Wednesday, 3 April 2024

FTL?

In sf, FTL usually means that a spaceship can move through space faster than light but there are some variations.

In Poul Anderson's The Enemy Stars, spaceships move slower than light but astronauts teleport instantaneously between planetary surfaces and spaceship interiors and fuel is teleported into the ships.

In Anderson's The Avatar, a slower-than-light spaceship rotates around a T-machine and arrives in another volume of space. This can happen in three ways. First, arrival precedes departure from the T-machine. This is time travel or, more precisely, space-time travel into the past. Secondly, arrival is a long time after departure. This is space-time travel into the future. Thirdly, arrival is shortly after departure but might be in another planetary system. This is the equivalent of FTL. I suppose that it is FTL although the spaceship itself is STL.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And you've made mores sense of these T machines than I've ever done. And, of course Anderson based this on the real world work of Frank Tipler. And I've also read Tipler's book THE PHYSICS OF CHRISTIANITY.

Ad astra! Sean