Portals in science fiction

A common device in science fiction is a portal, or stargate, allowing rapid travel between distant locations, often originating either as a natural phenomenon or technological device. It usually consists of two or more gateways, with an object entering one gateway leaving via the other instantaneously. An advantage of portal technology over a faster-than-light drive is that it can be imagined to work instantly, and optionally to travel to the past or future, or to alternate universes. It is different from a teleporter in that it can only transport between two fixed locations.

Although the portal is currently science fiction, the concept of wormholes is very similar, and may indeed permit instantaneous effective faster-than-light travel in the future.

Common envisioning

There is a widespread conception within visual science fiction of what a "portal" should look like. The "ripple effect" is the most common part of this conception. One of the earliest examples is the Guardian of Forever, an artifact of the Star Trek universe. The device could open spacetime portals to any point in history on any world in the universe, and was ring-shaped with a watery "event horizon." It was first seen in the ' episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" (1967) and later in the ' episode "Yesteryear" (1974). Again in "Star Trek", portals (with angular frames) and ripple effects are seen in the "" episode "To The Death."

Other examples include the "warp gates" in "Jak 3" which are rings containing a rippling blue substance used for transportation; a portal in "ReBoot", created by the characters Megabyte and Dot displays a rippling "event horizon" (generated by a ring that closely resembled the Stargate in appearance, making it an obvious reference to the movie); and the "Waygates" in "Warcraft III" which bear a shimmering portal. Also, in the "StarCraft" series, warp gates exist, which are similar in both style and function. Protoss warriors created Warp Gates to travel great distances instantaneously, rather than using the slower process of space travel. The knowledge involved in their creation was lost, but on some planets like in "Stargate", these gates still remain.

In ' and the game ', the Borg have a device known as a Transwarp Conduit. The aperture of the conduit at the transwarp hub resembles the event horizon of a Stargate crossed with the wormhole effect created by the Stargate.

Another famous science fiction example is the 1987 "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" cartoon, where the "dimensional portals" allow fast transportation between distant locations, and some portals are even used to travel in time. The portals are connected to some kind of machines and often look like a pulsating light in different colors. If the portals somehow work wrong or, someone/something doesn't get through before the closing, it/he/she often will end up in a whole other place instead. As a result of the portals, interstellar spacecraft are seldom seen in the series.

In Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" series, there exists a network of portals called farcasters which connect most human inhabited planets. The actual form these farcaster portals take can vary, and they may be opaque, completely transparent, or semi-transparent. The completely transparent variety is very commonly used and effectively turns all connected places into one giant "WorldWeb" where distance becomes almost meaningless, even between planets. Some of the more opulent occupents may have houses where each room is built on a different planet, and some rooms themselves may actually be partially built in several different physical locations but be joined by farcaster portals to form one complete room.

In the anime "Cowboy Bebop", hyperspace gates allow for faster- though not instantaneous- travel between the planets and colonies of our solar system. These gates, however, were imperfect upon construction; this imperfection was made plain after a catastrophic accident involving the explosion of a gate near Earth ripped nearly half of the Moon's surface away to crash into the Earth.

The game "Portal" created by Valve Corporation features a portal-creating gun as a central game mechanic which is used to solve puzzles and reach otherwise-inaccessible destinations. The portals here are depicted without any special visual effects; instead, they show a crystal clear representation of the destination that the player can walk through seamlessly, without any loss of momentum.

In Half-Life, portals are displayed as glowing balls of energy which instantly teleports the user to an inversely colored exit point. Larger portals also exist: the tip of the Lambda Reactor and the A-17 prototype teleporter are very powerful devices, capable of sending the user into Xen, a so-called borderworld "where the dimensions intersect". However, the most advanced teleporter was Project XV11382, a handheld device that can create fully functonal portals on the fly and transport its user along with itself while using only an internal reactor operating on depleted uranium. Xenian teleporters are also capable of instantaneous transport, although they require seemingly no power or machinery at all. Using these portals can be very dangerous; when an extremely pure sample of xenium -a crystal with high concentrations of exotic matter- was transported to Earth, its structure was destabilized and a subsequent scanning attempt with an anti-mass spectrometer caused a huge dimensional anomaly. The term seldom used anymore in Half-Life 2 until the end, where it is used to refer to a huge Combine machinery capable of tunneling through dimensions. When activated, it created a large portal what was partially transparent, with the Combine homeworld clearly visible on the other side. Destruction of the device caused a huge explosion which blew off the tip of the Citadel. Later, the energy released from the Citadel's ruptured core have condensed into a city-scale glowing portal above the ruins of City 17; this phenomenon was dubbed a superportal, said to be able to transport entire armies from the Combine overworld when fully fledged; however, it was closed before reaching full strength by using a unique satellite array and a rocket with a so-called "resonator".

Stephen Robinett's book "Stargate" [Robinett, Stephen, "Stargate", Signet, 1976.] (1976) revolves around the corporate side of building extra-dimensional and/or transportational Stargates. In the novel, the Stargate is given the name "Jenson Gate," after the fictional company which builds it. Andre Norton's 1958 novel "Star Gate" may have been the first to use that term for such portals. The plot of Robert A. Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky (1955) uses a portal. Raymond Jones' "Man of Two Worlds" (aka "Renaissance") (1944) employs a portal which turns out to be a fraud. [Jones, Raymond F. "Man of Two Worlds", Street and Smith Publications, Inc., 1944.]

A recent example of a portal, or Stargate device, is found in the "Stargate" TV series. Portals were also seen on television well before. They can be seen in the series "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" (1979-1981), where travel between stars was also accomplished by a Stargate network. Each Stargate carries a designation such as "Stargate 4." These Stargates however were only shown as a diamond-shaped quartet of stars that shimmered when a vessel was making transit.Travel between the stars was accomplished with the use of stargates; which are artificially created portals in space shown as a diamond-shaped quartet of brilliant lights that shimmered when a vessel was making transit. Some people appear to find the transit from stargate to stargate physically unpleasant (transit resembling a "spinning" of the spacecraft). Buck Rogers is portrayed as disliking them on at least one occasion.

The Shi'ar, an extraterrestrial race introduced by Marvel Comics in 1976, also utilize a network of Stargates. The Shi'ar utilize both planet-based Stargates and enormous space-based versions (equivalent to the Ori supergate), though both are usually depicted without any physical structure to contain the wormhole.Stargates: Devices in a network system. They are used for travel to faraway distances. There are planet-based Stargates (used for personal travel) and enormous space-based versions (used for starships to travel through).

Since the introduction of the Stargate on the big screen other authors have referenced the Stargate device. Authors Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince also write of "The Stargate Conspiracy: The Truth About Extraterrestrial Life and the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt"." The book details an alternative theory which ingrains the term Stargate with Egypt's past: either the pyramid itself is a gateway to the stars (because of the shafts pointing to a star) or the building of Heaven on Earth based on geographical location of the great and outlying pyramids ("see: Orion").

Common functions

One concept of portals used abundantly in science-fiction to cast protagonists into new territory. Another video game concept assumes that portals are used to cover territory that's already been explored very quickly. A related book plot that's commonly used is the struggle to get to the opposite end of a new gate for the first time, before it can be used. The 1998 film "Lost in Space" featured a space-bound hypergate system. The premise of the film is that the Robinson family will pilot a spaceship to Alpha Centauri, in order to complete construction of another hypergate there, which will allow instantanous travel between Earth and Alpha Centauri.Stargate-like devices are abundant in video games as they can be used to neatly split a game into levels. The video games "Primal" and "Turok the Dinosaur Hunter" feature gateways that allow instantaneous travel between locations to this effect, and in "", a number of ring-shaped dimensional portals allow the main characters to travel between a "Light" and "Dark" version of a planet. In the game "EVE Online", a large object called a Stargate lets you travel between solar systems, and in "Homeworld 2", "Hyperspace Gates" serve as the centerpiece of one of the game's final missions; these are massive rings that create wormholes capable of transporting matter great distances. In Super Mario 64, and its follow up, Super Mario Sunshine, various paintings and warp pipes lead to levels, all connected by a bigger level that houses said portals. The effects are different, however. In Super Mario 64, Mario simply jumps into the paintings. In Super Mario Sunshine, he jumps up, splits into smaller particles, which go into the portal, and the particles merge again in the level.

In the cartoon series "The Transformers", the Decepticons built the Space Bridge, which serves a similar purpose. A large round ring built on Earth (lying flat) would create a subspace tunnel to a destination tower on Cybertron. One key difference in function was that matter was not broken apart for transport.

References

ee also

*Wormholes in fiction
*Teleportation in fiction