Not really any spoilers, and a couple of the reviews also mention the tachyon transporter.
Using an example in the plot that won’t really give anything away…what if you could instantly jump from one place to another, particularly when in danger, but couldn’t be sure if when you teleported that you would be the version that was safe, or the one that wasn’t. Maybe it doesn’t matter, since you are in both places…but it sure matters to the one that didn’t get away.
Okay that’s definitely not the one I was thinking of. However, he reportedly wrote a story a year for Issac Asimov’s periodicals for almost two decades, plus his many actual books, so it is no surprise that some of his themes were re-used, yet hard to find the name of:-).
I thought the one I am thinking of was neat b/c the dinos were gate-keeping offering their transportation technology to humanity, thinking that surely no warm-blooded mammal could possibly keep their emotions in check to do what must needs be done, unlike the cold heart & keen mind of a reptile.
In other works like his collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke “Altered Carbon”, Pohl used the concept of that “stack” to limit the spread of one human mind that would otherwise just be spread out amongst the stars with as many copies as bodies could be found to hold them. But in other anthologies there were other limitations preventing that (and presumably some others still that I haven’t read where those limitations were removed?:-P).
Here’s a mention about the one book I had read (the second in the series):
Wall Around a Star
Not really any spoilers, and a couple of the reviews also mention the tachyon transporter.
Using an example in the plot that won’t really give anything away…what if you could instantly jump from one place to another, particularly when in danger, but couldn’t be sure if when you teleported that you would be the version that was safe, or the one that wasn’t. Maybe it doesn’t matter, since you are in both places…but it sure matters to the one that didn’t get away.
Okay that’s definitely not the one I was thinking of. However, he reportedly wrote a story a year for Issac Asimov’s periodicals for almost two decades, plus his many actual books, so it is no surprise that some of his themes were re-used, yet hard to find the name of:-).
I thought the one I am thinking of was neat b/c the dinos were gate-keeping offering their transportation technology to humanity, thinking that surely no warm-blooded mammal could possibly keep their emotions in check to do what must needs be done, unlike the cold heart & keen mind of a reptile.
In other works like his collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke “Altered Carbon”, Pohl used the concept of that “stack” to limit the spread of one human mind that would otherwise just be spread out amongst the stars with as many copies as bodies could be found to hold them. But in other anthologies there were other limitations preventing that (and presumably some others still that I haven’t read where those limitations were removed?:-P).