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Talk:Hyperspace (deep space): Difference between revisions
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: Hmm. Laid out like this, this is a persuasive argument, but I still think a complete separation treating the two Hyperspaces as no more than unrelated namesakes is hazardous. I feel the same way about the "universe"="galaxy" thing; yes, from a certain point of view, this is just a different meaning of the word "universe", but is it ''altogether''? We are dealing with writers whose understanding of the science and cosmology itself was unlike ours. | : Hmm. Laid out like this, this is a persuasive argument, but I still think a complete separation treating the two Hyperspaces as no more than unrelated namesakes is hazardous. I feel the same way about the "universe"="galaxy" thing; yes, from a certain point of view, this is just a different meaning of the word "universe", but is it ''altogether''? We are dealing with writers whose understanding of the science and cosmology itself was unlike ours. | ||
: If you look at 60s | : If you look at 60s sources which speak about "other universes" beyond a physical void you can cross, yes, you can think "they're just using a different word for what we'd call ''galaxy''", but you might equally say: huh, I see where {{cs|Wild Blue Yonder (TV story)}} gets it from. Were they mistakenly calling galaxies ''universes'', or were they misconstruing what we now know to be mere distant clusters of stars ''as'' physically-reachable "alternate universes"? I think the answer to that has to be "a bit of both". When someone says the Daleks are from "a distant universe" this does, to my mind, often carry an intent of marking them out as more remote, more eldritch, more — in a literal sense — ''otherworldly'' than merely "from some stars very far far from ours". We would not be covering "[[next universe but one]]" correctly if we treated it as precisely the same thing as [[Skaro's galaxy]]. | ||
: And I feel a similar and indeed stronger way about "Hyperspace". I don't think the Dalek Books are such hard science that "a different ''form'' of space, with different physical laws" and "a region of space whose relation to the Milky Way can be mapped out two-dimensionally" are incompatible. In fact, looking at the "History" section of {{w|Hyperspace}} on Wikipedia, we find that one of the earliest detailed descriptions of it, in the original ''Foundation'' (1951), is as: | : And I feel a similar and indeed stronger way about "Hyperspace". I don't think the Dalek Books are such hard science that "a different ''form'' of space, with different physical laws" and "a region of space whose relation to the Milky Way can be mapped out two-dimensionally" are incompatible. In fact, looking at the "History" section of {{w|Hyperspace}} on Wikipedia, we find that one of the earliest detailed descriptions of it, in the original ''Foundation'' (1951), is as: | ||
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: I look at that, and I can only conclude that this and other first-half-the-20th-century usages of "Hyperspace" in what we construe as the more familiar other-plane sense are what the Dalek writers were ''attempting'' to riff on. Mark the use of "region" in the Asimov quote. Asimov & al. had Hyperspace as a "mysterious region" that interstellar spaceships pass through; and my view is that 60s Dalek material's "Hyperspace" as a mysterious region of space with "little-known depths" must surely be very much an evolution of that early classic-sci-fi usage, just… by people who hadn't quite grokked the higher-dimensional-physics aspect. Or deliberately decided to dumb it down for the kiddos, I don't know. (I'll never finish writing this if I check my archives for ''every'' source which uses the word, but {{cs|Warmonger (novel)}} has an interesting instance of Terrance Dicks's Doctor talking about "the mysterious realm of hyperspace" as late as 2002, even in a story which is broadly using hyperspace in its typical meaning as a plot device to get FTL spaceships.) | : I look at that, and I can only conclude that this and other first-half-the-20th-century usages of "Hyperspace" in what we construe as the more familiar other-plane sense are what the Dalek writers were ''attempting'' to riff on. Mark the use of "region" in the Asimov quote. Asimov & al. had Hyperspace as a "mysterious region" that interstellar spaceships pass through; and my view is that 60s Dalek material's "Hyperspace" as a mysterious region of space with "little-known depths" must surely be very much an evolution of that early classic-sci-fi usage, just… by people who hadn't quite grokked the higher-dimensional-physics aspect. Or deliberately decided to dumb it down for the kiddos, I don't know. (I'll never finish writing this if I check my archives for ''every'' source which uses the word, but {{cs|Warmonger (novel)}} has an interesting instance of Terrance Dicks's Doctor talking about "the mysterious realm of hyperspace" as late as 2002, even in a story which is broadly using hyperspace in its typical meaning as a plot device to get FTL spaceships.) | ||
: Hence, this still looks to me like a divergent portrayal of the same underlying imaginary concept. Divergent enough to get its own page? Maybe. Why not. But I strongly feel it should be documented at [[Hyperspace]] with "accounts" language as part of the history of ''Who''{{ | : Hence, this still looks to me like a divergent portrayal of the same underlying imaginary concept. Divergent enough to get its own page? Maybe. Why not. But I strongly feel it should be documented at [[Hyperspace]] with "accounts" language as part of the history of ''Who''{{'}}s riffs on the preexisting sci-fi stock-word. A tiny {{tlx|you may}} doesn't cut it. | ||
: Oh, and this is really a secondary point, but: | : Oh, and this is really a secondary point, but: | ||
