Superdrive

Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home (Frogmore, St Albans, Herts, 1975), CHAPTER ONE.

A graduate in physics, Poul Anderson was able to devise several alternative rationalizations for faster than light space travel. In this novel, it is theorized that:

there are eight dimensions;

this is "...a modification of the old wave-mechanical hypothesis of one other universe co-existing with ours." (p. 10);

matter that goes "...through this 'hyperspace'..." (ibid.) goes "...from point to point instantaneously..." (ibid.) in our space. 

This does not add up to a coherent account. How does the other universe come into it? How can motion through other dimensions be instantaneous? 

Anderson presents an ingenious quantum jump "hyperspace" in his Technic History but here he uses the term in its more usual meaning of a kind of space distinct from familiar space-time.

This interstellar drive is called not a hyperdrive but a "superdrive" (p. 5) and turns out not to be faster than light after all. It is instantaneous for the travellers but light-speed for the external universe and a more accurate formulation of its theory is that:

the spaceship is projected as a wave pattern;

it re-forms on arrival;

harmonics in the electronic wave trains must be set up so that they can reconstitute the original relationship (between molecules and energy states?) at another set of spatiotemporal coordinates.

The original theoreticians were mistaken with their eight dimensional framework. It seems that the ship remains in ordinary space-time where it teleports.