The stars my destination….
That was the title of a book I’ve read several times since 1970. It is the story of the adventures of a man called Gulliver Foyle. This is his poem as I remember it:

Gulliver Foyle is my name,
Terra is my nation,
Deep space my dwelling place
And death my destination

In the book people ‘jaunt’, that is, travel by imagining where they want to be. This causes a lot of problems as once someone has been into your house, if they can remember enough they can get back in. Smallpox reappears, leprosy is epidemic, etc. etc. Terrible crimes are carried out.

Yesterday I was listening to the news. They were talking about a man in Germany who advertised over the internet for someone who was willing to be killed and eaten. The awful thing is that someone answered his request.

Back to the book: What we are doing now over the internet, isn’t that a little bit like jaunting? In the space of a few minutes I can travel from Norway to south Africa, from Scotland to Ohio. We are all busy screening ourselves off from terrible viruses and the worst part, all manner of perversion is rearing it’s ugly head, like worms to the surface after the rain.

Science fiction writers know what they are talking about.