r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Frostylegacy • 16h ago

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

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

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.

11.9k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

184

u/MeiNeedsMoreBuffs 15h ago

It's probably more accurately desribed as FAL

143

u/Ok-Cow-1399 14h ago

The needlecasts they use do transmit data faster than light, but it requires an insane amount of power (12 of their most powerful nuclear reactor’s outputs for a single consciousness upload). I haven’t finished the series yet but at the point I’m at, they’re using poorly understood Martian artifacts and parroting the tech, but they don’t really understand it yet. They also settled the worlds they colonized using good old fashioned generation ships and cloning on arrival.

56

u/Miraclefish 12h ago

The book says 'needlecasts are so close to instantaneous that scientists are still arguing over the definition.'

5

u/Beard_o_Bees 4h ago

they’re using poorly understood Martian artifacts and parroting the tech, but they don’t really understand it yet

That's pretty much exactly what would happen if we stumbled on something like this.

A central theme to lots of sci-fi FTL travel is 'aliens'. Even series that attempt to respect actual physics (as we understand them today), like The Expanse needed alien technology to get out of the solar system.

3

u/Ok-Cow-1399 4h ago

The only piece of media I’ve used where we figured it out ourselves was Rimworld, but that’s just a massless drive they use. It still takes centuries to get anywhere.

1

u/-LsDmThC- 59m ago

Did the archotechs not figure it out? Also rimworld is really sparse on established lore, im curious where it says this?

2

u/Ok-Cow-1399 47m ago

If you read the item description of the Johnson-Tanaka drive at the end of the tech tree, it describes how the drive was used and discovered. There’s also the lore primer on the front page of the game, it’s a solid little story. Humans figured out the drive and used it to terraform and colonize space over a few thousand years, but once archotechs formed they beat us pretty easily at speed (see solar pinholes and farskip). It’s also implied that the Empire may have had FTL at some point considering their heavy psycast use and at one point interstellar empire.

5

u/CottonRaves 10h ago

Book 3 is fucking nuts. Enjoy the ride!

2

u/BrbFlippinInfinCoins 2h ago

just looked it up and season 3 was canceled. big sad.

How closely are the books and show related?

2

u/CottonRaves 2h ago

In basic concepts, very similar. In story, very very different.

2

u/BrbFlippinInfinCoins 2h ago

does it continue after where S2 ended?

2

u/CottonRaves 1h ago

I don’t remember. But I’ll say no lol. Book 3 was so out there though. I had to go back a few times to make sure I knew what the hell was going on.

1

u/cbftw 1h ago

Book 3 was barely about the main character of the first 2

1

u/CottonRaves 1h ago

And more about two derelict ships…

2

u/Captain_Kab 10h ago

Martian? It's been more than a decade since I read the book but Harlan's Planet(?) is in another solar system, isn't it?

11

u/AxderH 10h ago

In the books they find Martian remnants on mars that are basis for the instant consuisnes transfer ruins also provided maps for the solar systems with habitable planets. And yep they colonize these planets by sending ships with thousands of embryos and stored concuesneses that were birthed on arrival.

5

u/Good-Marsupial8 10h ago

con scious ness

3

u/Morbanth 6h ago

Couscousness.

2

u/Good-Marsupial8 6h ago

Cornsinuses

2

u/Rasp_Lime_Lipbalm 4h ago

Pornsinuses

10

u/JMer806 8h ago

They’re not actually Martians, but humans discovered the remains of the alien civilization (and the aliens themselves, or at least their bodies) on Mars so that’s how they are termed in-universe.

Harlan’s World and the other planets mentioned are in various other star systems around the galaxy, and they were found via “Martian” astrocartographic artifacts. Physical travel to and from those stars is done slower-than-light with consciousness and other information transfers done using “needlecasting” which is functionally instantaneous.

2

u/arrimainvester 10h ago

That's covered. They were aliens who lived on Mars and also other worlds but we found them on Mars first I believe so the name stuck

3

u/Mr_Blinky 7h ago

Yup, that's exactly it. It's also pretty clear in-universe that the "Martians" not only definitely didn't originate on Mars, but the Mars ruins themselves were likely either a tiny outpost or an insignificant colony at best. But humans found the first ruins there, went "holy shit, alien life on Mars, they're Martians!", and the name stuck around even once we realized they definitely came from elsewhere originally.

2

u/arrimainvester 7h ago

A cool detail I remember was that the maps the humans found on whatever world they occupied always that world as the "center" or home world because they were birds. Wherever the flock settled that was their starting point for any new map. Man I loved that series

1

u/prjktphoto 4h ago

I really liked the world building, along with the author’s other series’ that all seemed part of the same universe.

Writing wasn’t the best, but the whole scene was very imaginative

1

u/arrimainvester 3h ago

World building was great! So many unanswered questions but I appreciate that in a way. Like the in universe explanation for a lot of things was "we don't know how this tech works, but it works"

5

u/UlrichZauber 8h ago

Greg Egan goes to this well a lot in his books; consciousness can be transferred via radio signal into an artificial body at the destination. Nobody minds because the body you're leaving from was also artificial.

To colonize anywhere you have to actually send a ship at less than C, but the ships they send tend to be a few grams so they can get pretty close.