Is there a 'north' on a star chart?

If you're writing sci-fi why not invent something new? Term all directions as colors and never explain how it works because all the characters understand it so they never even think about it. The Sex Planet is yellowwards of the Llama Confederation, which is bluegreenish of the Empire of Doom and Waffle Fries, rendering the entire red side of the galaxy inhospitable to any cyborg nannies trying to make it big in show business even if they inherited those emerald mines on the Sapphire Planet from their Great Uncle Borg.
 
Armitage72 said:
It would really depend on the size of the area that you're dealing with. The Inner Sphere is only about 1000 light years in diameter, so toward or away from the galactic core and with or against the galactic spin work on their maps. If you're filling a significant portion of a galaxy, that obviously won't work, since they could be opposite directions.
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East in New York City is opposite of East in Beijing. You don't think of it that way because you're used to it, and your mind automatically "unrolls" the earth, but it's still true. And "Clockwise" at 12 is opposite of "Clockwise" at 6, but you're used to thinking of it as a circle. Same thing on a galactic scale: you're using a polar coordinate, but that's really not a problem, especially if the people using it will use it a lot.
 
TragicMonkey said:
If you're writing sci-fi why not invent something new? Term all directions as colors and never explain how it works because all the characters understand it so they never even think about it. The Sex Planet is yellowwards of the Llama Confederation, which is bluegreenish of the Empire of Doom and Waffle Fries, rendering the entire red side of the galaxy inhospitable to any cyborg nannies trying to make it big in show business even if they inherited those emerald mines on the Sapphire Planet from their Great Uncle Borg.
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Alternatively, make up an alien alphabet of about 30-40 letters, assign a six-letter code to each planet according to an obscure mapping to a 3-D co-ordinate scheme, then suggest that the resolution of this coding system is fine enough that the relative movements of stars over timescales of a few months makes significant differences to it.

Ooops, no, sorry. That one's taken.

Dave
 
Dave Rogers said:
Alternatively, make up an alien alphabet of about 30-40 letters, assign a six-letter code to each planet according to an obscure mapping to a 3-D co-ordinate scheme, then suggest that the resolution of this coding system is fine enough that the relative movements of stars over timescales of a few months makes significant differences to it.

Ooops, no, sorry. That one's taken.

Dave
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Everything in that franchise is super realistic and believable in comparison to the notion that the US military would allow an officer to sport a bed-head hairstyle while in uniform. All the magical aliens and nonsense science are as nothing compared to that insanity.
 
TragicMonkey said:
If you're writing sci-fi why not invent something new? Term all directions as colors and never explain how it works because all the characters understand it so they never even think about it. The Sex Planet is yellowwards of the Llama Confederation, which is bluegreenish of the Empire of Doom and Waffle Fries, rendering the entire red side of the galaxy inhospitable to any cyborg nannies trying to make it big in show business even if they inherited those emerald mines on the Sapphire Planet from their Great Uncle Borg.
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Are those the Emerald mines that the TragicMonkey consortium took over in a hostile bid to gain a monopoly?
 
Rincewind said:
Are those the Emerald mines that the TragicMonkey consortium took over in a hostile bid to gain a monopoly?
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The TragicMonkey Continuum would never be hostile to miners. If anything we're extremely fond of miners, big muscular sweating miners.
 
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