TALARIA grading scheme
Two catalogues, one spine. Every entry, real or invented, is first sorted by the loophole it uses. Physics entries then carry a standing and a bill. Fiction entries carry a notability, a coherence and a causality mark. Every empirical statement on any page carries a confidence and a source tier. The health checker rejects anything outside these vocabularies.
Loophole classes (shared)
| Class | Name | The move |
|---|---|---|
| L1 | Faster in the same space | The object itself outruns light in ordinary spacetime |
| L2 | Move the space | Spacetime is engineered to carry the ship; locally nothing exceeds c |
| L3 | Take a shortcut | Two distant points are connected by a tunnel, fold, gate or jump |
| L4 | Leave the manifold | The ship enters another space with different rules and re-emerges |
| L5 | Send the message | Information, not matter, is claimed to beat light |
| L6 | Not FTL | Filed here by habit: time dilation, hibernation, reactionless thrust, sublight epics |
A proposal that uses two moves (Mass Effect lowers mass to run L1 and uses relays for L3) gets a dossier per move, or one dossier with the primary class in the metadata and the secondary named in the text.
Physics: standing
What kind of thing the proposal is, as the literature stands today.
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
| K4 | Exact solution of the Einstein field equations, or an established result of quantum field theory, peer reviewed |
| K3 | Peer-reviewed proposal with worked mathematics that is not an exact solution, or an exact solution whose central claim is contested in print |
| K2 | Speculative physics with a named mechanism: a new field, particle or dimension, without consensus mathematics |
| K1 | A claim with no worked mechanism, or a misreading of a real effect |
| K0 | Refuted, retracted or shown to be an artefact |
K4 is a statement about the mathematics, not about feasibility. Alcubierre's metric is K4 and has a bill nobody can pay.
Physics: the bill
What the proposal needs that we do not have. A dossier may carry several.
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
| B-neg | Negative energy density; violation of one or more energy conditions |
| B-mass | Energy or mass beyond any conceivable engineering, even if positive |
| B-new | A field, particle or dimension not in the Standard Model or general relativity |
| B-boot | Needs FTL to make FTL: the structure must be laid along the route in advance |
| B-caus | Produces closed timelike curves, or requires a preferred frame to avoid them |
| B-none | No exotic requirement. Nothing faster than light sits here, and that is the finding |
Fiction: notability
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
| N1 | Canonical. Shaped how the public imagines FTL: Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune, Interstellar |
| N2 | Significant. Widely known and mechanically articulated: the Expanse, the Culture, Mass Effect, Vinge |
| N3 | Notable niche. Historically first, unusually rigorous, or an unusually clean example of a class |
The cap is roughly sixty works. A drive earns a dossier by having an articulated mechanism, not by being famous.
Fiction: coherence
How the work handles the physics it invokes. This is the grade that matters.
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
| F4 | Engages. Names a real constraint and builds story around its cost. Vinge, Haldeman, Le Guin, Interstellar |
| F3 | Acknowledges. States a limitation and applies it consistently: warp factors, navigators, relays only between relays |
| F2 | Rule-bound. Internally consistent rules with no physical content: hyperspace lanes, jump cooldowns |
| F1 | Handwave. Works when the plot needs it to |
| F0 | Joke. The drive is the punchline and knows it |
F0 is not a low mark. The Infinite Improbability Drive is a perfect F0.
Fiction: causality
Any FTL signal in a Lorentz-invariant world is a message to somebody's past. What does the story do about it?
| Mark | Meaning |
|---|---|
| C-owns | Admits the implication and uses it, or forbids FTL where it would bite |
| C-dodges | A stated rule prevents it: a preferred frame, jumps that are simultaneous for everyone, a hyperspace with its own clock |
| C-silent | Never comes up |
Constraint verdicts
Every dossier scores every register entry. Physics vocabulary:
| Verdict | Meaning |
|---|---|
| SATISFIES | The proposal respects the constraint as stated |
| VIOLATES | The proposal requires the constraint to fail, and says so or can be shown to |
| DODGES | The proposal evades the constraint by an assumption the constraint does not cover (a preferred frame, a pre-built route, a different theory of gravity) |
| SILENT | The proposal does not address it and the literature has not settled whether it applies |
| N/A | The constraint does not bear on this class of proposal |
Fiction vocabulary, because a story cannot violate a theorem:
| Verdict | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ENGAGES | The work addresses this constraint on screen or on the page |
| RULE | The work has a stated rule that happens to answer this constraint |
| SILENT | Never addressed |
| N/A | Does not bear on this class of drive |
Confidence
[HIGH] peer-reviewed and unchallenged, or primary text read directly. [MED] peer-reviewed but contested, or a strong preprint, or a secondary source of good standing. [LOW] preprint only, press account, or a fan source with no primary confirmation.
Source tiers
| Tier | Meaning |
|---|---|
| S1 | The paper itself, or the primary text, film or game where the drive is defined |
| S2 | Peer-reviewed review, monograph (Visser 1995, Lobo 2017), or an official technical manual |
| S3 | Franchise wiki, author or showrunner interview, reputable popular science |
| S4 | Press coverage |
| S5 | Forum, fan speculation, unsourced blog |
Never blend the tiers. A Memory Alpha paragraph is S3 however confident it sounds, and a physics claim resting on S3 is [LOW] until an S1 is found.