FTL Travel - your favourite method?

[AllWalker]

Define "favourite" however you like. Faster-than-light travel shows up in a lot of scifi, essentially because the entire space opera genre is impossible without the means of travelling between stars quickly.

In general, I like jump drives - the method of disapperaing from one place and instantly reappearing elsewhere. Especially when the distances "jumped" are small compared to interstellar distances, as this means "harbours" and "choke points" appear on the galactic map - territories which are pretty much unavoidable, allowing things like toll booths, ambushes and other terrestrial concepts. After all, space is big, but the need to periodically stop and rest at set points makes it managably smaller. Often conditions need to be perfect for a successful jump, such as only jumping to and from areas of low gravity. This allows dramatic chase scenes which are impossible when both sides can teleport anywhere and anywhen.
Classic examples: Asimov's Foundation series features jump drives which need low gravity to simplify the calculations involved in jumping. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy does the same, except jumping in a gravity well trains the drives too much.

Hyperspace is a broad and often annoying term. Sometimes it applies to a parallel universe where the las of physics allow FTL naturally, or it is a higher dimension that allows shortcutting between distances. This is popular because, again, of terrestrial analogy - hyperspace is like driving on a highway. It's nothing special, just allows for a smoother ride. Bonus points for weird or different rules of hyperspace, like this one novel I forget the name of where spaceships can't have windows, as gazing into hyperspace drives most people mad.
Classic examples: Star Wars, Star Trek, etc etc, as well as 2001: A Space Odyssey, for winning points on the weird front. Book and movie, both are weird in different ways.

Fixed position "gateways" can be either of the above, but are not portable aboard ships. Some of these are artificial gates, others are naturally occuring things, some are a mix of both. These are the ultimate terrestrial analogy, as they allow tolling, passports, quarantine... in many ways, it's like going for a drive in the car but ending up on another planet.
Classic examples: Stargate does this, with physical gateways linked via hyperspace. Special mention to Starplex, where there is the confusing setup of a wormhole near the star of each inhabited planet, which only activates when a slower than light craft passes through it.

I like the elegence of the wormhole generators in Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga and Void Trilogy - wormholes are generated in fixed positions but the exit can be any coordinate within range, which is quite high (tens of ly, IIRC). Also, the wormholes are generated on the ground, so people ride trains between worlds. Awesome.

Bonus points if you can suggest or name a method of FTL which is really weird or bizarre.

[hatesfreedom]

Merchanter's Luck by C. J. Cherryh, I believe was where I read about my favorite form of FTL travel. It was a jump system but a violent one for the humans aboard to go through, so before each jump they would drink a liquid which would render them or less or retarded and comatose for the duration of the jump. I could very well have the book wrong as its been a long long time sense I read the book, but yah know either way I always thought Cj Cherryh was a damn fine author. Anyway, that's all I got.