Hyperspace as a game/story mechanic

[sobrique]

One of the problems with science fiction, is that space is big.
Really really big.

There's lots of different ways of handling it. Most do so by some form of faster than light travel.
Too many overlook it though, since it makes a big difference to the 'feel' of your setting - how easy it is to travel.

Sometimes you have "FTL isn't possible" scenario. Where everyone obeys relativistic physics. There aren't many examples of this, although perhaps the most famous would be Arthur C. Clarke, and his 2001, 2010, 2061. In these, the journey is a major part of the story - travel around the solar system takes months. Often there's the concept of 'continuous acceleration' ships - the physics being cheap fusion power, throwing particles out of the ships sufficient to sustain 1G of acceleration all the way. (The ship turns around mid flight and decelerates the final stages)

It works well enough, but (off the top of my head) this makes Jupiter weeks away, and our Solar system the limit.

Another common mechanic is 'warp' drive. Faster than Light travel through real space. Most obvious example being 'Star Trek' where they distort space time, such that they're travelling through real space, but 'cheating' to avoid the light speed barrier.

It makes for a 'simpler' conception of the galaxy - they 'almost' ignore the light speed problem, and all they need is a special engine to travel quick. (Although they do have relativistic issues when travelling with 'impulse' engines).

The third method that's often seen is 'hyperspace'. A realm of space, connected to 'real' space, but usually smaller. Or of a different topography, such that moving the 4 light years from Sol to Proxima centauri doesn't involve covering the same distance.
Motion through hyperspace typically _also_ takes a different kind of propulsion - sometimes just to 'jump' sometimes to sustain.

In star wars, hyperspace is not a 'natural' place for a ship to exist - if the hyperdrive cuts out, ships leave hyperspace (although sometimes that means they're proper fecked). The 'speed' through hyperspace depends on the 'power' of your hyperdrive. A hyperdrive in star wars is also sufficiently small to be on fighters - all the rebel starfighters - A-Wings, B-Wings, X-Wings and Y-Wings can travel through hyperspace. Although being in small cockpit for extended periods of time isn't stunningly comfortable.

Babylon 5 universe is similar, but with one important difference. Hyperspace _is_ stable in B5, so a ship can enter hyperspace and stay there.
In B5 this was originally accomplished via the Jump Gates in each Solar system, but there was an evolution of 'ship based' hyperdrives. Most of these only on the very large capital ships (one of the reasons that large ships are necessary).

It does make for a different plot device - getting 'lost' in hyperspace is a very real possibility (where in star wars, getting 'lost' was still possible, but it'd be in real space as you ended up in the middle of no where between stars).

The fourth possibility is 'star gates'. Mystical thingies that people can use to travel between two fixed points. Or maybe they're just 'warp points'. They're finite and fixed. If you want to go to $location, you have to start from $other location.

And finally you have the 'mystic navigator' system. Dune and the Warhammer 40k use them. Special individuals who can in some way move things the size of space ships across the intervening void. This is actually one of the cooler ones - it's a 'human aspect' to your space travel, rather than just a technological solution.

The universe and stellar distances are approximately fixed. The _real_ distance is how long it takes to get there. Occasionally you see others show up, such as the 'mathematics' travel that David Zindel uses in Neverness. Sort of a variant on the mystic navigator, it's also more detailed, and ... well worth a read just for the explaination of hyperspace travel.

So now I have a question. Which do you 'prefer' for your GMing, story telling, or in films/TV?

And is there any (examples or methods) that I've missed in this selection of plot devices?

Comments

[borusa.livejournal.com]

Hi!

Some that you may not have considered...

In Robert Heinlein's "Starman Jones" they travel "faster than light" by getting away from a solar system then accelerating up to the speed of light (I know), timing their acceleration so that they hit the speed of light at exactly the right point. This causes them to burst out of our space and drop back in somewhere else. Space is described as being crumpled over (through additional dimensions), and if you do this at a point where two parts of space touch, it's a useful way to travel.

This is (a) obvious b*ll*cks and (b) very similar in some ways to Madeleine L'Engle's Tesseracts in "A Wrinkle In Space".

Melissa Scott, in the Silence Leigh trilogy has a really bizarre science-magic method of intergalactic travel which involves ships made of an alloy containing "Philosopher's Tincture" which, when music is played at it, will attempt to ascend into hyperspace. That's a rubbish explanation, but a rather interesting idea.

There's also the Wormholes idea, a sort of natural stargate - hinted at in DS9, used elsewhere (though exactly where escapes me).

Don't forget the infinite improbability drive, either.

R

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Hmm, infinite improbability is clearly one of the better ones. I should have remembered with the Hitchhikers guide being in the radio again, but *shrug*.

Heinlein did have the torch ships in several of his books - fire up the engines, and burn full pelt, relativism will mean you're only in transit for a few years, although everyone you know'll be dead by the end of it.

Actually, whilst I remember, there's "The Forever War" that uses similar concepts - attacks are committed hundreds of years in advance, and the crew give up all that they have apart from the navy in order to participate.

And then of course, there's Hyperion, which is very strange...

[the-g-man.livejournal.com]

My problem with any FTL travel, and one which is frequently overlooked in most sci-fi, is that, according to relativistic theory, it is indistinguishable from time travel. I have yet to see a literary device that has not fallen prey to this.

Admittedly, you can just assume a more Newtonian version of space-time but, for me, I know that space just isn't like that.

This is currently a bit of preoccupation for me - trying to find a fictive FTL device that doesn't permit hundreds of time travel paradoxes.

time travel paradoxes.

[erisreg.livejournal.com]

if you approach time the same as you would explore the core of the sun,..that it just doesn't allow the paradoxes to exist kind of a self healing environment,.you can play with the concept, you don't need to know cellular division theory to use the concept of something growing, you just present the act and let the mileage vary,..

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

I don't know, whilst 'trans light' or 'relativistic velocity' travel does present temporal distortion, the concepts of 'shortcuts' through real space does exist. There's a space-time curvature at the singularity point, indeed in any gravity well. So any given path, if it's 'close' to a stellar mass the difference is different.

I don't see it as much of as suspension of disbelief to allow that to be taken notably further.

I thought though, that there just isn't "faster than light". You can take 'shortcuts' but can't move faster than this absolute limit.

A static wormhole does imply time differences, with differing velocities of the entry and exit point, but I've always taken the view that it doesn't really matter overly if proxima centauri is 4 years 'in the past' or 'in the future' as long as theres at least some coherency in the temporal mechanics.

I daresay that we may have physicists prove these things one way or another at some point, but I don't think they'll ever lose their value as storytelling devices.

[the-g-man.livejournal.com]

The problem is, to ensure temporal consistency, you are very limited in what sort of shortcuts you can have. The light barrier isn't the problem here - the lack of universal simultaneity is.

In relativity, two different observers can disagree about which of two events occurs first. This normally isn't a problem because neither event exists in the other's light cone. They occur close enough together in time and far enough apart in space that a signal from one will not be able to reach the other.

Once you start allowing information to move faster than light, however, even by the use of wormholes or what-have-you. You violate this assumption which makes for very tangled causal relations between events.

[jorune.livejournal.com]

I prefer the method that fits with the story that I'm telling, having said that I think that there are a lot of social consequences that FTL brings that players and refs miss out or do not think through. For example if an invasion is occuring at different tech levels then what is the relative military value of travelling from planet to planet if you're not going to engage with the enemy, because they've already gone, or you'll wait and wait for them. If it takes a long time to travel from planet to planet then the prevailing culture could be radically different from place to place. The consequences of this are far reaching, it affects law, economics, public opionion, goods on sale, goods prohibited. What is the point of traders plying the starlanes if their product are not in demand at the remote planet or they find nothing to take back home.

At this point each planet/solar system becomes its own microcosm and yet a macrocosm of competing ideas and societies. This concept is covered in Gurps Transhuman Space where they are major powers competing across the solar system not only with themselves (China, EU, Transpacific Socialist Alliance (TSA), Pacific Rim Alliance (PRA)) but with competing ideologies of existence. Captalism vs Allcomers.

Let the medium fit the message.

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

That's what Sci-Fi is primarily about though. Social consequences of innovation.

OK, so _some_ explore physics or whatever, but it's not particularly viable - if it's not been invented yet, it could easily become implausible. If it has, then it's not so much sci-fi.

Harry Harrison wrote a lovely collection of short stories, called 'One step from Earth'. The primary 'tech' was the MT. The matter transmitter.

Stories are set in increasing steps, from the prototype to the first one on mars, to the first one on jupiter, to a society where their use is widespread.

When one can traverse to any known point in the universe in seconds, then the very nature of exploration changes. After all, if your house is on Titan, and you work in a factory orbiting Tau Ceti, but your favourite bar is at the other end of the galaxy, the nature of your universe changes.

But you still have the 'gaps' it's easier to ignore them.

Most settle for a middle ground, where interstellar travel is 'economically viable' for military or trade purposes. Not necessarily fast, or cheap, but fast enough and cheap enough that you can make a profit flying to nearby star systems with the latest DVD release (or whatever).

Some go to extremes, but usually the extremes are the ones where the method of travel _is_ the major point.

[jorune.livejournal.com]

I think the challenge in any scifi that isn't drawn from a recognised source, book/tv/movie is making sure the players and the ref understand what is and what isn't possible in the game world.

In most game systems it is fudged. There is a game that is wholly set on an aging gen ship called Metamorphosis Alpha. That has a virus that starts to infect the whole ship and turns into a bio survival story.

do you 'prefer' for your GMing

[erisreg.livejournal.com]

not a role player i don't know how definitive your environments need to be,..for story telling purposes it suffices to say if x then y and take it from there,. like if you walk through a Zetla radiation field you mutate into a Throg, you can play with the hows and whys if it behooves you but you can just take the Throg and run with it also,..o.o

Re: do you 'prefer' for your GMing

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

When doing roleplay, it's kind of like an interactive story.
The weaker ones explain the 'hows and whys', the good ones 'gloss over' and say 'it happens this way'.

Bablyon 5 vs Star trek being the classic examples - B5 never explains tech. Star trek tries, but simply can't because it doesn't exist yet.

One of my favourite B5 quotes is:
"So how does your artificial gravity work?"
"Very well thank you."

The physics is less relevant to the story (well, except the ones where it's the major point) than the methodology.
A story where you can go from Earth to Proxima to the horsehead nebula in a matter of minutes, will be very different to one where interstellar travel is done by accelerating continously up to the speed of light, and decelerates at the other end.

Re: do you 'prefer' for your GMing

[crashbarrier.livejournal.com]

Babylon 5 doesn't have to explain tech cos the theory is

'if you live there then you use it the same way we use a car, a microwave, velcro.. normal everyday people wouldn't necesarily know HOW it works just that it works."

Star Trek universe spends a lot of time explaining itself cos it feels it has to justify its existance, which just goes to show what a sparkling non-reality lace it is:)

Star wars is just fantasy.. :):)

I always loved the Tomorrow People. now that was a way to travel in style.

Re: do you 'prefer' for your GMing

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Actually, I do know how cars/microwaves work...

But I also agree that spending time explaining it is wasted in ... well almost any sci fi series/film. (Might get away with it in a book, but Lenseman did that, and I didn't think much of that either.)

leap of faith

[erisreg.livejournal.com]

like politics and religion, sci-fi works best when you have faith in the person leading,.. and for me it at least still works for sci-fi,...;D

[warmage.livejournal.com]

Two words:

1) TARDIS.

2) duh. ;)

TARDIS, as explained to hilarious effect by Peter Cushing in "Dr. Who and the Daleks" (the movie, not the show), travels by use of (in short phrases) string-theory-type electrical charges (frequencies/vibrations) "transmitted" through spacetime.

[warmage.livejournal.com]

I almost forgot - the "Portable Hole" and "Hammerspace" effects:
Portable Hole comes from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "Hammerspace" is that place where hot anime chicks magically withdraw Weapons of Mass Hilarity. (q.v. http://strangecandy.keenspace.com)

[iamnotramphus.livejournal.com]

I am not a fan of 'clean' FTL travel, much abused by Star Trek. You can fight while travelling FTL. Any ship from the size of a car can do it, and everyone does it at a drop of a hat. It is not really dangerous either. Gets rid of the fun. Using it is the equivalent of popping to Tesco's in the car.

[warmage.livejournal.com]

In a third crack at the subject - what about something like "tele-lithography," combining telepresence and stereolithography. This only requires that *communication* is instantaeous, not matter-transit. The esoteric elements that make up the difference are left as an exercise to the writer.

Basically it's your "standard issue" holographic projection tank, but through force-projection or matter manipulation (or whatever) you interact with a sort of golem or doppelganger of the subject made solid in your own viewing apparatus.

[malal.livejournal.com]

"And finally you have the 'mystic navigator' system. Dune and the Warhammer 40k use them."

I'd dispute that they're separate methods of travel, just methods around the horrible navigation problems of FTL travel.

Dune's ships have an Uber Warp-type drive in them. Navagators just shortcut the horrible maths.

40K's ships use a Hyperspace-type system, with Navagators to be able to see where they're going.

In both worlds it's possile to make very sort jumps safely, but they're not much use....

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the real difference is the 'human element'.
To take a conventional solution, we'd see lots of simultaneous equations to solve, so we'd throw computer power at it.

But in 40k and Dune, I see the way through hyperspace as not something that can be solved by a computer - so you have to have a navigator.

In several of these there's the 'hyperspace' concept, but the major distinction is entry/exit, and navigation through it. Which are the major 'plot' points (or could be).

[jambon-gris.livejournal.com]

doesnt the navigater see forwards in time so as to steer round approaching objects

[malal.livejournal.com]

"But in 40k and Dune, I see the way through hyperspace as not something that can be solved by a computer - so you have to have a navigator."

True for 40K (since the "hyperspace" is the real of chaos!), but not true for Dune. Remember that in the later books someone solves the problem and you get highliners without navagators competing with the guild.

[warmage.livejournal.com]

In Dune the whole of the ship is wreathed in a field inside which we have the Navigator, who exerts (the books suggest "encompassing" - like a field outside the first one) its will to drag this field and its contents across space by space-folding. By definition (only) they're translating spacetime itself, not their vessel.

[jambon-gris.livejournal.com]

Ok theres the FTL thing (star treck etc) which is a "hyper drive", theres the worm hole star gate (SG5, etc) which belive stands up to the current understanding of science and might work if both ends of the worm hole are at the same time Strictly there is no time gradient between the two ends).
My favorate is warp drive where you distort time and space. Because all you 'puters will crash when you turn off your warp drive. Clockwork space craft :-) have a bus to catch will say more tommorw

[huwjones.livejournal.com]

Left Hand of Darkness had the 'anisible' a device for communicating instantly over interstellar distance. Can't remember it's travel mechanism though.

Peirs Antony had his kirlian quest series, where travel was a pain, but people with strong 'souls' could exchange bodies.

[xarrion.livejournal.com]

There was a short story - which I'm sad to say I can't find any reference to via random Googling* - which involved (from what I recall - it was about 10 yrs ago) visualising a tesseract and then bending it into an effective mobius loop. In the same way as you can travel to any point on a mobius loop, it allowed you to travel any distance through space and time, through manipulation of perception.
Alas, all I can remember of the story was that it was in a diary format, and involved a professor and his two genius children.

*the side effect of which has been that I've been messing with hypercubes all night :)

And yeah, although my knowledge of the Dune universe is limited, I thought the heighliners were just big lumps of metal that the Navigators moved by bringing two points in space together, then 'releasing' the one they didn't need - all through mental control.

Those are probably my favourite methods of hyper-travel, but that's probably just due to my love of the possible latent potential of the human mind.
Instantaneous travel anywhere in the universe makes things simple (especially in game/story terms), as there's no need to mess around with light-speed and spacetime equations. The only worries become energy required, stress on the traveller, etc.
Good topic :)

[malal.livejournal.com]

"And yeah, although my knowledge of the Dune universe is limited, I thought the heighliners were just big lumps of metal that the Navigators moved by bringing two points in space together, then 'releasing' the one they didn't need - all through mental control."

No, while that's what they do, they need the engines to do it.

Depending on what description you read, they work in one of two ways. Either, they can visualise the point half way across the galaxy, and know precisely where it is in relation to the ship, or there's this huge list of amazingly complex calculations to be done, and the navigators just look ahead and go "the final answer is *this*". Remember that the Dune universe really doesn't have very good computer tech.

Note, I remember it points out somewhere that Mentats could navigate Highliners, but only take them on short simple jumps. Longer ones would take so long for them to solve, the conditions would have changed significantly.

We shall ignore the bit in the current set of prequals where Norma makes a set of calculations to dump a highliner in orbit around Arrakis weeks before it's used, and it's also used several days before it's ment to be.... Sigh

[crashbarrier.livejournal.com]

in McCaffrey's 'pegasus' trilogy and 'tower and the hive' series they use a high form of Telekenesis to push craft between 'stations' the TK's synchronise with huge generators and pull that energy to do this. Each of the stations is collection of various Psionics of ranging power all working in sync with each other.

I quite liked it cos its different from your usual Sci-fi science.