Your favorite FTL methods in Science Fiction?

That it is. When I started reading the extract I thought that Slipstream was essentially just Hyperspace by another name, but it appears extremely well thought out and intriguing.

Here's another FTL candidate, the completely insane Infinite Improbability Drive.

 

And Wolfe left himself a good rationale for things to move "at the speed of plot" in his series.

 

Andromeda's slipstream drive was inspired by the "transfer points" in David Brin's Uplift universe, and there are a lot of similarities between them. It's an intentional homage, since Brin is a friend of Robert Hewitt Wolfe's.

 

Did not know that. Should go read some Brin. Thanks for the info.

 

For purely combat and tactic related reasons I generally prefer FTL systems that use jump-points or jump-gates of some type. Wing Commander, Battletech, Honor Harrington to a limited extent.

Free form FTL such as warp drive, hyperdrive, whatever, is just too powerful a potential weapon, and creates a tactical setting that has no meaning whatsoever. Defense as already noted is impossible, and any sort of dramatic tension is ruined when you realize that our heroes or villains can just speed away whenever they want. With free form FTL there can be no decisive battles, because any rational combatant leaves when they start to lose. Sure, you can disable your heroes (whatever)drive to create tension, but it just gets silly after awhile, how many times can the Enterprise lose its warp drive?

I think the best example of this is Wrath of Khan. Probably the best written and tactically interesting space battle in Trek, and it relies completely on the Enterprise's warpdrive being disabled.

 

I love the GUTdrive Stephen Baxter uses for his Xeelee stories. FTL travel actually rsults in potentially coming home from a battle that might not have happened yet, or meeting your past self.

 

THEY'RE GOING PLAID!!!!!

Another interesting one, and I suppose it goes into the category of using another dimension, is the "black hole" drive in Event Horizon.

Just your ship comes out demon posessed, so I'd recommend against.

 

I must confess that I have an unhealthy fascination with the FTL drive of Warhammer 40K, where the hyper-sub-alterspace that allows FTL is something called the Immaterium, a kind of hellish dimension inhabited by the Gods of Chaos, where Mind and Matter are the same thing and every ship need psychics on board or the crew would go raving mad. I mean, dude. I'll rather stay home and play water polo.

 

Yeah, that's also a good one. The psychics also keep the ship's fix on the presence of the Emperor, which is necessary to fix the ship's course.

The WH40k universe is a facinating one. The minis are great, too, too bad the main game sucks.

Space Hulk is tre kewl, though.

 

Someone needs to write up a drive based on traveling across knotted space-time strings that make ships go "clickety-clack, clickety-clack."

 

On a somewhat related note, when Captain Harlock's ship is underway, you hear creaking beams and the like. But I always thought that Harlock had that stuff piped through speakers because he's a sentimental sort.

 

My favourite method has to be Hyperspace. I just feel it offers more story telling opportunities then the others, though the ludicrously-fast method does allow for "cooler" scenes.

 

I always liked the mental drive put together by(Cordwainer Smith?) where a Human is telepathically tied into a cat to fight "dragons" and passing the enemy results in trans-stellar flight. Wish I could cite the story involved...

 

Brandonv, you don't actually expect me to read the whole post before replying, do you?

 

Leiji Matsumoto's Galaxy Express 999?

 

"The game of rat and dragon."

 

I have "The Best Of" I'll look through it...

 

Wave Motion Engine!!

 

Infinite Improbability Drive.

 

The Time Vortex - surely the only way to travel!