To jump, or not to jump

One of the problems we SF writers have is the perennial one of getting about the universe in a reasonable length of time. It's that pesky Mr, Einstein and his theories of relativity that cause us problems.

 So what do we do if we want to get around the universe? Generation ships are only any use if you want to set your story on the ship, or your novel uses an incredibly long timescale.

 But if you have a character like my Ria Bihar, the Trading captain of my novel Starfire, she needs to get about the universe rather more speedily. Enter the fiction of the hyperspace jump, warp speed. A leap into an as-yet undiscovered other realm to get somewhere fast.

We have to trust that our readers will suspend their disbelief and accept the jumps,and it helps them to do that if we make the jump as realistic as we can. CJ Cherryh does this brilliantly in The Pride of Chanur. She shows us the exhaustion of the crew, the dulled senses when emerging from jump, the shedding of fur, the worry that the jump vanes wants bring you out into normal space any place you recognize. These details bring the process alive and allow the reader to believe in it.

The fiction of the jump is just too useful to pass up, and I'll be using it I my fiction for a long time to come.