A review brought up an interesting criticism of this series, and probably Odyssey One now that I think about it.
Recent scientific developments have managed to measure the propagation rate of gravity waves… and, surprising no one really, they travel at lightspeed. This is an issue in my books, and others I know of, because bring written before this bit of information became quantified, gravity waves clearly travel faster than that in this universe.
While a pain, that’s the risk of writing a science fiction novel with truly speculative THEORIES rather than merely speculative technology. If you get specific about anything, there’s a better than average chance that you’re going to be proven wrong at some point.
I wonder, though, does this… as the critique said, somehow magically change the nature of the theoretical discussion to ‘technobabble’? Or was it always technobabble and merely floated there, unrecognized?
Or is there a third option? Does a disproved theory, or hypothesis in this case, still have respectability despite it’s new status, at least as long as the thinker(s) behind it are willing to admit to the new facts?
There is a lot of be learned from ideas that we know are wrong, so long as we acknowledge that they’re wrong in the process.
Of course, that’s academic and this is fiction… Though the speed of gravity propagation is a relatively small part of this universe’s canon, and not generally vital to any plots, I doubt I’ll retcon it out of existence. I do try to stay within real scientific theories for the most part, but the gravity detection speed was always more of a nod to Weber than anything important to the plot.
Actually, finally finding evidence of gravity waves existing helps the novel’s plot far more than it hurts. It actually means that at least SOME parts of their gravity jump drive mechanism have been confirmed as ‘not entirely batshit’. 🙂
Cheers everyone.
