Ansible’s story

Let’s take a quick look at who developed Ansible and what it actually is.

What is Ansible?

Before we discuss how Ansible started, we should quickly discuss the origin of the name. The term “Ansible” was penned by science fiction novelist Ursula K. Le Guin; it was first used in her novel Rocannon’s World, which was first published in 1966. In the story’s context, an Ansible is a fictional device that sends and receives messages faster than light.

Note

In 1974, Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia was published. This book features the development of the Ansible technology by exploring the (fictional) details of the mathematical theory that would make such a device possible.

The term has since been used by several other notable authors within the genre to describe communication devices that are capable of relaying messages over interstellar distances, which, as you will discover...