Too Fast? Not Fast Enough?
My ubergeeky parts--the ones that spend an embarrassing amount of time deciding exactly how giant monsters/robot soldiers/leagues of planets/zero-gravity combat would really work--were all excited by Jo Walton's Tor.com article on common models for FTL and the emotional and cultural implications of those models. Great writerly food for thought.
When I read Nova I noted how unusually fast the faster-than-light was. The ship goes from Alkane to the Dim Dark Sister in five hours, and from the Pleiades to Earth in three days. These are cars-in-the-US velocities, the whole inhabited galaxy is about as far apart emotionally as New York and San Francisco.