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"I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled 'Science Fiction' and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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| Matter Transmitter | ||
| Device which causes a physical object to disappear from one place and reappear in another. |
This reference to transmitting an object from place to place is not as early as you might think; however, it is probably the first use of this modern term to describe it.
| But when the word of the strangers' descent over our home city, Tola, came to us, all else was forgotten. With me at her side, Geble hastened to the beam station and there in the matter transmitter we dispatched our physical beings to the palace at Tola, and the next moment were staring upward at the two strange shapes etched against the sky. |
| Technovelgy from The Conquest of Gola,
by L.F. Stone. Published by Wonder Stories in 1931 Additional resources -
|
For an earlier (maybe earliest) use of the concept, see the entry for the telepomp from the still-enjoyable 1877 story The Man Without a Body by Edward Page Mitchell.
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'Looks like she has bought the Avatar Construction Set and put together her own...'
'Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of midday.'
'A broken circle with arrows pointing to a right-hand flow appeared in the chalf.'
'The object seemed melted together like wax — nothing was distinguishable.'
'Midges have many capabilities. To the untrained eye, they look like sparrows.'
'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
