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It's common joke that the Star Trek teleporters actually kill the person they dematerialize and recreate a copy. (Last week, SMBC joked that by 2026, all the strip's jokes will be about this question.) But, of course, teleportation in science fiction is quite a bit older than Star Trek.

Rogue Moon, original cover (with a plot precis that Wikipedia calls "misleading")

For example, the death of the teleportee is the central motif of Rogue Moon, published in 1960, but I suspect that this was probably not the first work to use it either. However, I also suspect that this is not one of those ideas that goes back to somebody like Lucian of Samosata, since it seems to entail a fundamentally materialist worldview—that there is no transcendent soul that exists independently of the human body.

So, what was the first science fiction work that referred to the possibility that teleportation (or at least technological teleportation) would actually kill the person who undergoes the process? It doesn't need to be confirmed that the person actually dies, but the issue should be raised.

Buzz
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    https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DestructiveTeleportation might be handy. – FuzzyBoots Dec 04 '23 at 04:24
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    I thought it was plot-relevant in Rogue Moon that the teleporter didn't destroy the original, and thus they could keep sending new copies? So more of a twinmaker than a destructive teleport. – DavidW Dec 04 '23 at 04:30
  • How is that a "joke"? It doesn't seem all that funny to me. I realize that people's senses of humor can vary a lot. – user14111 Dec 04 '23 at 04:33
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    Too late for "first" but it's an explicit theme in Ray Brown's 1982 "A Change of Employment": 'I haen't said no,' said Flaherty, 'but I do know how the Transmat works, after all. Your company's very name for it is a lie. It doesn't transmit matter, it transmits information. You get into a booth and you're scanned for the most probable state and position of the subatomic particles that make you up, and the scanning process destroys that arrangement of particles—vaporizes you. A new body is assembled at the receiving booth out of new matter. But the person who entered the first booth is dead.' – user14111 Dec 04 '23 at 05:06
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    The first Star Trek tie-in novel Spock Must Die (1970) discussed this at length. https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/84307/28516 – Organic Marble Dec 04 '23 at 05:34
  • Lem discusses something like it in Dialogues (1957), but that is about a (hypothetical, even within the story) duplication machine not used for transport. – Eike Pierstorff Dec 04 '23 at 09:02
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    I don't think it's exactly what you have in mind, and there may be earlier examples, but: The 1930 short story "An Extra Man" by Jackson Gee is about a man being teleported at two different places at the same time, resulting in two "versions" of the same man. At some point, when discussing the issue of "who should be considered the original?", a third character suggests to put back in the teleporting device whoever will be considered the "copy", for him to be dematerialized, but without transferring him anywhere –which would effectively result in his death, as one of the two copies points out. – J-J-J Dec 04 '23 at 18:56
  • Not the first, 1998, but an interesting take on the theme is The Resurrected Man by Sean Williams. – DafyddNZ Dec 04 '23 at 21:15
  • I remember teleportation working exactly like this in the book Way Station by Clifford D. Simak – p4ulie Dec 05 '23 at 17:56
  • @p4ulie I keep meaning to reread Way Station! It's been sitting atop the headboard of my bed for months, but now I feel motivated to actually grab it again. – Buzz Dec 05 '23 at 18:04

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