(Original review, 1980)

Here's my two cents' worth on matter transmission (MT) regarding Damon Knight's "A For Anything".

First of all, I am skeptical of any MT system that works by scanning/rebuilding. Leaving aside the duplicator aspects of such a system, I don't believe such a system can be made to transmit a living human. Carl Sagan has estimated (in "Dragons of Eden") that the human genome contains some 10^10 bits of information, the human brain about 10^13. This puts a lower limit of 10^23 "pertinent" bits you must transmit. NB: that to achieve this compression you must first have BOTH ultra-fast cloning AND mechanical telepathy. More to the point, I don't believe there can be a scanning system fast enough to record 10^13 bits of brain info within a reasonable interval. By "reasonable" I mean short enough to be imperceptible to the brain being scanned. Let's be generous and call it a millisecond (though even this might be too long to avoid scrambling a train of thought). That means a scanning rate of 10^16 bits/second, i.e. ten million gigabits. The wavelength of such a pulse train is around 10^-8 meters, or 100 Angstroms. You'd need an X-ray modulator to transmit it. Like I said, I don't believe it.

As for "space-warp" systems, I see two kinds: those based on a new kind of fundamental force, and those that work by tunnelling. New forces, needless to say, will tend to shake up current physical theory a bit -- especially if they can be propagated faster than light (while we're shaking things up we might as well go the whole route). I would hesitate to predict what kind of side effects such a shakeup would have.

It seems to me that large scale tunneling involves some violations of probability by arranging for ALL the subatomic particles in an object to tunnel simultaneously to a distant point. Of course, a device that affects probabilities offers some interesting variations of its own. You could use it to disrupt the timing of atomic clocks, randomize bits in a computer memory, make all the air rush to one end of an occupied room, cause an H-bomb to fizzle or blow Terreiro do Paço sky-high...

CONCLUSION: No matter what kind of technology you use to build your MT system, you end up with something else as well: a duplicator, or a probability distorter, or a whole new concept of physics. In each case the technical/social impact of the something else by far outweighs the reduction in transportation costs gained by the MT application. As with many new technologies, fulfilling the stated goal turns out to be the LEAST important result. ( )

I did not like this book. The story starts well, with some good science-fiction premises. This "Gismo" is able to duplicate anything, including itself, almost for free.
The inventor mails a hundred samples to random people in the US, then a physicist drops out of nowhere and starts talking of really exciting stuff, like rockets that duplicate fuel as they go (and I, the reader, become all excited for some space action).
Then an ex-marine comes, kills him and enslaves everyone else (and I, the reader, am very disappointed) .
Jump to 70 years later or so to some medieval society with pistol duels, flying machines and more slaves (more disappointment).

It is a bit too much to digest in just one sitting, why the slavery? Why the guy created only 100 instead of keeping duplicating new ones? How could just one hundred samples break down society? And if the first one hundred where duplicated to the point of really troubling the economy, how the whole master-slave relation could come into effect?
Everything is possible in science fiction, but the story should be able to stand up by itself. Here a lot of logic is missing: ok the author wanted to explore the slavery theme, but how did we get there? ( )

In A for Anything, it is 1971 (the not-so-distant future!) and a scientist invents a machine (a "Gismo") that can make an exact replica of anything else, including itself (and, eventually, people). The scientist is excited and sees this as the answer to all of humanity's problems -- why if no one had to work, go hungry, or want for anything, then what could possibly go wrong? Well, for starters the government tries to seize the invention before it causes the downfall of capitalism. On to their plan, the scientist mails out 100 pairs of Gismos to random addresses and then heads to his idyllic retreat with his family to await the utopia. It soon becomes apparent that his good-intentioned idea has resulted in anarchy, violence, and a huge power struggle between those who have the Gismos and those who don't.

Jump ahead to 2049:

Over half the population has been killed in a series of large-scale wars and small-scale battles for position. No scientific progress has been made since 1970. Huge swaths of the country have reverted to nature. And the country is divided up among a set of noble families who own slaves (which they call Slobs) and live lives of medieval decadence under the ever-present shadow of potential treason and overthrow by a rival family.

Our protagonist, who we never really like all that much, is Dick Jones, a young man who is next-in-line as the leader of a settlement in the Poconos. Just before he is about to fly to Colorado for his four years of military service at the Eagles, the gigantic court of a very big boss, he gets in an argument with his cousin that ends in a duel. But leaving his small pond in the Poconos for the oceanic grandeur of a Colorado mountaintop knocks Jones down a peg. In fact, much of the book is about Jones learning to navigate the complex levels of power that make up life in Eagles. As one might expect, this uneven society can't last forever, and when it finally explodes, Jones is right at the center of it.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2009/04/for-anything-1959.html ] ( )