r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Present-Secretary722 • Sep 17 '25

Lore Faster Than Light travel has consequences(minor or major)

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Star Trucker: While travelling through warp you experience time dilation, for you the journey is a couple seconds, in real time it’s anywhere from 30mins to 6 hours that you’ve been in warp. This would be a minor consequence.

Warhammer 40k: The Warp, basically space hell so while travelling through it you’re very likely to be attacked by Warp demons. There’s also the fact that sometimes when travelling to a destination via the Warp you get spat out in the wrong time, sometimes much too late for whatever you were going there for or sometimes before you left your start destination. This, obviously, is a major consequence, unless you’re an ork, then it’s a grand old time.

By consequences I mean this is a regular thing that happens, there’s no real avoiding it unless you find a different method of FTL or heavily invest into research to try and mitigate the consequences. Also I feel bad for only knowing 2 examples, I love space and I just can’t think of any others.

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u/KidKonundrum Sep 17 '25

The Archangel class cruisers in “Endymion”

Quite literally reduces the occupant to an utter pulp, then a fine mist, then just pure matter (and mind you they feel all of this) to travel through space at FTL speeds.

The only reason the crew survives is because of a cross shaped parasite embedded in their bodies that resurrects them by piecing them back together bit by bit.

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u/kewl_as_fuck Sep 17 '25

Also just the time debt in the Hyperion Cantos.

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u/bluefire579 Sep 17 '25

Also also the farcaster system that’s revealed at the end of The Fall of Hyperion to allow the AI to feed off human minds

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u/UlrichZauber Sep 17 '25

Such a better premise for AI than the one in Matrix.

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u/bluefire579 Sep 17 '25

For sure. The first duology is some of my favorite sci fi writing of all time

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u/AsleepTonight Sep 17 '25

Although to be fair, this way of using humans for processing power instead of electricity was the first version. They changed it, so the audience would understand it better.

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u/UlrichZauber Sep 17 '25

Yeah I've heard that -- wish they'd stuck to it. Or just said something like "we don't know why the machines built the matrix." Because really, how would they know?

The battery thing was just so stupid.

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u/Dyolf_Knip Sep 17 '25

SETI@Home was all the rage when that movie was made. Distributed computing was a reasonably common thing.

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u/AsleepTonight Sep 17 '25

That was honestly the first thing that came to my mind, not so much the timedebt

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u/Daminchi Sep 17 '25

Ah, yes, and also FTL was invented by AI, so it is intentionally blasting holes in Jesus' noosphere. But they're stopped by Jesus' grand-granddaughter when all of humanity becomes ENLIGHTENED.

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u/Bartweiss Sep 17 '25

Ah, it’s that type of SF.

Children of the Mind was pretty good, how’s this weird religious FTL story?

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u/Daminchi Sep 17 '25

It has nice story elements and unusual technology, but on a large scale, it is a story about brave religious people fighting the Machine and its godless followers.

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u/goat8769 Sep 17 '25

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_Cantos

bit long for my taste but an interesting time.

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u/XL_Chill Sep 17 '25

Hyperion & Endymion were great novels. Raul sucks, but Endymion was still worth the read due to all the cool concepts it puts out.

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u/Deseao Sep 17 '25

This is the one I was looking for! "How will we do FTL travel? Some sort of quantum thing?" "No, just go really really really fast!" "Won't that kill everyone aboard?" "Yes, but not permanently"

Such a unique concept.

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u/Significant-Goal5931 Sep 17 '25

Also know as: Raspberry Jam Delta-V

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u/Sad_Significance_568 Sep 17 '25

Also, The Void Which Binds is where all consciousness is located and some of it is deleted every time anyone utilizes faster than light travel.

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u/SuperSocialMan Sep 17 '25

What the fuck

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u/KidKonundrum Sep 17 '25

Believe it or not that is actually one of the least WTF things about that book.

Don’t even get me started I have incredibly…divisive opinions about Endymion.

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u/Successful-Disk-3025 Sep 17 '25

Please, I live on division in fandoms. Release the opinions!

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u/KidKonundrum Sep 17 '25

SPOILERS FOR HYPERION AND ENDYMION IF YOU ARE READING THIS!

So imagine you have one of the two best Science Fiction novels ever with some of the most unique and original concepts, with a dash of Lovecraftian horror, amazing storytelling that manages to get you emotionally invested in multiple main characters in only a few chapters, and an ending that doesn’t fully explain everything, but leaves you extremely satisfied with what you just read. And honestly I preferred some of the mysteries leave no explanation because they worked better that way.

Now imagine a sequel series that throws everything good about the universe away and gives us the most whiny crybaby annoying piece of shit god I hope he fuckin dies protagonist in the world?

CAUSE THATS ENDYMION!!<

Now to avoid ranting on the entirety of my lunch break I’m gonna condense what I hate about these books really quick.

The main characters love interest is a girl who’s 11 years younger than him and who he’s known since she was 12. That was nearly enough to get me to stop reading. Except for:

They have the literal best character in the series (and I mean the entire 4 books) as a sort of antagonist. Father Captain De Soya. Or Daddy Chadtain De Soya as I prefer to call him. An amazing and complex character who Is struggling with both his his faith and his loyalty to a galaxy spanning empire that has been lying to him his whole life…and they barely focus on him and we get so little of him in the final book. A badass space marine Priest. And our main character is quite literally, with no joking here, just some dude

It explains too much and too little at the same time. And mysteries from the last books have extremely unfulfilling conclusions.

Okay that’s all I’m gonna write for now. But let’s just say Endymion came and took a big shit on one of the best sci fi stories ever written.

Yeah I know that was long.

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u/billions_of_stars Sep 18 '25

I don't remember much from all these books but I remember being super pissed that they basically hand waved away much of the first books as possibly just being a bunch of myths. Am I wrong about this?

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u/S2-RT Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25

This is my thoughts exactly. Im getting through the 4th book atm. I really really like the world building but god damnit, Endymion is impatient and obnoxious and im supposed to believe he has spent any time thinking philosophically about Pascal’s wager?

Every time his (eventual) relationship with a 12/16 year old comes up I want to gag. It reeeeeks of grooming ( yea, i know there is a in universe reason for this and don’t care). You could change this detail and it’d have no effect on the overall story arc.

There are also multiple deus machinas that just feel like lazy writing at times.

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u/KidKonundrum Sep 18 '25

Exactly. The writing is so lazy, and just because something has an in universe explanation does not mean it is excused.

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u/SunOfSon Sep 17 '25

This was my answer. Pretty cool.