Fantasy Teleportation

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In 2013, I began thinking about how long-range teleportation might be used to shuttle Interventionist agents such as Parthney to and from Earth. Back in 2013 I mentioned "It's Such a Beautiful Day", a short story by Isaac Asimov set in a future time when teleportation is used routinely to move people across town. Assuming that teleportation technology were obtained, should there be any practical limit on the range for teleportation?

 

I've seen it claimed that the earliest use of the term "teleportation" was in 1931. The original usage was in the context of a person using magical powers to move from one place to another (psychokinesis). Other terms such as "matter transmission" have been used in the context of an imaginary scientific breakthrough and development of a working technology that could make teleportation possible.

 

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In 1877, Edward Mitchell wrote a silly story called "The Man without a Body" which depicted a failed matter transmission experiment during which the teleported man's head arrived at the destination but not the rest of his body. Mitchell coined the term "telepomp" to refer to his imagined battery-powered teleporter.

 

Interstellar

Last year I mentioned another Asimov story, "The Deep" from 1952. In that story, aliens use teleportation to travel over interstellar distances to Earth. In "The Man without a Body", Mitchell's telepomp was like a telephone, with a transmitter and a receiver linked by a wire carrying an electrical signal. In 1877, electrical telegraphy provided a real-world model for imaginary teleportation.

 

Star Trek "beaming"

Later, after the widespread use of radio, it became conventional to assume that matter transmission would be accomplished by "beaming" an electromagnetic signal from the teleportation transmitter to the receiver. "The Deep" was more audacious in proposing an alternative means of transmission that worked over interstellar distances at speeds greater than light speed. 

 

In the Star Trek fictional universe, the original matter transmission technique was limited to short distances and could be blocked by thick layers of dense matter, but then other "subspace" transmission methods were developed and used for longer range teleportation. "Open end" teleportation was possible without the teleported object having to be near a transmitter or a receiver.

  

Nano-scale teleportation

In the nanorealm.

I'm currently writing a story called "Hierion Writers Club" in which I make use of teleportation to and from Nanoville, a space-time bubble in the Hierion Domain where nanoscopic replicoids reside. At the start of the story, I depict Mary arriving from Earth at a "receiver" in Wendy's workshop. In part 3 of the story, I want to depict "open end" teleportation of another character arriving in Nanoville. Is there any practical limit on how precise "open end" teleportation might be? Maybe it is necessary to use aircars to move around in Nanoville because "open end" teleportation does not have enough spatial resolution. Not being a fan of fantasy, I enjoy working within practical constraints that apply to imaginary technologies.

Fantasy Teleportation

Dr. Mudge is telepathically
assaulted by Martians.
interior art by Charles Thomson

In the July 1938 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, there was a story called "The Dangerous Dimension" by Lafayette (Ron) Hubbard. This story was apparently "designed" to please John Campbell, the magazine's editor; it contains equations, telepathy and the discovery of a "practical" means of teleportation.

Working in his home office, Dr. Mudge discovers "equation C", the key to teleportation. Equipped with the theoretical basis for telepathy, does Mudge then step into his workshop and build a functioning teleporter? No! All you need to do is look at "equation C" and then you can wish yourself to Paris or Mars or anyplace that you care to imagine. Ah, the power of mathematics!

Beam yourself up, Scotty!

In the October 1951 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories, a story by Jack Vance called "The Plagian Siphon" presented one of the most "nuts and bolts" accounts of "matter transferers" from the perspective of repairman Scotty Allister. Vance imagined that various planets of the galaxy are linked together by teleporters, but these handy devices need occasional tune-ups. 

"The Plagian Siphon" features aliens and their robotic systems that have been programmed to have human-like intelligence. Vance did occasionally mention robots in other stories, but this story is the first that I have seen from Vance with a "robotic" character that plays a significant role in the plot.

 

alien robots

fixing a broken L-toggle

Scotty is teleported away from Earth and off to a distant world where robotic systems of alien design and planetary scope mine resources and send them back to master planet Plagigonstok. 

 

However, the planetary "robot" is in need of repair and the "robot" now kills any Plagian who teleports in to make repairs. Working with the "robot", Scotty is able to repair a defective "L-toggle" and soon the robot's ills have been cured.

 

in the Ekcolir Reality

Scotty returns to Earth and he realizes that his own boss, the Chief of Maintenance and Repair is a Plagian who has been stealing Earthly technology and sending it back to Plagigonstok. The Chief sent Scotty out to perform the robot repair job because previous repair missions by the Plagians themselves had all failed.

Last year I suggested that "Dodkin" in Vance's story "Dodkin's Job" may have been the first computer "hacker" ever depicted in a science fiction story. Scotty may have been among the first computer repairmen depicted in science fiction, but having been written in the early fifties, the alien computer system depicted in "The Plagian Siphon" has no microscopic components. All Scotty has to do is pull a replacement L-toggle out of a drawer and plug it into the alien computer system.

cover art by Gino D'Achille

I like to imagine that in a previous Reality, an analogue of Jack Vance (Joan) was able to write additional science fiction stories that we never received from Vance here in our Reality. At the end of "The Plagian Siphon", Scotty teleports the Plagian spy off of Earth. World Security Intelligence (WSI) has now been alerted to the problem of Plagian espionage, but I can't believe that Plagian intrigue would end with the story told in "The Plagian Siphon". I wanted a follow-up story!

 

In the Ekcolir Reality, Joan Vance wrote several stories about  technologically advanced Plegians, including "Return of the Plegians" in which they use their time travel technology to help guide the development of computer science and robotics on Earth.

 

Aliens hidden among us

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When Scotty realizes that his boss is an alien, he finds it hard to understand why he never noticed all of the clues including the Chief's yellow skin and the poison gas that he breathed through a tube. For his novel Star King, Vance invented another alien who could infiltrate human society and he concocted a more convincing explanation for Malagate's ability to go undetected.

interior art by
Paul Orban

In "The Evitable Conflict" (1950), Asimov had written about computerized systems called "the Machines" that took control of Earth's economy, working for the betterment of Humanity. In Asimov's imagined future, well-programmed computers carefully guided the world's economy into the future, avoiding catastrophic boom-bust cycles. 

 

It is easy for me to view Vance's "The Plagian Siphon" as a reaction to Asimov's rosy view of computerized systems. Vance's world-spanning computer system has automated repair, but the repair subsystem breaks down, leading to disaster.

Alien teleportation.

 2023 update. In 2023 I began making use of AI-generated images to make illustrations for this blog. For the image to the left, WOMBO Dream was able to use a text prompt that included, "a quantum computing artificial life form that is holding a red quantum amplifier" and produce the image that is shown to the left. You go around playing with a quantum amplifier and who know what might happen!

Related Reading: Assignment Nor'Dyren, a better Sci Fi story about a repairman

and       Matter Duplication; making copies of people

 

Next: thinking machines

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