Space travel in fantasy

[Smajdalf]

Fantasy setting is mostly in something like medieval, but I've been thinking about that magic would greatly fasten the technologic advance, don't you think? In maybe 1675 a.c. we would travel in bigger speed than light. Post what you think about this.

 

[Queshire]

Honestly it's not a sure thing. Naturally it depends on how the magic actually works, but even if it was it needs the right sort of thought processes to explore such things. If magic on its own is enough to provide all somebody needs they might not see any reason to push the envelope.

Still, it's a cool idea. DEATH TO MEDIEVAL STASIS! XD

 

[Gryphos]

I'm always a fan of blurring the line between fantasy and scifi. In one of my stories, part of one character's backstory is she once used her extensive magical power to fly all the way to the moon, creating an oxygen bubble around her. And her standing on the surface of the moon looking down at the earth (or her earth, since this is a secondary world) is an inspiring moment of her life.

 

[skip.knox]

It's planned in to Altearth. Details are sketchy, since they come from my brain which itself sketchy, but the core idea is that aether is real. That's what will allow space travel. Since Altearth mimics the timeline of real Earth, I'm just going to have the space program continue very much along the lines we thought it would after the Apollo missions. In accord with my slogan, when reality fails you, rewrite it. Also thinking of expropriating Heinlein's future timeline, which is both fun and sensible.

 

[Miskatonic]

There are different dimensions in the world my story takes place in, but it has more to do with magic than Sci-Fi type space travel.

 

[Reaver]

I've said it many times before and I've no doubt I'll say it again after this, space travel in fantasy works because sci-fi is a sub-genre of fantasy. And more importantly, there are no rules when it comes to writing fantasy. Anything is possible so age quod agis.

 

[skip.knox]

"age quod agis" ... you're only as old as you feel.

 

[Penpilot]

Check out DnD's Spelljammer world which came out in I think the 80s or 90s. It's fantasy in space. Spelljammer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

This sounds like an awesome idea. What if you had huge, space-faring dragons that were capable of FTL travel? What if you had a Harry Potter type wizard school on a huge spaceship? What if all the fantasy races were each the dominant species on different planets?

High fantasy+scifi=WHY ISNT ANYONE WRITING THIS

 

[skip.knox]

Something along these lines is Poul Anderson's The High Crusade

 

[CupofJoe]

Also as a background to Julian May's Exiles and Galactic Milieu stories.

 

[Sheilawisz]

This is a great thread!

I already talked about one of my Aylar worlds and their interstellar travel capabilities in the recent Scifantasy thread, but I wanted to describe in more detail how it works. I think that it can be classified as space travel in Fantasy, because the concept has no connection to real science at all.

They have an advanced world with impressive stuff like fighter jets, force fields, directed energy weapons and also the equivalents of many things like TV and computers, but all of that works with Aylar energy instead of electricity.

Even though Aylar energy is very powerful, it was not good enough for interstellar travels.

All of that changed when they discovered a new thing called Violet Energy...

This V.E. is actually dazzling white, but it becomes violet when they condensate it in the form of crystals. Once you discover it and you realize how to use it, V.E. becomes an endless source of energy that you take out of nowhere... This means that a culture equipped with Violet Energy will never run out of it, and they will never need other sources of energy.

The problem with V.E. is that it's exceedingly dangerous!

When they had just discovered it and built the first V.E. bomb as an experimental device, there were plans to detonate it in the middle of an ocean just to see what would happen. Many people insisted that it would not be safe, so in the end the first V.E. bomb was taken far from their planet by an A.E. ship and detonated there.

The explosion was so powerful that it turned night into day for an entire hemisphere even though it took place a billion miles away. The bomb in question was so small that you could keep it hidden under your bed, and yet it would have annihilated their planet completely in case they had detonated it on the surface or even a short distance from their world.

After this, all of the V.E. bombs were to be kept at distant space stations and the development of V.E. ships was carried out under extreme caution. They built an entire fleet of those ships, not for exploration (Aylars feel little interest on space travel) but for defense in case they ever encountered other V.E. capable species.

The V.E. ships are dangerous because simply activating the Violet Drive close to an inhabited planet would exterminate all life on that world thanks to the radiation fallout. When one of those ships departs from their planet, it travels a long distance (like from Earth to Mars) on Aylar Energy, before firing up the V.E. systems for a longer journey.

They are relatively small ships, but a single V.E. bolt from their cannons would reduce Earth to an airless, burned and badly deformed rock floating out of its original orbit. They never run out of V.E., in theory they can be functional forever and they can also manufacture and shoot V.E. bombs like torpedoes.

About the interstellar travel: V.E. is the greatest power in their universe, for there cannot be anything more powerful or more advanced. Still, there is no way to travel faster than light (speed of light in their universe is 13.37 times ours) and there are no funny tricks like Warp or Hyperspace, so the only way to travel to other star systems is to accelerate your ship to freaking crazy speeds and pray for the best.

V.E. allows a ship to accelerate beyond 300000km/s (our lightspeed) known to them as Violet 1.

After that barrier is broken, the ship in question can continue to accelerate up to the fastest speed that represents little risk, which is a little above Violet 12. In theory it's possible to reach Violet 13 and a bit more, but you risk causing trouble to the unstable Violet Drive and blow your own ship up in the process.

The acceleration can take weeks, and after that they need several weeks more in order to deaccelerate. They have special V.E. shields that annihilate anything that the ship could collide with, so the real danger comes from the stability of the Violet Drive and the integrity of the ship itself as it is subjected to such brutal acceleration forces.

They have performed a few travels to other star systems in a matter of months and returned home, but longer travels represent a higher risk of Violet Drive failure and death.

I like the concept that even with the help of such a thing, interstellar travel remains a dangerous and fearsome adventure reserved only for the bravest (or the craziest) of all.

 

[Smajdalf]

Thanks everyone for their replies, and the idea with V.E. is interesting. I've made something very close to your V.E.

Crystals in color between pink and violet take any energy to start, solar, tectonic, heat and more and the crystals store it in itself. They use it to create Magiradii, energy of magic, use that to make more and more and more and when they reach maximal capacity
(described by their size) they use it to multiply the matter they are made of and slowly continue growing. Magiradii can be transformed into many other types of energies. A kilogram of crystal can hold 10000 units of Magiradii, which is about 100 terrawatts of electric energy.