OpenStars

I just wanted to find someone that I could say "duck off" to - can that be you? :-D

Uh oh dude... never bring a knife to a gunfight, smh... :-D

Ah Bester, my favorite ambassador from Babylon Six!? :-P

Engage laughter module.

Cease. Now resume work.

Indeed, it might be neat to stop such things, wherever they occur.

Nah - back then, that was a problem for tomorrow's (now today's) politicians to have to solve. So long as it worked to put Trump in power, and attempt to remain there, everything was going to be A-okay. And that's my problem with that kind of thinking: it works, but it's always only ever short-term for some reason.

Oh no, if only this entirely predictable outcome could have somehow been... predicted?

I guess we didn't threaten enough doctors and nurses lives and families /s.

But the (clickbait) title got people to (click) talk about it so... it accomplished its publishers' goal, nonetheless.

Okay that's definitely not the one I was thinking of. However, he reportedly wrote a story a year for Issac Asimov's periodicals for almost two decades, plus his many actual books, so it is no surprise that some of his themes were re-used, yet hard to find the name of:-).

I thought the one I am thinking of was neat b/c the dinos were gate-keeping offering their transportation technology to humanity, thinking that surely no warm-blooded mammal could possibly keep their emotions in check to do what must needs be done, unlike the cold heart & keen mind of a reptile.

In other works like his collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke "Altered Carbon", Pohl used the concept of that "stack" to limit the spread of one human mind that would otherwise just be spread out amongst the stars with as many copies as bodies could be found to hold them. But in other anthologies there were other limitations preventing that (and presumably some others still that I haven't read where those limitations were removed?:-P).

Is that the one with the "dinos"? I recall a short story about teleportation in that manner, and something happened, but it was the confirmation that got delayed. So the original person was up walking around, waiting to be sent again, drinking tea, etc... when the equation had to be balanced. Stories like that really make you think, not just bam-pow-punch-kick... in space.