Talk:Space travel in science fiction

Odd sentence
Was reading through the article, and stumbled over "From the 1960s onward, the growing popularity of public with the modern technology...". Is this supposed to be "...the growing popularity of modern technology with the public..."? Chris857 (talk) 19:02, 5 September 2021 (UTC)


 * @Chris857 Hmmm, I honestly don't see the difference, but I am not a native speaker of English and sometimes I miss such things. Ping User:Nihil novi? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:26, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Piotrus, I haven't been able to find the sentence in question, but I'm pretty sure Chris857 is right – if it is indeed modern technology that is popular, rather than the public.
 * There are a few other wordings that Chris857 might help with, if he is willing.
 * Regards to you both,
 * Nihil novi (talk) 04:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I fixed this here per your suggestions: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Space_travel_in_science_fiction&type=revision&diff=1042850760&oldid=1042434451&diffmode=source Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 03:10, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
 * "'the growing popularity of public with the modern technology..." First of all, in the sense the words are being used here, it's always "the public", and "modern technology" without the. And if you make those emendations, "the growing popularity of the public with modern technology" indicates that modern technology is loving the public more and more, which is nonsensical. Koro Neil (talk) 10:17, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Weltraumschiff and The Space Explorers
I have reverted additions by anon regarding the above topics. They are plausible, but anon forgot to add references, hence they violate WP:V and WP:OR. Since said anon did not register an account, they can't be notified about this :( I am sorry, but this article was written adhering to the strictest highest standards of referencing, and it cannot be compromise by good faithed OR. Feel free to restore this interesting content - but with proper references. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 07:57, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

A bit too much about space folding?
While expansion is good, I am not sure if the merger of all content from space folding into here (during the ongoing Articles for deletion/Space folding, which I started, judging that article to be mostly beyond rescue, a rescue that User:Mark McWire is attempting) is good. Some of the content improved by Mark seems fine but I am also worried some is referenced to primary sources like movie scripts and is WP:UNDUE WP:FANCRUFT. As I've pretty much written the GA article here from scratch, I don't want to be too bold due to WP:OWN and remove good faithed expansion by Mark (or parts of it) without discussion, but I do have serious concerns they are not meeting quality standards we have here right now. Ping User:Artem.G, User:TompaDompa, User:Daranios, User:Jclemens... Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:16, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree with the example for Event Horizon an removed it myself. But the other mentioned examples are source by at least a Encyclopedia or Technical Manual from the franchise. At least in the Star Trek books there are author comments and text expansions that are not purely in-universe written. --Mark McWire (talk) 11:45, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Still, we need sources about space folding in science fiction, not just sources about Star Trek that discuss space folding in Star Trek. And we need to justify why we're treating it as a concept that is distinct from the concept of wormholes. I didn't see how that could be justified based on the cited sources, so I moved some content to the wormhole section and removed the rest. TompaDompa (talk) 18:22, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

I readd some content, because youre remove not justified, because there are sources. --Mark McWire (talk) 02:24, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
 * The mere existence of sources is not sufficient; we need a very specific kind of sourcing for this kind of material, the details of which are described in MOS:POPCULT. TompaDompa (talk) 06:11, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I think also WP:UNDUE is an issue. Not a single source about space travel in science fiction mentions space folding in-depth, at best we have one new source using the term in passing in one sentence. As such, I don't think inclusion of a lengthy section about it - lengthier than that on hyperspace - is correct. It's just like in the article on hyperspace we mention, in passing, that there are similar terms such as subspace or overspace or jumps pace, cite in a footnote one or two works using them and that's it. I suggest the same to be done here - that space folding is mentioned in a single sentence, with a footnote listing example or two. As a reminder, the best non-primary source I found is and it doesn't even use the term "space folding", just describes warp drive while using the word "fold". Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  10:27, 8 December 2021 (UTC)


 * Update: I have reverted to the last stable version, as I noticed that content was removed with no justification, such as the sentence "I will revert to stable source, as I noticed that the recent edits not only added substandard content but also removed reliably referenced content, ex. the sentence " Some works involve discussion of Einstein's general theory of relativity and challenges it faces from the quantum mechanics, and include concepts of space travel through wormholes or black holes."" Einstein's no longer mentioned, and that sentence was moved to a subheading "Space folding and Wormholes", which is not only badly formatted (Wormholes should not be capitalized) but also, the cited source doesn't discuss space folding at all. It's all OR, I am sorry but edits should improve articles, and I feel the recent ones did not. Feel free to restore a short mention of space folding - but with a proper reference discussing this term outside of PRIMARY sources. Something like "The term space folding is used to describe space travel in works like Dune and others". --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:34, 8 December 2021 (UTC)


 * I revert your revert, because it was blindly and unselective and destructive. --Mark McWire (talk) 10:44, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
 * You have failed to address the issues raised above. Your edit uses substandard references, violates OR, PRIMARY, and UNDUE, and moves stuff to wrong sections. Above both me and TD are critical of your version. I am afraid it is you who needs to get a consensus to keep your changes in the text. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 10:46, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I need some time for finding a reliable source. I can't made this in one day. --Mark McWire (talk) 10:49, 8 December 2021 (UTC)


 * In general I am averse to just sweep the topic under the rug, no deletion consensus was reached here. We currently have it in the heading, but no explanation, and like Mark McWire, I would not want the heading removed, but rather the explanation added. We have discussed a number of sources of different quality in the deletion discussion. So how about That's Weird!, p. 236? That's not the Sci-Fi encyclopedia but a book of popular science, but I see no reason not to use it. It has two short paragraphs explaining one version of the space folding, both the scientific basis and the sci-fi application, and also distinguishes (this version of) space folding from wormholes. It also uses the term directly. Again as already discussed, the scientfific part is backed up by Philosophical Essays, p. 46. That book also directly calls the effect "space folding", as well as "folding of space". That should be fine for a start in my book. In addition, we have Grazier's essay (p. 170-206 + mention on 151). It does call it "folded space" and "space-folding". While this essay volumewise talks about a lot of background things, too, it does have folded space as its main topic. And, oh yeah, if that section is felt unduely long, maybe we have - strange isn't it? - the situation where it should be split out into it's own Space folding (science fiction) article? Daranios (talk) 11:54, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I am not averse to building something using these sources, but the current rewrite is sloppy. In addition to the errors discussed above - such as still unexplained removal of some content, MoS violations in heading, etc., we have sloppy moving of content around and badly written sentences like "Many writers introducing fictional concepts to get around the limitations of the special theory of relativity." It's nice Mark wants to improve this page, but I am afraid his changes, right now, are not really improvements. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here  12:04, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
 * What you are doing is not improving the article, but rather worsening it by deleting referenced content. If you are looking for a consent, stop deleting things that are "sloppy" and help improve the text. --Mark McWire (talk) 12:11, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
 * How about you propose any significant additions here, and we can review them, with sources and so on? For now I have added the "space folding" term to the article, with a footnote mentioning it is used in Dune.Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 14:24, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Classification of the travel methods
Incidentally, the whole time I am concerned with the classification of the methods, not the examples. If you think the sources are too weak, I'll just delete them again. It is important to me that the sub-sections remain. --Mark McWire (talk) 11:10, 8 December 2021 (UTC)


 * We can consider that. But we don't need subsections for each type of method (spindizzy, overspace, etc.). And classifying them ourselves into different types is OR. Slower than light and faster than light, that's fine, but getting deeper is ORish territory. Please understand that as frustrating as it can be, Wikipedia's core policies like WP:OR prohibit us from adding stuff that we know is correct or is useful, but is not covered in reliable sources. The idea of providing a classification of fictional space travel is great, but we need to base it on reliable sources that present such a classification, not on our own research into that. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 14:23, 8 December 2021 (UTC)