Re: Hard Sci-fi?

: Peter Knutsen <peter@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
: I disagree with your "need analysis".  In very many cases, FTL *is*
: needed, because the character needs to get from somewhere to somewhere
else. 
: It is *only* the artificial gravity (of the non-rotiational kind)
: which is a true sign of the author being lazy (and/or rampantly
: science-iliterate). 

I do have to wonder why most everybody's spaceships have a gravitational
acceleration perpendicular to the direction of travel.  That always
seems so ... odd, so ... asymmetrical to me.

But ANYhoo, the only sense in which characters "need" to get places
FTL is the same one in which they "need" to be glued down to a flat
non-rotating deck.  In each case, there may be some plot-directed or
intended-visual-image-related reason for wanting fast transit, or a
surface-ship-like configuration, but neither seems a better excuse for
implausibility or counterfactuality.


Wayne Throop   throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   http://sheol.org/throopw