Most Misused Word in Science Fiction

[barsoomcore]

I read a book once that actually addressed the whole "doesn't teleportation kill you" question by having it NOT kill you.

I THINK the book was Frederik Pohl's Wall Around A Star, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

Anyway, what happens is you step into a teleportation booth, push the button and then walk out. Disappointed because you thought you were going somewhere but just came out exactly where you went in.

MEANWHILE, on the other side of the galaxy, you ALSO stepped out of the remote teleportation booth, all excited because you got see another world but also disappointed because you'd never see home again.

It got all kinds of fun when folks took multiple trips so there were half-a-dozen of themselves running about somewhere. And if you got killed somewhere, they'd try and contact you somewhere else so you could send another you over.

The book itself I didn't like lots, but that idea blew me away. What fun!

 

[Crothian]

IIRC there was a DS9 episode where a shuttle exploded with half of the main cast in it. They beamed out in time, but only barely - they were "stuck" in the ship's memory, only to appear on the holodeck. For some reason, they couldn't stop the running program (James Bond rip-off), or else these people (Sisko, O'Brian, Kira and Dex - again, IIRC) would've died.

Gosh, that was an awful episode. Didn't make any sense whatsoever.

Actually it made sense in the context as they set it up. THey did explain why they were in the holodeck and not able to be made real at the time. It wasn't a good episode but it made sense in the Star Trek Universe.

 

[Alzrius]

Well, I don't know about words, but the concept of teleportation is moderatly popular in sci-fi... I love the explanations for it. A machine rips you apart atom by atom, digitizes the info (somehow) and sends it to another machine the reconstructs you, atom by atom.

From what I can tell, this isn't teleportation at all. It's a close facsimile, but not the same thing.

"Teleport" means that you go from one point to another without crossing the intervening distance. Being broken down into your component atoms and having them reconstructed elsewhere may be quicker, and you may not experience the travelling, but the individual atoms are still making the physical trip from here to there. Likewise, moving through other "dimensions" (see other posts for more on that ) isn't teleporting, as you're just traversing the distance by another route.

Literal teleporting is where you cease to exist at one point and simultaneously begin existing at another (though, strictly speaking, it doesn't need to be simultaneous).

 

[Pbartender]

Most Misused Word in Science Fiction...

Science.

 

[Captain Tagon]

Science.

Duh duh duh duh.

Yeah, that doesn't look as cool as it sounds.

 

[Pbartender]

Duh duh duh duh.

Yeah, that doesn't look as cool as it sounds.

Try it like this...

Duh duh duh duh!

 

[Captain Tagon]

You are my hero.

 

[s/LaSH]

'tele'+'port'. 'Tele' means distant or distance. 'Port' means 'move', as in porter, transport, etc. Thus teleport means to move something a great distance, in its rawest etymological form. Nothing about destroying it in there. Thus, unless you perform a metalinked energy transmission using direct matter-to-energy conversion and a matching inversion at the destination, you're not being teleported, or ported at all - you're being duplicated somehow. Or so my technobabble goes (although it's accurate technobabble, one of my weaknesses - I can't carry on about something inaccurately).

IIRC there was a DS9 episode where a shuttle exploded with half of the main cast in it. They beamed out in time, but only barely - they were "stuck" in the ship's memory, only to appear on the holodeck. For some reason, they couldn't stop the running program (James Bond rip-off), or else these people (Sisko, O'Brian, Kira and Dex - again, IIRC) would've died.

Gosh, that was an awful episode. Didn't make any sense whatsoever.

I liked that episode. I laughed my anatomy off watching it, and it made sense to me.

 

[mojo1701]

IIRC there was a DS9 episode where a shuttle exploded with half of the main cast in it. They beamed out in time, but only barely - they were "stuck" in the ship's memory, only to appear on the holodeck. For some reason, they couldn't stop the running program (James Bond rip-off), or else these people (Sisko, O'Brian, Kira and Dex - again, IIRC) would've died.

Gosh, that was an awful episode. Didn't make any sense whatsoever.

I loved it as well. Garak's commentary throughout was an added bonus. The episode's name was "Our Man Bashir," FYI.

 

[trancejeremy]

Oooh, ooh, the one that really boils my goat... quantum leap, used to mean a huge, revolutionary progression - when it really refers to a miniscule, inexplicable translocation.

A quantum leaps means a jump from one level to another, without actually going in between. Which is pretty much a huge, revolutionary progression.