Not as fast through the middle

[threemonkeys]

Sometimes the little everyday miracles impress me. I got an envelope delivered to me in the mail today. It was posted in the UK on the 19th. I figure that this means the time from posting to delivery was about 90 hours allowing for the time zone differences - possibly a little more but more likely a bit less. Sure, this post will be available all over the world pretty much the instant I click submit, but I am still very impressed by how quickly a physical object can be sent. Remember that it has to go through various delivery and sorting processes at both ends of the journey as well as the day or so it will spend on a plane covering the 20,000K journey. Given that the UK is almost the furthest country from New Zealand (we are actually opposite Spain) I should point out that physical distance is not a great determinant about speed of delivery. Things usually take a day or two longer to get here from Australia and twice as long as that to get here from the USA. Lets not even think about some places where the paper of the envelope will degrade before a letter ever gets delivered.

The envelope in question contained that rarest of items in these parts - a real printed-on-paper fanzine. In particular a copy of fishlifter's fanzine Banana Wings. I wonder what my chances of getting it read in less than the time it took to get here are. Not good I suspect, but out of respect to the process that got it here I think I should try don't you?

Comments

[lobelet.livejournal.com]

A. E. Van Vogt (I think it was) wrote a short story about a man who realised that when he postd a letter, the further away the addressee lived, the shorter the time it took to deliver the letter. Thus a letter to someone in the next street took weeks to get delivered, but a letter to someone on the other side of the planet got there in mere hours.

So, just for fun, he wrote a letter to someone on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri and five seconds after he posted it, the aliens invaded Earth.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the story, but I admit to having had similar thoughts - even to the notion of using it for interstellar communication. Then the real world intervened and I gave up.