Are there any hard sci-fi good books about FTL and causality violations?

Every time I read a pop-sci book about relativity I get a bit bummed out all over again that faster than light travel obviously wouldn't work, because you can't have relativity, causality, and faster-than-light travel in the same universe. One of them's got to go. Most stories basically ignore big chunks of relativity in order to keep FTL and a reasonably sensible, causal universe. However occasionally an author will boldly embrace relativity and FTL at once, and start abandoning parts of causality. (Alistair Reynolds did this a bit in the margins in his otherwise strictly slower-than-light novels.)

Are there any authors that really commit to this idea? Having a relativistic universe with FTL travel and just having the story accommodate the fact that causality's broken?

Thanks in advance for suggestions!

You could try Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire series. It suggests relativistic effects are affecting causality but it's not explicit.

Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise by Charles Stross. Causality violation is possible, but God, aka the computer that embodies the singularity, will kill you if you try to mess about in its light cone.

I'm not sure if I fully understand all three concepts, but Joe Haldeman's Forever War uses time dilation as a key plot complication.

I'm with drmamm on understanding exactly what you want, but Roger MacBride Allen has a trilogy that I believe does cover it. Trilogy is Chronicles of Solace, first book is Depths of Time.

drmamm (#4):

I don't remember any FTL in Forever War, though.

What the OP is asking for is something which permits FTL, but is consistent with the understanding from special relativity that FTL is equivalent to time travel in that it violates causality (effects can precede causes from some reference frames if you permit FTL travel, and since special relativity means all reference frames are equally valid that means there's no such thing as cause and effect anymore). It's hard to craft a narrative without cause and effect, so other than things like Stross's Eschaton books where causality violation is permitted by physics but prohibited by the wrath of things functionally equivalent to gods, this is a challenging request.

That's exactly what I meant, very well put lorax. To be honest I am sure that a completely literal version of this request is impossible but I'm curious as to how far writers have tried to take it.

I'll start poking at all of these suggestions, but probably Stross first - I loved "Missile Gap" and "A Colder War", and a friend has been trying to convince me to have a look at his longer fiction before it's adapted for TV.

The Wounded Sky - which is a Star Trek novel, but don't let that stop you! - is explicitly about a new (at-the-time-theoretically-possible) FTL drive that screws with causality in a very hard-science way. (Only Star Trek novel I ever read that had a 'works cited' at the end.)

It's been a while since I read it, but I wonder if A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge would be of interest. It at least approaches the subject in a novel way if I recall.

There may be more to consider than physics (aka hard-sci fi), at least with respect to time travel. What happens if a time traveler goes back in time and meets himself? In order to answer that question, I had to invent a multi-verse and a non-conventional view of the soul. I did my best to make it plausible, but it is not hard-sci-fi.

>10 drardavis: Well, David Gerrold took a similar approach to that problem in The Man Who Folded Himself. The multiverse manifested itself in a far more personal, not to say intimate way, however.

Hey! Thanks for the link. I've heard the title, but not read the book yet. When writing I tend to avoid currently reading certain fiction topics in order not to plagiarize.

>12 drardavis: When Bill Gibson was writing Neuromancer, he went to see 'Blade Runner' and said he had to walk out after twenty minutes "because it looked too much like the inside of my own head"...