{"id":1843,"date":"2010-03-17T04:47:49","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T09:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1843"},"modified":"2010-07-18T18:56:46","modified_gmt":"2010-07-18T23:56:46","slug":"in-search-of-ftl-taxonomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1843","title":{"rendered":"In search of: FTL taxonomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been troping again.  This time I found and repaired the TV Tropes page on <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/FasterThanLightTravel\">Faster Than Light Travel<\/a>.  It had previously made a distinction between three subtypes of FTL drive: &#8220;jump&#8221;, &#8220;warp&#8221;, and &#8220;shortcut&#8221;.  The &#8220;shortcut&#8221; category was confused and confusing, and I&#8217;ve renamed it to &#8220;portal&#8221; and fixed the definitions of both &#8220;portal&#8221; and &#8220;warp&#8221; subtropes.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m now looking for earliest occurrences and trope codifiers on these subtypes.  I think I have one nailed down, but I can&#8217;t push the other two back very far.  Instances and cites are solicited.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The easiest one is the portal drive.  This is the newest of the three subtropes; I think it was codified in Niven &#038; Pournelle&#8217;s <cite>The Mote In God&#8217;s Eye<\/cite>, 1975. Note that we want to be careful about distinguishing it from FTL involving fixed artificial stargates and\/or naturally occurring wormholes.  I&#8217;m interested in ur-examples.<\/p>\n<p>The jump (or fold-space) drive goes back at least as far as <s>Robert Heinlein&#8217;s 1953 &#8220;Starman Jones&#8221;<\/s> Isaac Asimov&#8217;s earliest <cite>Foundation<\/cite> story in 1942.  There may well be earlier examples.<\/p>\n<p>The warp drive goes back at least as far as  Murray Leinster&#8217;s first &#8220;Med Service&#8221; story in 1957.  Again, I&#8217;m certain there are earlier examples.  Let the digging begin!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been troping again. This time I found and repaired the TV Tropes page on Faster Than Light Travel. It had previously made a distinction between three subtypes of FTL drive: &#8220;jump&#8221;, &#8220;warp&#8221;, and &#8220;shortcut&#8221;. The &#8220;shortcut&#8221; category was confused and confusing, and I&#8217;ve renamed it to &#8220;portal&#8221; and fixed the definitions of both &#8220;portal&#8221;&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=1843\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">In search of: FTL taxonomy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1843"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2204,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843\/revisions\/2204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}