Someone please help me find this sci-fi story. I read it in the 80's and enjoyed it but can't remember the details or title of the story.

The setting took place in the future and had something to do with a boy using a "transporter" to transport his essence/mind into another duplicate body that looked just like him, at the destination. The whole society used these transporters for transportation to other areas. I'm not sure if it was transporting to different planets, or just around the Earth, but it was just the mind being transported to the new duplicate body. I was sure Ray Bradbury was the author, but I could be wrong.

That is about all I currently remember, but I found the story facinating back then when growing up.

oh, and by the way, I just finished watching Ray Bradbury theatre on Sci-Fi channel. I loved this growing up, and am glad it is still showing on TV!

No one can help Coyote?

Dear Coyote,

Just right now the story line doesn't ring a bell, but let me check it out. What I want to know is how did you you get a blue unsmiling (in this instance) face appear?

I posted this inquiry, along with all the other non-Bradbury story descriptions, at the MSN Message Group ExLibris, the Lost Boards. No answers on this one so far. If you want to pay $2.00, you can post a stumper at "Stump the Bookseller" at www.logan.com/loganberry, which has more regulars than ExLibris. Someday I plan on copying all the unsolved non-Bradbury stumpers over to another Message Forum, mostly for kids' literature, but very heavily trafficked.

The only novel like that I can remember is The Worlds of Null-A by A.E.Vogt.? I am fuzzy on that one. It has been quite a while since reading that one.
He had written some classics, The Silkie,and Slan, he is from the early 50s or so. Well worth finding his work if you can.

[This message has been edited by uncle (edited 04-28-2002).]

This reply came from a librarian on a newsgroup:

I think this book might be My Trip to Alpha I by Alfred Slote (Lippincott, 1978.)� The main character is a boy named Jack who goes to visit his Aunt Katherine using a technique called VOYA-CODE.

"You could send data by neutro waves to every part of the universe.� And then, instead of you taking a long trip by rocket or Superrocket yourself, you could travel by VOYA-CODE.� Your computer program would be fed into a dummy that looked just like you and had been made on the planet you were going to.� The instant that happened, the dummy would come alive.� The dummy would be you! Meanwhile, back home, your original body would be kept in Sleep-Storage until you were ready to return.� Then your dummy would be deprogrammed, all the data would be let out of it, and you'd wake up back home."

Hope this helps,
Susan Harding

This reply came from a librarian on a newsgroup in answer to #3, "Minds Transported":

I'm thinking that someone must have suggested this title already, but just in case.... I know it doesn't have a coyote but it does have a skunk and it is from the 1980s. good luck, elm
Stinker from space / Pamela F. Service. New York: Scribner's, c1988. 83 p. ; 22 cm.�����������������
An agent of the Sylon Confederacy, fleeing from enemy ships,� crash lands on Earth, transfers his mind to the body of a skunk, and enlists the aid of two children in getting back to his home planet.
� 1) Extraterrestrial beings -- Fiction.�����
� 2) Skunks -- Fiction.���������
� 3) Science fiction.��������������������������

Elaine Morgan

Coyote could well be long gone, but may come a-lurking. Anyhow, the significance of the number in the above is that I sent 15 of the most difficult descriptions around to a number of other groups. This, being only #3, was obviously an early entry. We've now worked the unsolved ones down to about 8.

Why do you suppose so many people attribute science fiction stories to Ray? Because he's so prolific? I mean, he isn't really a writer of hard SF.

I think it's due to the fact that his first "stuff" was largely science fiction. (In spite of his purist protestations, stories in space tend to be seen as sci-fi, rather than fantasy/fiction> ) I also think his more famous stuff is either Science fiction or fantasy (Dandelion Wine is a favorite of his fans, but how many "commoners" even know what it is?). When people hear the name Bradbury, what they most often associate it with is F451, Martian Chronicles, and Sci-fi short stories (The Veldt, All Summer in a Day, etc.).

I think he's a victim of his early success, combined with a generously applied definition of science fiction.

Yeah, people who read Ray for the space ships and dinosaurs probably won't beat a path to a notalgic magical boyhood-remembered novel with the word "Dandelion" in the title. I know I didn't. If it wasn't for Avon's neat little hardback reissues, I would never have fallen for Bradbury like I have. They slipped Dandelion Wine in somewhere between Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes. By that time I was so hooked, I couldn't stop.