The Business: Adding Some Reality To Your Space Adventures

I'd mentioned Anton Petrov some time ago. He's a space science guy whose channel is fantastic viewing for all things interstellar. He's not a fiction guy, but I think that space gamers and writers ought to throw him on their regular reading and viewing list because what he does videos about could be very good for making space fiction--gaming or writing--a lot more fun in the same way that knowing real history made Howard's Conan stories a lot more fun. This video, for example, could be a lot of fun for playing with FTL travel.

For the record, the inventor of Space Opera--E.E. Smith--had something like this in his Lensman series, albeit implicitly and derived logically from what was known at the time. (TLDR: FTL gets faster the further out from solar systems you go due to decreased density of stellar matter to provide hinderance thereto; the books get more specific.)

Take a moment during a coffee break to think through this concept of localized bubbles of stars and how that impacts interstellar long-distance travel. First, and foremost, it means that explorers now have something to look for when scanning distance areas of space; this, in turn, gives exploration fleets something to point at and travel towards, as well as a distinct horizon event to mark arrival. Second, it gives a distinct boundary against which an interstellar civilization can organize a network of outposts, garrisons, unmanned commications drones or buoys, etc. that combine to divide "Civilization" and "The Frontier/Wilderness" on that scale. Third, it means that a long-time trope of space fiction--"(X) Space"--can be a real thing; an entire local bubble where a specific national or imperial culture resides.

And it means that areas of the galaxy can be mapped and tracked in real time with greater accuracy than what one might expect otherwise.

For worldbuilders, this can also work to give weight to a decision to exclude rather than include; rather than an entire galaxy, you can only deal with a local bubble. Classic Traveller alone has had entire campaigns going on for years at a time where all the action only occurs in a single subsector with no more than a dozen planets, so a local bubble will still be more than enough. It is arguable that the entire Macross franchise has actually gone further than our local bubble, given what we know of both now, and that still feels fine. (Then there's the Gundam franchise, where most of its stories take place entirely within the Lunar Sphere, and somehow feels epic.)

You don't have to go hard on it; Smith deftly anchors his technological premises in various books with dialog that inattentive readers mistake as throwaway lines, demonstrating an efficency of prose that few others match, and none who defame him now could even comprehend. Worldbuilders can throw that detail into their kitchen table books and Wiki articles; in novels, film, and television that needs to be background and not foreground even when its implications are relevant to the plot.

You also don't need to be a scientist or engineer to do this, though it helps. You need to have a clear conception of what it is and how it works, in the manner that you would explain it to the average five year old child; Uncle George got this right when he made his seminal Space Opera in the 1970s, and it is a common trait in enduring works of that genre across all media.

But remember that you're doing adventure, not engineering exercises. Leave that to the professionals making men into nuclear techs, wonderworkers that keep B-52s flying, the fine folks at Space X, and whomever is tasked with making something useful to replace the Litorral Combat Ship.