The idea of somehow counteracting gravity is one of the great science-fiction dreams: it is gravity that kept us earthbound for so long, and even now the force required to escape the gravity well of Earth or any other celestial body is the main factor that makes spaceflight so difficult and expensive. R.L. Forward in his 1995 book "Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology is Indistinguishable from Magic" and H.G. Wells incorporated into science fiction the theme of antigravity. Antigravity is a generic word to designate the control of gravitational fields produced by massive bodies (like planets). In his book, "First Men in the Moon", H.G. Wells introduced the idea of screening the Earth's gravitational field by using an imaginary material call "Cavorite".

In science fiction a huge variety of personal transportation devices are used: from antigravity devices that counteract the effects of gravity on the body, to faster-than-light transportation, to teleportation. In "Fantastic Voyages" written before the mid-19th century virtually all modes of transport were facilitating devices. John Wilkins, fascinated by ideas of novel means of transportation, had discussed submarines, flying machines and land-yachts at some length in "Mathematicall Magick" (1648). Concepts like the space-gun in Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" (1865-70) and the antigravity device in H.G. Wells' "The First Men in the Moon" (1901) were heavily discussed. In "Air Wonder Stories", H. Gernsback was writing about the topic in 1929. In "Star Trek", the Heisenberg compensator somehow miraculously overcomes the difficulty.

The faster-than-light (FTL) starship had arrived before the end of the 1920s, as had the ultimate in personal transport, the antigravity-belt featured in the Buck Rogers stories by Philip Francis Nowlan. According to Relativity, the velocity of light is limiting: no matter how objects alter their velocity relative to one another, the sum of their velocities can never exceed the ultimate constant c, the velocity of light in a vacuum. FTL drives of various kinds are so useful in avoiding the inconveniences of Generation starships that many writers of science fiction insist on clinging to the hope that the theory may be imperfect in such a way as to permit an exploitable loophole. "Faster than Light" (1976), a theme anthology edited by Jack Dann and George Zebrowski, includes, as well as the stories, several essays combatively arguing the case. A small rocket like the one used in the comic and movie "Rocketeer" to allow the hero fast movement has already been tested on Earth. It proved inconvenient, as the maneuvering is complicated. Yet flying cars like in "Back to the Future" have been built and function. The next problem will be to adjust driving laws to these science-fiction-inspired personal transportation devices!

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