Ask Lemmy

One thing I'll say is that I prefer gates or portals to "Teleporters" for the obvious "it actually kills you" thing

FTL travel in the series of book "the interdependency" is one of the major plot devices, so it's one of those that marked me the most.

Without going into spoilers: FTL is limited to using a natural phenomenon that are pretty much akin to space-rivers, so humanity has no power onto what systems are connected to one another.

As rivers do, those "currents" can also shift and have done so in the past: the place where the books happen are completely cut off from earth since pretty much forever, for example.

I prefer the STL in Card's Ender's Game series. They asymptotically approach the speed of light so the passengers only have several weeks pass when travelling to far flung locations but the universe around them experiences a normal passage of time which may be tens of years. This has really big implications on the plots in several stories.

They do have an ansible communications system that does allow instantaneous communication over astronomical distances.

CJ Cherryh and Joel Sheperd use basically the same system in their universes (Sheperd admitted he basically adopted CJ’s almost verbatim).

Ships can travel FTL transitioning into another plane of existence (to say it in an uncomplicated way), but to do so they must first acquire a speed very close to c. And when they transition back to the regular space they do it at transluminic velocity, that they must shred off pulsing their hyperdrives before coming down to ‘maneouvring’ speeds.

All of this makes for interesting tactical situations in the intent of an interstellar conflict.

Silfen Paths from Judas Unchained. Aliens called Silfen walked from planet to planet directly via actual forest paths. Everything gets wonky time wise when your on one so you might emerge 100 years later. The technology itself is sentient and not maintained. The Silfen who lost interest long ago are asked how they manage the paths. They say they just let them do what they want. At least one path exists to/from Earth. But humans are boring and make things boring, so the aliens avoid Earth.

So if you're on a walk and you get lost you may be walking to another planet.

goes Plaid

Not ftl but I really like cryo sleep themes. Someone wakes up 100+ years later and the world is post apocalyptic. James axlers deathlands audio books, alien, some obscure video games.

Star Control had an interesting take on it, where you're able to jump between eiffererent "levels" of space if you have something that can induce the right field and at the right level of power. Sort of like jumping between electron shells or something.

But you can jump from normal space, to hyperspace on top of that, to quasispace on top of that. And maybe others above (and below). Traveling a certain distance in each space allows you to travel an exponentially larger amount of distance in the lower space.

So you induce a field, pop up to hyperspace, move at less than FTL (as relative to hyperspace), then fall back to regular space.

No mention of Futurama? Screw moving the ship, just move the universe around it!

The Hyperspace Gates in Cowboy Bebop always seemed to be pretty plausible. They didn't explain all the science behind them, but there was enough to show that the was science behind it, and it had been commercialized enough that people had a basic understanding of them.

I wouldn't say it was my favourite FTL but it has some interesting implications.

The artificial wormholes of The Algebraist by Ian Banks. I can't say too much if you haven't already read it, but it's artificial wormholes that have to be transported sublight.

All the new wormholes are of course lovely and high capacity, but much of the network is still the original tiny little ones first installed. So your military at least uses kilometer long needle ships that can fit through these small points.

Think fitting an aircraft carrier through a Stargate.

The one where humans discover a way to "skip" through space in jumps – which shouldn't be possible and puts a strain on the traveler – until they discover the real deal from aliens.

Aside from that, the more common type with beacons or gates.

As long as it's got "dat woosh", I'll love it.

Elite Dangerous, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Battletech are my favorites, though.

FRIENDSHIP DRIVE CHARGING BABY!

"Warning! Hyperspace conduit unstable!"

Uh oh.

I like how Stellaris does hyperdrive; certain systems are connected by hyperplanes. Presumably something "man-made" in those systems generates the field and "throws" the ship to the next system.

Similar to Mass Effect except that whereas in Mass Effect, one generator can connect to any other, in Stellaris each one only goes between two points, like a subway.

I like the kind where they didn't try to explain it. Trying to show how they make their sausage never works out well. I can suspend disbelief for FTL but not for their stupid explanations

My favourite one is Red Dwarf when they see the future. Requires a fair amount of "dont think about it" but its still a great plot.

Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. It deals heavily with causality and "light cones." There's some super advanced entity in the universe that enforces a ban on causality-breaking FTL, so it's not possible for anything to mess with the entity's development, iirc.

Stross's Neptune Brood also has some interesting stuff about FTL economics. It's somewhat of a satire on cryptocurrency, NFTs, and marketization in general.

The Infinite Probability Drive from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The warp from warhammer 40k.

Just because of how grim dark and batshit it all is.

I liked the wormholes from the Bobbyverse. You had instantaneous travel across interstellar distances but you had to get there via slower than light speed first. So no matter how technologically advanced you became your interstellar civilisation still grew at a rate of one or two systems per decade.

in mass effect, the core can manipulate the mass of a surrounding ship, making lightspeed travel possible.