Persis d'Io discusses the Technic History version of hyperspace:
"'A series of quantum jumps which do not cross the small intervening spaces, therefore do not amount to a true velocity and are not bound by the light-speed limitation...sounds nice and scientific to you, doesn't it? You know what it sounds like to me? Ghosts flitting forever in darkness.'" (p. 66)
To me, it sounds like a space travel version of the time travel in HG Wells' The Time Machine. The Time Machine flits unseen through intervening matter and could continue to the beginning or end of time. But do we agree with Persis' account? Ghosts flitting through darkness? Yes. Forever? No, they don't, but imagine if they did. While I was still at boarding school, I imagined an ultimate escapist fantasy: a self-sustaining habitat indefinitely flying out of control through hyperspace, a faster-than-light version of the interstellar ramjet in Poul Anderson's Tau Zero. The hyperspace habitat would become a self-contained universe unaffected by anything outside it and meanwhile would continue to recede light-millennia away from the Milky Way. But, socially and spiritually, its inhabitants would take their problems with them. No escape.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I love that part of ENSIGN FLANDRY! Every time I read that book I slow down to wistfully ponder that carefully thought out speculation about how a real FTL drive might work. And that reminded me of Alcubierre's speculative work on a real FTL drive.
Ad astra! Sean
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