John Victor Peterson 10 min read

If matter transference really works, neanderthalers can pop up anywhere, and that's very hard on politicians. A bodyguard must find the physicist who's shaken security at White Sands.

John Victor Peterson's 1956 story is a wry psi-and-social-SF tale of teleportation and its awkward consequences. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a breakthrough in matter transmission threatens to make a shambles of political business as usual.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

10 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).