Ben Bova

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Ben Bova
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35 Quotations from Ben Bova

areology n. 2013 B. Bova Mars Farts in New Frontiers (2014) 266 ‘Hey, you guys are the geologists. I thought you were happy to drill down that deep.’ ‘Overjoyed…. And here on Mars we’re doing areology, not geology.’
biosuit n. 1969 B. Bova Foeman, Where Do You Flee? in GalaxyJan. 31/1 The captain's mono-moleclar [sic] biosuit gave his craggy face a faint sheen, like the beginnings of a sweat.
Cerean adj. 1992 B. Bova Sam Gunn, Unlimited xix. 285 The two women were sitting in the faculty lounge of the minuscule Ceres branch of the Interplanetary Space University. Little more than an extended suite of rooms in the same shielded dome as the hotel, the university was mainly a communications centre where Cerean workers and their children could attend classes through interactive computer programs.
cryonics n. 2001 B. Bova Precipice 110 It took several years for Selene’s governing council to realize that a new trend had started. Cryonics. People were coming to Selene to be declared legally dead, then frozen into suspended animation in the hope that they could one day be cured of the disease that killed them, thawed, and returned to life once more. Cryonics had been banned in most of the Earth’s nations.
cryosleep n. 1972 B. Bova Flight of Exiles xvii. 184 They’re putting Dan into cryosleep today. Dr. Tomaso says he can work on Dan’s neural patterns much more easily when the nerve impulses are slowed down by the low temperature.
dystopian adj. 1994 B. Bova Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells xix. 211 Even in the darkest dystopian science fiction stories, there is hope for the future.
Earthside adv. 1967 B. Bova Fifteen Miles in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May 68/2 ‘But the regulations...’ ‘They were written Earthside. The brass never planned on something like this. I’ve got to go back, just to make sure.’
energy screen n. 2013 B. Bova New Earth 190 ‘The big shield?’ Jordan asked. Aditi nodded. ‘The planetary shield. The energy screen that protects the whole planet.’
ET n. 2008 B. Bova Waterbot in New Frontiers (2014) 185 When they first detected our distress call the astronomers went delirious: they thought they’d found an intelligent extraterrestrial signal, after more than a century of searching. They were sore as hell when they realized it was only a dinky old waterbot in trouble, not aliens trying to say hello. They didn’t give a rat’s ass of a hoot about Forty-niner and me, but as long as our Mayday was being beamed out their fancy radio telescope search for ETs was screwed.
fantastic n. 1 1981 B. Bova We Have Met The Mainstream… in F. Herbert Nebula Winners Fifteen 175 As L. Sprague de Camp has been pointing out for years, the literature of the fantastic was the mainstream of world storytelling from the time writing began until the beginning of the Seventeenth Century A.D.
gray goo n. 1998 B. Bova Moonwar 88 The containment worked. Although nanomachines were assembled constantly for tasks as diverse as ferreting oxygen atoms out of the regolith and building spacecraft structures of pure diamond out of carbon dust from asteroids, there had been no runaway ‘gray goo’ of nanomachines devouring everything in their path, no plagues of nanobug diseases.
lightspeed n. 1 1964 B. Bova Interstellar Flight in Amazing Stories Jan. 35/2 What about light[-]speed ships?
planetary engineer n. 1964 B. Bova Operation Shirtsleeve in Amazing Stories July 89/2 To the planetary engineer, the really interesting features of the Martian landscape are the so-called desert areas.
pressure suit n. 1992 B. Bova Mars (1993) 3 Through the thick insulation of his pressure suit, Jamie could hear nothing except his own excited breathing.
pressure suit n. 1967 B. Bova Fifteen Miles in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May 64/1 He stepped down from the jumper—a rocket motor with a railed platform and some equipment on it, nothing more—and planted his boots on the solid rock of the ringwall’s crest. With a twist of his shoulders to settle the weight of the pressure-suit’s bulky backpack, he shambled over to the packet of seismic instruments and florescent [sic] marker that the priest had left there.
psionics n. 1994 B. Bova Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells vi. 43 At the very least, it can lead to stories that are filled with jargon such as space warp, psionics, antigravs, droids and such.
ringwall n. 1967 B. Bova Fifteen Miles in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May 64/1 He stepped down from the jumper—a rocket motor with a railed platform and some equipment on it, nothing more—and planted his boots on the solid rock of the ringwall’s crest. With a twist of his shoulders to settle the weight of the pressure-suit’s bulky backpack, he shambled over to the packet of seismic instruments and florescent [sic] marker that the priest had left there.
roboticized adj. 1988 B. Bova Crisis of the Month in Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar. 100 Population growth was nicely levelling off. Inflation was minimal. Unemployment was a thing of the past, with an increasingly roboticized workforce encouraging humans to invest in robots, accept early retirement, and live off the productivity of their machines.
science fiction adj. 1994 B. Bova Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells ii. 6 Science fiction stories are those in which some aspect of future science or high technology is so integral to the story that, if you take away the science or technology, the story collapses.
sci-fi n. 1994 B. Bova Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells ii. 6 From here on, when I say science fiction, I mean stories the meet the definition above. Other areas of the field I will call SF. The term sci-fi, which most science fiction writers loathe, I will reserve for those motion pictures that claim to be science fiction but are actually based on comic strips. Or worse.
space cadet n. 1972 B. Bova Zero Gee in H. Ellison Again, Dangerous Visions 573 ‘How does an Air Force captain get into the space cadets?’ ‘The same way everything happens—you’re in a certain place at a certain time. They told me I was going to be an astronaut.’
space sick adj. 2003 B. Bova Sam and the Flying Dutchman in Analog Science Fiction & Fact June 127/2 I recalled, ‘You started a honeymoon hotel in Earth orbit back then, didn’t you?’ His face clouded. ‘It went under. Most of the honeymooners got spacesick their first day in weightlessness. Horrible publicity. I went broke.’
space warp n. 1994 B. Bova Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells vi. 43 At the very least, it can lead to stories that are filled with jargon such as space warp, psionics, antigravs, droids and such.
Sturgeon’s Law n. 1994 B. Bova Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells vi. 44 This is merely proof of Sturgeon’s Law, coined many years ago by one of the best science fiction writers, Theodore Sturgeon: ‘Ninety-five percent of science fiction is crud; but then, ninety-five percent of everything is crud.’
suit up v. 2001 B. Bova Precipice 257 ‘Going to help Pancho suit up?’ he asked. ‘I can—’ ‘Oh, there’s plenty of time for that,’ Amanda said brightly.
super-weapon n. 1994 B. Bova Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells ix. 80 They usually have an evil scientist in their gang, or…the benefits of futuristic science, such as superweapons, hypnotic rays, invisible spaceships or whatnot.
technothriller n. 1994 B. Bova Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells xv. 160, I have never been in space, but when I decided to write a technothriller set on a space station I went to someone who knows the territory, astronaut Bill Pogue.
thruster n. 1987 B. Bova Battle Station in Battle Station 41 ‘I don’t want that gas spurting out and acting like a rocket thruster,’ Hazard explained to her back. ‘Besides, it’s an old submariner’s trick to let the attacker think he’s caused real damage by jettisoning junk.’
thud and blunder n. 1985 B. Bova in Thrust (#23) Winter 12/2 (interview) It was one of the world’s worst thud and blunder novels set in the far future—it makes Star Wars look tame—and they bought it.
torch drive n. 2007 B. Bova Aftermath 367 Pleiades surged into acceleration as its fusion torch drive lit up.
tri-v n. 1971 B. Bova Exiled From Earth in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine Feb. 191/2 When I first came aboard this satellite Dr. Kaufman asked me to go on Tri-V and tell you something about what had happened to me.
tri-v n. 1971 B. Bova Exiled From Earth in Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine Feb. 189/2 Lou sat tensely in front of the Tri-V cameras.
videophone v. 2000 B. Bova Jupiter (2001) i. 31 So Grant composed long, lonely video messages back to Marjorie, wherever she was in Uganda or Brazil or the ruins of Cambodia. Realtime videophoning was impossible: The distance between them as Roberts cruised out toward Jupiter created an ever-lengthening time lag that defeated any attempt at true conversation.
viewscreen n. 1966 B. Bova in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Dec. 65/2 Finally he said to the viewscreen, ‘O.K., then we…try to make a real storm cell out of it.’
Vulcan nerve pinch n. 1984 B. Bova Isolation Area in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Oct. 90/1 Rap me on the head. Knock me out. Give me a Vulcan nerve pinch. Anything!