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From: okie@ihuxs.UUCP (B.K. Cobb)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: FTL and time travel
Message-ID: <478@ihuxs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Feb-84 09:19:03 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxs.478
Posted: Mon Feb  6 09:19:03 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Feb-84 06:27:27 EST
References: <16357@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 18

Larry Niven has also dealt with this subject.  In *A World Out of Time*,
a man from the past is awakened from frozen sleep in another body (hmmm --
time travel of another kind?).  In his future, he finds that he is in the
body of a criminal that must repay his debt to the State.  They make him
a starship pilot (rammer) and send him out with a ship on a long mission to
"seed" worlds for future life.  Well, he ends up stealing the ship and
heading for the galactic core -- but at one point he has to depend on his
ship's computer, which is intelligent.  The computer puts him into an FTL
course around the black hole at the core (you have to understand a bit
about the cosmology of Niven's galaxy for this) and they wind up back on
earth a few million years later than when he left.  Also, the computer
informs the pilot after the fact that they could have arrived home only
70,000 years later had the orbit around the black hole been changed slightly.

It's an interesting concept.

B.K. Cobb
ihnp4!ihuxs!okie