This is the follow-up to “Science fiction and the speed of light“.
Faced with the impossibility of travelling faster than the speed of light, what’s a science fiction writer to do? The easiest solution is to ignore the problem entirely. The world of science fiction is full of “warp drives,” “hyperdrives,” travel through “subspace,” and their relatives — the writer simply assumes that someone, sometime, will figure out a way to circumvent the cosmic speed limit.
Science fiction is full of such ideas: Breezy violations of various laws of physics that just too darned inconvenient to obey. Probably the two most implausible ideas in all of science fiction are also the most popular: faster-than-light travel and time travel. These ideas have become such a part of the fabric of science fiction that they no longer even require justification when they appear in a story. The very first time travel novel, courtesy of H.G. Wells, includes a lengthy explanation of how the time machine works, but a modern time travel story just takes the time machine for granted. And a ship can simply jump into subspace or switch on its hyperdrive with the wave of a hand, and no further explanation is necessary.
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