Ian Watson

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Ian Watson

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13 Quotations from Ian Watson

alternative history n. 1989 I. Watson World Renews Itself in M. Bishop Nebula Awards 23 (1989) 8 This time, however, the distancing devices are the fantasy elements of hexes and effective magic and the SF paraphernalia of alternative history. Seventh Son is the fascinating first volume of an other-history saga of the American frontier, flawed only by the inclusion of an emigré William Blake as Taleswapper.
cyberpunkish adj. 1989 I. Watson World Renews Itself in M. Bishop Nebula Awards 23 9 Pat Cadigan’s first novel, Mindplayers, explores the fast track of the brain-wired consciousness industry in hardbitten, wisecracking, cyberpunkish style.
homeworld n. 1990 I. Watson Flies of Memory i. 61 Perhaps they could willfully ‘forget’ the distance from their home world.
inhuman n. 1973 I. Watson The Embedding (1977) 196 ‘Surely the Sp’thra can’t still be in Nevada!’ ‘Oh but they can…. The inhumans can!’
multiverse n. 1 1987 I. Watson Milk of Knowledge in Aboriginal Science Fiction Sept.–Oct. 60/2 Our intrusion threatens you with all possible world-lines, which is where we dwell: in the multiverse, not in your single universe. You tune all other existences out, bar one. We can make the world jump tracks. We can juxtapose.
nearside n. 1997 I. Watson Jewels in Angel's Wing in M. Ashley Random House Book of Science Fiction Stories 274 I remembered the approach of the aliens: two great spacefaring beings like grotesque, beautiful, ornamental fish a kilometer long, two kilometers high, half a kilometer wide, wrapped round with convoluted sparkling sails and veils, shimmering with powers and forces that we couldn’t fathom. All contact with Earth from our transmitter on Nearside was disrupted, lost.
planet-wide adv. 2002 I. Watson Speaker for the Wooden Sea in Asimov’s Science Fiction Mar. 127 EMP will have propagated through circuits planet-wide, frying a lot of Lill-2 in the process.
starship n. 1990 I. Watson Flies of Memory i. 45 A country run by mysticism might launch Armageddon against an alien starship if they believed it held the Antichrist.
superscience n. 1990 I. Watson Flies of Memory in Asimov’s Science Fiction Sept. 34 People of the super[-]science tomorrow could easily be illiterate.
time war n. 1987 I. Watson Milk of Knowledge in Aboriginal Science Fiction Sept.–Oct. 59/2 It is the fate of history itself—and therefore of the present—at the hands of whoever goes in…. A sort of wildly dangerous time-war is going on.
uptime adj. 1990 I. Watson In the Upper Cretaceous in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Aug. 7 Cretaceous landscape wasn’t too dissimilar to that of uptime Britain, except perhaps that there was so much of it; that everything was landscape.
Vegan n. 1 1980 I. Watson Gardens of Delight xxiv. 159 How much more would we regret the passing of Canopians, Vegans, Aldebarians or whomever, with all the insights they had gained?
Vegan n. 1 2002 I. Watson Speaker for Wooden Sea in Asimov’s Science Fiction Mar. 118 Not that there haven’t been two or three cargo shuttles from starships visiting our spaceport. The last of these, arriving a week ago, brought me a surprise package. The woman who delivered it, a Vegan—in the stellar rather than the dietary sense—did not know anything about me other than that I was obviously from offworld, and she was amazed that I had settled here.