A sense of scale

[Imperial Overlord]

If you can just hop to another planet, whether it is 5 or 50,000 lightyears away, then 50,000 lightyears becomes an irrelevant distance. The scale compresses. The civilization could take place in tiny section of the galaxy or the whole galaxy, but you wouldn't know it because all the planets are effectively close together and all the travel is easy.

And you completely miss the point of my going to L.A. example. You have either cars and planes or on foot. On foot its going to take you months. By machine it'll take days at most. That's the difference in scale. The slower the travel, the more time travel takes, the more impression the distance traveled makes. SW has fast FTL so it relies on other means (vast numbers of sentient races, cities sprawling over whole worlds, Death Stars, titanic star fleets) to convey the size of the setting.

As to what's there, that matters too. One city planets don't convey scale very well, another problem with SW as it continually goes back to that one part of Tattooine. Dune has the same damn problem.

[Adrian Laguna]

As to what's there, that matters too. One city planets don't convey scale very well, another problem with SW as it continually goes back to that one part of Tattooine. Dune has the same damn problem.

At least Dune has an excuse in the fact that Arrakis is important due to its unique ecosystem, and in the later books it is the capital of the Empire. Tatoonie is a worthless backwater that should have never appeared in any other movie but the very first one.

[Elessar]

However:

"He's hiding in the Sophia System."

"Oh that narrows it down does it? There are only 9 planets in that system, and 8 of them are inhabited, with each of them having almost a trillion people each, with thousands of cities, many many more houses and back alleys he can hide in.

Hey, lets not forget the fact that he can easily be hiding in the countrysides of each planet, or that he could have rented a small ship and be floating around somewhere in the hundreds of millions of km of space out there!

He's in the Sophia System, that narrows it down lots."

Is pretty crazy big for me. If the writer is good enough, then even finding a clue as to this guy's whereabouts can be hard and take a good portion of the story, or something like that.

And SW seems pretty vast to me:

In a sector of the galaxy Boba Fett had never heard of, a star went nova; it murdered a world and an entire sentient species. It aroused less comment than had the destruction of Alderaan, only a decade prior; the galaxy at large barely noticed the tragedy, and Fett never heard about it. In a galaxy with over four hundred billion stars, over twenty million intelligent species, such things are bound to happen.

What is with you and numbers? The OP asked about conveying a sense of scale, not describing an environment with encyclopedic accuracy. Every single one of your examples doesn't show, it merely tells. Worse, they tell in a fashion that most people don't get.

Conveying a sense of vastness requires more than just plucking a number north of a billion. Description using large numbers is a cop-out, telling, instead of showing. Just like reading an atlas and learning that there are several hundred million people in China doesn't actually prepare you for the vast swaths of bodies that pile into Beijing, pointing out that there are millions of species in a few sentences does little more than fill the dead space between plot developments.

Slow travel is a little trick to force readers to remember their own experiences. The sense of isolation when you're lost in the wilderness, those hours upon hours of hard hiking just to get back to civilization... sure, it's not literally vast, but it invokes emotion and places one squarely in the middle of the unknown. There are other tricks: faulty communication that takes weeks or months, trips taking years or decades (and in WH40K, multiple generations), information taking ages to spread...

A recent example pops to mind; one of the best examples of conveying scale was in one of the Ultramarines books. From a planet of Space Marines, where families devote themselves to their presence, where governments are formed around the Emperor's children... where their entire history is twisted and woven around the Ultramarines.

And suddenly, a scene change to this massive, civilized world of Pavonis: where a rioting crowd is silenced by the mere presence of a single Marine. And why? Because no one had ever seen one in the flesh. Legends, mere stories and myth of a power from far away.

A stark reminder of the power of the Imperium indeed. And an excellent reminder to the reader of how vast the Imperium truly was.

[Darth Ruinus]

If you can just hop to another planet, whether it is 5 or 50,000 lightyears away, then 50,000 lightyears becomes an irrelevant distance. The scale compresses.

How the fuck does that happen?

If you hop over to the other planet, you can see just how many, many, many more people and cultures there are. You could probably go every single day to your town or city square and see a NEW alien, preaching about a NEW religion, in a new language or whatever that you have never heard or seen before, simply because the FTL allows all those billions of planets to link together.

I understand what you are saying, but what I am saying is that the FTL speed is irrelevant, what matters is the number of stuff in that universe, not "It takes longer to get there, so its more vast"

The civilization could take place in tiny section of the galaxy or the whole galaxy, but you wouldn't know it because all the planets are effectively close together and all the travel is easy.

It doesnt matter if they are "effectively close together" what matters is that they are STILL FAR APART. Tatooine to Coruscant is still almost half a galaxy away, and because it took a few hours this somehow compresses the scale involved?

The travel time is irrelevant. You still traveled that massive distance to get there.

And you completely miss the point of my going to L.A. example. You have either cars and planes or on foot. On foot its going to take you months. By machine it'll take days at most. That's the difference in scale. The slower the travel, the more time travel takes, the more impression the distance traveled makes.

"You know that in 2 hours, we travelled more distance than some entire civilizations will travel in their entire lifetime?"

For instance, I can walk across a desert for months, and see sand, some lizards, maybe some camels and an oasis every while or so.

I can ride in my car across the city or a state for a day and see much more than I had seen in the desert. The travel time doesnt matter for shit at all, what matters is the stuff in that distance, or on that world or in that galaxy or whatever.

As to what's there, that matters too. One city planets don't convey scale very well, another problem with SW as it continually goes back to that one part of Tattooine. Dune has the same damn problem.

Yes, I said that a while ago, and I agree with you there.

[Imperial Overlord]

As to what's there, that matters too. One city planets don't convey scale very well, another problem with SW as it continually goes back to that one part of Tattooine. Dune has the same damn problem.

At least Dune has an excuse in the fact that Arrakis is important due to its unique ecosystem, and in the later books it is the capital of the Empire. Tatoonie is a worthless backwater that should have never appeared in any other movie but the very first one.

Arrakis being the imperial capital and the source of power for hydraulic despotism is fine. What isn't fine is that it has a warrior population that can subdue a vast number of worlds on its own and the same thing applies to the Sardukaur. Sure they're badass, but the number of troops you can raise from mostly desolate shit holes is limited even if you accept the "hostile environment=badass" wank. The big scary Jihad isn't compatible with a vast universe because they're simply aren't enough Fremen to have one.

[Darth Ruinus]

What is with you and numbers? The OP asked about conveying a sense of scale, not describing an environment with encyclopedic accuracy. Every single one of your examples doesn't show, it merely tells. Worse, they tell in a fashion that most people don't get.

So, knowing that you would live on one planet with lots and lots of people, in a civilization that controls lots and lots of planets, each with lots of people, with populations in the ridiculous amounts of numbers doesnt convey "vast and large"? Especially if the universe makes it a point to infor the reader or audience that each planet may have hundreds of different cultures or languages, and then show that?

Just like reading an atlas and learning that there are several hundred million people in China doesn't actually prepare you for the vast swaths of bodies that pile into Beijing, pointing out that there are millions of species in a few sentences does little more than fill the dead space between plot developments.

True. But if the author shows what its like to be in that city, then it would convey vastness.

A recent example pops to mind; one of the best examples of conveying scale was in one of the Ultramarines books. From a planet of Space Marines, where families devote themselves to their presence, where governments are formed around the Emperor's children... where their entire history is twisted and woven around the Ultramarines.

And suddenly, a scene change to this massive, civilized world of Pavonis: where a rioting crowd is silenced by the mere presence of a single Marine. And why? Because no one had ever seen one in the flesh. Legends, mere stories and myth of a power from far away.

A stark reminder of the power of the Imperium indeed. And an excellent reminder to the reader of how vast the Imperium truly was.

Thats a nice example, and you could also have the same thing said with a larger universe. For instance you could make a cop story where they are looking for a fugitive, and he goes and hides in a syste (like my example you quoted) and he hides in those massive seas of people.

Both convery senses of vastness. In WH40K because travel does take a long time and stuff gets made into myth and stuff. And the other one because in such a large universe, even in one where FTL is fast, anyone can just disappear into the crowds just like that, and probably never be seen from again. What Im saying is that the FTL speeds dont matter, because it can work in a fast FTL universe too. People can still make myths out of anything, especially if they dont bother to look for themselves. Just like today, the world is huge and there is a massive amounts of people in it, we can almost literally go and check anything we wanted to if we really needed to, and information is readily available.

That doesnt stop a bunch of idiots from believing in old superstitions or hoxes. It doesnt stop people from going "maybe we didnt land on the moon" or "there is a giant sky pixie" and it still doesnt stop hundreds of people visiting the new place where the Virgin Mary decided to appear.

[Imperial Overlord]

If you can just hop to another planet, whether it is 5 or 50,000 lightyears away, then 50,000 lightyears becomes an irrelevant distance. The scale compresses.

How the fuck does that happen?

Because it takes the same amount of effort to 5 lightyears as 50,000. Everything is close by because it takes little effort and time to get there. The effective scale in terms of effort expended and time required compresses. It used to take half a year to go from Europe to China. It was a big deal to make that journey. Now, not so much.

I understand what you are saying, but what I am saying is that the FTL speed is irrelevant, what matters is the number of stuff in that universe, not "It takes longer to get there, so its more vast"

It is relevant. It is not, however, the most important factor. Star Wars, as I said, survives this easily. The same damn part of Tattoine getting visited over and over again does far more damage. But in Star Wars the only reasons we know that Tattoine is in the Outer Rim and Coruscant is in the Core is that we are told so. Travel to all worlds, regardless of galactic distance is easy. It works against the impression of size because distance becomes irrelevant. It's still a strike against the impression of size.

The travel time is irrelevant. You still traveled that massive distance to get there.

The distance is irrelevant if you can travel it quickly and easy. It makes the universe seem small.

The travel time doesnt matter for shit at all, what matters is the stuff in that distance, or on that world or in that galaxy or whatever.

How can something seem big if it takes no time to cross? We're talking about impression of size, the appearance of scale. And if its easy to cross, it seems small.

Now, I agree completely that content on the end of the journey is more important than travel time. I'm not saying that slow travel is necessary to convey a sense of scale. I'm saying slow travel over long distances helps convey a sense of scale, but it isn't crucial. Dune has instant FTL travel and that isn't what sinks its sense of scale for me, nor does Star Wars's rapid FTL make me think the Star Wars galaxy is small. 40K's relatively rapid FTL still taking a long time to cross the galaxy does, however, help reinforce the size of that setting.

[Darth Wong]

Dooku casually spoke of adding ten thousand new systems to the separatist alliance in AOTC. The scale of SW is indeed clearly larger than people think, but it's not really shown directly in the movies; only alluded to.

I don't know how you're supposed to show scale in movies, though. Do movies set in the present day really give a good impression of the scale of all modern human civilization? Should they even try to, or would that be a pointless distraction from the storyline? Would it serve any purpose apart from wankery?

[Imperial Overlord]

I don't know how you're supposed to show scale in movies, though. Do movies set in the present day really give a good impression of the scale of all modern human civilization? Should they even try to, or would that be a pointless distraction from the storyline? Would it serve any purpose apart from wankery?

Movies do have their limitations, just as all mediums have. Other than relentlessly returning to the same patch of Tattooine, the Star Wars movies do a pretty good job of conveying scale with a seemingly endless Senate Chamber crammed full of delegates, the Death Star, scale of the Separatist movement, etcetera. Other mediums have different strengths and weaknesses and one should certainly take those in consideration when devising a story and remembering the chief goal is to entertain the audience.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I think a TV series would be better for scale, if done right. It need not dwell on pointing out how vast and hard it is to cross a territory, but being able to convey some sense of scale is better than stating facts about numbers of planets and that you can travel to any in a day.

[Swindle1984]

Larry Niven's Known Space series has an adequate feeling of scale, both in terms of time and space.

The Ringworld is a massive artifact of almost incomprehensible scale and complexity, and it's lost within the galaxy. Heck, the first book in the Ringworld quadrilogy involves traveling the short distance across part of the structure and it takes most of the book, even with them cheating and never reaching the edge. Incredible scale.

The Man-Kzin Wars has some good portrayal of scale in regards to the Kzinti Patriarchy and the years of travel from one system to another at relativistic speeds. A Kzin officer with orders from the Patriarch will pass his orders on to his son, his grandson, and even great-grandson simply because of the huge lengths of time involved in traveling from the center of the Kzinti empire to the frontier regions. Wunderland was conquered and occupied by the Kzin for fifty years and word of its conquest hadn't even reached the core worlds when it was liberated again. And Known Space is just a small portion of one arm of the galaxy.

The full-length novel Destiny's Forge describes this sense of unknowable vastness well. When they relied on slower-than-light travel, the Kzinti spread out among the stars, always forging ahead to conquer new worlds, vaguely aware of the vast Patriarchy behind them. Once faster-than-light travel became standard, a journey that used to take years, even decades, suddenly took a month or less. Now the Patriarchy was no longer so vast and unknowable, because anyone could travel across its entire breadth. Because of the constant failures to conquer humanity and the seeming weakness of the Patriarchy, it became easier for would-be conquerers to turn on their neighbors and make a grab for power than it was to continue to spread and venture into the unknown.

[Imperial Overlord]

Ringworld has a great sense of scale. The tiny bits of it that were full sized duplicates of the land masses and oceans of Kzinti and Earth (conquered by the Kzin ) was a great touch.

[Junghalli]

What is with you and numbers? The OP asked about conveying a sense of scale, not describing an environment with encyclopedic accuracy. Every single one of your examples doesn't show, it merely tells. Worse, they tell in a fashion that most people don't get.

Actually I'd say the Fett quote conveys a sense of bigness pretty well. And the deconstruction of the "he's on Altair IV" trope isn't a bad idea, he just overdid it a bit. I'd make it something more like this.

"He's hiding on Sophia IV."
"Yeah that narrows it down. You do realize we're talking about an entire planet here, right? Do you have any idea how big a planet actually is?"

As for the slow/fast travel debate, here's my two cents. You want slow travel if you want a setting that feels big and mysterious. If you don't care about the mysterious part the speed doesn't matter so much.

[Omeganian]

One may recall the Foundation series. Salvor Hardin recalls there at one point, that the surrounding kingdoms were once parts of a single province, the province was a part of sector, the sector part of a quadrant, and that in turn a part of the Galactic Empire.

A few pages later, he visits in turn each planet of a single province, and that vastness overwhelms him, used to a single sparsely populated planet. Nineteen billion people, inhabiting twenty five solar systems. The entire Empire had 25 million planets and about 10^17 people.

The Empire itself - here is the description:

"It was a colossal Empire, stretching across millions of worlds from arm-end to arm-end of the mighty multi spiral that was the Milky Way. Its fall was colossal too - and a long one, for it had a long way to go."

That, I believe, can give some a feeling of vastness.

[Mayabird]

The reason I'd thought of Dune as being large is that there are all these major players with their own goals, plans, schemes, and counters to the others in the background: CHOAM, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, the Emperor, the Houses, but it's all a precarious balance between massive forces that hinges upon one very weak point: control of melange. Plus, there was all the background and throwaway comments and everything that fleshed out the universe, made it obvious that there was a lot of stuff going on mostly unseen in the background and we only saw hints of it between the big epic control of the known universe plot.

I suppose that, having grown up knowing about all the novels and games and everything for Star Wars and knowing the interconnected backstories and the constant return to Tattooine and a few other worlds, I never really picked up the scale of it.


A little looking at tvtropes.org made me think that if a planet isn't portrayed as a Planet of Hats, which makes it feel about the size of a single small village, it would seem a lot bigger, and a universe full of those planets wouldn't feel so small.

[Axiomatic]

I have to ask, though, if utter backwaters are five minutes' drive from the center of galactic commerce and industry, how can they be as backwatery as they are presented? I mean, that way, it should be possible for someone to start every day by waking up on Tattooine, getting on a spacebus to Coruscant where they work in a supermarket, and then getting on another bus back to Tattooine in the evening.

[Singular Intellect]

I have to ask, though, if utter backwaters are five minutes' drive from the center of galactic commerce and industry, how can they be as backwatery as they are presented? I mean, that way, it should be possible for someone to start every day by waking up on Tattooine, getting on a spacebus to Coruscant where they work in a supermarket, and then getting on another bus back to Tattooine in the evening.

A slave kid could still build a pod racer and protocol droid of out spare parts lying around his master's junkyard. It was specifically stated that slaves trying to escape get killd by implanted devices. Furthermore, I doubt getting off the planet is free or easy anymore than it's free and easy to book a flight from some third world shithole where you live out in the middle of nowhere.

It's a matter of perspective. From a caveman's point of view, some guy's dive of a home that's a total mess and writeoff by 'normal' standands, but still has a working small fridge, stove, electricity, running water, etc would seem pretty damn impressive. Until compared to Bill Gate's home. But without that comparison model, the caveman would only see "holy shit he brightened this whole area by just flicking this thing on the wall, can command water out of this thing, has a really cold crevice with a moveable lid he gets his food from and can cook his food with a rock that gets super hot when he wishes! And he even has enough free time to waste it lying around dazed after he snorts this white stuff..."

[Darth Wong]

I have to ask, though, if utter backwaters are five minutes' drive from the center of galactic commerce and industry, how can they be as backwatery as they are presented? I mean, that way, it should be possible for someone to start every day by waking up on Tattooine, getting on a spacebus to Coruscant where they work in a supermarket, and then getting on another bus back to Tattooine in the evening.

It's more like a few hours travel AFAIK, not five minutes. And in a few hours, using a modern plane, you could travel quite a long way relative to real-life centres of population.

[Lonestar]

Actually, I think the WH40K franchise does a pretty good job with scale.

[Nyrath]

Poul Anderson's FLANDRY OF TERRA novels have a good sense of scale. His galactic empire is hundreds of years old, contains about four million stars, and has tens of thousands of systems that have never been visited because there are too many systems and not enough explorers. By the time news on one end percolates to the other side it isn't news, it is history.

Then you find out that the titanic empire is only 400 light years in diameter, which is microscopic compared to the 100,000 light year diameter galaxy. Put it this way, if the galaxy was a dinner plate, Flandry's galactic empire would be the size of a speck of pepper.

[Ghost Rider]

Split is here.

[Peptuck]

Actually, I think the WH40K franchise does a pretty good job with scale.

For the most part, I agree, but I think even GW itself doesn't get the entire scale of its setting. The part in the main rulebook about the Imperial Guard consisting of countless" billions" when you'd need more along the line of countless trillions to cover what else is depicted in the setting.

[Adrian Laguna]

For the most part, I agree, but I think even GW itself doesn't get the entire scale of its setting. The part in the main rulebook about the Imperial Guard consisting of countless" billions" when you'd need more along the line of countless trillions to cover what else is depicted in the setting.

Or you could read "billion" as being a million squared, rather than a thousand millions.

[Peptuck]

For the most part, I agree, but I think even GW itself doesn't get the entire scale of its setting. The part in the main rulebook about the Imperial Guard consisting of countless" billions" when you'd need more along the line of countless trillions to cover what else is depicted in the setting.

Or you could read "billion" as being a million squared, rather than a thousand millions.

That certainly puts things into a new perspective.

[Adrian Laguna]

That certainly puts things into a new perspective.

There is no other way of reading it. The Imperium of Man controls about a million "world", which I suppose could include moons and planetoids. A paltry average population of a million persons per world gives a total population of a long billion. I'd peg the actual average at at least 10 million, given that hive worlds tend to have populations in the tens of milliards, and its apparent that they have a few thousand of the things.