h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm writing a sci-fi novel and I've exhausted my own ideas for far-fetched methods of transport. Hovercars, wormholes, time machines, gargantuan dirigibles, riding on wildebeeste, I love all the incredible ways people in sci-fi stories get from one place to another, but now I'm stuck.

So I was wondering if any h2g2 researchers, in their infinite wisdom, would like to share wild, wacky or wonderful ways that one might get from A to B in a sci-fi story. If my novel ever gets published (not likely for some years yet), the winner will have their idea included and will also receive a very subtle hint to their personal researcher name (if you so wish) around about chapter twenty.

To start the ball rolling, so to speak, I've already used the idea of quantum tunneling - if you wait long enough there's a very tiny chance that all your component particles will tunnel simultaneously to another random location. Whilst that method is based in fact, I don't mind using another that isn't, but I'm looking for a slightly more exciting idea than that for this part of the story.

Please help! Writer's block is such a terrible feeling.

Well me advice is, keep it simple as possible, don't onto realms of comptle fantasy like Farscape, and science like Star Trek. Don't go into all the faster than light/time-travelling rubbish if you can, take the Red Dwarf/Nadesico example, set the plot around the main characters and not fit the characters around the plot!!!

Hmmm, are we talking actual science-fiction here or a science-fiction parody?

In the Anne McCaffrey Pern books, the Dragons of the Wehr can think 'when' and move themselves between time. It takes a while to get there. Previously they could only think 'Where'.
Another way is via the Sunday Observer's April Fool spoof, which was by down-sizing people and then sending them to Oz by Laser beam , where they were then re-sized. I believe the cost was £15,000, and over 400 people applied!!!!

It's similar to the sort of sci-fi Douglas Adams uses if that helps. I don't mind how unrealistic or complicated the ideas I use are.

Thank you for that, Mazin. Any other ideas?

Rocket powered or spring powered seven-mile boots.

Yes, good idea. They've always worked for me but I'm not sure they'd really suit my main character...

You follow a small group of trainees though training,

To be sent off-world to help younger spices develop and to do it with out younger spices knowing”.

Soon after graduation day, our little group of trainees are giving there first posting.
to help a young developing spices on a small green blue planet called? “You guess”
Openings for all sorts of fun and games,
not totally new, but may be a good place to start.

ES

Good idea. I was actually only looking for ideas related to science-fictional transportation, but if ever I need another seed for a plot I'll keep that in mind.

Sorry BB, that will teach me to read the topic won’t it.

Dimiysalds

Small trans-dimensional aliens,

You ride like a pony, Si-fantasy
or
Drive you from one dimension to another. Si-fiction

Springs to mind.

But I bet you have got that one

Molecular fazing…?


ES

How about a universe-moving device! The character stays in the same place, but the universe is shuffled a couple of hundred miles to the left, so he ends up where he wants to be.... Sounds suitably douglas adams

Well you are an intelligent moose I must say. I don't know why I didn't think of that myself. Are you sure it hasn't already been used in a book?

So what if it's been used already - after all, how many countless writers have used 'spaceships'? You'll use it completely originally and it'll be fun!

Maybe a movement of the space-time continuum could take place, a bit like space-shifters only moving time? A bit like the concept of His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. This is assuming that there are parallel universes operating at the same place but at different times....a possible explanation of Deja Vu where, when we sleep we time-shift, only to return shortly before waking, and then catch up with the time we visited.
Alternatively, as per (20/03/04 p34) New Scientist, when the Big Bang occured, our time and space was created, as was our negative mirror-image going in the opposite direction. Maybe a meeting of your character's negative could occur, and they shift planes?

I don't think it's been used before - at least, I wasn't willfully plagiarising. Good luck if you decide to use it!


"-0-" (best I can manage for a Moose emoticon!)

April 5, 2004

Hello Dear Sweet Mortals. Lord Valkyrie. At Your Service.

Writer's Block Sounds Rather Scotish To Me. What More Can I Do Here.

I've Done Work For NASA & As A Working Veteran Of The United States Navy President Bush The 2nd & Four Star Admiral John Paul Reason Sole Commander Of The North Atlantic Fleet Did Give Me Clearance As Per My Rank Within The Navy To Reveal This Much Of The "Poseidon Observation" Which Is My Very Own Creation, The "Poseidon Observation" That Is.

In Short Travel Bi Thought Is Very Real. More Real Than The Internet.

Will One Of You H2G2 Lads Please BCC The BBC To CC Her Majesty's Secret Service On This One 101 Reply. I Can't Be Bothered To Blow In 007's Ear Today And I Won't Be Getting Back Over The Pond Until Yesterday. Eh?

But Then Again Since Tomorrow Never Dies And The World Is Not Enough It Is A Good Thing Australia Has The Good Ole Tunder Dome Because I Swear If Diamonds Are Forever Then I Must Need A Ruby Or Two And Bi The Bi Did Anybody Ever Find That Bloody Glass Slipper I Lost Last Week. Eh?

Truly,

Lord Valkyrie

www.mennotgods.com
www.chicagogigs.com/mennotgods

The stay-put-while-I-make-the-universe-move idea has been used in "Star Trek - The First Adventure" by Vonda N. McIntyre (which was not my most favorite of ST books, I must say).

As to other ideas... It is, of course, a well known fact that in the universe as we know it, nothing travels as fast as bad news, so it is just a matter of time until someone invents the Bad News Drive(tm). This will, however, soon be replaced by the spectacular Horrible News Power Drive(tm), of which the WCS Drive(tm) (Worst Case Scenario Drive) is a splendid modification. All these work on the basic principle that bad news is very easy to manufacture. The difficulties surrounding this kind of drive are 1) historically: how to actually attach the vehicle to the news (this has been solved by devising a vehicle which in itself IS the bad news) and 2) prospectively: how to deal with a universe which by virtue of being travelled in becomes less and less desirable to be travelled in, due to all the bad news going around in it.

Another way to travel is preferred by mathmaticians: they simply redefine space and once they defined the Horse Head Nebula to be just two miles away, they walk the distance.

Popular among the public-transportation-infested populations: The Nicotine Drive(tm). People accustomed to public transport know that the easiest way to speed up the time spent waiting for the next bus to come is to light up a cigarette. Since 1) time can thus be altered and 2) v=s/t therefore v*t=s, distances just become a matter of nicotine supply given that you travel at a constant speed. The drawback of this kind of travelling is that most species cut deals with Fidel Castro, which in turn peeves off the Americans who, for this reason, will not grant landing rights to aliens on planet Earth, which explains nicely why almost everybody on planet earth, excepting Fidel, has never seen aliens.

Y.

re: As to other ideas... It is, of course, a well known fact that in the universe as we know it, nothing travels as fast as bad news, so it is just a matter of time until someone invents the Bad News Drive(tm).

Someone's already used this - think it may have been Terry Pratchett

Never read any Pratchett - shame on me. But yes, I would have been surprised if no one else should have thought of the Bad News Drive(tm)

But then again, rumors are pretty quick, too. The downside: once you move vehicles by having them be no more than a rumor, you add so much more incertainty to the universe...