re: #40 Obdicut

I think part of your conundrum is artificial; the limit of the speed of light as information in a society where some sort of FTL travel is possible ignores the possibility that that FTL travel medium can also carry information. I mean, obviously FTL on its own is fiction, but once you’ve established that, why restrict yourself to light as a carrier of information?

In the Culture novels by Ian M. Banks, for example, ships scan through the ‘hyper’ and ‘ultra’ spaces in order to get information, for which the gobbledegook explanation is that they have no real physical dimensions anyway.

I’ve played mentally with “neo-retro’ plot gimmicks in which FTL ships become the fastest available means of communication, as in the days of sailing ships. A second example would be the need to re-streamline ships against interstellar dust and gas, as the ships become really fast.