[dakial1]

I love science fiction because they usually try to play these scenarios in a somewhat feasible future. The 3 Body Problem series (more specifically the 3rd book) goes well into what it would take for humanity to be interestellar even without lightspeed or wormholee tech.

Avoiding spoilers it would basically be through hibernation and/or generational ships. Which basically implies of losing all ties to earth and anyone/anything you left there.

But, then again, why would nations invest in such expensive endeavours if there is no prospect of seeing something back out of it. I imagine only an emergency situation would cause this no?

[troyvit]

I've been reading some sci-fi by Kate Elliott lately. While she gets around large distances with the usual FTL tech of sci-fi, in-system space battles hew a little more to physics, so that you get situations like, "Crap! The bad guys fired all their missiles at us! We have sixteen hours to decide what to do ...." Fun stuff.

I bet you're right about emergency situations. On top of that, people have been getting on boats and pushing off into the ocean for at least 25,000 years[1] when there was plenty of good land to keep them occupied. It's not that we're talking the same time scales, but rather the fact that they probably did it despite completely unknown time scales. It makes me wonder if the right philosophy or religion will come along that makes somebody try a generation ship for non-emergency reasons.

[1] https://teara.govt.nz/en/pacific-migrations/page-1

[RandomBacon]

I'm reading the sci-fi ExForce series by Craig Alanson. There is jumping (wormholes) and speed of light restrictions where lightseconds, lightminutes, lighthours come in to play. What you see (position of enemy ships) might not be true anymore.

[dakial1]

Ah yes! I remember that from "The expanse" as well: "let's do a meeting to decide how to evade the missile!"

I think that Physics-compliant sci-fi novels are more entertaining because the solutions (feasible or not) are more ingenious and the consequences more surprising.