Wormholes in Fiction - Wormholes in Written Fiction

Wormholes in Written Fiction

• In Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials, wormholes are an immensely important plot device, one which is first discovered in the trilogy by protagonist Will Parry, when fleeing from his home after an accidental murder; he finds a window in the air in an Oxford street which leads to a totally different universe, the town of Cittagazze. In the rest of the trilogy, the other main characters use wormholes in the form of these extradimensional windows in order to travel "between worlds" and thus speed their journeys.
• In Madeleine L'Engle's Young-adult novel A Wrinkle in Time, the process by which the characters travel through space and time is explained in a manner similar to the wormhole theory. Say an ant wants to get from one part on a tablecloth to another some distance away; it is a lot quicker to just "wrinkle up" the space between them so that the two points touch, and travel directly from one to the other.
• In Joe Haldeman's classic war novel The Forever War, interstellar travel is achieved through gateways located at collapsars. This is an early word for a black hole, and the novel refers to the (now obsolete) theory that black holes may contain Einstein–Rosen Bridges.
• Wormholes are a centerpiece of Carl Sagan's novel Contact, in which a crew of five humans make a trip to the center of the Milky Way galaxy through a transportation system consisting of a series of wormholes. The novel is notable in that Kip Thorne advised Sagan on the possibilities of wormholes. Likewise, wormholes are also central to the film version (discussed below).
• In The Power of Five series by Anthony Horowitz, wormholes are an important plot device: the Gatekeepers can travel anywhere they wish in the world instantly by using wormholes in the form of doors found in holy places such as churches, and the wormholes are also used as an important plot device in Book Two of the series, Evil Star, this time for a much more sinister purpose; the Old Ones, the antagonists, use the Nazca Lines as a gigantic wormhole to unlock the Lines in order to escape onto the Earth.
• In Stephen Baxter's Xeelee universe, human beings use wormholes to traverse the solar system before the discovery of the hyperdrive. A wormhole is also used in this universe to put a probe into the sun (the wormhole is utilized to cool the probe, throwing out solar material fast enough to keep the probe at operating temperatures). In his book Ring, the Xeelee construct a gigantic wormhole into a different universe which they use to escape the onslaught of the Photino birds.
• In 2000, Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter co-wrote a science fiction novel, The Light of Other Days, which discusses the problems which arise when a wormhole is used for faster-than-light communication. In the novel the authors suggest that wormholes can join points distant either in time or in space and postulate a world completely devoid of privacy as wormholes are increasingly used to spy on anyone at any time in the world's history.
• Dan Simmons's Hyperion Cantos tetralogy contains a mode of personal interstellar transport called a "Farcaster" which closely resembles wormhole travel. The Farcaster network employs "singularity spheres" to warp space-time and allow individuals to literally step across light-year distances in moments.
• The novel Diaspora by Greg Egan features scientifically well-founded depictions of wormholes.
• In the Iain M. Banks novel The Algebraist, traversable wormholes can be artificially created and are a central factor/resource in the stratification of space-faring civilizations.
• John G. Cramer's novel Einstein's Bridge featured travel via wormholes between alternate universes.
• In Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, naturally occurring wormholes form the basis for interstellar travel. The world of Barrayar was isolated from the rest of human civilization for centuries after the connecting wormhole collapsed, until a new route was discovered, and control over wormhole routes and jumps is the frequent subject of political plots and military campaigns.
• The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton describes how wormhole technology could be used to explore, colonize and connect to other worlds without having to resort to traditional travel via starships. This technology is the basis of the formation of the titular Intersolar Commonwealth, and is used so extensively that it is possible to ride trains between the planets of the Commonwealth.
• The "Ramsbotham Gates" in Robert A. Heinlein's novel Tunnel in the Sky apparently operate by forming stable wormholes between two points, though Heinlein does not use the term "wormhole."
• The novel "House of Suns" by Alastair Reynolds features a wormhole to Andromeda. One main character also alludes to other wormhole mouths leading to galaxies in the Local Group and beyond. In the books, all wormhole-linked galaxies are cloaked by Absences, which prevent information escaping the galaxy and thus protecting causality from being violated by FTL travel
• Military science fiction often uses a "jump drive" to propel a spacecraft between two fixed "jump points" connecting solar systems; such jump drives are often described in ways that make them seem similar to wormholes. For example, the hyper-spatial tubes in E. E. Smith's Lensman series seem very like wormholes.
• Connecting solar systems in a network like this results in a fixed "terrain" with choke points that can be useful for constructing plots related to military campaigns. The Alderson points postulated by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in Mote in God's Eye and related novels is an example. The development process is described by Niven in N-Space, a volume of collected works.
• Traversable wormholes are used as time travel along with the theory of quantum foam in Michael Crichton's bestselling novel, Timeline.
• In The Urth of the New Sun, Severian becomes linked with a White Hole (called a White Fountain) that moves to and rejuvenates Urth's dying sun.