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"Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful."
- Philip K. Dick
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| Ansible | ||
| Faster-than-light communication. |
One of the key problems in running an interstellar empire (or just traveling between stars) is communicating with the home world. Electromagnetic radiation dawdles along at a mere 299,792,458 meters per second. At that rate, you could never carry on a long distance phone call with anyone on Alpha Centauri; you would wait years just to hear "hello."
It is widely reported on the 'net that the first appearance of this term is in LeGuin's award-winning book Left Hand of Darkness." However, an earlier reference can be found in this work, published in 1966.
| Only for a moment, when he had located the control room and found the ansible and sat down before it, did he permit his mind-sense to drift over to the ship that sat east of this one. There he picked up a vivid sensation of a dubious hand hovering over a white Bishop. ...
As his fingers (left hand only, awkwardly) struck each key, the letter appeared simultaneously on a small black screen in a room in a city on a planet eight lightyears distant: |
| Technovelgy from Rocannon's World,
by Ursula Le Guin. Published by Not Available in 1966 Additional resources -
|
LeGuin is supposed to have invented the idea of FTL (faster than light) communication, but that is hard to believe. Discussions of how energy might travel faster than light were done shortly after publication of Einstein's original papers on relativity in 1905.
In his 1951 novel Foundation, Isaac Asimov referred to a hyperwave relay that could be used to instantaneously trip a switch across interstellar distances. In his 1950's Cities in Flight novel series, James Blish refers to a Dirac transmitter that allows instantaneous communication throughout the galaxy.
Perhaps my favorite means of FTL communication is the sniggertrance, which is what happens when you take a Taprisiot call in the 1969 Frank Herbert novel Whipping Star.
Also, the concept is implicit in well-known Saturday movie serials from the 1930's, like Buck Rogers.
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
