Recently read Hayden’s World and there’s some FTL in there that (mostly) obeys relativity and the associated time dilation issues, so that was fun to see. Also, a generally unpleasant experience for the humans on the craft. Otherwise I liked KSR’s Red/Blue/Green Mars, how the story developed travel technology organically on a timeline.

Star Control had an interesting take on it, where you’re able to jump between eiffererent “levels” of space if you have something that can induce the right field and at the right level of power. Sort of like jumping between electron shells or something.

But you can jump from normal space, to hyperspace on top of that, to quasispace on top of that. And maybe others above (and below). Traveling a certain distance in each space allows you to travel an exponentially larger amount of distance in the lower space.

So you induce a field, pop up to hyperspace, move at less than FTL (as relative to hyperspace), then fall back to regular space.

The Hyperspace Gates in Cowboy Bebop always seemed to be pretty plausible. They didn’t explain all the science behind them, but there was enough to show that the was science behind it, and it had been commercialized enough that people had a basic understanding of them.

I prefer the STL in Card’s Ender’s Game series. They asymptotically approach the speed of light so the passengers only have several weeks pass when travelling to far flung locations but the universe around them experiences a normal passage of time which may be tens of years. This has really big implications on the plots in several stories.

They do have an ansible communications system that does allow instantaneous communication over astronomical distances.

I like gate type things and prefer them in space like babylon 5 and buck rogers.

CJ Cherryh and Joel Sheperd use basically the same system in their universes (Sheperd admitted he basically adopted CJ’s almost verbatim).

Ships can travel FTL transitioning into another plane of existence (to say it in an uncomplicated way), but to do so they must first acquire a speed very close to c. And when they transition back to the regular space they do it at transluminic velocity, that they must shred off pulsing their hyperdrives before coming down to ‘maneouvring’ speeds.

All of this makes for interesting tactical situations in the intent of an interstellar conflict.

Does a TARDIS count?

The FTL in the game FTL.

It’s not really explained or important in the game, but Christ almighty have I put hundreds of hours into that infuriatingly addictive thing; so it must be my favorite FTL.

Cowboy Bebop 👩‍🚀🤠

What I like about FTL is how it works with the story.

My favourite examples are Elite Dangerous and Dune.

Elite Dangerous’s FTL tech is based on alien tech and that allows the developers to do cool stuff that you wouldn’t expect in an mmo (this is usually a loading screen so when this first started happening people were terrified).

And Dune’s idea of having the entirety of interstellar civilisation dependent on one substance that can only be made on one planet, which also has other uses extremely important to different groups, sets the stage perfectly for what happens in the books.

Hyperspace in Babylon 5 is pretty cool.

Also in Star Trek TNG when the Traveller uses his mind to go crazy fast.

I like how Stellaris does hyperdrive; certain systems are connected by hyperplanes. Presumably something “man-made” in those systems generates the field and “throws” the ship to the next system.

Similar to Mass Effect except that whereas in Mass Effect, one generator can connect to any other, in Stellaris each one only goes between two points, like a subway.

In the Bobibverse (book series) they used SUDAR for FTL. SUDAR was a gravity based communication. I believe this started coming out before the gravity wave discovery and we confirmed(/it became common knowledge) that gravity travels at the speed of light. It was a cool idea though.

goes Plaid

Not ftl but I really like cryo sleep themes. Someone wakes up 100+ years later and the world is post apocalyptic. James axlers deathlands audio books, alien, some obscure video games.