25

This is from TV Tropes's Teleporter Accident page:

An old sci-fi story dealt with aliens coming to Earth and offering to share their technology with humanity, including teleportation. Unfortunately, the alien civilization is stagnant, and has been for centuries ever since the discovery of the teleporter, as the alien interacting with humans and studying their 'quaint' beliefs in souls and psionics learns that souls do exist and anyone who's been run through a teleporter loses his soul and all that's left is a soulless shell. Without souls all development and creativity had stopped for them and to save humanity from that (apparently he was unwilling or didn't believe his people would believe the truth) the alien destroys his ship and all records in their database referencing Earth. It ends with a reporter detailing the story and sadly thinking how he'll never again create anything new, as he was part of the group of humans run through the teleporters to show that they were safe.

Does anyone happen to know the name of this story? I'll accept the best match.

Improve this question
1

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
8
+25

The closest I've been able to find about this is the Slabscape series by S. Spencer Baker, specifically Slabscape: Reset.

Within the books, there's a teleportation technology known as "Matter Transmitters" (or "emties" / "EMTI") which can cause Soul Displacement:

Unfortunately, Emties can only transmit physical matter. Human souls, however, are non-physical entities and cannot be transmitted by matter transmission. Early experiments with brave volunteers produced extremely upsetting results. The poor individuals who had been transported were only fit to be employed as Music Business and Advertising Executives.

Unfortunately, the only information I can find about this book is from the "Slabscapedia", an unofficial wiki for the series. There is no Wikipedia entry for either the book or author, so I can't verify what else-if anything-matches the story described in the question.

Improve this answer
4
  • If you hadn't posted this answer I would have; you waited long enough. :) "Slabscapedia" is canon: "Steve published his first novel Slabscape: Reset. The novel is a web-back; a work of fiction which is published in printed as well as e-book format with addenda, back-stories and tangentially linked information available through an online wiki: Slabscapedia."
    – DavidW
    Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 21:33
  • slabscapedia.com is copyright the publishing company that the author appears to own. "All Slabscapedia content is © 2006-2019(Earth local) Blipbooks.com" (About Slabscapedia)
    – DavidW
    Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 21:37
  • On Goodreads the author's personal website is given as slabscape.com, which has "The slabscape series are webbacks which means they are backed-up by a free, online resource of back-stories, definitions, explanations and complete irrelevancies at Slabscapedia.com"
    – DavidW
    Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 21:39
  • There is more explanation about souls on the Consciousness energy page.
    – DavidW
    Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 21:43

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.