaaaaaar!
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Re: Is there any way to make the solar system in Firefly/Serenity make sense?
The idea that all the crappy little moons in a big solar system could be terraformed into earth-like worlds is silly - almost as silly as the idea of FTL.
It works great for Firefly, just as warp drive works for Star Trek.
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Re: Is there any way to make the solar system in Firefly/Serenity make sense?
Your suspicion is correct sir.
It works as some strange star cluster with the understanding that this verse only needs to be stable for a few thousand years. Everything will eventually go BOOM. Kind of like how they've now figured the Earth has about a billion years before it will collide with Mars.
If you try to science the verse, you will only get frustrated and peeved.
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Re: Is there any way to make the solar system in Firefly/Serenity make sense?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Toxoplasma
Understand it as a narrative conceit?
The planet in sci-fi is more or less the island in earlier fiction, or the town in a western.
It's a hermetic locale the protagonist travels to, things happen, and do not affect other islands/planets/towns.
Helpful or not, that just ain't how my mind works.
Now you know why I don't ever run superhero games.
Re: Is there any way to make the solar system in Firefly/Serenity make sense?
Short answer ? No ("Because Science makes me cry" as Joss put it)
There have been some interesting debates long those lines on the old Firefly fora (now the cortex ones) and I think the best that anyone came up with was several solar systems that are very close to one another.
You can terraform gasgiant moons in theory (serious work has been published on the subject) but there're issues with tidal forces, tidal lock and earthquakes that would make the ones on Earth look like a gentle tap.
"But Wash honey... you live on a spaceship"
You just need to have the "Joss Whedon pulls celestial mechanics out of his enormously talented arse... let's just pick a model for the solar system(s) and ignore the inaccuracies from here on in." conversation with the party on day 1 and then never speak of it again (Like we all keep quiet about mad uncle Gilbert down in the basement and Lord Arcane's two headed flesh eating daughter... not that I like to spread rumours)
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