Title Echo Round His Bones Series --- Author Thomas M. Disch Cover Art --- Publisher Nelson Doubleday - 1980 First Printing 1966 Category Science Fiction Warnings Racism, Cannibalism Main Characters Captain Hansard Main Elements Advanced Tech

The invention of the matter transmitter had given the U.S. an edge in a Cold War that was on the verge of becoming hot. The Soviet Union's nuclear installations on the moon abruptly ceased to be a threat, since the U.S. Army had transmitted it's arsenal to Mars, and could deploy those weapons anywhere instantaneously.

Captain Hansard was aware of the strategy, but knowing the military bureaucracy as he did, he never expected to get involved firsthand. Therefore, when given a top-secret letter to deliver to the C.O. on Mars, he figured it would be a routine "jump," and he entered the transmitter completely oblivious to the nature of the message he carried.

He was also oblivious to the fact that transmission produced a peculiar and unpleasant side effect. But on that score, he wised up fast.

It is always a little amusing to read an old SF book that is predicting future tech in a time that is already our past (in this case we apparently invented a transporter back in the 90's) which didn't quite come to be. It's also amusing that the Soviet Union is still the evil villain of the US like in a James Bond movie.

Now imagine, every time you send someone through a transporter, you create a kind of duplicate of that person. They are on another dimension, they cannot interact with our matter, a ghost for all intents and purposes. And every time you use this transporter on this person, you create yet more clones. If you use the transporter on the ghost version he is then duplicated yet again down to another dimension that cannot interact with the two above it, and so on. Now imagine that these aren't just vague memories of a person but a living breathing intelligent being suddenly cut off from the world and they don't know why. But, we don't know this is a side effect of the technology, we just keep using it, creating these poor clones of ours who can't even find food and water since they can't interact with our matter.

Thus, I found the concept fascinating, and it was the kind of thing that really made you think, forced your brain to work overtime to keep track of who was on what dimension and what kinds of things they could do while they were there. Especially when you start transporting people, and then whole planets. But also keeping in mind people of one dimension are unaware of ones of lower dimensions but still aware of the ones in higher ones, you can see them but can pass through them, cannot hear them since your ears can't process their air. The amusing problems, like you can sort of sit in a bus due to surface tension but if it accelerates too fast or takes a hard turn you will get pushed through your seat onto the road. And the ethics of it, imagine Star Trek and how many times they use their transporters there? Now add on the possibility that they were unwittingly creating these clones that were doomed to die without "clone" air they could breath? Disturbing no? Imagine being in a transmitter that transmits non-stop, so you are instantly cloned to the nth degree?

However to make it all work so our protagonist wouldn't die required too much "oh by chance they were transmitting water nearby" so that he could drink, and "oh by chance the city is covered by a dome, so the air they transmit will collect enough duplicates so our protagonist can breath". The details were too complicated to be truly convincing, after all humans need a surprising number of things to survive. And the overall plot, with a pending nuclear war (handy to be able to transport your nukes instantaneously where you want, or to stockpile them on Mars since distance it no issue...yet building a base on Mars where humans could survive is still not a thing one can do overnight though apparently they achieved it...and no one mentioned the difference in gravity either). Fine, it's a short novel so can't go into detail about everything, and it's more about the cloning than all the rest around it, but it was a silly plot with an unusual and unecessary romance. Basically it felt like the author need some kind of story so he could explore his extra-dimensional ghost concept, and a plot that would allow him to take the idea to the extreme, but little more.

I got this book as a freebie from a university book fair, guess they thought they couldn't sell it so it was in the free bin (along with a lot of other older SF which I grabbed), in that sense it was worth the read, just for the ideas it conjured up.