Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Five top examples of creative faster than light (FTL) travel

Jason M. Hough is the New York Times bestselling author of The Dire Earth Cycle and the near-future spy thriller Zero World, which Publishers Weekly said is "a thrilling action rampage that confirms Hough as an important new voice in genre fiction.”

One of Hough's favorite examples of creative faster than light (FTL) travel in fiction, as shared at Tor.com:
Infinite Improbability Drive

Douglas Adams famously concocted this method when he’d written himself into a corner in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. His main characters were floating in the vacuum of space, and every solution he could come up with to rescue them seemed infinitely improbable. In classic Adams fashion, he turned this to his advantage, and so was born the Infinite Improbability Drive: A device that takes you to every possible position in every possible universe and eventually picks one to dump you at. Could be anywhere, and you could be anything when you emerge. Not only is an inventive idea, it fits perfectly with the fun and humorous nature of the Hitchhiker books.
Read about another entry on the list.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy appears on Rachel Stuhler and Melissa Blue's top five list of books celebrating geek culture, Fredrik Backman's six favorite books list, Jon Walter's top ten list of heroes of refugee fiction, Becky Ferreira's list of the six most memorable robots in literature, Charlie Jane Anders's lists of the ten most unbelievable alien races in science fiction, eleven books that every aspiring television writer should read and ten satirical novels that could teach you to survive the future, Saci Lloyd's top ten list of political books for teenagers, Rob Reid's list of 6 favorite books, Esther Inglis-Arkell's list of ten of the best bars in science fiction, Don Calame's top ten list of funny teen boy books, and John Mullan's list of ten of the best instances of invisibility in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue