Ian McDonald
37 Quotations from Ian McDonald
| biotechnician n. | 1994 Necroville (1995) 128 The biotechnician’s natural predilection for the small and perfectly organized led them to invest in the emerging nanotech corporadas. |
| continuum n. | 1999 Days of Solomon Gursky 253 PanLife, that amorphous, multi-faceted cosmic infection of human, trans-human, non-human, PanHuman sentiences, had filled the universe long before the continuum reached its elastic limit and began to contract under the weight of dark matter and heavy neutrinos. |
| dimension n. | 1988 Desolation Road (2001) i. 11 ‘Though we journey through different dimensions, like you I am a traveller across this dry and waterless place,’ said the greenperson. |
| doppel n. | 1998 Days of Solomon Gursky in Asimov’s June 120 Later, on a stone bench by the lake, Sol Gursky said to his doppel, ‘Your politeness is appreciated, but it really wasn’t necessary for you to don my shape. All this is as much a construction as you are.’ |
| farside n. | 2015 Luna: New Moon ix. 296 The moon was a much smaller place then, we couldn’t have built and trialed an extractor without word running round the Farside and back again before we’d even locked helmets. |
| gee n. 1 | 1998 Days of Solomon Gursky in Asimov’s Science Fiction June 104 The new ships were lean, mean, fast: multiple missile racks clipped to high-gee blip-fusion motors, pilots suspended in acceleration gel like flies in amber, hooked by every orifice into the big battle virtualizers. |
| gee n. 2 | 1998 Days of Solomon Gursky in G. Dozois Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction, 12th Coll. (1999) 234 Fifty-five gees… Time to contact, one thousand and eighteen seconds. |
| glassite n. | 1988 Desolation Road (2001) xxi. 112 Time slowed in a jungle of scales and arpeggios: there was no time, the stars froze in their arcing paths, tracing slow silver snail tracks across the glassite cap-dome. |
| light sail n. | 1994 Necroville (1995) 110 They have a policy of buying up your contract while you’re still swimming in your Jesus tanks. ‘Nightfreighting’: shipping mining plants and crew out to the asteroids in the form of cheap light-sail drivers with slap-on tector packages. |
| light sail n. | 1998 Days of Solomon Gursky in G. Dozois Mammoth Bk. Best New Science Fiction, 12th Coll. (1999) 245 The breaking wave of particles, with multiple gravity assists from Luvah and Enitharmon, would surf the bright flotilla up to interstellar velocities, as, at the end of the centuries—millennia—long flights, the light-sails would brake the packages at their destinations. |
| Lunarian n. | 2015 Luna: New Moon vii. 238 Marina is trapped in a dull conversation whorl dominated by a loud sociologist from Farside U and his theories about post-national identities in second and third generation lunarians. |
| morph v. 2 | 1998 Days of Solomon Gursky in G. Dozois Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction, 12th Coll. (1999) 241 The next morning they morphed the pod into an ash-runner and drove through the cindered forest. |
| multiversal adj. | 2007 Brasyl 115 Her thesis was that all mind is a multiversal quantum computer and therefore a fundamental element of reality, and also linked across universes by quantum entanglement. |
| nanomachine n. | 1994 Necroville (1995) 254 It’s the original nanomachine, microprocessors the size of molecules. |
| nanotech adj. | 1994 Necroville (1995) 128 The biotechnician’s natural predilection for the small and perfectly organized led them to invest in the emerging nanotech corporadas. |
| nanotechnological adj. | 1994 Necroville (1995) 38 The week after that they were even shipping then down in environment tanks from the Milapa Swimmer Community to visit Camaguey’s nanotechnological reef. |
| nanotechnology n. | 1994 Necroville (1995) 31 These are the things that matter. Not the moon being converted into a three thousand kilometre sphere of nanotechnology. |
| needle v. | 2010 Dervish House i. 19 If the scene-of-crime bots see him they’ll needle him with their stings. That would be exciting. |
| neo n. | 2005 River of Gods v. 50 ‘That’s close for a NEO,’ Lisa Durnau says. See, I can do the speak too. |
| neo n. | 2005 River of Gods xliii. 439 The monsoon has come to this imaginary city. Najia is too proud to have watched an entire episode of Town and Country but even as a neo she recognises there are whole districts of this city of illusions the plot never visits, that have been lovingly built and maintained by exabytes of processing power merely to hold the rest together. |
| posthumanity n. | 1995 Evolution’s Shore 234 I do not understand these things well. I do not know about Australopithecus and evolution and what you call transhumanity, posthumanity. |
| redshirt n. | 2005 River of Gods xlvi. 466 I am every secondary character and minor character and walk-on and redshirt. |
| rocketeer n. | 2015 Luna: New Moon viii. 279 His colleagues among the Vorontsovs have never confirmed nor denied the legend that Valery Mikhailovitch Vorontsov, the old rocketeer of Baikonur, has, over decades of free-fall aboard his cycler Saints Peter and Paul, become something strange and inhuman. |
| shapeshift v. | 1994 Necroville (1995) 68 The car shapeshifted, slimming and streamlining itself, pressing itself close to the black skin of the highway, growing spoilers and tailfins. |
| shapeshifting adj. | 1994 Necroville (1995) 13 The halls and landings of his shapeshifting hacienda were occupied by the monochrome likenesses of the brief and bright. |
| Sol III n. | 1997 After Kerry in Asimov’s Science Fiction Mar. 130 ‘You are disturbing the ambassador…. She should not be disturbed when channeling. It’s dangerous.’…‘Ya,’ the ambassador to Sol Three said. The door closed. |
| space-armored adj. | 1985 Empire Dreams in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine Dec. 57 Space-armored technicians are running ponderously to cover as the fighter deck is evacuated. |
| space elevator n. | 1988 Desolation Road (2001) xxxix. 206 Just what the hell are they doing out there, building an extra space elevator or something? |
| space gun n. 1 | 1988 King of Morning, Queen of Day in Asimov’s Science Fiction May 114 [set in 1909:] Our French colleague has written most imaginatively…of how a great space-gun might propel a capsule around the moon. |
| spaceworthiness n. | 2015 Luna: New Moon 161 Ah. Pustelga. Still waiting spaceworthiness certification. The LDC is so slow. |
| Terrene n. | 1999 Breakfast on the Moon, with Georges in P. Crowther Moon Shots 296 Uncontrolled, Hirondelle goes into a glide, loses altitude, and spirals down to a nudge landing in the soft moondust of the farther shore of the Lake of Dreams. The Selenites swarm aboard, spinning dream-silk from their spinnerets. The crew are trussed within minutes. Five frail Selenites to one Terrene, the Members of the Anglo-French Expedition to the Moon are borne into the heart of the Temple of Dreams. |
| Terrene adj. 1 | 1994 Necroville (1995) 110 Even before extra-terrene space was surrendered to the mutineers and that slamships and nanoprocessors, Ewart/OzWest had turned to the mid-ocean trenches, seeding them with machines and dead configured for deep-water labour. |
| Terrene adj. 1 | 1999 Breakfast on Moon, with Georges in Moon Shots 293 Selenites observe his repast through strange ocular devices, and scurry much. Were they capable of recognizing terrene expressions, they would note the grave look on his face. |
| transhumanity n. | 1994 Necroville (1995) 165 The Isolationists pressed for the immediate expansion of the extant Clades across all the solar system, the establishment and recognition of a dead transhumanity that had severed all ties with planet-bound humanity. |
| transhumanity n. | 1995 Evolution's Shore 234 I do not understand these things well. I do not know about Australopithecus and evolution and what you call transhumanity, posthumanity. |
| Venerian adj. | 2015 Botanica Veneris in Old Venus 562 Princess Latufui had been restless all this evening—the time before sleep, that is: Great Evening was still many Terrene days off. Can we ever truly adapt to the monstrous Venerian calendar? Arthur has been on this world for fifteen years—has he drifted not just to an- other world, but another clock, another calendar? |
| weird n. | 2007 Brasyl 294 He picked the old mall because it is enclosed and free from the eyes of cameras, but it’s big and out of the way and full of weirds and he doesn’t love the idea of her hanging around among them too long. |