The life and death of Bussard ramjets in fiction

[james_davis_nicoll]

Heppenheimer's paper came out in the mid-1970s.

Comments

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to Ngram it, but how many stories feature fast - but not FTL - travel? And how many rely on slow -- ~0.01 c or slower - travel? Hmmm . . . subcategory: slow travel plus full automation. I can think of precisely on generation story I've read in recent years, McCleod's Learning the World.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

That's not even a full generation ship. The adults are immortal and lived or slept through the journey; they just happen to be raising some kids in the volume emptied out by reaction mass near the end.

That seems the more common approach. Alastair Reynolds is full of sleeper/immortality/time dilation mix. The colony ships in Chasm City, the Ultras and Conjoiners, _House of Suns_. Stross has his two robot novels.

MacLeod's Engines of Light took the unusual "exactly as fast as light" dodge, avoiding both relativity violations and the energetics of NAFAL.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

I liked that book, particularly the alien space bats, but Amend Locke says he has no plans for a sequel. Oh well. :)