Using blackboxing the author can have the highly-unscientific FTL drive that their readers crave, but make the rest of the background ultra-hard science fiction. If any reader asks the author how the drive works, the answer is "Splendidly". The author just gives the drive a technobabble name and leaves it at that. In extreme cases, the author does not even mention how the FTL drive works. Functionally the only thing that penetrates the black box are the pre-established limits, not the operating mechanism. This means the disruptive effects of the FTL technology are never explored in the novel, because it never occurs to any of the characters in the story to look. The FTL method that is part of the background of a science fiction novel is put into a black box, that nobody can look inside. In the better scifi novels, the author uses a technique mentioned in the Fate Space Toolkit RPG: " blackboxing". ![]() The second FTL page is for samples of faster-than-light travel in various science fiction. AND simultaneously is as free as possible from nasty unintended consequences that will allow their readers to point out logical inconsistencies and laugh. ![]() This page is about a science fiction author designing a faster-than-light system that logically allows the sort of science fiction background they want to write about. Space opera with no StarDrive is like chocolate cake without the chocolate. However, while Faster-Than-Light travel is about as handwavium as you can get, it is unfortunately the sine qua non of interstellar space opera. I wanted to keep the website as free from handwavium as possible. I wasn't going to put this page in, but I have to.
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