Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction | Hacker News Reader

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction

sfdictionary.com

50 pointsthrow0101a12 comments

I'm really unclear on the line between "science fiction" words and...words.

"Light-year" is here, citing Asimov in the 1950s, but Wikipedia notes that Germans were already complaining about the unit's name in the 1850s.

Then look at the adjective "avian," defined as "(of an alien) bird-like." Avian's already an English adjective meaning bird-like. You can also call an alien "tall" and that doesn't make tall a science fiction word.

What're the rules of this thing?

Maybe the 'About' page [1] can clear things up:

> This site is a historical dictionary of the vocabulary of science fiction. It is edited (and coded) by Jesse Sheidlower, formerly the Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

It's looking at the history of words as they appear in Science Fiction.

[1] https://sfdictionary.com/about

That's incredibly interesting. You can look at usages of "sentient" as an adjective, or usages of "sentient" as a noun. It includes usages from reviews and criticism of SF works as well. Fabulous idea, but missing a lot as of yet -- checking some of my old favorites and more recent ones, it has "psychohistory" from Foundation, but it doesn't have "eptification" or "mucker" from Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, "dark forest" from Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem trilogy, or "orogene" or "orogeny" from N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy.

Looks like what they want in terms of support is labor: https://sfdictionary.com/how_to_help

I contributed a few words to the previous project, roughly 20 years ago.

One of the requirements was that the word not be a one-off use. Is 'eptification' used in other stories by other authors, for example?

"Spindizzy", as I recall, was in the earlier effort, though not here. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spindizzy for background.

I just realized you saw "spindizzy" before I edited it out -- I didn't know if Cities in Flight was something anybody else remembered.

Stand on Zanzibar was full of made-up slang, but eptification and mucker stand out in my memory, because eptification was so similar to the automated learning in the Matrix, and mass shootings (and knifings in other parts of the world) are now a normal part of life. I don't think any other writers picked them up and used them in their work, though.

Actually, I didn't see it in an earlier version of your comment.

It really was an independent memory from 20 years ago when I contributed a few word and citations to the original project.

That's a crazy coincidence. Glad somebody else remembers. Cheers!

It is a self-selected audience of HN readers who care enough to read comments on a historical dictionary of SF. ;)

FWIW, I have a copy of the 2006 reprint of Blish's 1970 omnibus edition. As I recall, I bought it because I read the term "spindizzy" in the OED effort from 20 years ago, which made me curious.

Interesting way of looking at these terms. If you want a bit of a higher level look, check out the SF Encyclopedia! I've found a LOT of great books and ideas just skimming through this:

http://sf-encyclopedia.com/category/themes/theme

Watch out for spoilers in the descriptions though.

And see coverage on Ars [0] and NY Times [1]

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/01/warp-speed-prime-dire...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/arts/science-fiction-dict...

Where is "ansible"? (Faster-than-light text-only channel) Coined by LeGuin, but also used by Card and others

That's funny. That was the first thing I looked for as well! It's on the second page.

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