Saturday 11 May 2013

Matter Transmission

In Poul Anderson's The Enemy Stars (London, 1979):

a human body contains about 100,000,000,000,000 cells, each with millions of molecules;
each molecule is scanned and structurally identified, its momentary energy level and spatiotemporal relationship to every other molecule noted;
the scanning beam touches every atom, is modified by the contact and sends the modification to the transmitter matrix;
the contacts reduce the scanned body to gas which is "...sucked into the destructor chamber and atomically condensed in the matter bank..." (p. 38);
as yet, the signal entering the transmitter matrix is too complex to be recorded and transmission must be simultaneous with scanning;
transmission is not by beam or wave but by instantaneous gravitational propagation; 
the receiver matrix, an interstellar distance away, combines gasses to form elements, molecules and cells according to the signal.

The instantaneity sounds like Dirac transmissions in James Blish's works.

The characters are transmitted to a spaceship approaching a black dwarf where, unexpectedly, the rapidly rotating dwarf's strong magnetic field damages the ship, destroying its matter transceiver. References to the Blackett effect and to germanium strengthen the resemblance to Blish.

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