HYPERSPACE

   In sf TERMINOLOGY, a kind of specialized space through which SPACESHIPS can take a short cut in order to get rapidly from one point in "normal" space to another far distant. The term was probably invented by John W. CAMPBELL Jr in Islands of Space (1931 Amazing Stories Quarterly; 1957). Itis now so thoroughly incorporated into the conventions of GENRE SF that few sf writers feel called upon to explain its meaning, although Robert A. HEINLEIN gave a particularly clear account in Starman Jones (1953).Hyperspace is often seen as a space of higher DIMENSION through which our three-dimensional space can be folded or crumpled, so that two apparently distant points may almost come into contact. Sometimes, as in Frederik POHL's "The Mapmakers" (1955), hyperspace is seen as a POCKET UNIVERSE, akind of visitable map with a one-to-one correspondence to our own Universe (with all points hopefully arranged in the same order). In "FTA" (1974) byGeorge R.R. MARTIN, although hyperspace exists, travel by it takes longer. In Redshift Rendezvous (1990) by John E. STITH a starship has to cope with the fact that the velocity of light in hyperspace is 22mph (35kph); relativistic effects thus occur at very modest velocities.The prohibitions in Relativity theory against travelling FASTER THAN LIGHT are not really circumvented with devices like SPACE WARPS or hyperspace, since it is actually FTL journeys and not FTL velocities that are prohibited, a point often not appreciated by sf writers; if an FTL journey takes place via hyperspace, the fact remains that the arrival might be witnessed by observers elsewhere in the Universe as preceding the take-off, and Relativity prohibits the principle of causality being broken by thereversal of cause and effect.A relevant article is "Hyperspace" by David LANGFORD in The Science in Science Fiction (1982) by Peter NICHOLLS, BrianM. STABLEFORD and Langford. More recently, a scientific book on the subject is Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension (1994) by Michio Kaku, professor oftheoretical physics at the City College of the City University of New York.

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