Ask Lemmy

Hyperspace in Babylon 5 is pretty cool.

Also in Star Trek TNG when the Traveller uses his mind to go crazy fast.

the farcaster network built by a machine super intelligence in Hyperion. unbelievable

Whatever it is, I'm inclined to like the versions where FTL is a teensy bit dangerous. Not necessarily 40k's "FTL is actual hell and frequently fails in terrible ways", but more... it's risky. It's a mundane risk, maybe. But still, there's that little bit of risk in the background and it needs to be approached carefully...

Like, Babylon 5's hyperspace is an actual place you make trips into, but it's also highly nonlinear, and so it is entirely possible to get lost or stuck if your ship malfunctions. Also, there are living things in there which may not be friendly.

Even Star Wars' Hyperdrives can be dangerous. It doesn't get played up in the stories much, but a malfunctioning or improperly programmed hyperdrive can strand you in deep space, subject you to severe time dilation, or just splat you against a realspace object.

I like the Stargate-lite system in the game Terminus (2000). Unlike Stargate, each gate connects 1 to 1 with another, so there’s no “dialling up” a new destination. In fact, these gates don’t go anywhere unexplored. They only go where we’ve already been (around the solar system).

See, in Terminus the space ships can only fly at realistic speeds (similar to real life rockets) and maneuvering is difficult (with pretty decent Newtonian physics). If you want to travel to other places in the solar system it takes an extremely long time, so the gates make it actually feasible to get around.

This all had the effect of making space feel like the age of railroading. You can get around but you’re limited to where the rails can take you. I don’t know why, but there’s something so romantic about that.

The FTL in the game FTL.

It's not really explained or important in the game, but Christ almighty have I put hundreds of hours into that infuriatingly addictive thing; so it must be my favorite FTL.

Slipspace from Halo.

You can weaponize that shit in a pinch if you wish. It seems to be the appropriate FTL method for humanity to use.

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.

I like the version from BSG.

Andromeda was weird. Able to travel from galaxy to galaxy otherwise they travel at sub-light.

Does L space in the Discworld novels count?

goes Plaid

One of the more interesting (and creepy, and appalling!) FTL systems I remember is from Scalzi's The God Engines. Way back in the day The Lord subjugated all other gods, and these gods are now prisoners of human ships, and responsible for moving them through the stars.

I'm fuzzy on the details, but I remember engineering was replaced by a priest caste, and their prayers kept most ship systems running (this Lord is a very active deity!) I also remember that the ship-gods can be very recalcitrant - I think the book opens with the captian having to whip the ship's god into compliance.

In the Bobibverse (book series) they used SUDAR for FTL. SUDAR was a gravity based communication. I believe this started coming out before the gravity wave discovery and we confirmed(/it became common knowledge) that gravity travels at the speed of light. It was a cool idea though.

Julian May's Galactic Milieu trilogy from the '90s has a fun FTL concept involving a ship generating an upsilon field to break through superficies into a "grey limbo" hyperspace. Each translation (in and out) causes physical pain; the tighter the catenary and the longer the jump, (the faster the trip) the more pain is caused.

The exact mechanics are never explained, but I’ve always loved “fenestering” in David Zindell’s Neverwhere and Requiem For Homo Sapiens trilogy.

A pilot, in a one-person “lightship”, interfaces with their computer, merging their minds into one. They then solve maths equations which have never been solved before and prove new mathematical theories. This opens up a window underneath the ship, which it falls in to, into hyperspace. They then need to do more novel maths to open up the window to where they’re going and fall through that.

It’s weird and it’s nerdy and it’s poetic and it’s mystical, like everything in the books, and it’s just so incredibly cool.

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.

Does a TARDIS count?

A hard choice, so many of them have been well done in media and text.

If I had to make a choice I would pick versions that match up with what we think could be possible. And that means anything based on or similar to the Alcubierre drive theory. The "slower" travel around a system in Elite Dangerous uses this idea of moving the space the ship is in faster than light, avoiding any relativity issues. Stephen Baxter's "Flood" and "Ark" novels (mainly Ark) use this idea and his descriptions of what it looks like from inside and departure/arrival are fantastic and not intuitive (Elite Dangerous gets the leaving right, but not the arrival maybe because it would look weird). When the ship arrives it would suddenly appear from nowhere, but then its virtual image would move away into a point as the light catches up.

For a great video of it, here's a wonderful collection of potential future interstellar ships with the Alcubierre drive as the final solution to .

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

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.

Robotech (or Macross for the purists).

Folding space, essentially.

The Mirrors in Book of the New Sun. Basic idea is to surround yourselves with mirrors until you create an infinity room and then, through 'exactly aligned' lights, the light waves don't cancel out but instead 'push' objects out of the universe, returning at the destination when the light slows down to universal speeds.

Implosion drives from the Borderlands games.

Can't travel faster than light in realspace? Fine. We'll just annihilate all realspace between here and our destination.

The Drop Drive from Final Space, just because it's so amazingly silly. XD