Exploring Tropes of Faster-Than-Light Travel In Science Fiction

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Traveling through the depths of space is one of the central concepts of science fiction, but, who has the time? A modern rocket would take between 3 and 6 months just to get to Venus, the closest planet to Earth. Imagine the time investment it would take just to make it to one of the fantastical alien worlds across the known universe.

Luckily, sci-fi isn't working with modern tech, it's working with faster-than-light travel. Thought to be impossible by science since the days of Albert Einstein, science fiction has been addressing the concept since at least the 1870s. Given the subject's current impossibility, it's interesting how many works in the genre have entertained similar ideas surrounding the concept.

The Most Common Space Travel Tropes In Fiction & Where They Come From

Since traveling faster than light isn't technically possible, the first question most sci-fi creators must ask is how they get around the rules. There are two go-to options, the first of which was popularized by Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. Warp technology is a bit complex, and it goes by many different names depending on the work that's using it. The most straightforward summation of warp technology is that it bends space around the ship as it travels, allowing it to move as if it's traveling faster than light. Some might argue that cutting the distance traveled would mean that the object isn't actually moving that fast. Imagine drawing a straight line to connect two points on a piece of paper. Warp technology simply folds the paper to bring those two points closer together.

Star Trek is the primary example of this system, though its warp system is actually slightly more complex. In the 90s, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre was tasked with