I stumbled upon a Wikipedia entry that says the idea of warp drive first appeared in the sci-fi novel Islands of Space by John W. Campbell Jr. If I were a rare book collector, I would’ve wanted to buy the first edition (1957). Only 1,417 copies of the book were printed back then. Campbell is also the author of the novella Who goes there? which the movies The Thing from Another World (1951) and The Thing (1982) were based on.
I don’t know how Miguel Alcubiere got the idea about warp drive. Could it have been from the Campbell’s book or, from Star Trek? Regardless, the importance and significance of good science fiction cannot be understated, in my opinion. Good science fiction inspires and influences real science as was the case of Jules Verne and Arthur C. Clark, for example. Unfortunately, good science fiction is hard to come by nowadays. A lot of the stuff coming out today as sci-fi are simply just garbage, absolutely nothing about science. People seem to have become so dumb today that they can’t distinguish real science and fantasy, magic, supernatural stuff.
