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Comment by mminer237 | Hacker News Reader

I agree, but also, it's really hard to have sci-fi without FTL. I feel that necessitates it being somewhat soft, but having every other character die when someone travels to another planet means you're basically tied to a space story without space travel.

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> when someone travels to another planet

I think you mean solar system. While nobody has traveled to Mars, it is reasonable to suggest that is only because we haven't tried hard enough yet. There are problems in the way, but they seem like engineering things that we will figure out if we try. It is debatable if we can make a self supporting colony on Mars, but it getting there seems perfectly possible in reach. Venus is harder (getting there is easier, but reaching the surface is questionable), but we could probably do it.

Getting just the farthest planet in our solar system though is getting close to a lifetime. The nearest star to earth is 4 light years away, we have no hope of reaching it in a lifetime with any technology we know works (there are nuclear options that seem promising but we don't know if they work)

The milky way is 100k lightyears. Not possible to cross without FTL.

Its really not hard! I am with GP in that most scifi with FTL comes off as silly, perhaps fun and well written but not to be taken seriously in the sense of its worldbuilding being immersive or intriguing.

Almost all my favorite books almost exclusively occupy settings with laws of physics that are internally consistent and believable and therefore have no FTL. See "The Expanse", "Three Body", "Blindsight", "The Sunflower Cycle", "Rendezvous with Rama" and too many others to name.

Three Body has FTL.

Does it? The sophons are capped at light speed though they communicate FTL. The whole curvature propulsion I thought had the ships moving at light speed, not exceeding it. Three Body has plenty of clarketech but most of the drama comes from it being grounded in something kind of like actual the laws of physics.

Communicating FTL breaks causality just like FTL travel does.

The Expanse has FTL after a couple of books, though I enjoyed the pre-FTL parts more.

Yeah I guess it has FTL but its not really FTL in the same way I think GP meant. It could just as easily be simulation or something else. Its not warp or hyperdrive and it doesnt really violate the internal consistency of the world building since its totally alien clarketech

Mild spoilers for The Expanse: It does have FTL travel, but it is presented as alien and has a limited impact on the day-to-day lives of characters. I get the feeling this was done for narrative reasons primarily, but it helps with "sci-fi hardness".

Generally I think the impact of instant communication and near-instant travel (or lack thereof) is not talked about enough. Most sci-fi stories derive from the present day, and keep this aspect of today (as do many fantasy stories, interestingly), but it's a narrative choice with large impacts.

That's an incredibly compelling hook for a sci-fi story!

It is largely the premise for at least the beginning of Speaker for the Dead where the main character lives essentially a digital nomadic life traveling at almost light speed planet-to-planet. He knows he can never go back to any place he's been as everyone died of old age as soon as he left. It has FTL communication though.

Read some Greg Egan. It isn't really that hard.

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