William Tenn

See first quotes from William Tenn
17 Quotations from William Tenn
Aldebaranian n. 1 | 1948 | Confusion Cargo in Planet Stories Spring 87/2 Footsteps became louder and stopped outside my door. There was the sound of a man stepping over the body. Then the door was flung open and two huge Aldebaranians strode in. They leveled still-throbbing shmobbers at my waist.
Aldebaranian adj. | 1948 | Confusion Cargo in Planet Stories Spring 88/1 Great exploding novas! What do you blastheads think this is—a meeting of the Aldebaranian Benevolent Association?
avian n. | 1948 | Ionian Cycle Aug. 116/2 The saffron sky was obscured by multitudes of black winged avians dipping in short angry circles. A swarm of the avians had surrounded the lifeboat and, as he watched, they lifted it slightly off the ground in the direction of the sea.
avian adj. | 1948 | The Ionian Cycle in Thrilling Wonder Stories Aug. 112/1 Imagine! Another civilization in embryo—avian this time. An avian culture would hardly build cities. But this is a culture where the glider comes before the wheel.
biotech n. | 1954 | Down Among Dead Men in Galaxy Science Fiction June 100/1 I sat staring at them once more, but now I was seeing a different picture. I wasn’t seeing conveyor belts moving slowly along, covered with human tissues and organs on which earnest bio-techs performed their individual tasks. I wasn’t seeing a room filled with dozens of adult male bodies suspended in nutrient solution, each body connected to a conditioning machine which, day and night, clacked out whatever minimum information was necessary for the body to take the place of a man in the bloodiest part of the fighting perimeter. This time, I saw a barracks filled with heroes, many of them in duplicate and triplicate.
deep-space adj. | 1948 | Dud in Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr. 92/2 He won’t take any back talk from even an ex-army guy. It’s a shame we have to have two separate services in the first place. Crazy jurisdictional squabbles in the middle of a war whether a battle is deep-space or planet-based.
grok v. | [1949 | Venus & the Seven Sexes in The Seven Sexes (1963) 177 The humans who make these stereos neglect almost completely the senses of taste, brotch, pressure, and griggo. [Ibid. 183] ‘The only other sex-chief whose whereabouts I griggo,’ the tree-dweller observed, ‘is the new nzred nzredd.’ [Ibid. 188] First, it was necessary for me to teach English to the first Plookh thespians so that they could follow Shlestertrap’s direction. Not very difficult, this: it simply required a short period of concentrated griggoing. [Ibid. 196] The nzred nzredd and twelve specially trained helpers had been traveling everywhere, griggoing English to all Plookhh they met and ordering them to go forth and griggo likewise.]
pseudopod n. | 1948 | Brooklyn Project in Planet Stories Fall 95/1 ‘—a very difficult problem. The question before us: should we shllk or shouldn’t we shllk?’ He was hardly speaking English now; in fact, for some time, he hadn’t been speaking at all. He had been stating his thoughts by slapping one pseudopod against the other—as he always had...
rocketeer n. | 1951 | Venus Is Man's World in Galaxy Science Fiction July 4/1 Of course, every once in a while I would run across a big scene of stars in the void set in the wall; but they were only pictures. Nothing that gave the feel of great empty space like I'd read about in The Boy Rocketeers, no portholes, no visiplates, nothing.
science fantasy n. 4 | 1955 | Of All Possible Worlds Introd. 9 Such a critic would not hesitate to label such luminaries in the field as Sturgeon and Bradbury as ordinary commercial writers who happen to specialize in science fantasy and who, as such, are more interested in a continuous production of material of proved saleability than in the steady derivation from their work of new, unfamiliar, and possibly unpopular creative azimuths.
scout ship n. | 1954 | Project Hush in Galaxy Feb. 103/1 They know we are here—either from watching us land a couple of hours ago or from observing Tom’s scout[-]ship—or they do not know we are here.
Sol III n. | 1954 | Party of the Two Parts in Galaxy Science Fiction Aug. 8/2 The difficulty did not originate on Sol III this time.
spacehound n. | 1948 | Dud in Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr. 90/1 What in all infested outer space does that spacehound mean by talking to me like that?
space-pale adj. | 1948 | Dud in Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr. i. 91/1 I was amazed at the look of worry on his old, space-pale face.
space travel n. | 1972 | Jazz Then, Musicology Now in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May 107/2 I read an article on space travel in some butcher-paper science-fiction magazine…. He…spent almost an hour showing me—with figures and formulae—why space travel was unlikely, impracticable, and very close to being a scientific impossibility.
telescanner n. | 1948 | Ionian Cycle in Thrilling Wonder Stories Aug. iii. 113/2 He swept the beam across the sickly sea and up the coast-line of the continent until he saw a dark spot in the orange ground. Then, nudging the telebeam into the cave, he saw at last the few shimmering crystals that meant precious Q. He tried other apertures here and there, convincing himself that, while there was little enough in any one cave, the planet as a whole possessed more than they required. The sight of all the unobtainable Q on the telescanner screen made Donelli sweat with exasperation.
terrene adj. 2 | 1948 | Ionian Cycle in Thrilling Wonder Stories Aug. 113/1 You are familiar with Quentin’s theory of our galaxy’s origin? That once there were two immense stars which collided—one terrene, the other contra-terrene? That the force of their explosion ripped the essence of space itself and filled it with ricocheting terrene and contra-terrene particles whose recurring violence warped matter out of space to form a galaxy? According to Quentin, the resulting galaxy was composed of terrene stars who are touched every once in a while by contra-terrene particles and go nova.