I thought the opposite: the writers of the original Star Trek seemed to think nothing of including teleportation, nor does it cause alarm in D&D/Planescape or Harry Potter.
I think the naive reaction to onscreen teleportation is that it is ‘instantaneous movement’ bypassing intervening distance, a la wormholes, not the destruction of an original and construction of a new version at a different location. If the Star Trek teleporter worked onscreen by slowly burning the original to ashes, and then growing a new copy at the destination in a vat, people would have very different reactions.
There was an episode of TNG about this. They wind up with two Rikers if I remember correctly. Then in an episode of Voyager two signals are accidentally combined resulting in a hybrid of two characters.
They wind up with two Rikers if I remember correctly.
OTOH, they all seem dreadfully puzzled at the issues of identity this raises. (It had happened some time ago, without anyone realizing; the original was left behind after they successfully beamed him up, and they only realized what had happened when they revisited the planet. So they had spent some time getting to know one copy, and the other was essentially a new character.)
You do realize the notion of the “clone” that somehow has the original’s memories is a well-established pulp science fiction trope, and (when the original is dead) is usually treated as the same character?
I think the naive reaction to onscreen teleportation is that it is ‘instantaneous movement’ bypassing intervening distance, a la wormholes, not the destruction of an original and construction of a new version at a different location. If the Star Trek teleporter worked onscreen by slowly burning the original to ashes, and then growing a new copy at the destination in a vat, people would have very different reactions.
There was an episode of TNG about this. They wind up with two Rikers if I remember correctly. Then in an episode of Voyager two signals are accidentally combined resulting in a hybrid of two characters.
OTOH, they all seem dreadfully puzzled at the issues of identity this raises. (It had happened some time ago, without anyone realizing; the original was left behind after they successfully beamed him up, and they only realized what had happened when they revisited the planet. So they had spent some time getting to know one copy, and the other was essentially a new character.)
You do realize the notion of the “clone” that somehow has the original’s memories is a well-established pulp science fiction trope, and (when the original is dead) is usually treated as the same character?