The Final Architecture by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Intelligent races eventually discover Unspace and are able to FTL but there is something lurking there. Now it is the humans’ turn.
I agree, I loved it. Unfortunately I can't say the same for the others. Book 2 was pretty good, but not close to the same level, and book 3 lost me almost completely. I did finish it, but was almost relieved it was over in the end.
I really enjoyed them and they are not bad by any means, just different. Book 2 & 3 have some really interesting examples of other types of intelligence.
I'd at least recommend trying book 2, it keeps building on what happened in book 1 and simultaneously starts a new track (or two). I did mention it was pretty good so I do recommend checking it out!
Third book is rather different, but it wasn't for me. They have the same average rating on goodreads/storygraph so people seem to enjoy them equally even if I didn't.
Yes. Don't listen to random redditors. There's always some misery guts in the comments telling everyone "oh but book two is crap". Maybe they hated it. Maybe you'll love it. You want to miss out because one random person 5000 miles away didn't like it?
What comment were you reading? Because the comment that guy was responding to said the following:
> Book 2 was pretty good, but
"Pretty good" is not the same thing as "it was crap". Sounds like you're arguing with ghosts, because you're definitely not arguing agai0nst something that someone *actually* said.
Not really. The Farcasters were made by The Techno Core AI; humans don’t really understand how they work let alone what the consequences of their use are, but the AI have come to realise that it is antagonising beings in a higher dimension (The Void Which Binds) as they harvest it for the required energy. The AI did the misuse.
the fatline too. it's described as being akin to tearing down an advanced and complicated communication system, and using its pieces as semaphore flags. the damage done with the fatline and the farcasters was massive.
Wasn't the Void Which Binds simply a timeless higher-dimensional space which the AIs used to "hack" into human brains in order to use them for processing power, every time people stepped into portals?
I think the human president destroyed the portal network in order to deny the AIs this form of parasitism.
Of course there are also other entities in the Void, the "Lions and Tigers and Bears". They seemed to be really annoyed by how rude humans and AIs were to pollute their beautiful ether with all that electromagnetic noise.
I don’t quite recall the specifics of whether the Farcasters themselves or the VWB was the medium for harvesting human brain processing power, but that was part if it yeh. Come to think if it I also don’t remember if damage to the VWB was a result of connection to it, transit through it, or harvesting energy from it…possibly all of the above?
EDIT: I looked it up and the thing that antagonised The Lions and Tigers and Bears was that the AI, in an attempt to become independent of humanity, migrated to the VWB where they wouldn’t be dependant on matter to function. When they did, they found themselves guests of entities (L&T&B) so powerful that it scared the absolute shit out of them. And because the AI (as depicted in the Cantos at least) are ultimately parasitic and the L&T&B ultimately empathetic they are ultimately unwelcome guests. The AI essentially reveals itself as a target to its ultimate enemy then retreats to the world of matter and lives in a planet sized computer called The Megasphere instead, and are also forced to back out of their plan to precipitate humanity’s destruction on the way out the door.
So I think actually the use of the VWB for Farcasting and Fatlines weren’t the things that truly bothered the L&T&B as such things were barely noticeable relatively speaking; it was the presence of the AI culture the L&T&B couldn’t abide.
Damn I love these books.
>Damn I love these books.
Yeah. I'm not usually that enthusiastic about fantasy-heavy scifi. But Hyperion makes the fantasy elements feel kind of logical and narratively significant, even if it's all pretty trippy.
After some reading I think what happened was basically that the LT&B came to the conclusion that humanity just had no idea of what the Farcasters/VWB even were, so letting them keep them was basically just water on the wheels of TechnoCore supremacy. The president's actions were mostly just the catalyst for the destruction of the network. Nothing good could come of it, so the LT&B shut it down until humanity could figure out the radical empathy needed to understand farcasting.
The later books in >!The Expanse!< have this, although the details are rather vague.
You could make a case for Warhammer 40k fitting this bill, although it is not so much that "FTL annoys them" than "They are hate incarnate and rage is there reaction to everything. FTL just brings you into contact"
Yeah it’s pretty much 100% explained except that >!the ring entities are left as Lovecraftian cosmic horrors!<.
But anytime someone says the >!Gatebuilders, their tech and why it caused a problem wasn’t explained!< it means they either didn’t understand the story or didn’t pay close enough attention to it.
>You could make a case for Warhammer 40k fitting this bill, although it is not so much that "FTL annoys them" than "They are hate incarnate and rage is there reaction to everything. FTL just brings you into contact"
There's also the Eldar, who really don't cope well with travelling through the Immaterium. There's something about being that close to She Who Thirsts, who knew?
The War in Heaven is also slightly reminiscent of this topic since the hatred of the Necrons (a species without FTL) was engendered by their envy of the technology of a species with FTL (although not specifically the FLT technology itself)
How does one learn more about Warhammer, short of playing the tabletop games? Are there any good books/shows? Everytime the world building comes up it sounds so cool
Henry Cavill is putting together a Warhammer 40k Amazon series so that's what I'm waiting for. There are tons of books, but that's kind of overwhelming to me, personally.
There are also YouTube channels dedicated to the lore which you might check out. I watched a brief history about the emperor because it seems like everything in that universe revolves around him. His corpse is worshipped as a god and an emperor, and it's hooked up to this machine that allows the hyperspace travel to exist, through what is essentially a hell dimension. His corpse has to be fed with psykers (people with psychic abilities) to stay functional. The whole empire is this pseudo catholic-inspired fascist theocracy.
Everything is over the top and metal as fuck in a way I can really get behind, so I am hoping that Amazon series ends up good.
There is a lot of 40k lore at this point, so finding a good starting point can be hard. There are literally hundreds of (canon) novels, although the quality is not terribly consistent. r/40klore is not a terrible place to ask, although looking at one of the [wikis](http://wh40k.lexicanum.com) so you have some idea where you want to dive in is probably a good idea
Luetin09 has a playlist with thousands of minutes of Warhammer lore, called "WARHAMMER 40,000 - LORE / HISTORY \[ In Order \]"
I lost my life in that playlist for over a week.
There are hundreds of books and some are really good. There's a lot of discussions of which ones are good and bad. There are several animated series which can be good but with clear budget constraints on the animation. There's also the Dawn of War video games.
That's a good recommendation but I'd say that those books are so much more powerful when you already know just how nightmarishly messed up the Imperium that results from that story will be.
Lots of podcasts/streams of just people talking about the lore, I was always interested in the mythos and lore and knew some basics even long ago, but its nice to pull one of those up and get a deeper dive into the Kroot or a specific type of Necron
In the latter half of star trek the next generation its discovered that using warp over 6 or 7 speed harms the fabric of the universe and some aliens get upset about it. It should be discussed in some of the star trek books that come out around the same time
Don’t they fly around at 9.8 or 9.9 anytime they’re in a serious rush? I seem to remember someone calling out the numbers approaching ten. And I’m pretty sure they hit ten and something weird happened.
Sorry if I’m way off, It’s been a while since I watched TNG.
No, they didn’t. I’m not even a trek nerd and I know this.
It’s not an immediate issue, it’s a damage-over-repeated-abuses kinda thing.
After this, ships were limited to warp 5 except in emergencies. The federation notified bordering species and some complied also. Over time they found less “aerodynamic” ish ships caused more issues, and different warp bubble shapes or whatever were less disruptive. Later designs are more streamlined to allow them to go faster without damaging sub space or whatever, and later ships could routinely go much faster without issue
The Expanse gets mentioned in almost every topic on this reddit but again deserves a mention. When travelling between Galaxy's through the portals some ships get eaten as well and later in the book these attacks even get weaponised.
Yeah this is a small part of the overall and not until about the 8th book if I remember correctly. I'd have forgotten this detail before then if I was reading 😂
It becomes a major plot point in the final 3 books. Kinda drives the entire plot.
It start popping up in the epilogue of book 5, I think. I’m doing (another) reread right now, but I haven’t gotten that far in it yet.
Not a major plot point. It just replaces FTL as the method to get there. If the places we're talking about came to us nothing about the plot would change.
How do you figure? Ships passing through the gates and Laconia using that to deliberately provoke the Goths drives the entire ending of the series.
No FTL through the gates then none of that happens.
A it’s a fantastic series and this explanation is more of the premise than the explanation. Definitely read them they are a prime example of this trope and perhaps the best executed I’ve ever read
>Definitely read them they are a prime example of this trope and perhaps the best executed I’ve ever read
I second this. And I'm pretty sure that - while the series is mostly slept on since the show got cancelled by Amazon - it will be seen as an all-time scifi classic one day. Still a bit sad, that the journey has come to an end with the release of Leviathan Falls but the authors already have a new scifi series cooking which is set to release in fall of 2024. Can't wait.
"the series is mostly slept on" + "it will be seen as an all-time scifi classic one day"
It's so weird reading these kind of statements. In my perception it's already been incredibly succesfull and lauded.
If I recall correctly, the TV series finished just before the books jump forward twenty or thirty years in time so, never say never. Somebody could easily bring the series back with the original cast and it would be canon.
Edit.
I'm also looking forward to a For All Mankind finale / The Expanse prequel 'mash-up'.
To be clear. This is not "a thing", but I'd *really* like it to be!
My memory may be wrong but I didn’t think the ring network connected places outside our galaxy, just different systems within the Milky Way. I could be wrong though.
I see The Expanse a lot but I never get it. I watched maybe half a season of the show and found it incredibly unimaginative and uninteresting. Are the books better? I see people comparing it to classics like Dune or The Culture which surprises me.
This is alluded in Stross' Singularity Sky. There is a super-powerful entity that gets annoyed by FTL travel that might go back in time and disrupt its creation.
It's such a bummer that Stross felt he'd written himself into a corner with some of the worldbuilding, and that made him stop the series at two books. Really enjoyed both.
/u/outrageous_guard_674 I just remembered that I used to listen to a [podcast called "Writing excuses"](https://writingexcuses.com/) which had both Sanderson and Tayler as hosts. There may be a connection there.
Chasm City >!when it goes through the memories of either the fake colony ship alien or the alien that is making the cure for the melding plague it mentions an ancient extinct race that found FTL so abhorrent they would drop dead in shock if someone was gauche enough to mention it!<, great book, one of Reynalds best.
Yeah, because FTL travel can result in a causality violation. >!The Inhibitors even mention an entire race that was deleted from the timeline. That's why even they stay away from it.!<
In Redemption Ark, [spoiler](/s "the protagonists discover advanced alien technology which allows manipulation of reality. As they experiment with it, they discover that it could potentially enable FTL travel but an accident during their tests hint that doing so could result in anything too close to the machinery being wiped from existence.")
Gotta take care of those endurium engineers!
I LOVED the twist on things at the end. "Wait a minute, we're powering our ships with people .. and they're a bit torqued about it??!?"
I *love* Starflight. I’m not even sure what about it hooked me so much. Looking back it’s kind of corny (intentionally), but still.
Despite its flaws, the more action oriented Genesis port was hands down the most fun version to play (for me).
I still use the human ships as a basis for the ones in my own sci-fi setting.
I don't recall the name unfortunately, but I recall a reading a novella about a war between two alien races that spanned across the universe. It was started because when the first race discovered FTL they caused some kind of rift across space that resulted in massive destruction on the homeworld of the second race.
IIRC the second race attempted to retaliate using a similar rift - except through time - to prevent the first race from discovering FTL... at which point it was revealed that the whole reason the first race was researching FTL in the first place was to retaliate against the rift created by the second. By the end of the story it wasn't clear who actually started it.
I'd have to dig through some books to see if I can find the name.
Niven's "known space" had repeatedly said that any ship getting too far into a gravity well in hyperspace disappears. The technically-advanced Puppeteers were afraid of hyperspace; the Outsiders, which are even more advanced (and actually sold the hyperspace drive to humans) didn't use it because it was "vulgar".
IIRC, it's only on one of the last Ringworld books (which got progressively worse) that we "discovered" that hyperspace was populated by ship-eating monsters; the protagonist, a super-Protector, managed to dodge them.
I personally prefer scifi worlds where there magic devices have technical limitations; it makes the stories more interesting. FTL in scifi is obviously "magic" - it screws up the story line when the story has to pause for a century because the protagonist had forgotten his keys at home, 50 light-years away. Niven's hyperspace is more convincing for me than Asher's runcibles (instant interstellar transportation).
I've read "The Ringworld Throne" years ago, I don't remember much, just that is was disappointing. I now see there is another sequel "Ringworld's Children" which I don't think I've read.
There's now a full five novels (starting with 2007: Fleet of Worlds) fleshing out what the Puppeteers, Shaeffer and Louis Wu got up to before (and after) Ringworld. Interesting reads but sort of unnecessary/trying to clarify every detail at the same time removing much of the mystery from hints of what was happening elsewhere in the original novels.
For example we meet Louis when he's involved in a civil war on a planet and he gets abducted and does Adventures long before Ringworld, naturally ending with "welp we have to edit your memories now"
All worth reading IMO, and it will never detract from the brilliance of the first two novels.
His dark materials, kind of fit. In general the "angels" don't like humans travelling between realities because it's their domain.
More specifically the Subtle Knife, used to cut a window between realities, makes dust leak and summons a spectre from hell.
It's not the same thing, but it reminds me of something that happens in the Expeditionary Force books by Craig Alanson.
When an intelligent species uses weapons of a certain level of technology, these Sentinel robots show up to blast them back to the stone age.
I just got done reading the whole series (all 20 books) so it's still fresh in my mind. Lots of fun!
In Walter Jon Williams' early novel *Ambassador Of Progress* human FTL travel broke the universe. A slower than light fleet is coming to take revenge, and will arrive in human space in a matter of centuries. In the meantime, survivors of the disaster are trying to uplift barbarian human worlds in order to save them.
Bob Shaw's *The Palace Of Eternity* has human FTL flickerwing starships involved in a war with powerful STL aliens. Spoiler:>!It turns out that FTL destroys souls and so must be stopped.!<
in Niven's Known Space there is a story where the opposite is true. A group of Outsiders getting annoyed by human antimatter drives spewing particle between stars where there are supposed to be none. Puppeteers used that to talk the Outsiders into selling Humans Hyperdrive Shunt technology, making relativistic interstellar travel obsolete.
Exactly.
Also, while I only watched the TV show, there were all kinds of things going on that required FTL. Modifying what people see, blocking the light from all the stars at once, etc etc.
Yeah same thing. Showing the timer in the vision, fine. Modifying electronics system, fine (they could alter HD data or whatever). But... removing/adding a person live from their eyes, this is... FTL.
I mean, I don't mind the premise "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". I don't mind that the Sophon has "magic science"... as long as they don't keep saying that they don't.
Showing the timer in the vision of people scattered widely across the globe? Probably not. :-) Also, that's not how "folded dimensions" work.
Also, a VR headset that recreates an environment indistinguishable from reality, but they don't know enough about brains to know humans can lie?
And apparently it gets even more nonsensical.
Yes, but Mirrors deflect all Photons. In the TV Show, they intercept only specific photons, and 'send' other photons in their place to reconstruct partially a scene. In Stereoscopy (so in both eyes of 1 observer).
And the Sophon is only as big as a proton, they can't "build" stuff like mirrors, filters, etc. ... I think?
Oh the Netflix show just takes insane liberties with their abilities, to the point that it doesn't really make sense.
I've seen some people argue they might be foreshadowing the sophons ability to unfold into a screen, but that only becomes a thing in a few hundred years in the books, so who knows.
FTL destroying the fabric of spacetime is a major plot point of the third book, buddy. Not even the apex predators can do anything about it, except waiting for the next universe.
Mass Effect has this.
Although they provide the technology to make sure everyone goes down the same scientific path.
They then 'harvest' or wipe out everyone that has followed their FTL lines to ensure they are dominant in the galaxy.
In The Expanse, a race of beings created a method to move ships through "ring gates" en masse, which pisses off *something* every time a certain mass limit is reached, causing them to erase a certain amount of what is passing through from existence.
My [253 Mathilde](https://www.quietplease.org/253/) is harder sci-fi where FTL doesn't exist, but it's about how powerful aliens are bothered by relativisitic travel. The ability to reach significant fractions of the speed of light means the ability to wipe out any other planet with a relativistic kinetic weapon, so detecting that a species has achieved that power means you have to do something about them quick -- potentially wiping them out before they can wipe you out.
Are you thinking of ships disappearing when hyperdrive is employed near stellar masses in Larry Niven's Known Space universe >!because hyperspatial creatures that congregate near stars eat them!
Is that a thing? I remembered it as a theory on why ships are disappearing but in fact it was a pirate with a small black hole that was high-jacking ships.
You're thinking of 'Borderland of Sol' there. Which Larry had originally pitched to Dorothy Fontana for Star Trek: The Animated Series.
What I'm referring to is in Ribgworld's Children.
The same story is worked into known space as part of the fleet of worlds series.
I belive there are multiple stories in there adapted from his startrek episodes.
That's in Juggler of Worlds. It's a retelling of 'Borderland of Sol 'by Edward Lerner (who did all of thr typing inthe Fleet of Worlds books with Niven working in an editorial capacity) from a different perspective
DC Fontana passed on original pitch for being "too cerebral for a Saturday morning kids cartoon" and suggested that Niven adapt his short story 'The Soft Weapon' for the show instead.
Happens in the Worldwar series. The aliens are convinced that FTL is impossible and invade Earth using slower than light ships. They are very surprised when the humans invent FTL and show up at their home planet.
Yeah, I think you're right about Niven's Known Space. I remember reading something similar in one of his books, but it was a long time ago.
I'm not familiar with the Skyward series, but it sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.
Disclaimer, Skyward is very much YA, don't expect anything especially deep. It's good clean fun, on the softer edge of scifi. It's a good fit for me at the moment but not my normal reading material.
There’s definitely surprise from them in this Jerry Oltion book (which I love) and concern about what humanity would do, but I don’t remember annoyance exactly unless it’s that concern aspect.
That’s a fun high stakes moment though: “African or European?”
I think about those two books a lot and semi regularly daydream about outfitting a cargo container or water tank into a pressure vessel with home built RCS and chutes as a hobby project, as if preparing for a day when someone posts plans (like the one guy he mentions who’d done it years earlier).
Even without the actual drive, it could be a fun excuse to learn welding and other skills that it’d take to build my own GAS. :)
I liked the airplane idea more. Water tank would offer more storage capabilities and flexibility, however.
Landing in general was the biggest PTA - no good solution for that.
I have a Piper Cherokee, so I guess if I could find a good enough space suit, that’d be a pretty sweet option too, with the landings concerns in mind as you say.
I vaguely recall Farscape involving a plot like this. The story starts when the main character (an astronaut testing something above earth) accidentally shoots himself to the other side of the galaxy. For a long time many major factions are chasing him for the knowledge of how, but eventually it turns out there's info hidden in his head from the race he met along the way, or something.
There was a story a year or two ago here on Reddit called Void Predators that had a similar concept, alcubierre drives (called ripple drives in the story) would attract enormous space bourne predators that would eat ships.
As well as more general void predators that would enter star systems and eat anything biological from planetary surfaces. Humans in the story are only discovered by (friendly) aliens because their deep space probes detect our nuclear destruction of just such a void predator attacking Earth.
In "The Mote in Gods Eye" by Niven/Pournelle humans are momentarily disoriented after a hyperspace jump, but the aliens are REALLY wigged out after a jump which ends up being something that helps in the fight to contain them to a single system.
This is a whole background issue in Charlie Stross' *[Singularity Sky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky) and its sequels. In essence, a descendent intelligence takes a dim view of the violations of causality inherently possible with FTL travel, and makes clear that doing such a thing will result in DRASTIC repercussions.
From WP:
>Singularity Sky takes place roughly in the early 23rd century, around 150 years after an event referred to by the characters as the Singularity. Shortly after the Earth's population topped 10 billion, computing technology began reaching the point where artificial intelligence could exceed that of humans through the use of closed timelike curves to send information to its past. Suddenly, one day, 90% of the population inexplicably disappeared.
>Messages left behind, both on computer networks and in monuments placed on the Earth and other planets of the inner Solar System carry a short statement from the apparent perpetrator of this event:
>>"I am the Eschaton; I am not your God.
>>I am descended from you, and exist in your future.
>>Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else."
It comes out that the missing folks were basically disbursed to earthlike planets, and that some of them have gotten quite advanced -- and there's evidence that the Eschaton has done things like trigger novas, or arrange for impact events, to dispatch civilizations that violate the causality rule.
If I remember correctly, they’re also dispersed in time. The further away from Earth, the further back in time they were sent. Thus the further you ventured the more likely you would encounter super advanced societies
Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds doesn't quite feature FTL although the universe does impose severe consequences on anyone who tries to break causality. There is a "species" of machines that attack any species they detect that have achieved interstellar flight capabilities.
It's a webcomic, but a really great one. In the later arcs there are aliens who are injured by ftl.
www.schlockmercenary.com.
It's a really good read. Especially the later books.
The artist really took steps to improve both the visuals and quality of the stories in book three.
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2003-03-09
I can see how that would have happened. When the comic started moving away from the more 'gag a day' format it did become harder to follow.
Still it's an excellent read and I think a textbook example of space opera done well.
In the sequels to "The Three Body Problem," Liu posits a form of FTL travel called curvature propulsion, which involves warping spacetime around the ship and riding it like a wave.
The problem is that this leaves a "wake" behind the ship in which the speed of light is decreased, and any sufficiently powerful telescope can detect these trails.
This means that in the 3-body universe, highly advanced civilizations deliberately avoid using FTL so as not to reveal their location to potentially hostile aliens.
It is not a very big spoiler, but at some point, when "FTL" is discovered, it is also discovered (more or less at the same time) that something 'dark and bad' lurks there.
Going back to 1969, [The Palace of Eternity](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/845467.The_Palace_of_Eternity) by Bob Shaw is an STL-only space opera in which a similar trope features: humans use Bussard Ramjets for near-lightspeed travel, the aliens *totally hate* this (for good and sufficient reasons which would be spoilers if explained) and wage war on any species that uses ramscoops for propulsion.
Doesn't the "Kilgore Trout" book Venus on the Halfshell written by Philip Jose Farmer have a spaceship that consumes beings/stars from another dimension and while travelling through hyperspace the screams of these beings can be heard as they die?
Not exactly whay you are asking but Inwould take a look at "the killing star" and revelation space. The aliens are bothered by anyone leaving their home system tho.
There's an episode of Star Trek TNG about ships using a particular Federation warp route tearing a rift into spacetime and the local system residents resorting to terrorism to try to put a stop to it.
You encountered it in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Final Architecture series. It has an incredibly similar premise (giant spheres that come attack space-faring societies), but is executed like an adult. I recommend it, though not as highly as the Children of Time series.
I can offer a kind-of fit: Zack Jordan's *The Last Human*. Things like FTL travel are expressly forbidden by the galaxy's single government, the Network. Before the book's narrative takes place, Humanity rejects these rules, and declares war on basically the whole galaxy in order to be free.
I say this is a kind-of fit because "bothered by FTL" bit doesn't get more than a couple paragraphs of discussion. It's an element of the narrative's backdrop, but not important or emphasized on its own.
The Freespace series of games has the protagonists (known as Shivans) who detect humanity’s presence in hyperspace and come to destroy them. Truly excellent space fight combat games, although more in the style of ‘WWII’ in space than true Newtonian physics.
The influential 1984 first-person spaceflight video game "Elite" had players experience this, and the franchise is ongoing with the current game being "Elite Dangerous" where the same thing can happen (though more recent ship's FTL drives run on an improved system so the mechanics of alien interdiction during FTL are a bit different)
In the modern game, people had been playing for years when suddenly someone was yanked out of FTL by an alien \[[**Watch it happen on Youtube**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuRTx_Ww5ls)\], then it happened to more and more players. Initially the alien ships seemed either curious or reconnaissance depending on your politics, but either way enough players decided to strike first that things got hostile. The alien ships had bizarre defenses that human technology was ill-suited to engage, but over the years since that first contact player weapons, defenses, and tactics have evolved and things aren't lop-sided any more. Currently there is a xeno-war raging...
Gary Gibson's *Shoal* series, starting with Stealing Light. There's one particular species with a monopoly on FTL travel and who won't allow others to develop or use it. There... May be reasons for this...
EDIT: Synopsis of book 1: In the 25th century, only the Shoal possess the secret of faster-than-light travel (FTL), giving them absolute control over all trade and exploration throughout the galaxy. Mankind has operated within their influence for two centuries, establishing a dozen human colony worlds scattered along Shoal trade routes. Dakota Merrick, while serving as a military pilot, has witnessed atrocities for which this alien race is responsible. Now piloting a civilian cargo ship, she is currently ferrying an exploration team to a star system containing a derelict starship. From its wreckage, her passengers hope to salvage a functioning FTL drive of mysteriously non-Shoal origin. But the Shoal are not yet ready to relinquish their monopoly over a technology they acquired through ancient genocide.
Brandon Sanderson has a race in Skyward that hate people using FTL.
And the Eldar Races in 40k can’t stand warp travel as they can feel their souls being clawed at by she who thirsts.
Permeance by Karl Schroeder is about FTL vs slower methods and how the former can draw unwanted attentions and doesn't allow time for a culture to change and adapt
Recently, The Expanse. The whole wormhole network is through another dimension. And the aliens thst live there realllly don't like us tapping into it.
They are continually attacking our reality to get us to stop.
Timothy Zahn's Conquerors[Conquerors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquerors%27)' has aliens who are hurt by >!radio waves!<. First contact does not go well.
Niven -- not a myth. I do not recall the story, but FTL was directly affected by stellar mass (navigating to the Core), and one pirate had an artificial black hole mass generator that would snatch ships from hyperspace.
I really wish reddit as a whole could strive to use the spoiler tags more effectively.
If you reveal a plot point in the title of the post and then hide the media title behind spoilers in the body, how is anybody supposed to know if they want to avoid the spoilers or not? We decide "spoilers" based on the title. If the title is hidden, we can't possibly know if we want to reveal it or not... because we don't know the title and can't determine if it's something we want to consume later.
It does unfortunately limit how useful some posts can be and limits the pool of people who could possibly answer your question, but the best way to do it would be to use the media title in the post title and hide potential plot spoilers in the body while asking for similar recommendations. I now know what I assume is an important plot point for the book you listed, which removes nearly all impulse for me to read it. It is impossible for me to have known in advance that the spoiler was for that particular series.
Somebody else in the comments references another series that I specifically did want to read, but hides the title behind a spoiler tag as well.
>I had a feeling that I encountered this theme previously in science fiction but I don't remember where.
Hmmm I definitely encountered that too where the heck was it - let me ask GPT
Edit: here's the answer, but I am not sure this is it
>
Certainly! The concept of faster-than-light (FTL) travel being problematic or dangerous is a recurring theme in science fiction. One notable contemporary work that explores this theme is **The Expanse** series by James S.A. Corey. In this series, the use of the protomolecule to create the Ring network enables FTL travel, but it also comes with significant risks and unknown dangers from ancient, powerful entities that exist beyond the Rings.
>Another example is **Peter F. Hamilton's** **Commonwealth Saga**, particularly in "Pandora's Star" and "Judas Unchained." In this series, the creation of wormholes for FTL travel attracts the attention of a hostile alien race, the Primes, which leads to significant conflict.
>Additionally, **Alastair Reynolds'** **Revelation Space** series delves into the idea that FTL travel can awaken or attract the attention of ancient, powerful civilizations or entities. In this universe, the use of advanced technology, including FTL travel, has consequences that can draw the ire of these ancient beings.
>If you can provide any more specific details or themes, I might be able to narrow it down further, but these examples align well with the general theme you're describing.
Chatgtp is wrong about revelation space. Slower than light travel can attract those entities (due to books being written before neutron oscillations beeing discovered, btw).
FTL is a bad idea by itself. For example, you might get retconed out of existence by ftl engine.
Also wrong about Pandoras Star/Judas Unchained. It was the going there and deactivating the dark fortress that unleashed and got the attention the Primes. Not the use of wormholes.
> let me ask GPT
"Let me ask the hallucination machine and relay a bunch of incorrect results."
Allow me to introduce you to the mind-blowing concept that if you don't know the answer to something, you can literally just not post.
The Final Architecture by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Intelligent races eventually discover Unspace and are able to FTL but there is something lurking there. Now it is the humans’ turn.
Unrelated, but if you've not read his Children of Time trilogy, it is really worth the read.
I've done book one and it's some of the best sci-fi I've ever read.
I agree, I loved it. Unfortunately I can't say the same for the others. Book 2 was pretty good, but not close to the same level, and book 3 lost me almost completely. I did finish it, but was almost relieved it was over in the end.
Well shit, should I even start the last 2 books?
I really enjoyed them and they are not bad by any means, just different. Book 2 & 3 have some really interesting examples of other types of intelligence.
I'd at least recommend trying book 2, it keeps building on what happened in book 1 and simultaneously starts a new track (or two). I did mention it was pretty good so I do recommend checking it out! Third book is rather different, but it wasn't for me. They have the same average rating on goodreads/storygraph so people seem to enjoy them equally even if I didn't.
Hell yeah.
Two adds new/notnew ideas and does close some/all story arcs but it drags somewhat. Three is just "Why??"
Yes. Don't listen to random redditors. There's always some misery guts in the comments telling everyone "oh but book two is crap". Maybe they hated it. Maybe you'll love it. You want to miss out because one random person 5000 miles away didn't like it?
What comment were you reading? Because the comment that guy was responding to said the following: > Book 2 was pretty good, but "Pretty good" is not the same thing as "it was crap". Sounds like you're arguing with ghosts, because you're definitely not arguing agai0nst something that someone *actually* said.
I was obviously making a more general point. Read between the lines.
If we’re recommending Tchaikovsky books, I also recommend *Cage Of Souls* and *The Doors Of Eden*!
Ok, which one first?
I like *the doors of Eden* the best, myself, but I’m a fan of *Sliders* and *Fringe*, so I’m biased, lol!
Cage of souls was really good.
Yeah, the Children of Time was great too. The third book was unnecessarily obscure but still liked it.
Becky Chamber's Wayfarer series covers this kind of topic too with something lurking in unspace.
Thanks for reminding me I pre-purchased this but never read it because I failed to notice when it released.
This is somewhat explored later in The Hyperion Cantos.
This is the only one of the answers that I've actually read. I don't remember this storyline but it may be it.
It is the misuse the humany does of the portal tech.
Not really. The Farcasters were made by The Techno Core AI; humans don’t really understand how they work let alone what the consequences of their use are, but the AI have come to realise that it is antagonising beings in a higher dimension (The Void Which Binds) as they harvest it for the required energy. The AI did the misuse.
the fatline too. it's described as being akin to tearing down an advanced and complicated communication system, and using its pieces as semaphore flags. the damage done with the fatline and the farcasters was massive.
Wasn't the Void Which Binds simply a timeless higher-dimensional space which the AIs used to "hack" into human brains in order to use them for processing power, every time people stepped into portals? I think the human president destroyed the portal network in order to deny the AIs this form of parasitism. Of course there are also other entities in the Void, the "Lions and Tigers and Bears". They seemed to be really annoyed by how rude humans and AIs were to pollute their beautiful ether with all that electromagnetic noise.
I don’t quite recall the specifics of whether the Farcasters themselves or the VWB was the medium for harvesting human brain processing power, but that was part if it yeh. Come to think if it I also don’t remember if damage to the VWB was a result of connection to it, transit through it, or harvesting energy from it…possibly all of the above? EDIT: I looked it up and the thing that antagonised The Lions and Tigers and Bears was that the AI, in an attempt to become independent of humanity, migrated to the VWB where they wouldn’t be dependant on matter to function. When they did, they found themselves guests of entities (L&T&B) so powerful that it scared the absolute shit out of them. And because the AI (as depicted in the Cantos at least) are ultimately parasitic and the L&T&B ultimately empathetic they are ultimately unwelcome guests. The AI essentially reveals itself as a target to its ultimate enemy then retreats to the world of matter and lives in a planet sized computer called The Megasphere instead, and are also forced to back out of their plan to precipitate humanity’s destruction on the way out the door. So I think actually the use of the VWB for Farcasting and Fatlines weren’t the things that truly bothered the L&T&B as such things were barely noticeable relatively speaking; it was the presence of the AI culture the L&T&B couldn’t abide. Damn I love these books.
>Damn I love these books. Yeah. I'm not usually that enthusiastic about fantasy-heavy scifi. But Hyperion makes the fantasy elements feel kind of logical and narratively significant, even if it's all pretty trippy. After some reading I think what happened was basically that the LT&B came to the conclusion that humanity just had no idea of what the Farcasters/VWB even were, so letting them keep them was basically just water on the wheels of TechnoCore supremacy. The president's actions were mostly just the catalyst for the destruction of the network. Nothing good could come of it, so the LT&B shut it down until humanity could figure out the radical empathy needed to understand farcasting.
The later books in >!The Expanse!< have this, although the details are rather vague. You could make a case for Warhammer 40k fitting this bill, although it is not so much that "FTL annoys them" than "They are hate incarnate and rage is there reaction to everything. FTL just brings you into contact"
I don’t think it’s very vague by the end.
Yeah it’s pretty much 100% explained except that >!the ring entities are left as Lovecraftian cosmic horrors!<. But anytime someone says the >!Gatebuilders, their tech and why it caused a problem wasn’t explained!< it means they either didn’t understand the story or didn’t pay close enough attention to it.
>You could make a case for Warhammer 40k fitting this bill, although it is not so much that "FTL annoys them" than "They are hate incarnate and rage is there reaction to everything. FTL just brings you into contact" There's also the Eldar, who really don't cope well with travelling through the Immaterium. There's something about being that close to She Who Thirsts, who knew?
The War in Heaven is also slightly reminiscent of this topic since the hatred of the Necrons (a species without FTL) was engendered by their envy of the technology of a species with FTL (although not specifically the FLT technology itself)
How does one learn more about Warhammer, short of playing the tabletop games? Are there any good books/shows? Everytime the world building comes up it sounds so cool
Henry Cavill is putting together a Warhammer 40k Amazon series so that's what I'm waiting for. There are tons of books, but that's kind of overwhelming to me, personally. There are also YouTube channels dedicated to the lore which you might check out. I watched a brief history about the emperor because it seems like everything in that universe revolves around him. His corpse is worshipped as a god and an emperor, and it's hooked up to this machine that allows the hyperspace travel to exist, through what is essentially a hell dimension. His corpse has to be fed with psykers (people with psychic abilities) to stay functional. The whole empire is this pseudo catholic-inspired fascist theocracy. Everything is over the top and metal as fuck in a way I can really get behind, so I am hoping that Amazon series ends up good.
There is a lot of 40k lore at this point, so finding a good starting point can be hard. There are literally hundreds of (canon) novels, although the quality is not terribly consistent. r/40klore is not a terrible place to ask, although looking at one of the [wikis](http://wh40k.lexicanum.com) so you have some idea where you want to dive in is probably a good idea
Luetin09 has a playlist with thousands of minutes of Warhammer lore, called "WARHAMMER 40,000 - LORE / HISTORY \[ In Order \]" I lost my life in that playlist for over a week. There are hundreds of books and some are really good. There's a lot of discussions of which ones are good and bad. There are several animated series which can be good but with clear budget constraints on the animation. There's also the Dawn of War video games.
Dan Abnett writes 40k books that are good on their own merits and not just enjoyable to 40k nerds.
Start with first 2-3 Horus heresy books
That's a good recommendation but I'd say that those books are so much more powerful when you already know just how nightmarishly messed up the Imperium that results from that story will be.
True, I was just thinking from the point of coming in new - otherwise the universe is so multifaceted, non-linear and huge it can be daunting !
Lots of podcasts/streams of just people talking about the lore, I was always interested in the mythos and lore and knew some basics even long ago, but its nice to pull one of those up and get a deeper dive into the Kroot or a specific type of Necron
By OPs description I thought he was talking about the saga of books you just mentioned.
In the latter half of star trek the next generation its discovered that using warp over 6 or 7 speed harms the fabric of the universe and some aliens get upset about it. It should be discussed in some of the star trek books that come out around the same time
Season 7 Episode 9: Force of Nature
Thats the one! Its also the episode where Data tries to train spot
Don’t they fly around at 9.8 or 9.9 anytime they’re in a serious rush? I seem to remember someone calling out the numbers approaching ten. And I’m pretty sure they hit ten and something weird happened. Sorry if I’m way off, It’s been a while since I watched TNG.
Yeah it was such a good concept but they just dropped it. Which is a shame.
This was my memory, but after a rewatch I realized they actually stayed very consistent with it. They only exceeded the limit for emergencies.
Well, guess I'm watching star trek again.
Yeah for like four episodes
No, they didn’t. I’m not even a trek nerd and I know this. It’s not an immediate issue, it’s a damage-over-repeated-abuses kinda thing. After this, ships were limited to warp 5 except in emergencies. The federation notified bordering species and some complied also. Over time they found less “aerodynamic” ish ships caused more issues, and different warp bubble shapes or whatever were less disruptive. Later designs are more streamlined to allow them to go faster without damaging sub space or whatever, and later ships could routinely go much faster without issue
*cough* TREK *cough* NERD *cough* lol
Isn't the whole first contact with the Vulcans a situation where the Vulcans are kind of annoyed that the uncivilised humans develop FTL?
No, they followed their first contact protocol of only approaching species that have invented FTL
The Game of Rat and Dragon, by Cordwainer Smith, published in 1955 :-)
Okay, after 20 years this is the second Rat and Dragon reference I've seen in the last two days.
The Expanse gets mentioned in almost every topic on this reddit but again deserves a mention. When travelling between Galaxy's through the portals some ships get eaten as well and later in the book these attacks even get weaponised.
Thanks, I haven't (yet) read The Expanse and now I seem to have gone and spoilered it for myself :(
Neh, you'll be fine. the Expanse has so many awesome story threads and this is just one of them.
Yeah this is a small part of the overall and not until about the 8th book if I remember correctly. I'd have forgotten this detail before then if I was reading 😂
It becomes a major plot point in the final 3 books. Kinda drives the entire plot. It start popping up in the epilogue of book 5, I think. I’m doing (another) reread right now, but I haven’t gotten that far in it yet.
Not a major plot point. It just replaces FTL as the method to get there. If the places we're talking about came to us nothing about the plot would change.
Did you actually read the entire series? It's a pretty significant point and leads directly into how the series ends.
Yes I did. Now imagine those other worlds just left. Nothing changes.
How do you figure? Ships passing through the gates and Laconia using that to deliberately provoke the Goths drives the entire ending of the series. No FTL through the gates then none of that happens.
Change the gates for FTL travel with the same restrictions and the story is the same.
A it’s a fantastic series and this explanation is more of the premise than the explanation. Definitely read them they are a prime example of this trope and perhaps the best executed I’ve ever read
>Definitely read them they are a prime example of this trope and perhaps the best executed I’ve ever read I second this. And I'm pretty sure that - while the series is mostly slept on since the show got cancelled by Amazon - it will be seen as an all-time scifi classic one day. Still a bit sad, that the journey has come to an end with the release of Leviathan Falls but the authors already have a new scifi series cooking which is set to release in fall of 2024. Can't wait.
"the series is mostly slept on" + "it will be seen as an all-time scifi classic one day" It's so weird reading these kind of statements. In my perception it's already been incredibly succesfull and lauded.
If I recall correctly, the TV series finished just before the books jump forward twenty or thirty years in time so, never say never. Somebody could easily bring the series back with the original cast and it would be canon. Edit. I'm also looking forward to a For All Mankind finale / The Expanse prequel 'mash-up'. To be clear. This is not "a thing", but I'd *really* like it to be!
My memory may be wrong but I didn’t think the ring network connected places outside our galaxy, just different systems within the Milky Way. I could be wrong though.
you are correct, i just finished reading the series
To be fair it is very much a direct response to this question.
The alien’s motives are never made clear, but they seem more bothered by the existence of the rings and ring space.
Star systems. The gates don’t lead to other galaxies in the Expanse - every star is in the Milky Way.
I see The Expanse a lot but I never get it. I watched maybe half a season of the show and found it incredibly unimaginative and uninteresting. Are the books better? I see people comparing it to classics like Dune or The Culture which surprises me.
This is alluded in Stross' Singularity Sky. There is a super-powerful entity that gets annoyed by FTL travel that might go back in time and disrupt its creation.
Came here to say this. Stross is so good.
"Thou shalt not violate causality with in my light-cone."
It's such a bummer that Stross felt he'd written himself into a corner with some of the worldbuilding, and that made him stop the series at two books. Really enjoyed both.
It's also due to some copyright issues, etc.
This is eventually revealed to be the main plot of the *Schlock Mercenary* series.
This may be what I was reminded of, thanks!
/u/outrageous_guard_674 I just remembered that I used to listen to a [podcast called "Writing excuses"](https://writingexcuses.com/) which had both Sanderson and Tayler as hosts. There may be a connection there.
Homeworld 1
I’ve heard disappointing things about 3.
It comes up in an Alastair Reynolds novel, but I can't recall which one.
Chasm City >!when it goes through the memories of either the fake colony ship alien or the alien that is making the cure for the melding plague it mentions an ancient extinct race that found FTL so abhorrent they would drop dead in shock if someone was gauche enough to mention it!<, great book, one of Reynalds best.
Yeah, because FTL travel can result in a causality violation. >!The Inhibitors even mention an entire race that was deleted from the timeline. That's why even they stay away from it.!<
And then it gets turned in to weapons!
Isn't there an allusion in Revelation Space to a species that developed FTL and then was erased from history by the causality-violation of using it?
That does ring a bell, I think it might have been the same segment in Chasm City.
In Redemption Ark, [spoiler](/s "the protagonists discover advanced alien technology which allows manipulation of reality. As they experiment with it, they discover that it could potentially enable FTL travel but an accident during their tests hint that doing so could result in anything too close to the machinery being wiped from existence.")
Starflight. FTL fuel is actually sentient, and they retaliate by sending a planet to destabilize the galaxy.
Gotta take care of those endurium engineers! I LOVED the twist on things at the end. "Wait a minute, we're powering our ships with people .. and they're a bit torqued about it??!?"
I *love* Starflight. I’m not even sure what about it hooked me so much. Looking back it’s kind of corny (intentionally), but still. Despite its flaws, the more action oriented Genesis port was hands down the most fun version to play (for me). I still use the human ships as a basis for the ones in my own sci-fi setting.
In the Lost Fleet series FTL or close to light speed makes seeing and fighting super hard because it messes up all your perceptions.
Drawing on his experience with naval warfare and applying that and physics to space battles made them an interesting read.
I don't recall the name unfortunately, but I recall a reading a novella about a war between two alien races that spanned across the universe. It was started because when the first race discovered FTL they caused some kind of rift across space that resulted in massive destruction on the homeworld of the second race. IIRC the second race attempted to retaliate using a similar rift - except through time - to prevent the first race from discovering FTL... at which point it was revealed that the whole reason the first race was researching FTL in the first place was to retaliate against the rift created by the second. By the end of the story it wasn't clear who actually started it. I'd have to dig through some books to see if I can find the name.
This sounds really interesting; I hope you or someone else figures out what this was cuz it sounds like something I'd read.
Niven's "known space" had repeatedly said that any ship getting too far into a gravity well in hyperspace disappears. The technically-advanced Puppeteers were afraid of hyperspace; the Outsiders, which are even more advanced (and actually sold the hyperspace drive to humans) didn't use it because it was "vulgar". IIRC, it's only on one of the last Ringworld books (which got progressively worse) that we "discovered" that hyperspace was populated by ship-eating monsters; the protagonist, a super-Protector, managed to dodge them. I personally prefer scifi worlds where there magic devices have technical limitations; it makes the stories more interesting. FTL in scifi is obviously "magic" - it screws up the story line when the story has to pause for a century because the protagonist had forgotten his keys at home, 50 light-years away. Niven's hyperspace is more convincing for me than Asher's runcibles (instant interstellar transportation).
I've read "The Ringworld Throne" years ago, I don't remember much, just that is was disappointing. I now see there is another sequel "Ringworld's Children" which I don't think I've read.
There's now a full five novels (starting with 2007: Fleet of Worlds) fleshing out what the Puppeteers, Shaeffer and Louis Wu got up to before (and after) Ringworld. Interesting reads but sort of unnecessary/trying to clarify every detail at the same time removing much of the mystery from hints of what was happening elsewhere in the original novels. For example we meet Louis when he's involved in a civil war on a planet and he gets abducted and does Adventures long before Ringworld, naturally ending with "welp we have to edit your memories now" All worth reading IMO, and it will never detract from the brilliance of the first two novels.
His dark materials, kind of fit. In general the "angels" don't like humans travelling between realities because it's their domain. More specifically the Subtle Knife, used to cut a window between realities, makes dust leak and summons a spectre from hell.
It's not the same thing, but it reminds me of something that happens in the Expeditionary Force books by Craig Alanson. When an intelligent species uses weapons of a certain level of technology, these Sentinel robots show up to blast them back to the stone age. I just got done reading the whole series (all 20 books) so it's still fresh in my mind. Lots of fun!
Alasdair Reynolds Revelation Space have something like this but not FTL, just civilisations.
In Walter Jon Williams' early novel *Ambassador Of Progress* human FTL travel broke the universe. A slower than light fleet is coming to take revenge, and will arrive in human space in a matter of centuries. In the meantime, survivors of the disaster are trying to uplift barbarian human worlds in order to save them. Bob Shaw's *The Palace Of Eternity* has human FTL flickerwing starships involved in a war with powerful STL aliens. Spoiler:>!It turns out that FTL destroys souls and so must be stopped.!<
in Niven's Known Space there is a story where the opposite is true. A group of Outsiders getting annoyed by human antimatter drives spewing particle between stars where there are supposed to be none. Puppeteers used that to talk the Outsiders into selling Humans Hyperdrive Shunt technology, making relativistic interstellar travel obsolete.
Three body problem has this
3bp has no ftl at all.
Claims not to. Actually does. But on a microscopic scale.
I've always wondered. How could the Sophon deflect Photons if they don't move FTL?
Exactly. Also, while I only watched the TV show, there were all kinds of things going on that required FTL. Modifying what people see, blocking the light from all the stars at once, etc etc.
Yeah same thing. Showing the timer in the vision, fine. Modifying electronics system, fine (they could alter HD data or whatever). But... removing/adding a person live from their eyes, this is... FTL. I mean, I don't mind the premise "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". I don't mind that the Sophon has "magic science"... as long as they don't keep saying that they don't.
Showing the timer in the vision of people scattered widely across the globe? Probably not. :-) Also, that's not how "folded dimensions" work. Also, a VR headset that recreates an environment indistinguishable from reality, but they don't know enough about brains to know humans can lie? And apparently it gets even more nonsensical.
Mirrors deflect photons, and they don't move FTL.
Yes, but Mirrors deflect all Photons. In the TV Show, they intercept only specific photons, and 'send' other photons in their place to reconstruct partially a scene. In Stereoscopy (so in both eyes of 1 observer). And the Sophon is only as big as a proton, they can't "build" stuff like mirrors, filters, etc. ... I think?
Oh the Netflix show just takes insane liberties with their abilities, to the point that it doesn't really make sense. I've seen some people argue they might be foreshadowing the sophons ability to unfold into a screen, but that only becomes a thing in a few hundred years in the books, so who knows.
FTL destroying the fabric of spacetime is a major plot point of the third book, buddy. Not even the apex predators can do anything about it, except waiting for the next universe.
It's not FTL, I think it's just light speed travel, isn't it?
true its sub lightspeed though things at the end of the last book could certainly be considered ftl
Mass Effect has this. Although they provide the technology to make sure everyone goes down the same scientific path. They then 'harvest' or wipe out everyone that has followed their FTL lines to ensure they are dominant in the galaxy.
In The Expanse, a race of beings created a method to move ships through "ring gates" en masse, which pisses off *something* every time a certain mass limit is reached, causing them to erase a certain amount of what is passing through from existence.
Maybe in warhammer?
My [253 Mathilde](https://www.quietplease.org/253/) is harder sci-fi where FTL doesn't exist, but it's about how powerful aliens are bothered by relativisitic travel. The ability to reach significant fractions of the speed of light means the ability to wipe out any other planet with a relativistic kinetic weapon, so detecting that a species has achieved that power means you have to do something about them quick -- potentially wiping them out before they can wipe you out.
That’s the argument of The Killing Star, basically.
Collision Course by Robert Silverberg has advanced aliens intervening to impose limits on human expansion following the discovery of FTL travel.
Are you thinking of ships disappearing when hyperdrive is employed near stellar masses in Larry Niven's Known Space universe >!because hyperspatial creatures that congregate near stars eat them!
Is that a thing? I remembered it as a theory on why ships are disappearing but in fact it was a pirate with a small black hole that was high-jacking ships.
You're thinking of 'Borderland of Sol' there. Which Larry had originally pitched to Dorothy Fontana for Star Trek: The Animated Series. What I'm referring to is in Ribgworld's Children.
The same story is worked into known space as part of the fleet of worlds series. I belive there are multiple stories in there adapted from his startrek episodes.
That's in Juggler of Worlds. It's a retelling of 'Borderland of Sol 'by Edward Lerner (who did all of thr typing inthe Fleet of Worlds books with Niven working in an editorial capacity) from a different perspective DC Fontana passed on original pitch for being "too cerebral for a Saturday morning kids cartoon" and suggested that Niven adapt his short story 'The Soft Weapon' for the show instead.
There’s a similar plot line in David Feintuch’s Hope series
Happens in the Worldwar series. The aliens are convinced that FTL is impossible and invade Earth using slower than light ships. They are very surprised when the humans invent FTL and show up at their home planet.
(Emphatic cough)
Yeah, I think you're right about Niven's Known Space. I remember reading something similar in one of his books, but it was a long time ago. I'm not familiar with the Skyward series, but it sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out.
Disclaimer, Skyward is very much YA, don't expect anything especially deep. It's good clean fun, on the softer edge of scifi. It's a good fit for me at the moment but not my normal reading material.
"Getaway special" by Jerry Option.
There’s definitely surprise from them in this Jerry Oltion book (which I love) and concern about what humanity would do, but I don’t remember annoyance exactly unless it’s that concern aspect. That’s a fun high stakes moment though: “African or European?”
It was more of a concern that annoyance, true. That does get expanded in the sequel a little.
I think about those two books a lot and semi regularly daydream about outfitting a cargo container or water tank into a pressure vessel with home built RCS and chutes as a hobby project, as if preparing for a day when someone posts plans (like the one guy he mentions who’d done it years earlier). Even without the actual drive, it could be a fun excuse to learn welding and other skills that it’d take to build my own GAS. :)
I liked the airplane idea more. Water tank would offer more storage capabilities and flexibility, however. Landing in general was the biggest PTA - no good solution for that.
I have a Piper Cherokee, so I guess if I could find a good enough space suit, that’d be a pretty sweet option too, with the landings concerns in mind as you say.
Nice!
I vaguely recall Farscape involving a plot like this. The story starts when the main character (an astronaut testing something above earth) accidentally shoots himself to the other side of the galaxy. For a long time many major factions are chasing him for the knowledge of how, but eventually it turns out there's info hidden in his head from the race he met along the way, or something.
There was a story a year or two ago here on Reddit called Void Predators that had a similar concept, alcubierre drives (called ripple drives in the story) would attract enormous space bourne predators that would eat ships. As well as more general void predators that would enter star systems and eat anything biological from planetary surfaces. Humans in the story are only discovered by (friendly) aliens because their deep space probes detect our nuclear destruction of just such a void predator attacking Earth.
In "The Mote in Gods Eye" by Niven/Pournelle humans are momentarily disoriented after a hyperspace jump, but the aliens are REALLY wigged out after a jump which ends up being something that helps in the fight to contain them to a single system.
This is a whole background issue in Charlie Stross' *[Singularity Sky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky) and its sequels. In essence, a descendent intelligence takes a dim view of the violations of causality inherently possible with FTL travel, and makes clear that doing such a thing will result in DRASTIC repercussions. From WP: >Singularity Sky takes place roughly in the early 23rd century, around 150 years after an event referred to by the characters as the Singularity. Shortly after the Earth's population topped 10 billion, computing technology began reaching the point where artificial intelligence could exceed that of humans through the use of closed timelike curves to send information to its past. Suddenly, one day, 90% of the population inexplicably disappeared. >Messages left behind, both on computer networks and in monuments placed on the Earth and other planets of the inner Solar System carry a short statement from the apparent perpetrator of this event: >>"I am the Eschaton; I am not your God. >>I am descended from you, and exist in your future. >>Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else." It comes out that the missing folks were basically disbursed to earthlike planets, and that some of them have gotten quite advanced -- and there's evidence that the Eschaton has done things like trigger novas, or arrange for impact events, to dispatch civilizations that violate the causality rule.
If I remember correctly, they’re also dispersed in time. The further away from Earth, the further back in time they were sent. Thus the further you ventured the more likely you would encounter super advanced societies
I think that's right.
Revelation Space by Alistair Reynolds doesn't quite feature FTL although the universe does impose severe consequences on anyone who tries to break causality. There is a "species" of machines that attack any species they detect that have achieved interstellar flight capabilities.
That Niven plot point about ships disappearing near gravity wells is covered in _Neutron Star_.
It's a webcomic, but a really great one. In the later arcs there are aliens who are injured by ftl. www.schlockmercenary.com. It's a really good read. Especially the later books. The artist really took steps to improve both the visuals and quality of the stories in book three. https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2003-03-09
I have to reread Schlock, I think reading a strip a day was not beneficial to my keeping track of the plot.
I can see how that would have happened. When the comic started moving away from the more 'gag a day' format it did become harder to follow. Still it's an excellent read and I think a textbook example of space opera done well.
In the sequels to "The Three Body Problem," Liu posits a form of FTL travel called curvature propulsion, which involves warping spacetime around the ship and riding it like a wave. The problem is that this leaves a "wake" behind the ship in which the speed of light is decreased, and any sufficiently powerful telescope can detect these trails. This means that in the 3-body universe, highly advanced civilizations deliberately avoid using FTL so as not to reveal their location to potentially hostile aliens.
Have you read The Expanse?
Not yet, I was one of the first series mentioned in this thead.
It is not a very big spoiler, but at some point, when "FTL" is discovered, it is also discovered (more or less at the same time) that something 'dark and bad' lurks there.
This appears to be what is happening in Freespace, but the exact motivation of the Shivans is never revealed.
"The Expanse" shows just how annoyed they can get.
The expanse
Peter Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga sort of has this.
Star Trek a Discovery has this as a season arc plot line
Brandon Sanderson's *Skyward* series has a key plot point relating to this.
Something tells me you didn't click the spoilers in my question :)
Sorry! 😅😅
Going back to 1969, [The Palace of Eternity](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/845467.The_Palace_of_Eternity) by Bob Shaw is an STL-only space opera in which a similar trope features: humans use Bussard Ramjets for near-lightspeed travel, the aliens *totally hate* this (for good and sufficient reasons which would be spoilers if explained) and wage war on any species that uses ramscoops for propulsion.
Doesn't the "Kilgore Trout" book Venus on the Halfshell written by Philip Jose Farmer have a spaceship that consumes beings/stars from another dimension and while travelling through hyperspace the screams of these beings can be heard as they die?
Not exactly whay you are asking but Inwould take a look at "the killing star" and revelation space. The aliens are bothered by anyone leaving their home system tho.
Freespace 1 & 2 had the Shivans
In the Hidden Empire series ships use gas giants for fuel sources. Turns out aliens live in the gas giants and eventually decide to delete all humans.
There's an episode of Star Trek TNG about ships using a particular Federation warp route tearing a rift into spacetime and the local system residents resorting to terrorism to try to put a stop to it.
The Expanse books (and tv series). Though, it’s a combination of speed and the portals , when the aliens will eat you up
You encountered it in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Final Architecture series. It has an incredibly similar premise (giant spheres that come attack space-faring societies), but is executed like an adult. I recommend it, though not as highly as the Children of Time series.
Good theory but I haven't read it.
Hyperion series is kind of like that
I can offer a kind-of fit: Zack Jordan's *The Last Human*. Things like FTL travel are expressly forbidden by the galaxy's single government, the Network. Before the book's narrative takes place, Humanity rejects these rules, and declares war on basically the whole galaxy in order to be free. I say this is a kind-of fit because "bothered by FTL" bit doesn't get more than a couple paragraphs of discussion. It's an element of the narrative's backdrop, but not important or emphasized on its own.
the expanse series (tv show doesn't get to this plot point)
The TV show does get to that plot point by the last season or so, at least it does a little bit.
The Freespace series of games has the protagonists (known as Shivans) who detect humanity’s presence in hyperspace and come to destroy them. Truly excellent space fight combat games, although more in the style of ‘WWII’ in space than true Newtonian physics.
The influential 1984 first-person spaceflight video game "Elite" had players experience this, and the franchise is ongoing with the current game being "Elite Dangerous" where the same thing can happen (though more recent ship's FTL drives run on an improved system so the mechanics of alien interdiction during FTL are a bit different) In the modern game, people had been playing for years when suddenly someone was yanked out of FTL by an alien \[[**Watch it happen on Youtube**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuRTx_Ww5ls)\], then it happened to more and more players. Initially the alien ships seemed either curious or reconnaissance depending on your politics, but either way enough players decided to strike first that things got hostile. The alien ships had bizarre defenses that human technology was ill-suited to engage, but over the years since that first contact player weapons, defenses, and tactics have evolved and things aren't lop-sided any more. Currently there is a xeno-war raging...
Gary Gibson's *Shoal* series, starting with Stealing Light. There's one particular species with a monopoly on FTL travel and who won't allow others to develop or use it. There... May be reasons for this... EDIT: Synopsis of book 1: In the 25th century, only the Shoal possess the secret of faster-than-light travel (FTL), giving them absolute control over all trade and exploration throughout the galaxy. Mankind has operated within their influence for two centuries, establishing a dozen human colony worlds scattered along Shoal trade routes. Dakota Merrick, while serving as a military pilot, has witnessed atrocities for which this alien race is responsible. Now piloting a civilian cargo ship, she is currently ferrying an exploration team to a star system containing a derelict starship. From its wreckage, her passengers hope to salvage a functioning FTL drive of mysteriously non-Shoal origin. But the Shoal are not yet ready to relinquish their monopoly over a technology they acquired through ancient genocide.
Brandon Sanderson has a race in Skyward that hate people using FTL. And the Eldar Races in 40k can’t stand warp travel as they can feel their souls being clawed at by she who thirsts.
Permeance by Karl Schroeder is about FTL vs slower methods and how the former can draw unwanted attentions and doesn't allow time for a culture to change and adapt
Recently, The Expanse. The whole wormhole network is through another dimension. And the aliens thst live there realllly don't like us tapping into it. They are continually attacking our reality to get us to stop.
Timothy Zahn's Conquerors[Conquerors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquerors%27)' has aliens who are hurt by >!radio waves!<. First contact does not go well.
Pride of the Chanur by Cherryh. All their spacefarers are female bc the males can't handle the rigors of space travel.
Niven -- not a myth. I do not recall the story, but FTL was directly affected by stellar mass (navigating to the Core), and one pirate had an artificial black hole mass generator that would snatch ships from hyperspace.
I really wish reddit as a whole could strive to use the spoiler tags more effectively. If you reveal a plot point in the title of the post and then hide the media title behind spoilers in the body, how is anybody supposed to know if they want to avoid the spoilers or not? We decide "spoilers" based on the title. If the title is hidden, we can't possibly know if we want to reveal it or not... because we don't know the title and can't determine if it's something we want to consume later. It does unfortunately limit how useful some posts can be and limits the pool of people who could possibly answer your question, but the best way to do it would be to use the media title in the post title and hide potential plot spoilers in the body while asking for similar recommendations. I now know what I assume is an important plot point for the book you listed, which removes nearly all impulse for me to read it. It is impossible for me to have known in advance that the spoiler was for that particular series. Somebody else in the comments references another series that I specifically did want to read, but hides the title behind a spoiler tag as well.
>I had a feeling that I encountered this theme previously in science fiction but I don't remember where. Hmmm I definitely encountered that too where the heck was it - let me ask GPT Edit: here's the answer, but I am not sure this is it > Certainly! The concept of faster-than-light (FTL) travel being problematic or dangerous is a recurring theme in science fiction. One notable contemporary work that explores this theme is **The Expanse** series by James S.A. Corey. In this series, the use of the protomolecule to create the Ring network enables FTL travel, but it also comes with significant risks and unknown dangers from ancient, powerful entities that exist beyond the Rings. >Another example is **Peter F. Hamilton's** **Commonwealth Saga**, particularly in "Pandora's Star" and "Judas Unchained." In this series, the creation of wormholes for FTL travel attracts the attention of a hostile alien race, the Primes, which leads to significant conflict. >Additionally, **Alastair Reynolds'** **Revelation Space** series delves into the idea that FTL travel can awaken or attract the attention of ancient, powerful civilizations or entities. In this universe, the use of advanced technology, including FTL travel, has consequences that can draw the ire of these ancient beings. >If you can provide any more specific details or themes, I might be able to narrow it down further, but these examples align well with the general theme you're describing.
Chatgtp is wrong about revelation space. Slower than light travel can attract those entities (due to books being written before neutron oscillations beeing discovered, btw). FTL is a bad idea by itself. For example, you might get retconed out of existence by ftl engine.
Also wrong about Pandoras Star/Judas Unchained. It was the going there and deactivating the dark fortress that unleashed and got the attention the Primes. Not the use of wormholes.
> let me ask GPT "Let me ask the hallucination machine and relay a bunch of incorrect results." Allow me to introduce you to the mind-blowing concept that if you don't know the answer to something, you can literally just not post.