
Originally Posted by
Ophiolite
Do you mean the way in which the authors conveniently whisk their protagonists across many light years via space warps, worm holes, FTL craft, etc, each in violation of relativity?
Exactly. Common "knowlege" sees the speed of light as barrier that must be surpassed in order to make our dreams of traveling to the stars come true. People do not even bother finding out what relativity is really saying anymore. They simply assume that one day we will find a way around it.
Actually the idea of warping which I like like to relate to Madeleine L'Engle's description in "A Wrinkle in Time" of two points in space being brought closer together, is exactly what happens when we travel close to the speed of light. I like to say that the lorentz contraction factor gamma is like a warp factor because it can represent an effective velocity which is greater than the speed of light, and because bringing the points in space closer together is exactly how it works.
The reality which most people fail to realize is that the limitation to the speed of light is not a barrier to space travel at all. But it does make our dreams of space empires and star spanning governments impractical. So is it impossible to make interesting science fiction stories which accepts this fact and reliquishes man's desire for dominion and an ever increasing scope of power?
I think so.
EDIT: I mean I think it is possible to write interesting stories which accept relativity and stops trying to build space empires. I think there are interesting quetions. What kind of human society would send out groups of people to the stars, and how would those groups be prepared. Travel between colonized star systems would be like jumps in to the future. Why would people travel like this? What would the colonies think of such travelers? The only book I think of that comes close to this is "Speaker for the dead", only this story still violates relativity by using faster than light communication.