Teleportation in fiction
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Teleportation, the instantaneous movement of objects from one location to another without traveling through space, is featured prominently in many works of fiction. For more information on the subject of teleportation, See the main article
[edit] Novels and stories
[edit] Aladdin
In the famous Aladdin story of The Arabian Nights, djinns are depicted as capable of instantaneously transporting themselves from China to Morocco and back, and of taking with them en route as much as a whole royal palace with its entire animate and inanimate contents. This is presented as part of a djinn's inborn magic powers.
[edit] The Man Without a Body
Perhaps the earliest story to depict human beings achieving the ability of teleportation in science fiction was printed in 1877: Edward Page Mitchell's story The Man Without a Body details the efforts of a scientist who discovers a method to disassemble a cat's atoms, transmit them over a telegraph wire, and then reassemble them. When he tries this on himself, the telegraph's battery dies after only the man's head was transmitted.
[edit] The Disintegration Machine
Arthur Conan Doyle's The Disintegration Machine (a 1927 Professor Challenger story) also revolves around the idea of teleportation.
[edit] Golden age of science fiction
Later authors of science fiction used the term and concept of teleportation more extensively, making the concept a staple of the genre. Early science fiction continuities A. E. van Vogt's World of Null-A (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1945), Isaac Asimov's It's Such a Beautiful Day (Star Science Fiction Stories No.3, 1954), George Langelaan's The Fly (Playboy Magazine, June 1957) and Algis Budrys' Rogue Moon (Gold Medal Books, 1960) used teleportation.
[edit] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
In Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series teleportation has been described as "not quite as fun as a good solid kick to the head" on account of the fact that teleporting involves having your atoms ripped apart in one place and put back together somewhere else. In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, teleportation is generally frowned upon. One popular poem from the book goes "I teleported home one night with Ron and Sid and Meg, Ron stole Meggie's heart away, and I got Sidney's leg."
[edit] The Fly
In the short story The Fly by George Langelaan (mentioned above), as well as the two films based on it (see The Fly (1958 film) and The Fly (1986 film)), a scientist teleports himself, but a housefly gets in the telepod with him, causing him to swap heads with the fly in the short story and 1958 film and turning him into a half-fly, half-human hybrid in the 1986 and 2008 films.
[edit] One Step from Earth
One particularly novel variety of teleportation can be seen in Harry Harrison's short-story collection One Step from Earth, nine stories all revolving around a variety of teleportation Harrison calls matter transmission (or "MT"). Rather than using the Star Trek metaphor of disassembling and reassembling something, MT works by taking two screens and aligning them to share the same part of another dimension (called "B-space"). "What goes in one comes out the other", as one character puts it. The stories explore the technical difficulties of the system -- the screens can be separated by theoretically infinite space, but the quality of that space (such as the presence of gravitational fields) can affect transmission -- as well as the social implications of having such a device. In one story, "Waiting Place", a one-way MT screen is used to dump criminals on an isolated planet where they will only be a danger to each other; in another, "Wife to the Lord", a man achieves godhood in the eyes of his people by using the planet's sole MT screen to work miracles.
[edit] Think Like a Dinosaur
In James Patrick Kelly's 1996 Hugo Award winning story, Think Like a Dinosaur, a woman is teleported to an alien planet, but the original is not disintegrated because reception can't be confirmed at the time. Reception is later confirmed, and the original, not surprisingly, declines to "balance the equation" by re-entering the scanning and disintegrating device. This creates an ethical quandary which is viewed quite differently by the cold-blooded aliens who provided the teleportation technology, and their warm-blooded human associates. This story was subsequently made into an episode of Showtime's acclaimed revival of The Outer Limits. Jack Chalker's Soul Rider series explores similar moral issues.
[edit] The Jaunt
In Stephen King's The Jaunt, teleportation is a routine form of transportation in the future, but sentient organisms must be asleep while undergoing the process to avoid nightmarish results. When 'Jaunting', a sentient organism's mind does not particulate when transmitted, unlike the physical matter of the organism's body. The mind therefore experiences the Jaunt, but while the particles that make up the organism travel instantaneously, to the conscious mind the trip seems to last forever. In an experiment, a convicted criminal, offered a full pardon on the condition he takes a Jaunt awake, emerges on the other side but instantly suffers a massive heart attack, uttering the cryptic phrase: "It's eternity in there..."
[edit] The Stars My Destination
The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester, tells of a future time when psionic displacement/teleporting has become commonplace. This story is the origin of the term jaunt (spelled "Jaunte" in the book) as a term for personal teleportation.
[edit] The Singularity Project
F.M. Busby's book "The Singularity Project" uses quantum singularities (artificial black holes) to transpose two masses.
[edit] Jumper
In Steven Gould's book Jumper, Davy teleports (and later his wife Millie, in Reflex) by warping Space/Time around himself creating a wormhole or gate that lets him appear instantaneously anywhere on Earth.
[edit] Stranger in a Strange Land
In the novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein, the main character, Valentine Michael Smith, is able to make objects and people disappear.
[edit] Harry Potter
In the Harry Potter book series by J. K. Rowling, there are several methods of teleportation, all of them magical. Apparation and Disapparation allow the wizard to disappear in one location and appear in another location. If the wizard is not sufficiently skilled, he can splinch himself in the process. A skilled wizard can also take somebody with him while apparating. Because of the risk associated with apparation, a wizard must be of age and licensed in order to apparate. Unlicensed wizards can use Floo powder and Portkeys, other methods of teleportation that don't require skills.
[edit] Television
[edit] Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
A short-distance teleportation device (used instead of elevators) appeared in the 1939 movie serial Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. A combination teleportation device and time machine was featured in the 1950s TV space opera Captain Z-Ro.
[edit] Doctor Who
The longest BBC sci-fi television series, Doctor Who featured a number of teleportation devices over the years. The first occurrence is in a 1964 story, "The Keys of Marinus", which shows watch-like "travel dials" allowing instant transportation from one chosen location to another on the planet Marinus. In stories featuring Earth or human colonies, this mode of travel is most frequently referred to as a "transmat". Transmat (or T-Mat) technology is central to the plot of "The Seeds of Death" (1969), in which Martian Ice Warriors attempt to use Earth's mid-Twenty-first century T-Mat network to distribute a biological weapon around the globe. Time Lords are said to have mastered transmat technology when the universe was half its present size.
[edit] Star Trek
Widespread pop-culture awareness of the teleportation concept began with the numerous Star Trek television and theatrical movie series (beginning in 1964 with the original TV series pilot episode, The Cage) that was originally spawned by television writer-producer Gene Roddenberry, primarily as a work-around for the prohibitively-expensive visual effects required to land a starship on a new planet every week.
The teleportation of Star Trek is likely the most widely-recognized fictional teleportation: the “transporter” device, which is used to teleport people and things from ship to ship or from ship to planet and the other way around in an instant. Persons or non-living items would be placed on the transporter pad and are dismantled particle by particle by a beam with their atoms being patterned in a computer buffer and converted into a beam that is directed toward the destination, and then reassembled back into their original form (with no mistakes). Site-to-site transportation is also possible, where the subject doesn't need to be reassembled on the transporter pad before being transported and reassembled on a different location.
Until the advent of quantum teleportation (through particle entanglement), the Heisenberg uncertainty principle was thought to stand as the chief barrier to developing a Star Trek-type teleportation device. The act of precisely pinning down the position of one of the body's subatomic particles to make a recording would give the particle an indefinite momentum, thus making it impossible to copy both a particle's position and momentum at the same time, hence necessitating the (fictional) "Heisenberg compensators" (as shown explicitly in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ship in a Bottle"). However, as science has progressed since the advent of Star Trek, it has been discovered that there are theoretically no physical barriers to implementation of a teleportation device making use of quantum state teleportation (although there may be engineering or design barriers). It should be noted though that quantum state teleportation makes use of destruction of the original particle as part of the process in order to reconstruct. In destroying the original particle, the position/momentum (Heisenberg pairs) need not be measured, but can be transferred through prior entanglement and classical communications channels to a distant identical particle.
[edit] The Tomorrow People
The Tomorrow People, a television series first made in the mid-1970s and then re-made into a modern, Nickelodeon program incorporated psychic teleportation or "jaunting" as a psionic gift bestowed upon a group of random teenagers.
[edit] The Twilight Zone
In the short-lived Twilight Zone series, there is an episode called Valley of the Shadow in which the main character is teleported and told not to reveal the secrets of teleportation by the inhabitants who feel that the invention will be misused and destroy humanity.
[edit] Blake's 7
The 1970s BBC science television series Blake's 7 featured a 'teleporter' on the spaceship Liberator. It required the teleportee to wear a bracelet for transport to and from the spaceship: misplacing a bracelet while away from Liberator was a plot device used from time to time in the series. Teleport Bracelets worked because they contained an alloy known as Aquatar. Teleportation was a known technology to the Federation (the oppressive interstellar regime in power), however it seldom worked and never worked on living matter. As such the Alien teleport technology of the liberator gave the rebel crew of the Liberator a technological advantage throughout the series.
[edit] Stargate SG-1
The most obvious instance of teleportation in the Stargate SG-1 universe is the Stargate itself, along with the intergalactic network of similar devices. Going by the dialogue of the series, the Stargate forms an artificial wormhole between two Gates. Travellers are then disassembled by the originating Gate, transferred as a matter stream with reassembly instructions to the receiving Gate, which then reassembles them upon arrival.
Another prominent teleportation system is implemented between two ring platforms. Each ring platform has five rings which elevate around the transported objects and swap the contents between the two ring platforms. However, there have been some instances of using a ring transporter to teleport objects short distances having a single platform perform both the disassembly and assembly, ascending or descending in between. It is noted in the series that the ring teleporter technology is related to the Stargate technology, although the rings have limited range as they do not utilize wormholes.
Later in the series, an alien race known as Asgard use a method similar to many other science fiction depictions of teleportation. This method does not require teleportation apparatus on either end.
[edit] Dragonball Z
The main protagonist, Goku, learns from an alien species on how to teleport on planetary scale in the anime series Dragonball Z. The technique was coined, "Instant Transmission", where Goku would focus his index and middle finger together towards his forehead and concentrate on a location he could sense through clairvoyant means through the practice of Qi Gong/Ki that is prevalent in the Anime/Dragonball Z universe. Also known as Shunkan Idō
[edit] Charmed
The series Charmed showed many ways of magical teleportation, by both evil and good sides. Whitelighters and half whitelighters have the ability to "orb", while Elders have the ability to orb themselves and/or other people separately. Some demons and warlocks have the ability to "blink" or "shimmer", while higher level demons and The Source can teleport in and out with various techniques. There is no significant difference between the various teleportation methods, except for the type of special effect used to portray it on the screen.
[edit] Heroes
In the NBC drama Heroes, the characters Hiro Nakamura and Peter Petrelli have the "power to bend the spacetime continuum", which enables them to teleport and travel through time.
[edit] X-Men
In the cartoon series based on the Marvel Comics superheroes of the same name, the character Nightcrawler exhibits a mutanagenic ability to teleport himself and other objects he touches.
[edit] Films
[edit] Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3
In the film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3, the turtles come into possession of an artifact that would swap whoever held it and read from it with someone from feudal Japan, but body only, the people swapped would appear in each other's clothes.
[edit] Terminator
In the Terminator series of movies, Skynet used its displacement technology to produce a time machine, and thus named it the "Time-Space Displacement Equipment."
[edit] Stargate
Stargate's titular device is a teleportation system that utilizes an artificial wormhole to transport people to another Stargate on an extra-solar planet.
Another, more local teleportation system is seen to be used between two ring platforms. Each ring platform has seven rings which elevate around the transported objects and swap the contents between the two ring platforms.
[edit] Doom
In the film based on the video game series of the same name, a teleportation machine used to move between Earth and Mars wouldn't always work. One of the characters has half of his body teleported to Mars and the other half somewhere else in the galaxy.
[edit] Jumper
In Jumper, a genetic abnormality allows a young man to teleport himself anywhere. He discovers this gift has existed for centuries and finds himself in a war that has been raging for thousands of years between 'Jumpers' and 'Paladins' who have sworn to kill them.
[edit] X-Men
The 2nd and 3rd installments of the X-Men movie franchise feature characters from the Marvel Comics universe including the character Nightcrawler who exhibits a mutanagenic ability to teleport himself and other objects he touches.
[edit] Portal
In a very interesting implementation of teleportation, Portal features the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device or the ASHPD. The ASHPD shoots Portals, or linked gateways illustrated as Orange and Blue holes on flat surfaces. Portals effectively function as holes in space. Portals have a unique effect on the laws of physics, allowing the player to fling themselves out of one portal by jumping into it's twin from a great height. Infinite hallways and bottomless fall loops are also possible. Teleportation from a great distance is theoretically possible, but not possible during normal gameplay due to "fizzlers" that clear out any open portals when you pass through them.
[edit] Video games
[edit] Anarchy Online
Within the Massively Multiplayer Online Game, Anarchy Online, all characters have the ability to use a "Whoompa" to teleport instantly to a destination listed above the doorway. This type of teleportation is limited to the planet Rubi-Ka. However, in the Shadowlands a character may teleport instantly to a "garden" using "Insignias" on certain statues. (ex. Thrak, Enel, Shere...etc)
[edit] City of Heroes/City of Villains
City of Heroes and its sister game City of Villains allow player characters to learn teleportation powers at levels 6, 14, and 20. These begin with the ability to teleport foes short distances to a location near the player or the ability to teleport group members to the player's current location from hundreds of meters away. Later powers allow player characters to teleport themselves and nearby allies more than a hundred meters at a time. Within the game setting, there is said to be a teleport grid running throughout the city that is used mainly to transport injured characters to a medical facility. Supergroups (the in-game term for a guild or clan) can also construct teleport pads which, after they obtain the beacon for a zone, can be used to travel directly there from their base.
[edit] Diablo II
In the computer video game Diablo II and the Diablo II Expansion Pack, the Sorceress character is able to develop a teleportation skill and speed through levels through development of an ability. In this game the teleportation is a lightning based skill. The 'Enigma' runeword armor, when worn, also grants any character the Sorceress teleportation ability.
Also, any character can purchase Scrolls of Town Portal, which create a portal to the nearest town and back. These portals can be used by any party member, but disappear after the creator uses it to return from town. Last of all are Waypoints which are teleportation pads. Each town has one, and there are numerous waypoints in each act. They need to be activated (by clicking on them) before they can be used; but once they are activated, they can be used to teleport to any other activated waypoint (even from one act to another) with limitless uses.
[edit] Doom series
In the Doom series, the UAC's experiments with teleportation technology provide a way for demons from Hell to enter our universe. Teleportation devices are also used to transport the protagonist between positions on various maps.
[edit] Fable
In Fable, the Hero can teleport using the Guild Badge. Although he can teleport from anywhere, he must teleport to a preset teleportation pad.
[edit] Guild Wars
In the online role-playing game Guild Wars; one can use the short-range transporters in the Crystal Desert. One simply steps on the pad, observes the lighting sequence of the four (4) crystals, and then touches them in the same order to activate the teleporter. In addition to this, all players can instantly teleport to any previously visited town or outpost at any point in the game, this is called "maptravel" by both the manual and in-game characters.
[edit] Half-Life series
In the computer game Half-Life, Gordon Freeman's experiment goes wrong, causing aliens to teleport to our world. In the sequel, Half-Life 2, teleportation devices are used to move Gordon and other characters to different locations. Portal consists primarily of a series of puzzles which must be solved by teleporting the player's character and other simple objects using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (the "portal gun"). The engineer class in Team Fortress 2 can build a teleporter entrance and exit.
[edit] Halo series
In the Halo series, the teleporters appear as glowing columns of green or orange. The player can walk into these columns and be instantly teleported.
[edit] Legend of Zelda series
In the Legend of Zelda series, several forms of teleportation appear. It first appeared in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, where the protagonist Link is teleported back to the beginning of the dungeon after beating the final boss. He later also acquires a magical spell that allows him to teleport to earlier set locations, and magical songs that allow him to teleport to several set locations. In later games, similar forms of teleportation return.
[edit] Marathon series
The Marathon series features teleportation technology as both a speedy means of local travel that moves the player between levels and as the fastest method of faster-than-light travel.
[edit] Mega Man series
In the Mega Man series and its spinoffs, many robots (including the titular character) have built-in teleportation devices, and booth-style teleporters also exist. The phenomenon is depicted as a streak of colored light (colored the same as the character).
[edit] RuneScape
Within the Massively Multiplayer Online Game, RuneScape, teleportation is an important and popular means of transport. Players may use the Magic skill to cast teleportation spells, allowing transport to various cities. With a high Magic level, players can also cast "teleport other" spells on players. All teleport spells require Law runes, along with several other runes depending on the spell; for instance, teleporting to the town of Varrock requires one Law rune, three Air runes and one Fire rune. Various items of enchanted jewellery can, when activated, teleport to certain areas, for instance the Duelling ring, which allows eight teleports to the Duel Arena before disintegrating. One exception to the spells is the Lumbridge home teleport. It does not require any runes but if you use it you have to wait 30 minutes before you can use it again because it is a ritual and need no experience. There are also a number of quest-related items that allow teleports to various areas, such as the "Enchanted Lyre", which teleports to the province of Relekka when played, and the "Ectophial", which teleports to the Ectofunctus when emptied. No teleports can be used past level 20 wilderness, except the Ring of Life and Amulet of Glory, which can be used up to level 30 wilderness.
[edit] Second Life
Within the Massively Multiplayer Online Game, Second Life, all avatars (residents), have the ability to teleport. Originally, residents could only teleport from one telehub to another telehub which were located within a cluster of regions (referred to as "sims") and then walk, drive or fly the remaining distance to their destination, but this was later replaced with point-to-point teleportation. The elimination of telehub teleportation had an economic effect on the prices and values of virtual real estate surrounding the telehubs as residents no longer had to pass through, around or over shops and buildings placed next to a telehub. Within the culture of Second Life residents typically shorten the word "teleport" to the letters: TP.
[edit] Tabula Rasa
Tabula Rasa features waypoint pads which operate as teleportation booths between any two previously explored waypoints within one zone, and wormhole portals which send characters from one planet to the another instantly. Dropships (sometimes known as hedgehogs) which can be used to move between zones and are also seen dropping troops into the field employ a teleport system similar to the waypoint pads to store and carry their passengers/cargo. Also used are portable wormhole generators which allow a player to access the waypoint pad system from remote areas.
[edit] Unreal Tournament series
In Unreal Tournament and its sequels, teleports exist to allow the players to traverse the map. Also, in some game types, the option exists to give each player a handheld device called a Translocator; this device, as a primary fire mode, fires a small disc to which the player can then teleport, as a secondary fire mode. It can be used with some skill to telefrag opponents by teleporting within the enemy character model when the destination disc is close enough.
[edit] World of Warcraft
Within the MMORPG World of Warcraft, characters can use an object called a "Hearthstone" to teleport the character to an inn to which the hearthstone is set. Characters can change the inn to which they "hearth" (as it is often called in-game) by visiting another inn and asking an innkeeper to make that inn their home.
Users can also create trinkets to teleport them to the regions of Tanaris and Winterspring through the use of the "Engineering" profession.
Some classes have the ability to teleport to certain places, for example, Druids can teleport to Moonglade by use of an ability.
Mages can create portals to capital cities that everyone in the party can access. Also mages can teleport themselves to the capital cities.
Warlocks can summon others with the help of group members.
Meeting stones now work like warlocks summonong spells, without the use of a soul shard.
Rogues also have a form of teleportation, Shadow step, an ability that makes the rogue appear behind an enemy
[edit] Portal
In a very interesting implementation of teleportation, Portal features the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device or the ASHPD. The ASHPD shoots Portals, or linked gateways illustrated as Orange and Blue holes on flat surfaces. Portals effectively function as holes in space. Portals have a unique effect on the laws of physics, allowing the player to fling themselves out of one portal by jumping into it's twin from a great height. Infinite hallways and bottomless fall loops are also possible. Teleportation from a great distance is theoretically possible, but not possible during normal gameplay due to "fizzlers" that clear out any open portals when you pass through them.
[edit] Comics
[edit] Marvel comics
The Marvel comic books feature many mutants and other characters with teleportation powers, such as Nightcrawler, Magik, Locus, Lila Cheney, Amanda Sefton, Madelyne Pryor, Blink, The Wink, Paragon, Silver Samurai and dozens of others.
[edit] DC Comics
DC Comics also has many teleporters, including Zatanna, Misfit, Darkseid, Ambush Bug, Angle Man, Manitou Raven, Bolt, Chronos, Dr. Fate, La Encantadora, Gog, and Hourman (android). There is also a way for non-teleporters to travel called the Boom Tube. The Flash has also "teleported" into parallel universes by vibrating at a very high frequency.
Additionally, the Justice League of America's lunar Watchtower contained banks of teleportation tubes based on principally Martian technology.
