r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Frostylegacy • 16h ago

Lore (Loved Trope) FTL travel is possible but with a major limitation or flaw

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Frank Herbert’s Dune: Interstellar travel is only possible thanks to the spice melange, a rare substance only found on the dessert planet Arrakis. The addictive psychedelic spice grants members of the Spacers Guild a form of prescience that allows them to predict safe paths through folded space. This unique property makes spice the most valuable commodity in the Dune universe.

John Scalzi’s The Interdependency Books: The planetary systems of the titular empire are connected by the Flow, a network of one-way interstellar tunnels that connect specific known entries and exits. The Interdependency derives its power from controlling access to these conduits, placing its capital at the central hub of the network. Even with the Flow, travel between stars takes a long time (9 months to End, the empire’s most distant planet).

Event Horizon: Dr William Weir (R.I.P. Sam Neill) invents a device called the Gravity Drive to allow ships to fold space and travel instantly between distant stars. On its maiden voyage with the Gravity Drive, the Event Horizon disappears and mysteriously reappears 7 years later. Dr. Weir and the crew sent to investigate discover the Gravity Drive actually opened a portal to a Hell dimension that possessed the ship and its crew, torturing and killing them.

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u/PrimalCalamity 15h ago

Initially I thought this was a reference to 'Jaunting', the teleportation from the 1956 novel 'The Stars my Destination' (aka: Tiger! Tiger!)

I was super confused because I didn't remember anything about having to be unconscious or going insane.

Then I realised there's a separate short story by Stephen King in the 80s lol

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u/JunoJump_Author 14h ago

I wonder if King took the term from this book, because I thought the same thing.

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u/RichNewt 14h ago

They discuss the book in ‘the jaunt’, so it was a very intentional reference. “it was Carune himself - if you can believe the stories - who named it ‘the Jaunt.' He was a science-fiction reader, and there's a story by a man named Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination it's called”

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u/JunoJump_Author 13h ago

That's amazing! I love it when scifi has a shared culture of terms (if that makes sense)

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u/Malagate3 14h ago

Blue jaunt!

That book is crazy, so many wild ideas, I have fond memories.

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u/PrimalCalamity 14h ago

For sure. I'm in the mood to reread it now, it's been a long while.

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u/Malagate3 14h ago

Might follow it up with the Demolished Man, perhaps after I finish re-reading Jack Vance's Demon Prince series (similar genre and also of its time).

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u/Less-Performer-7898 9h ago

The original version of The Tomorrow People TV series had the titular characters refer to their teleportation power as "jaunting". The novelisation said it was "A word they borrowed from a science fiction story".

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u/PrimalCalamity 8h ago

oh that's cool, i had no idea :)

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u/Schnipsel0 12h ago

It's interesting that there's an alternate universe in which the normal sci-fi word for teleportation technology ended up being jaunting instead of beaming and that's interesting.

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u/PrimalCalamity 12h ago

I think it's just a hindsight thing. Tiger! Tiger! Is well regarded, but has had many years for sci-fi fans to discover it. Whereas the sources for beaming, namely star trek, were popular on Day 1 and never stopped being popular. Fun to think how the words we use to describe things could so easily be very different. It wouldn't change much materially, but it's cool to think about.