P. Schuyler Miller

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P. Schuyler Miller
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33 Quotations from P. Schuyler Miller

adult fantasy n. 1932 P. S. Miller Letter in Wonder Stories Dec. 606/1 Third, I think, comes a second fantasy—adult fantasy…. We find Lord Dunsany and maybe a handful of others.
alternative universe n. 1944 P. S. Miller As Never Was in Astounding Science Fiction Jan. 34/1 As any schoolchild learns, the time shuttler who goes into the past introduces an alien variable into the spacio-temporal matrix at the instant when he emerges. The time stream forks, an alternative universe is born in which his visit is given its proper place, and when he returns it will be to a future level in the new world which he has created. His own universe is forever barred to him.
Asimovian adj. 2 [1959 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Science Fiction Feb. 140/1 David Starr, young scientific genius and member extraordinary of the Council of Science, and his undersized Martian pal, Bigman Jones, are this time tangling with a Sirian outpost on titan, a lost message capsule, high—or low—interstellar diplomacy, and the Asimovian laws of robotics.]
astrogating n. 1943 P. S. Miller Gleeps in Astounding Science-Fiction July 111/1 [Gleeps can become a copy of anyone, including the narrator.] This Gleeps is a very conscientious guy until he gets rattled. He’s me. I’m astrogator. So when the old man asks him for the ship’s course, what can he do but produce? He don’t know astrogating from nothing, but he’s me—he's got my brain and my handwriting. So he writes ’em a course. Since he's an amateur, he makes a couple of perfectly natural errors.
Bradburyish adj. 1958 P. S. Miller in Astounding Science Fiction May 146/2 ‘The Body’ is very Bradburyish—a story of a man put into a dog’s body.
catastrophe adj. 1959 P. Schuyler Miller Reference Library in Astounding Science Fiction July 148/2 The urge to write another ‘catastrophe’ story must be very like the urge that drove the late Cecil B. DeMille to produce his super-colossal spectacles. You can assemble a cast of millions and use a setting as big as the world. You are practically unlimited as to special effects.
contraterrene adj. 1951 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Stories Nov. 117/1 In the July 1942 issue of Astounding SCIENCE FICTION Jack Williamson, using the pen name ‘Will Stewart’, introduced the concept of ‘seetee’—contraterrene matter—to science fiction in the novelette ‘Collision Orbit.’ Seetee, as is now pretty generally known, is matter electrically opposite to normal or terrene matter, with a nucleus of neutrons and negative protons surrounded by shells of positrons. In contact with normal matter, the opposites are attracted to each other, react, and neutralize each other with total conversion of their mass to energy.
de Campian adj. 1963 P. S. Miller Hand of Zei in Analog Science Fact -> Science Fiction Aug. 89/3 (review) Where Burroughs’ heroes were more muscular than smart, and relied heavily on the fact that a Good Guy will always come out on top in a tussle with a Bad Guy, de Campian heroes have muscles but are often too modest to use them, treat their crises more as acrostics than as brawls, and are apt to be startled if a door breaks down when they put a shoulder to it and shove.
ether ship n. 1941 P. S. Miller Trouble on Tantalus in Astounding Science-Fiction Feb. 48/1 There, somewhere, was the mysterious Black Hole that had sucked a score of ether ships into oblivion since men first found this God-forsaken planet.
everywhen adv. 1943 P. S. Miller Gleeps in Astounding Science-Fiction July 100/2 I figure Gleeps is an Investigator. As far back as you want to go, he always has been, and as far ahead as you want to go in a bender, he always will be. Everywhere you go in this or any other universe he is, was and will be. He’s everywhen and everywhere—but I said that before.
Gernsbackian adj. 1952 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Science Fiction Sept. 163 The first of the fan organizations….was a counterpart to the Gernsbackian philosophy of science fiction. Gernsback believed…that science fiction existed as a new and powerful medium for teaching the facts, theories, and understanding of science…. The stories of this formative era considered the description of a flight through weightlessness, the surface of the Moon or Mars, or an exposition of some of the quirks and paradoxes of relativity ample justification for using up several thousand words in which very little might happen.
hard science fiction n. 1957 P. S. Miller in Astounding Science Fiction Nov. 143/1 It is also very characteristic of the best ‘hard’ science fiction of its day.
men in black n. 1958 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Science Fiction Aug. 143/1 ‘Security Check’ is the one in which two men in black call on the little craftsman who has been making SF sets for television.
New Wave n. [1961 P. S. Miller in Analog Science Fact Nov. 167/1 It’s a moot question whether Carnell discovered the ‘big names’ of British science fiction—Wyndham, Clarke, Russell, Christopher—or whether they discovered him. Whatever the answer, there is no question at all about the ‘new wave’: Tubb, Aldiss, and to get to my point, Kenneth Bulmer and John Brunner.]
other-dimensional adj. 1959 P. Schuyler Miller Reference Library in Astounding Sept. 152/1 The Norse gods, dwarfs, frost-giants, and all the rest are real and alive in some other-dimensional continuum, and making another play for control of Midgard—the Earth.
parallel universe n. 1950 P. S. Miller Book Reviews in Astounding Science-Fiction Dec. 98/1 [Reviewing Fredric Brown’s What Mad Universe:] The editor of a 1954 science-fiction pulp is kicked into a parallel universe where his magazine is a straight adventure book.
posthuman adj. 1952 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Science Fiction July 159/2 There are the tendrilless slans—numerous, powerful, and vicious—with the same distorted organs and magnified physical and mental powers as the true slans, but without the telepathic powers of the post-human race ‘created’ by Samuel Lann at least fifteen hundred years before.
problem story n. 1958 P. S. Miller Pilgrimage to Earth in Astounding Science Fiction May 146/2 (review) ‘Early Model,’ on the other hand, might belong right here in Astounding: it presents an explorer hopelessly overprotected by his safety devices—a how is he gonna get out yarn. [...] A more routine problem story, ‘Human Man’s Burden,’ shows us an asteroid farmer, mothered by his solicitous robots, who gets the wrong mail-order bride.
science fantasy n. 1 1943 P. S. Miller Fricassee in Four Dimensions in Astounding Science Fiction Dec. 67/2 ‘I read a couple of books one time, about the way I am and stuff like that. Fourth-dimension stuff. Tesseracts, and that. You ever seen it?’ I had. I've read my share of science fantasies.
science-fictive adj. 1953 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Science-Fiction July 154/2 Sir Charles makes several interesting suggestions with science-fictive possibilities.
secondary world n. 1965 P. S. Miller The Reference Library in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Sept. 148/1 The best science-fiction writers create…Secondary Worlds and take us inside. They may do it, as Hal Clement has done in his best stories, Robert Heinlein in most of his, and Arthur C. Clarke and Frank Herbert with notable success, by building their worlds as carefully as an architect-builder would do his work.
space colony n. 1932 P. S. Miller Letter in Wonder Stories June 91/2 Obviously, no author can present vividly and realistically for the benefit of the latter, experienced readers certain problems of future life and relations, of life in space ships and space colonies, that everyone realizes will and must occur, when sixth-grade children are reading them. They would not understand what was really being presented, anymore [sic] than they would understand a bald, literal statement of the theories of Freud and his school.
space freighter n. 1951 P. S. Miller Book Reviews in Astounding Science Fiction Mar. 144/1 Nelson Bond lacks few of the tricks of the born story-teller and uses them all blandly and shamelessly in this collection of eleven adventures of his bumbling, gangling hero, Third Mate Lancelot Biggs and his long-suffering fellow officers of the rattletrap space freighter Saturn.
spacewrecked adj. 1958 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Science Fiction Jan. 147/2 These are the adventures of Alan Green, spacewrecked on a far planet that is overrun with feudal human societies.
Sturgeon’s Law n. 1960 P. Schuyler Miller in Astounding Science Fact & Fiction Dec. 162/2 F. M. Busby, who will probably chair the 1961 World Science [sic] Convention in Seattle, seconds this with the opinion that a new reader, going over the output of the ‘great’ days of 1946 and that of 1959, would consider more of the 1959 stories really good. Theodore Sturgeon once attacked it from the other side with what has become known as Sturgeon’s Law: ‘Ninety per cent of everything is crud.’ The remaining ten per cent is what we call ‘good’ and ten per cent of that—one story in a hundred—is ‘really good’.
terrene adj. 2 1951 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Stories Nov. 117/1 In the July 1942 issue of Astounding SCIENCE FICTION Jack Williamson, using the pen name ‘Will Stewart’, introduced the concept of ‘seetee’—contraterrene matter—to science fiction in the novelette ‘Collision Orbit.’ Seetee, as is now pretty generally known, is matter electrically opposite to normal or terrene matter, with a nucleus of neutrons and negative protons surrounded by shells of positrons. In contact with normal matter, the opposites are attracted to each other, react, and neutralize each other with total conversion of their mass to energy.
time opera n. [1956 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Science Fiction May 144/2 From a writer whom we have come to recognize as the past-mistress of swashbuckling color and action on a galactic scale, we have a true novel which expresses her own personality in a way her space-and-time-opera never has. We have a plausible, understandable future created almost without gimmicks.]
time-slip n. 1958 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Science Fiction Jan. 150/1 The scientist…has undergone a ‘time slip’ which has him answering questions before they're asked.
timestream n. 1944 P. S. Miller As Never Was in Astounding Science-Fiction Jan. 34/1 As any schoolchild learns, the time shuttler who goes into the past introduces an alien variable into the spacio-temporal matrix at the instant when he emerges. The time stream forks, an alternative universe is born in which his visit is given its proper place, and when he returns it will be to a future level in the new world which he has created. His own universe is forever barred to him.
universe n. 1970 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Analog Science Fiction Apr. 162/1 The great ‘Lensman’ series here in Astounding showed us another such universe, one facet at a time. Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ stories…James Schmitz’s of the Hub worlds and A. Bertram Chandler’s of the galactic Rim…Fred Saberhagen’s chronicles of the Berserker machines…we all have our favorites. The greatest in recent years has probably been ‘Cordwainer Smith’s’ wonderful construction, but one of the richest and most vivid is the universe in which Poul Anderson sets many of his stories.
universe n. 1970 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Apr. 162/1 Such stories fall into two main categories, both well represented in science fiction. There is the string-of-beads pattern—more or less independent exploits of the same character in the manner of Tom Swift or Captain Future. We also have the more thoughtfully constructed series in which the storyteller dips into a fully worked-out imaginary universe. My first memories of this kind of science-fictional universe are Edmond Hamilton’s galactic adventure yarns for Weird Tales.
universe n. 1970 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Apr. 170/1 Some day I hope some fan or fan organization—maybe the vigorous Australian Science Fiction Association in Chandler’s home territory—will put together a list of the Rim or ‘Expansion’ stories (since they are not all laid in the Rim Worlds but are all in a consistent future universe—or universes) and try to organize them in some kind of sequence.
Vernean adj. 1958 P. S. Miller Reference Library in Astounding Science Fiction Nov. 143/1 The story begins with Vernean attention to equations and explanation.