title: A Brief History of the Future
author:  Stephen Clarke 
description: <b>What if teleportation was really possible? Englishman Richie Fisher is about to find out  </b><b></b>Richie and his wife Clara have won a weekend in New York in a newspaper competition. While Clara is off blowing their spending money, Richie wanders aimlessly, chewing on a veggie-burger, ending up in a gift-shop where he finds himself standing in front of an instant transporter machine. It looks nothing like the open-plan teleporter on Captain Kirks Starship Enterprise; in fact, it seems more like a glorified microwave oven.Richie places his burger inside, hits the return key on the linked-up computer - and the burger disappears. But if he can teleport a half-eaten veggie-burger, what else could you do with the machine? For criminals, the possibilities are endless. Who could catch you if you beamed drugs into nostrils a hundred miles away? And how much would illegal immigrants pay to be teleported into the rich host country of their choice? Richie buys a teleporter and takes it back to England, where the chaos begins ...
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  PROFILES OF THE FUTURE
  
  
  **_An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible_**
  
  
  ARTHUR C. CLARKE
  
  
  ![image](images/Gateway_Logo.jpg)
  
  
  [www.sfgateway.com](http://www.sfgateway.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  # Enter the SF Gateway …
  
  
  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it),
  Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint,
  created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the
  English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were
  languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists,
  consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the
  help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that
  genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to
  be widening our remit even mor