Tuesday, 5 May 2020

Hyperspace

Having discussed Poul Anderson's several means of FTL, including his Psychotechnic and Technic History versions of hyperspace, it remains to compare them with those of other authors. Isaac Asimov unimaginatively uses a single, unrationalized version of "hyper-space" throughout the two series that he eventually merged into one future history:

"Through hyper-space, that unimaginable region that was neither space nor time, matter nor energy, something nor nothing, one could traverse the length of the Galaxy in the intervals between two neighbouring instants of time."
-Isaac Asimov, Foundation (London, 1967), PART I, 1, p. 8.

Comments
(i) In zero time?

(ii) It is not explained why, in the course of a single journey, the ship must make several Jumps with travel time through ordinary space between them. (We can think of reasons but we are not told any.)

(iii) Anderson's Technic History multiple quantum jumps through ordinary space are a completely different use of the term "hyperspace."

(iv) This narrative is addressed to an audience in a further future who would not have needed an explanation of "hyper-space."

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And being a physicist by training, Anderson was able to think thru the possibilities and implications of just how a REAL "hyperdrive" MIGHT work. It is one of the many flaws in Asimov's work that he never did the same for his "future history."

Ad astra! Sean