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I read a book many years ago that talks about the shortest distance between two points being a line, and if you held a string between those points you can fold the string to connect the points. The book is about teleportation and space travel, and I believe it has a purple cover. Anyone know of this book?

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  • Do you have a better idea when it was published or when you read it?
    – T.J.L.
    May 3, 2016 at 19:26
  • What happens in the book - can you remember anything about the plot? How long was it: novel or short story? Was it in English? You might like to have a look at our guidance on writing a good story-ID question.
    – Rand al'Thor
    May 3, 2016 at 19:58
  • 1
    see also scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/50170/… for a question about the miniseries based on the trilogy
    – Otis
    May 4, 2016 at 15:41

2 Answers 2

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Are you thinking of A Wrinkle in Time? Three kids are teleported around space by a trio of supernatural aliens using folds or wrinkles in space-time.

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  • And it definitely has a demonstration involving fabric (not quite string, but close).
    – Buzz
    May 3, 2016 at 21:19
  • A Wrinkle in Time seems very close to the plot from what i remember, i just found the page with the distance and 2 points comparison and it seems right. Just thought i would remember for sure with more certainty once hearing the title. Sorry for the lack of information, i saw something that reminded me of the story and it was driving me crazy not being able to remember what it was. Im going to read it through, maybe it will start coming back to me. Thank you very much!
    – Raymond B.
    May 3, 2016 at 23:16
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Could it be Robert Heinlein's "Tunnel in the Sky", one of the original covers was sort of a purplish pink color. It's about teleportation as a means of space travel to colonize far off planets.

The main character is a high school boy who is taking a survival test, him and his team are supposed to be teleported to a distant primitive planet and survive 10 days, but something goes wrong and they are accidentally sent to an unknown planet for far longer and must learn to survive.

I don't specifically remember the scene with the string as reference to space travel, but it could be in there.

The first instance that I remember of that type of scene is in the movie Event Horizon with a piece of paper and then again in I think Interstellar. But I haven't read it in a book.

Here's an image of the cover for "Tunnel in the Sky" in case it jogs your memory: enter image description here

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  • Heinlein also uses a similar explanation in "Friday".
    – Jon B
    May 4, 2016 at 0:24

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