The Witling, by Vernor Vinge

Vernor Vinge is not a prolific author, to my chagrin. With this book, I have finally caught up and read all his fiction to date. The Witling is in many ways his least ambitious work, but that's saying nothing bad. It is one of the later examples (published in the mid-70's) of a novel that revolves around a very specific idea--in this case, "what if there really were people who could move things from one place to another without their traveling in between - teleportation?" So he weaves discussions of conservation of energy and angular momentum into the plot. It's tasty work, so if you have read the rest of his work it's worthwhile to go seek this out. The plot itself is just ordinary, so I can't give it more than 3 stars, but it was a good read.