KingArnulf

I can't seem to edit my original post but I wanted to another series of classic sci-fi compilations I have. These were published to honor works that were published before the institution of the Nebula Awards.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 1, 1929-1964 - Includes the Roads Must Roll by Heinlein and Nightfall by Isaac Asimov.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 2-A - Includes The Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth, and Who Goes There by John W. Cambell Jr. Who Goes There is the story on which John Carter's 1982 film The Thing was based.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. 2-B - The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak, The Martian Way by Asimov. This one also includes The Machine Stops that is included in the first compilation I recommended so there is some overlap.

If you like Classic SciFi, allow me to recommend The Ultimate Science Fiction Mega Collection: 24 of the Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time

It includes 24 public domain works by numerous authors such as Verne, Bradbury, Vonnegut, Wells and others. It includes the initial John Carter of Mars books by Burroughs, War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and many more.

It also includes one of my favorite stories, The Machine Stops by E M Forster. This story just wows me. It's about a society that lives in little apartments in huge underground arcologies that are all run by The Machine. It provides everything they need including food and air. While the arcologies are huge, the people never go outside and rarely if ever leave their pods (apartments) or see each other outside of video chats on social media. Many of the people have come to see The Machine as God.

The Machine Stops basically predicts modern social media and all it's isolating and deleterious effects and it was written in 1928 before the electronic computer was even invented!

Now, someone will ask, what if WorkDone in case of teleportation is actually close to 0.

Assuming the laws of physics still apply, work done is work done. You can improve efficiency, but that just means minimizing energy lost in the process. A boulder on top of a hill has X potential energy. Roll it down that hill, and that potential turns into kinetic energy that does work, like smashing a house at the base of the hill. If you move that boulder back to the top of the hill, the laws of thermodynamics say you need to put all that energy back into the boulder. Energy is always conserved. You have to do work to put the boulder back whether you use a bulldozer or a teleporter.

Even ignoring simple changes in altitude like this, you still have to consider momentum. We live on a big spinning rock. Let's assume you live at the equator. On your daily trip around the globe you are zipping along to the East, which seems like a constant to you, but it isn't. The direction East changes relative to the Sun depending on the time of day. At midnight, for example East is the same as the direction the Earth is moving in it's orbit. If the Earth were to suddenly disappear, you would be flung off along the Earth's orbit. At dawn, you are on the front of the planet in it's orbit and East is pointing towards the sun. If the Earth disappeared now, you would be flung off towards the sun. At noon East is pointing back along Earth's orbit and at sunset, it is pointing directly away from the Sun.

I'm rounding for convenience here. The Earth is about 24,000 miles in circumference at the equator. Since it spins once per day that means the surface and you are zipping along with it at about 1,000 miles per hour. Now, unless the warehouse teleporting your goods to you is very nearby, it will have a significantly different momentum. Let's say the warehouse is around 6,000 miles East of you. That puts it about a quarter of the way around the globe. When it's dawn for you, it's already noon for them. If the warehouse teleports something to you without accounting for that difference in momentum, the results would be dramatic to say the least.

Assume it is dawn at the warehouse. That means that their momentum is towards the sun at about 1,000 miles per hour. It's midnight for you so you are moving 1,000 miles per hour in the direction of Earth's orbit. When your product appears at your house, it is moving towards the ground at 1,000 miles per hour when it appears. If the warehouse were instead 6,000 miles West of you, then your shipments would appear and shoot through your roof at 1,000 miles per hour.

Similar things happen if you want to teleport to points North or South of you. As you move away from the equator, your relative velocity gets smaller and smaller the closer you get to the one of the poles. Someone standing at the North pole, for example, is spinning in place very quickly compared to someone at the equator who is whipping around the globe each day. If you teleport something from the equator to a point 6,000 miles due north of you, it will appear moving West at about 500 miles per hour because you are moving around the Earth at 1,000 miles per hour while the destination is only moving 500 miles per hour. Something teleported to the North pole from the equator will appear and fling off parallel to the ground at 1,000 miles per hour.

Greedy corporations have captured many regulatory bodies around the world. In the USA in particular, virtually all political decisions are made in support of corporate profits. In essence, we are heading the wrong direction at this point. In order to achieve the goal in this meme, we would need to somehow overcome those corporate influences and completely reverse the course we are on now. This would take decades at best and more than a few of them.

Sadly, the clock is running out on us and I very much doubt we have enough time remaining. Climate change and pollution levels are nearing tipping points will start us on a downhill race towards ecological disaster that will likely wipe out much of humanity. I give us maybe 20 years before the struggle for survival starts to overwhelm any other human motivations. If or when we come out the other side of that crisis, then perhaps the cultures that rise out of the chaos will be wiser than we are now.

My family: Sell a comic book.

My wife's family: Buy some popcorn.