Sci (Fantasy) Friday #12: Galactic Empire trope #2 "FTL Travel"
The "Faster-than-light" trope
It’s a big galaxy, make sure you arrive safe and on time.
Reader: “I see what you did there, Matt. You thought we’d forget about the missing cat pictures.”
Seriously? 🤦♂️ OK. I’ll find a cat photo for a future Media Monday, but it may take me a while.
Some background
How do you get from place to place in a huge galaxy? The earliest space opera stories used faster than light (FTL) travel, which is all theoretical as of this Substack. Lots of stories have different means of moving between, and within, star systems and galaxies.
A quick check of the stories that use FTL travel to move across systems shows CJ Cherry’s Alliance-Union series; Gordon R Dickson’s Childe series; Harry Harrison’s Bill, the Galactic series; the Dune series; Weber’s Honor Harrington series; and Ringo’s Aldenata series. With FTL drives in a ship, that ship has the freedom to move to different systems for trade, warfare, and refugees fleeing wars. That freedom offers a lot of story opportunities.
What if you want to stifle travel to move between certain points? To increase conflict and control? You use the Portal Network trope. You start with a network of portals strung across a galactic polity/empire. If all trade and travel must pass through a string of gates there would be far fewer chances for rebellion. If the galactic leadership decided you couldn’t leave a star system, you’re stuck. John Ringo’s Troy Rising series used gates to travel across the galaxies, and that story was awesome, IMHO.
Now picture having both means in one setting. How would different groups use each system? How would it effect trade? Actually, what would end up shipped between star systems? Would it be large bulky items/systems or smaller, higher value items? What about smuggling? Would smugglers/couriers gravitate towards FTL drives or gates?
Why do I care?
Star Wars 1977 had hyperdrive, which while not as funny as the Spaceballs version, was about as convenient to story plot. There is a trope, “traveling at the speed of plot,” where the characters move exactly as fast as needed to arrive on time to act or specifically too late to act. The battle with the Deathstar happened with little time remaining before the Deathstar would be in range to destroy the moon, where the Rebel Alliance was hiding. And the Deathstar blew up just at the point they were in range of he moon of Yavin. Why didn’t they flee, like they did with the ice planet Hoth in Empire Strikes Back? They could have scattered without risking the entire Alliance leadership. Why couldn’t the X-Wings and Y-Wings sneak up on the Deathstar, drift dormant until within range? How are space fighter planes spotted? Why not swarm all the defenses at once? Send any left over transport aircraft at the Deathstar? Drive the defenders nuts. 😈
Where am I going with this?
As I mentioned previously,
, , and I are working on novellas in our own shared world Galactic Empire setting. My stories required me to focus on FTL travel and such, so I focus on these tropes. My characters will be traveling through one polity and flying space craft that must jump from star system to star system. However, it wasn’t my research that started us with our own portrayal of FTL travel in the setting. It was Zane and , who laid down the initial comments about FTL, which included a Portal Network, and I knew this was fertile ground. How would space fleets move from system to system? How would they resupply? How would you refuel FTL drives? How would you create, and power, the portals between star systems? How would you sync them up? How would you repair them? How would space fighters work? How do you launch…? Let’s save that last question for next week when we talk about the “Cool Starships” trope.And that’s about all I’ll inflict on y’all this week. 😁 I’ll see all y’all next week when we talk about another genre/trope of SF.