In Star Wars: A New Hope, Han Solo invokes this trope by explaining to Luke Skywalker why it's impossible to just blast into hyperspace and avoid Imperial ships: it's too dangerous due to the risk of accidentally hitting something or going off course.See also Void Between the Worlds, Eldritch Location, Alien Geometries, Acid-Trip Dimension, Ludicrous Speed, FTL Travel Sickness, and Time Is Dangerous. If Space Is an Ocean, Hyperspace is that part of the map marked Here There Be Dragons. It might cause those who look upon it directly to Go Mad from the Revelation (so keep those view ports shuttered tight), and/or infested by Eldritch Abominations that would have even H. As such, to really make a point about how dangerous and scary hyperspace is, they throw some really weird, scary stuff into their vision of it. Long dissertations on it are sometimes inadequate for establishing this, however. In settings where this trope applies, authors will often take the time to point out that hyperspace or subspace is hazardous and fraught with peril, both for the characters and the ships that have to make passage through it. Sometimes, it will, and you'll wish it hadn't. If they're not, the ship won't come back at all. If the crew are lucky, the ship will simply be returned to normal space, or be destroyed instantly and relatively painlessly. Should something go wrong during hyperspace travel, results vary. Clearly marked paths may be slightly safer, or ships may generate a safe field around themselves while travelling. It's sure to be mind-bendingly different and hostile to conventional life - even more so than the void of space itself. Hyperspace, being Another Dimension or close, sets aside the natural laws that our universe and biologies need. Anything with the power to thrust people across light-years rightly should scare their astropants off. And let's not even get started on the whole 'infinite void of nothingness between the stars' aspect. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Larry Niven's short stories have pointed out that, barring Faster-Than-Light Travel, convenient real-space travel between planets has energy requirements on the same order as making significant holes in them. Contemporary space shuttles ride pillars of fire and launching one involves spraying 1100 cubic meters of water on the pad as a muffler to keep the craft from being damaged by the noise. There are very few things about space that are not freaky.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |