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"did I had an extremely expensive wife - she would see a new car that she liked and just buy it... under California law I was bound to buy her debts. I think I turned out 16 novels in five years."
- Philip K. Dick

Alderson Point  
  One end of a tramline, a path between stars that can be traversed using a hyperdrive engine.  

Also known at the "Crazy Eddie" point. The idea presented here is that there are pairs of points widely distant in space that are connected outside of normal space. A vessel equipped with the Alderson Drive can take advantage of this pair of points, moving from one to another without traversing the space in between.

I've been on trips where it was faster to drive over to another Alderson point, make a Jump, move around in the new system, Jump somewhere else, keep doing that until you come back to the original system at a different place - do all that and it would still be faster than merely to sail across the original system in normal space.
From The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle).
Published by Simon & Schuster in 1974
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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Mote in God's Eye
  More Ideas and Technology by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle)
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