[Data-modeling] Multiple Fictional Universes

[Jeff Prucher]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com 
> [mailto:data-modeling-bounces at freebase.com] On Behalf Of 
> Tadhg O'Higgins
> Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 12:39 PM
> To: Freebase data modeling mailing list
> Subject: [Data-modeling] Multiple Fictional Universes
> 
> How should we treat fictional universes within other 
> fictional universes? Or "alternate universes" within, e.g., 
> the Star Trek universe?
> 
> My initial thought is to have "Parent Universe" and "Sub-universes" 
> properties, but I'm not sure they cover all the cases. In 
> addition, we might run into the problem of having to use the 
> Star Trek universe as a hold-all, containing both the "main" 
> Star Trek universe (which most people will want to see data 
> about when they arrive at the page) and also the minor 
> alternate universes (e.g. from
> <http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000002
> 1eea5>) as separate topics connected as sub-universes.
> 
> Any thoughts on how these relationships should be handled?

This is a really good question. All the alternate universes that appear in
the Star Trek series are part of the same setting (which we also call a
universe). So in a sense, the literary construct that we call the "Star Trek
universe" is separate from the primary universe in which the stories take
place, which exists on par with the Mirror Universe and whatever other
alternate universes show up in the franchise. So parent and sub-universes
would work pretty well, I think. The trick would be to label or describe the
parent multiverse (which contains the Mirror Universe and the universe in
which the series are primarily set) from the primary universe it contains,
so that people can link to the topics reasonably consistently.

Jeff

> Tadhg
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