Anarresti Calendar and Clock

The Anarresti day is about 25 Earth hours. This can vary because Anarres forms a dual planet system with Urras. Anarres has two years: the Sun Year (Fas Vosterry) (the time for Urras and Anarres to go around the Sun, Tau Ceti, about 344 Anarresti days) and the Anarres Year (Fas Narresy) (the time taken for Anarres and Urras to orbit their common centre of mass, about 56 Anarresti days). There are two words for day: Las, the period from sunrise to sunrise; and Hisk, the opposite of night (Mesh).

The Anarresti week (Decad) has ten days. The days are:

Day	Pravic
Day 1	niLas
Day 2	neLas
Day 3	naLas
Day 4	noLas
Day 5	nuLas
Day 6	viLas
Day 7	veLas
Day 8	vaLas
Day 9	voLas
Community activity day	Las Voky

Dates are usually recorded as [Sun Year number]/[decad number]/[day number]. So the eighth day of the 23rd Decad of the Sun Year 172 would be 172/23/8 (Nivenes/Nenat/Vat). Where a Decad covers two Sun Years it is dated into the earliest year.

There is a thirty-five year cycle (KLas), at the end of which the Sun Year, the Anarres Year and the Decad are considered to be back in line. There may be some “non-days” added to the calendar to make the alignment as astronomically correct as possible. These are treated as extra community activity days.

The Annaresti day is divided into 24 roughly equal periods (Anarresti “hours”, Horri aNarresy). A fairly typical day would be:

Hours	Event	Pravic	Event
1st through 7th Hours	Sleep time	NiHorr KSas veHorr	Murr Docy
8th Hour	First meal	vaHorr	Murr niMordy
9th through 12th Hours	Useful activity time	voHorr KSas nineHorr	Murr Vakseny
13th through 14th Hours	second meal	ninaHorr KSas ninoHorr	Murr neMordy
15th through 16th Hours	Useful activity time	ninuHorr KSas niviHorr	Murr Vakseny
19th through 20th Hours	third meal	nivoHorr KSas nemaHorr	Murr naMordy
21st through 23rd Hours	Useful activity time	neniHorr Ksas nenaHorr	Murr Vakseny
24th Hour	Sleep time	nenoHorr	Murr Docy

Because Anarres is orbiting Tau Ceti as a dual planet system with Urras, the day length can be variable. To deal with this, the clock is reset each day so that the 13th hour begins when the sun is at its highest in the sky. However, Anarres does not have the “time is money” mentality of capitalist and managed economies, so nobody is tied to anyone else’s schedule (or to the clock) except by agreement.

Anarres has many traditions, holidays and festivals throughout the Sun Year, the chief of which is Insurrection Day (Las niPygvaty greVoki), which is also the midsummer festival.

Anarres and Urras are orbiting each other at an angle of ±2° from the ecliptic, so eclipses happen several times in a Sun year – they are common events.