This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
//Red Shoe: This sounds a little more vitriolic than necessary. "Subspace" and "Hyperspace" really seem to just be synonyms, like "Transmat", "Teleport", and "Transport".
BritBllt: It is, and due in part to that, I'm deleting this line from the opening...
- Hyperspace, on the other hand, has some degree of scientific legitimacy. It was the title of a nonfiction book by physicist Michio Kaku.
Because Michio Kaku named it after the science-fiction use of the word, not vice versa.
Also, removing all of this from the intro...
- Notable variation: Iain M. Banks's Culture novels feature two types of Hyperspace: Ultraspace and Infraspace. This is a result of the description of the nature of the Universe in those novels - as the Universe expands, other Universes are expanding "inside" it (in a multi-dimensional analogue of a kind of expanding onion, with the individual layers of the onion representing Universes). Hyperspace is found "in between" the Universes, with Ultraspace defined as the Hyperspace between a Universe and the one "above" it and Infraspace being defined as the one between a Universe and the one "below" it. The properties of the two types are the same; indeed, the difference between the two is only defined with respect to a given Universe. Forming the "roof" and "floor" of the two hyperspaces is a thing referred to as the "energy grid", a flexible but impermeable barrier (at least, impermeable in the sense that travelling through it results in annihilation) preventing most people from nipping next door to the neighbouring universe.. Ships travel faster-than-light by pushing against the energy grid in either kind of Hyperspace, but nothing from our Universe has been known to be able to connect to both grids simultaneously, which is the feature that makes the "Excession" in the novel of the same name so interesting.''
...and replacing it with a Culture example entry that cuts down on some of the unnecessary details...
- Iain M. Banks's Culture novels feature two types of Hyperspace: Ultraspace and Infraspace. This is a result of the description of the nature of the Universe in those novels - as the Universe expands, other Universes are expanding "inside" it (in a multi-dimensional analogue of a kind of expanding onion, with the individual layers of the onion representing Universes). Hyperspace is found "in between" the Universes, with Ultraspace defined as the Hyperspace between a Universe and the one "above" it and Infraspace being defined as the one between a Universe and the one "below" it.
