Editing Ansible (section)

=== Orson Scott Card's works ===

American author [[Orson Scott Card]] in his ''[[Ender's Game (series)|Ender's Game]]'' novels used the term "ansible" as an unofficial name for the "Philotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator" device, which transmits information across infinite distances with no time delay.<ref name=Card1977/> In the first ''[[Ender's Game]]'' novel (1985), Colonel Graff states that "somebody dredged the name ''ansible'' out of an old book somewhere".<ref name=Card1977/> In an answer on the question-and-answer website [[Quora]], Card explained why he chose to appropriate LeGuin's term "ansible" instead of developing a new in-universe name for one:

<blockquote>
In a FTL universe, you have several levels. [If you] can travel hyperfast, but no radio signal can outstrip [outrun] your ship, [then] you have to carry the mail with you. It's like the way things were between Europe and America before the laying of the successful transatlantic cable. But once it was laid, messages could be sent long before a ship could make the passage. That is like the ansible universe in Ursula K. LeGuin's early [[Hainish Cycle|Hainish]] novels. Since I needed to use exactly that rule set, why not use the word – an excellent word – which I apply in the same way we all say 'robot,' an invented word that has entered the language, [and thereby] pay tribute to the writer from whose works I learned the word.<ref name=QuoraOrsonScottCard/>
</blockquote>

Card's ansible in the ''Ender's Game'' universe works via fictional subatomic particles called ''philotes''.<ref name=Card1991/> The two [[quark]]s inside a [[pion|pi meson]] can be separated by an arbitrary distance, while remaining connected by "philotic rays".<ref name=Card1991/> Card's version of the ansible also features in the video game ''[[Advent Rising]]'', which he helped write the story for.<ref name=EnderScript/>