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Ask HN: Is there any fiction that's based on a world with different physics?
E.g. a world where momentum is not conserved, perpetual motion is possible, decreasing entropy etc
- ahazred8ta 5y agoThe science-fantasy novel Celestial Matters is based on ancient Greek physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Matters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Matters
- insomniacity 5y agoOn, by Adam Roberts.
- charliesolomon 5y agoThe Practice Effect, David Brin
- MrWiffles 5y agoCan't say I've heard of anything like this _explicitly_, but Star Trek _kinda_ skates around the edges of that with the whole "warp drive" thing to some degree. Not an expert in ST lore by any means, but that whole franchise's physics world would have to be different than ours for the idea of a "warp field" to exist.
- emteycz 5y agoNot really for warp: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/11/5/001 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0264-9381/11/5/00... But yeah for the other Trek technology
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoAs far as we know transporters and rigid force projections such as force field starship windows also violate our physics.
- amoruso 5y agoGreg Egan wrote a few of those. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_(series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_(series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(novel) Diaspora starts in this universe but ends up somewhere else.
- danbmil99 5y agoGreg Egan is great. Strongly recommend Permutation City. Predating The Matrix, they build simulated worlds which then bootstrap themselves into alternate realities. The physics are not the same as our physics but similar.
- kadoban 5y agoRaft by Stephen Baxter comes to mind. It's his first book, so it's far from perfect, but it's quite interesting. Some of his other books the physics are the same as ours but the locations are so exotic that they might as well qualify.
- rakejake 5y agoSome of Greg Egan's novels are based on very novel Physics I believe. His more "accessible" novel Permutation City is a HN favorite.
- x0xrx 5y ago“The Inverted World” by Christopher Priest involves a world that appears to be based on hyperbolic geometry I believe.
- ainzzorl 5y agoNot exactly this, but "Dragon's Egg" by Robert Forward takes place on a neutron star with a surface gravity billions times that on Earth.
- aherz 5y agoThe Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov explores this very idea of what would happen if two parallel universes were to interact but had different laws of physics.
- kilna 5y agoI am surprised nobody has mentioned Flatland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland
- erhserhdfd 5y agoFlatland is amazing! Without giving anything up, its a short-story that takes place in two dimensions, where men are polygons and women are lines. It's a brilliantly written satire of Victorian culture and an interesting thought experiment.
- yetihehe 5y ago"The Void Trilogy" by Peter F. Hamilton has a "constructed" subuniverse where you can alter matter with thoughts and it has different temporal flow.
- ww520 5y agoNightfall by Isaac Asimov, while not exactly different physics but it's in a totally physical "universe."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- randomNumber7 5y agoEvery fantasy with magic goes against the three laws of thermodynamics.
- drakonka 5y agoCheck out The Machineries of Empire series by Yoon Ha Lee. The first instalment (Ninefox Gambit) is one of my favorite books. The physics of the world is based on an interesting "calendrical" system which relies on the population's faith in the calendar to persist.
- aaron695 5y agoAny SciFi where faster than light travel is possible?!? Is this a serious question? Almost all of them. (Faster than light travel also means time travel is possible, but most SciFi doesn't link the two coherently) Many mess with gravity as well.
- washadjeffmad 5y agoThat's the basis of a story currently being written by a Dutch physics teacher: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21844/i-am-going-to-die-in-this-game-like-dimension https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21844/i-am-going-to-die-in... There are no advanced concepts or deep hard scifi explorations, but the various worlds each have unique physics systems that are macro-consistent.
- DarrenDev 5y agoThe Emberverse series by SM Sterling. The laws of physics change such that technology no longer works and is no longer capable of working. Ex: water couldn't boil enough to power a steam engine. The first book is the best - subsequent books are almost pure fantasy.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoRedshift Rendezvous (I forget who wrote it) has alternate physics you can step into where the speed of light is 30 m/s. You can get relativistic effects while jogging. (I mean, I guess that's just the same physics with one of the parameters changed, but it changes quite a bit...)
- robotguy 5y ago>You can get relativistic effects while jogging and you have to aim a flashlight like a water hose. +1 for the appendix at the end that explains the conceit and lays out the equations used! One of my favorites, written by John E. Stith.
- tmaly 5y agoRingworld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld
- hcs 5y agoThis is subtly present in Neal Stephenson's Anathem, late in the book it's a plot device that comes up a few times.
- mikewarot 5y agoIn this series, most modern technology stops working, due to aliens tweaking the laws of physics on earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emberverse_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emberverse_series
- webmaven 5y agoBob Shaw wrote a duology "The Ragged Astronauts" & "The Wooden Spaceships" in which the ratio of a circles circumference to it's diameter is 3. As far as I can tell, the only reason this factoid is included is to defuse any arguments about the plausibility of other elements of the setting (a binary planet with a shared atmosphere such that it is possible for a feudal society to stage an invasion from one to the other using balloons). Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle has Ptolemaic cosmology and Aristotelian physics. The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World by A.K. Dewdney is sort of a modern take on the classic Flatland by Edwin Abbot, and manages to improve upon it considerably. The Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter posits an infinite set of parallel Earths that can be reached with a trivial but unorthodox electronic device. You have to travel to them incrementally, one sideways step