FASTER THAN LIGHT

   According to Relativity the velocity of light is limiting: no matter how objects alter their velocity relative to one another, the sum of their velocities can never exceed the ultimate constant c (the velocity of light in a vacuum); moreover, the measurement of c is unaffected by the velocity of the measurer. The apparently paradoxical implications of this statement are avoided because objects travelling at high velocities relative to one another are subject to different frames of measurement, by which each appears to the other to be subject to a distortion of time. As a consequence, SPACESHIPS which make interstellar journeys at velocities close to light-speed relative to their points of origin are subject to a time-dilatation whereby the travellers age more slowly than the people they left at home. A good popularization of such ideas can be found in George GAMOW's book of scientific fables Mr Tompkins in Wonderland (coll1939 chap).Some "relativistic" effects of FTL travel are described in Camille FLAMMARION's pre-Einsteinian cosmic fantasy Lumen (1887; trans 1897), but other early sf writers, including the pioneers of pulp SPACE-OPERA, ignored such matters, even after Relativity theory had come into being. As the intellectual respectability of such ignorance declined, however, the limiting velocity of light increasingly became an awkward inconvenience to writers of interstellar adventure stories, necessitating the development of a series of facilitating devices - often involving "space-warps", interdimensional dodges into HYPERSPACE or "subspace", or,more recently, TACHYON drives or BLACK-HOLE-related "wormholes" - to enable the sciencefictional imagination to retain GALACTIC EMPIRES and their effectively infinite supply of earthlike ALIEN worlds ripe for COLONIZATION. Faster-than-light communication systems like James BLISH'sDIRAC transmitter and Ursula K. LE GUIN's ANSIBLE require similar justificatory fudges. Such literary devices cannot, in fact, succeed in setting aside the logical difficulties which arise if Einstein's theory is true, but FTL drives of various kinds are so very useful in avoiding the inconveniences of GENERATION STARSHIPS that many writers of HARD SF insist on clinging to the hope that the theory may be imperfect in such a way as to permit an exploitable loophole. Faster than Light (anth 1976), a theme anthology ed Jack DANN and George ZEBROWSKI, includes, as well as the stories, several essays combatively arguing the case. Other writers, however, have found the time-dilatation effects associated with relativistic star-travel a rich source of plot ideas.John W. CAMPBELL Jr was the writer who laid the groundwork for such facilitating devices as the space-warp (in Islands of Space, 1931; 1957) and hyperspace (in The Mightiest Machine, 1934; 1947), where the term made its debut; where heled legions followed. Stories which work harder than most to make such notions plausible include Robert A. HEINLEIN's Starman Jones (1953), Murray LEINSTER's The Other Side of Nowhere (1964), A. Bertram CHANDLER'sCatch the Star Winds (1969) and David ZINDELL's Neverness (1988). Memorable imagery relating to hypothetical means of FTL travel can be found in James Blish's tales of cities-become-starships by courtesy of the SPINDIZZY, CITIES IN FLIGHT (omni 1970), and in Kenneth BULMER's "StrangeHighway" (1960) and Bob SHAW's The Palace of Eternity (1969). Some memorable imagery attempting (mistakenly, as it later turned out) to envisage real relativistic visual effects can be found in Frederik POHL's "The Gold at the Starbow's End" (1972; exp as Starburst 1982). Many sfstories suggest that the pilots of FTL spaceships may have to be specially adapted to the task, sometimes by cyborgization (CYBORGS), becoming more-or-less alienated from their own kind; notable examples include Cordwainer SMITH's "Scanners Live in Vain" (1950), Gerard F. CONWAY'sMindship (1974), Joan COX's Star Web (1980), Vonda MCINTYRE's Superluminal (1984), Melissa SCOTT's trilogy begun with Five Twelfths of Heaven (1985), and Emma BULL's Falcon (1989). Norman SPINRAD's The Void-Captain's Tale (1983) deals ironically with sf symbolism of this general kind, featuringa phallic spaceship powered by a libidinous "psychological drive".Sf stories which play with time-dilatation effects include Fredric BROWN's flippant "Placet is a Crazy Place" (1946), L. Ron HUBBARD's earnest Return to Tomorrow (1950; 1954), Blish's "Common Time" (1953), Heinlein's Time for the Stars (1956), which deploys, literally, the celebrated "twins paradox", Vladislav Krapivin's "Meeting my Brother" (trans 1966), Joe HALDEMAN's THE FOREVER WAR (fixup 1975), Larry NIVEN's A World Out of Time(fixup 1976), Tom Allen's "Not Absolute" (1978) and George TURNER's Beloved Son (1978). Such effects are taken to spectacular extremes in Poul ANDERSON's Tau Zero (1970), whose protagonists are permitted to outlive the Universe, and in Pohl's and Jack WILLIAMSON's even more expansive The Singers of Time (1991).The elementary changes have now been rung, butthere is probably further scope for intriguing time-dilatation plots. One such is Redshift Rendezvous (1990) by John E. STITH, set on a starship in a version of hyperspace in which the velocity of light is so low (22mph/35kph) that its passage is visible, and relativistic phenomena areobvious at walking speed. In the mean time, FTL facilitating devices will undoubtedly continue to do sterling work for the extravagantly inclined sf writer.

   BS