Newest Quotations
| Word | Quotation | Date Added |
| time opera n. | 1948 Among the Magazines in Fantasy Review Aug.–Sept. 19/2 Emmett McDowell’s ‘Citadel of the Green Death’ is fast-action space opera of the sort beloved by Planet fans; ‘Valkyrie from the Void’ a Basil Wells ‘novelet of stellar savagery’ is more in the Tarzan tradition, and James Blish’s ‘Against the Stone Beasts’ is a time-travel tale of war between a winged race and creatures of negative matter—you might call it time-opera. | 2026-07-16 |
| thud and blunder n. | [1866 Arkansas State Gazette 24 Feb. 2/6 A startling melodrama of the ‘thud and blunder’ sort, has been brought out at the Chestnut street theater in Philadelphia, and the Press thus describes the denoument:…‘The long-lost mother finds her long-lost son, and the blue and red flames burst forth from the trap doors.’] | 2026-07-14 |
| thud and blunder n. | 1940 Letter in Satellite Feb. 2 Stories should be of the more thoughtful kind with perhaps an odd ‘thud-and-blunder’ thrown in now and again to satisfy the more juvenile readers. | 2026-07-14 |
| sellsword n. | 2000 A Storm of Swords 49 Ser Addam gazed at the sellsword with distaste. ‘Lord Tywin is stubborn where his blood is concerned.’ [Ibid. 245] He was a Lannister of Casterly Rock, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard; no sellsword would make him scream. | 2026-07-10 |
| sellsword n. | 1969 Kothar Barbarian Swordsman 14 One such warrior was Kothar, cast up by the sea in the northlands of his world, a sellsword and a mercenary, a wencher after the women of his day, a freebooter and a thief. | 2026-07-10 |
| sellsword n. | 1979 Lord of Lightning in Dark Fantasy (#12) Apr. 13 I have been called a wizard by some…yet I have been called an ignorant fool and a sellsword by wizards. So, take your pick. | 2026-07-10 |
| sellsword n. | 1986 Artifact of Evil 168 A wandering sellsword only thinks of putting down roots, never does it. | 2026-07-10 |
| sellsword n. | 2007 The Quest for the Trilogy 259 I’m a Librarian, he thought desperately. Not an adventurer. Not a sellsword. Not one of those heroes. | 2026-07-10 |
| sellsword n. | 2016 A Blade of Black Steel (2017) 158 From our first victory any Cobalt sellsword with brains in their hat has to have known they could sell me out to an agent of the Empire for crazy coin, but nobody’s tried it. | 2026-07-10 |
| sellsword n. | 2023 The Lesser Evil (The Witcher) (unpaged) ‘You must kill her.’ ‘I’m no sellsword, Stregobor. Only kill monsters for gold, not humans.’ | 2026-07-10 |
| sellsword n. | 1918 Manufacturers Record (Baltimore) 24 Oct. 69/2 Their sell-sword Steuben was the guiding spirit of the Revolution. | 2026-07-10 |
| sellsword n. | 1973 When the Green Star Calls xiv. 107 I don't think we could pass you off as a wandering sell-sword. Mercenaries are generally grizzled veterans, not fifteen-year-old boys. | 2026-07-10 |
| sellsword n. | 1950 Temptress of the Time Flow in Marvel Science Stories Nov. 92/2 The time the stinging slap released the other that was inside Trenton: the come-day-go-day, God-made-Sunday sell-sword that they had made out of him in the psychiatric wards back in the Interrogation Building. | 2026-07-10 |
| SF/F/H n. | [1973 Letter 12 Nov. in WSFA Journal (#83) (Apr. 1974) L-14/1 I admire Richard Delap for the work he put into his 1972 SF, F, & H Film round-up. ] | 2026-07-08 |
| SF/F n. | 1963 Letter in Cry (#170) Oct. 31 Have yaall [sic] read the novelet in the FaSF annish…. ‘They Don’t Make Life Like They Used To’ by Alfie Bester? A crying shame. If you’ve read it, that is. It was the craziest piece of sf/f I have EVER read, without exception. | 2026-07-08 |
| SF/F n. | 1954 Kaymar Trader (#81) Mar. (unpaged) (advt.) The following pocket sized books are for those who may read something in addition to SF&F. The titles include tales of Mystery, Mayhem, [etc.]... Also are included some SF-F & Weird. | 2026-07-08 |
| science fantasy n. 3 | 2010 Introduction in The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2010 Edition 11 I call four stories ‘science fantasy’, a nod to settings which combine purely fantastic notions with at least some nod to a far future or offworld setting, or with a technological grounding. | 2026-07-06 |
| science fantasy n. 3 | 1940 Uncrowned Masters in Fantascience Digest Jan.–Feb. 15/2 There is one man who is an acknowledged master in the field of weird fiction, but who goes unheralded in the science fiction field. That man is Clark Ashton Smith. Always recognized as a ‘master’ through his works in WEIRD TALES, he has not been directly associated with science fiction despite the fact that almost half of his published works show a definite leaning in the direction of science-fantasy. Smith is a master of words. He knows many and knows how to use them properly. Probably you would not be impressed if I simply recounted to you many of the masterful science-fantasies he has had printed in WEIRD TALES. | 2026-07-06 |
| post-cyberpunk adj. | 2022 New Scientist 12 Feb. 36/1 (review of Neal Stephenson’s Fall; or, Dodge in Hell) Speculative science fiction looking into the near future of the US. Like a more emotionally healthy, post-cyberpunk Succession. | 2026-07-02 |
| post-cyberpunk adj. | 1988 Paperback Inferno (British Science Fiction Association) (#75) Dec. 1988–Jan. 1989 8/1 (review of Michael Weaver’s Mercedes Nights) The other Dick-like feature of the novel is a group of drug-crazed characters who gravitate about Arthur Horstmeyer, whose weird paranoia/conspiracy theory concerning 'vacuum fish' recalls Dick himself. Unfortunately, Horstmeyer has no depth and serves merely to give this novel of the 80s a feel of the 60s and 70s; references to LSD, Pink Floyd and David Bowie abound. Far from being the forward-looking post-cyberpunk novel one expects, MERCEDES NIGHTS is ultimately backward looking in both its style and content. | 2026-07-02 |
| low fantasy n. | 1986 Critical Terms for Science Fiction & Fantasy 52 High fantasy, fantasy set in a fully imagined Secondary World, according to Boyer and Zahorski, as opposed to Low Fantasy which concerns supernatural intrusions into the ‘real’ world. | 2026-07-01 |
| low fantasy n. | [1945 Rain Before Seven (title) Rain Before Seven: A Low Fantasy.] | 2026-07-01 |
| low fantasy n. | 1979 Foreword in M. B. Tymn et al. Fantasy Literature ix Low fantasy, usually set in a rational, physically familiar world, challenges us with the coexistence of the nonrational. | 2026-07-01 |
| low fantasy n. | 1973 Letter to Shelton L. Root, Jr. 20 Feb. in J. S. Jacobs Lloyd Alexander: A Critical Biography (1978) (Ed.D. dissertation, University of Georgia) 575 High fantasy—as opposed, indeed, to low fantasy (’high’ and ‘low’ not necessarily being value-judgment words): I think it’s analogous to high and low comedy…. In low fantasy, the interest lies in the cleverness, creativeness, of the devices themselves; the ‘furniture’, as you might say. Or the gimmicks. High fantasy can certainly have creative, imaginative devices and furniture, but the real thrust has to do not with gimmickry but with basic human relations and attitudes, including the author’s. | 2026-07-01 |
| low fantasy n. | 2003 Introduction to a Multivariate Approach to Analyzing the Fantasmatic in N.Y. Review of Science Fiction Nov. 13/2 One might add ‘low’ fantasy as a type of ‘What if?’ fiction: E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It takes place in a realistically depicted Edwardian England, but its heroes meet a ‘psammead’, a creature that has the power to grant wishes. | 2026-07-01 |
| low fantasy n. | 2026 Science Fiction & Fantasy in Library Journal Feb. (electronic ed.) (review of A. S. Tamaki’s The Book of Fallen Leaves) Tamaki’s debut epic fantasy immerses readers in a reimagined feudal Japan…. The low-fantasy world is built with enough detail to feel real. | 2026-07-01 |
| low fantasy n. | 2015 The Hand of the King in Starburst (#410) Mar. 18 The ASOIAF [sc. A Song of Ice and Fire] series can be categorised as ‘low fantasy’—magic is a factor in the world that Martin has created but ultimately it doesn’t drive it. What Martin has managed to achieve through low-fantasy is the creation of a fictional world that is not only appealing because it is so complex and exciting but also because it is so convincing and genuine. | 2026-07-01 |
| non-genre adj. | 1973 in Norstrilian News Jan. 2 This seems a particularly good idea not only for those of us unable to see all the magazines, but in particular with so many stories now appearing in original anthologies that may not be widely available, or such places as non-genre fiction magazines. | 2026-06-30 |
| non-genre adj. | 2010 Mutant Popcorn in Interzone (#227) Mar.–Apr. 62/1 Even more than usual with these incursions into sf by non-genre writers, it’s anxious not to activate the science-fictional way of thinking that rejects the insurmountable. | 2026-06-30 |
| non-genre adj. | 1979 Life on Other Worlds in P. Nicholls Science Fiction Encyclopedia 356/1 The only full descriptions of other worlds undertaken by non-genre writers before the Second World War were in works inspired by the religious or mystical imagination. | 2026-06-30 |
| science fiction n. 2 | 1903 Evening Herald (Dublin) 4 Mar. 2/7 You read Jules Verne’s delightful ‘Thirty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,’ and you realized….that the British-born explorer was merely a bad translation of the work of a master of science-fiction. | 2026-06-27 |
| mecha n. 2 | 1987 WesterCon XXXX (convention program book) 44/2 The final night will showcase 20 years of robots and robotic mecha TV shows. | 2026-06-24 |
| high fantasy n. | 1970 High Fantasy—And Lots of It in Vector (#56) Summer 6/2 (review) High fantasy—and lots of it…. Next comes another Ballantine paperback, The High Place, which is the story of Florian de Puysange, a descendant of both Manuel and Jurgen (both of whom make brief appearances as ghosts). This is Edmund Wilson's favourite Cabell. It is certainly marvellous, and is high fantasy all the way through. | 2026-06-22 |
| spacegirl n. | 1933 Buck Rogers (syndicated comic strip) (Locket of Madness (series I, strip 151)) 12 Feb. A two-eyed being from space—just like the space girl we captured! | 2026-06-18 |
| spacegirl n. | 1990 Star Trek TV Episodes 67/68/69/70 in TV Zone (#15) Feb. 28/2 It [sc. S03E11 ‘Wink of an Eye’ (1968)] is one of the third season’s Kirk-gets-alien-space-girl episodes. In this case, the girl in question is Deela and she has chosen Kirk to help her repopulate her species. | 2026-06-18 |
| spacegirl n. | 2011 (title) Zita the Spacegirl. | 2026-06-18 |
| spacegirl n. | 1960 Letter in New Worlds Science Fiction July 125 The B.E.M.; the incredibly hardy spacegirl—nearly naked in galactic space while mere man progressed to her ‘rescue’ in space suits; the constant theme of space war; [etc.]. | 2026-06-18 |
| spacegirl n. | 2019 Baobab Tree in Shuri (#2) Jan. (unpaged) I—I’m actually going into space! I’m in space! Whoooooooo, Shuri the space girl!!! Finally! WOOOOOHOOOOO! | 2026-06-18 |
| spacegirl n. | 1971 To Vanishing Point vi. 45 Aislinn looked at him, a puzzled line between her eyes. Hazel believed that the spacegirl truly did not understand why John took offence at certain words, or that John should be ill at ease when Hazel was praised. But still Aislinn said, ‘I place my trust in the three of you.’ | 2026-06-18 |
| spacegirl n. | 1954 Giants from Outer Space in Imagination May 19/2 So they’d paired off already? So much for his quick dream of marrying a spacegirl... | 2026-06-18 |
| spacegirl n. | 1953 Wise Guy in Science Stories Oct. 52/2 Hawk made with a normal reaction comment: ‘Who made this damned walk. And what in hell for?’ ‘Men didn’t make it.’ ‘You believe in spacegirls. They made it?’ ‘I wish they had,’ I said. | 2026-06-18 |
| spacegirl n. | 1937 S O S in Space in Astounding Stories Jan. 72/1 P. S. You left out one little detail of my description—I’m bow-legged! Now this ‘charming’ space girl with the red mop—she’d be tall and gawky and bony, with a sour, chinless face, big, flabby feet, and a voice like a scratchy phonograph record. I know the type too well. Probably as lovable as a Uranian Cactus Rat. | 2026-06-18 |
| spacegirl n. | 1940 Planet Stories Fall 33 (editorial blurb for Robert Moore Williams’s Quest on Io) Radium-seeking Andy Horn and his talking honey-bear believed they were alone on Jupiter’s bleak satellite. Then out of nowhere dropped the space-girl trailing a fateful comet of piracy and death. | 2026-06-18 |
| disaster adj. | [1948 The Bronx Jeer in Fantasy Review Aug.–Sept. 4/2 One has only to glance at any part of his [sc. Charles Fort’s] books to see further, as yet unwritten stories practically staring one in the face. For example, looking at random: ‘Wild Talents’—‘With the advantages of practical witchcraft would come criminal enormities.’ Someone will turn that into ‘The Sorcery Shop’ in, say, 1950 Weird Tales. Or this from ‘Lo!’—‘Emissions of arms, the bubbling of faces, at crevices—fire and smoke and a lava of naked beings. Out from a crater, discharges of bare bodies boiled into fantastic formations.’ The seed of an atomic disaster story, or one about the sudden birth of silicoids. ] | 2026-06-16 |
| catastrophe adj. | 1947 Fantasy Advertiser June 31 (advertisement) You’ve been wanting some of these books….WRIGHT: Deluge---E[xcellent condition] (A Terrific Catastrophe Yarn). | 2026-06-16 |
| biopunk n. | 1988 in Thrust (#30) Summer 18/3 (review of Richard Kadrey’s Metrophage) That restrictive but descriptive label applies here: yes, Metrophage is a cyberpunk novel. Actually a better term is ‘biopunk’. Computers and wetware are not Kadrey’s concern here, instead we get a mix of Sterling’s Shapers and designer drugs as the latest vision of what the future is ‘really’ going to be like. | 2026-06-15 |
| biopunk n. | 2024 Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror in Guardian (Saturday Review section) 10 Aug. 53/3 (review of Ian Green’s Extremeophile) The bestselling fantasy author makes his SF debut with a compelling biopunk thriller set in a grimly believable near-future London ravaged by climate change. Charlie, half of the punk band Horse Theory, is a biohacker who provides genetic tweaks for paying customers and friends. | 2026-06-15 |
| time binding n. | 1941 Denvention Daze in Southern Star (#41) Dec. 3 He [sc. Robert A. Heinlein] first spoke of what made s-f fans different from other people; why it was that the world was divided into two parts, s-f readers and non-s-f readers. He spoke of that which distinguishes man from the lower animals, and he called it time-binding, which is the ability to think of the past and the future and relate them to the present. He believed that s-f readers had greater powers of time-binding, this being related to their great interest in the future. | 2026-06-15 |
| spacewoman n. | 2011 Count to a Trillion 105 So no voluptuous green-skinned spacewomen in silvery space-bikinis? | 2026-06-11 |
| neo n. | 2025 in Tightbeam (#366) Mar. 5 (review of Sam Maggs’s The Fangirl‘s Guide to the Galaxy) Written by an associate editor for The Mary Sue, this well-designed, light-hearted volume is an excellent introduction to fandom for young women—as well as any neo, really. | 2026-06-08 |
| neo n. | 2008 Letter in Southern Fandom Confederation Bulletin (vol. 9, no. 2) Sept. 25/2 Thanks for giving this born again neo a chance to learn a little more about (current) fandom. | 2026-06-08 |
| neo n. | 1952 The Top Level in Oopsla! (#6) 29 July 4 I looked at those miserable specimens of fankind that milled around me. The vile hucksters and dirty pro‘s. The struggling neofans like myself, and the beanie-phans—those lost souls who were neither neo, nor BNF. | 2026-06-08 |
| anime n. | 1983 Philcon Guide 18–20 Nov. (unpaged) (convention schedule) 5:00*THIS IS ANIME—Educ. Explanations of some of the more popular Japanese animated series. | 2026-06-04 |
| anime n. | 2013 Ohio Fangirls Embark on a Perilous Quest in N.Y. Times 29 Mar. 3/1 The show…celebrates the universe of anime, comics, science fiction, manga, and Hollywood effects spectaculars…. At an Ohio anime convention…two fans take on the guises of their fictional heroines: Danya…is resplendent in a black bodysuit, cowboy boots and purple wig; Honey…is a pink-haired pixie in fishnets and platform shoes. | 2026-06-04 |
| anime n. | 2005 Thought Experiments in Asimov’s Science Fiction Dec. 21/2 A visit to your local comic shop will reveal…busts of Captain Picard and The Matrix’s Neo…alongside busty robot-girls from anime franchises and muscular fantasy heroes. | 2026-06-04 |
| comset n. | 1988 2061 Odyssey Three xlviii. 220 He punched a code sequence on his comset, waited for the ‘Ready’ light to flash, and said: ‘Ganymede Central One Oh Nine—this is van. Do you receive?’ | 2026-06-03 |
| comset n. | 1992 A Fire Upon the Deep xiv. 95 The commsets from the boat, they really aren’t good enough to call for help? | 2026-06-03 |
| comset n. | 2006 The Empty Chair (Star Trek) vii. 112 How like him to think of me, Arrhae thought, and touched the control that would connect her to the old man’s private commset. | 2026-06-03 |
| comset n. | 2016 Prometheus & the Dragon viii. 62 He always wore a comset and would talk to Mia. | 2026-06-03 |
| comset n. | 1950 Barrier of Dread in Future July–Aug. 77/1 He made his instructions specific, assigned units and unit directors, answered startled questions for several hours, and, finally, flicked off the last open line on his com set, his mind finally free of the tiny doubt that had plagued it. | 2026-06-03 |
| comset n. | 1952 Special Delivery in Imagination Jan. x. 10/1 In the left front pocket was the comset. He fumbled it out and standing naked in the gloomy dawn, whispered: ‘Parr. There is an Oholo in my hotel.’ After a pause the comset issued the tinny question: ‘Is he aware of you?’ The voice filtering through the small diaphram [sic] was without personality. [Ibid. 58/1] An hour from now—give me one hour—you’re to contact the Fleet on my comset and tell them the Oholos are going to destroy their Advanceship right before their eyes. | 2026-06-03 |
| comset n. | 1958 Seller’s Market in Astounding Science Fiction Dec. 102/2 Corder reached down to a shelf under the dash, and took out a small hand comset. | 2026-06-03 |
| comset n. | 1973 A Bridle For Pegasus in Analog Science Fiction / Science Fact July 25/1 Glaring, Gillings icily banged at his desk comset and demanded to be put through to ID. [Ibid. 29/1] Though the comset was not color, Daffyd was certain that Gillings’ face changed shade. | 2026-06-03 |
| telescreen n. | 1968 Where the Subbs Go in Worlds of If May 17/1 Ralse reached out and activated a forward telescreen. An image of the Beam leaped to life. | 2026-06-03 |
| telescreen n. | 1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four i. 8 Behind Winston’s back the telescreen was still babbling away about big iron and the overfulfillment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. | 2026-06-03 |
| fannish adj. | 1942 Voice of the Imagi-Nation Aug. 3 BEB [sc. Barbara E Bovard] is fannish as they come & if her proposed airaid warden activitys don’t take up too much time, & she doesnt join the army or navy, I’m confident BEB will be pressing into the Top 20 brackets of actifans bfor long. [everything sic]. | 2026-06-01 |
| fannish adj. | 1942 Past, Present & Future in Fan Editor & Publisher Spring 3 Facing Me across the table of time and tide there sits an ominous, almost threatening array of duties and trials that will have me bound and shackled by the time that this necessarily dry material is consumed unavidly by soul-soaring eyes of fannish discrimination. | 2026-06-01 |
| Worldcon n. | 1941 in Voice of the Imagi-Nation (#19) 7 But individuals in England & Australia, for instance, have supported the WORLD cons by publicity & membership & proxy-participation. | 2026-05-29 |
| Worldcon n. | 2026 The State of the Union in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Jan.–Feb. 5/1 I want to talk…a little about this year’s WorldCon in Seattle. | 2026-05-29 |
| unfannish adj. | 2005 Letter in Vegas Fandom Weekly (#50) 27 Oct. 13/1 Contrary to what you might believe, I'm not against the fannish way. I’m against the idea (which seems terribly unfannish to me) that there’s only one way to be a fan. | 2026-05-28 |
| unfannish adj. | 2024 Editorial Comment in Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation Spring Are Worldcons becoming un-fannish?… [A]fter all with the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon we…have just seen a Worldcon being bought and paid for in the name of national soft power…. [S]ome…felt that the Worldcon was taken out of the hands of China’s grass root SF fans, and taken over by largely state-funded sponsor organisations who literally bought the Worldcon. | 2026-05-28 |
| unfannish adj. | 1942 Web’s Wanderings in Zenith (#5) Apr. 88 Apart from Genus Homo, which I'd been reading industriously on the 11-hour night journey from Aberdeen, I hadn’t looked at a stf story for months. Such exhibitions of unfannish behaviour can pass unnoticed in the wilds of Scotland, where men are men and have hair on their chests. | 2026-05-28 |
| unfannish adj. | 1985 Ted White—Giant Among Fans in Aussiecon Two (Convention handbook, 43rd Worldcon) 20/1 He also made me listen to his huge collection of records and tapes at top volume, but that’s another story, having to do with his having been a jazz critic and unfannish stuff like that. | 2026-05-28 |
| fanfic n. | 1966 Helmuth (Boston in ’67 Committee) 15 Apr. 2 With BoSFS [sc. the Boston Science Fiction Society] adding continuity to the already-existing college groups, Boston fandom is already making itself known, in such magazines as The Twilight Zine, Famous Fantasy Films, Fan-Fic and the MITSFS Index to the SF Magazines, 1950–1965. | 2026-05-26 |
| fanfic n. | 2005 Lumos 2005 The Witching Hour in Science Fiction Chronicle Feb.–Mar. 78/1 Librarians, teachers, writers, fanfic authors, slashers, shippers, fanartists, cosplayers, and other assorted, mostly female, geeks gathered for the conference. | 2026-05-26 |
| stfdom n. | ?1941 The Bibliophan (#1) Aug. 3 ‘Neil Bell’ exhibits what the unsympathetic might call ‘crankiness’ in a degree only equalled, in English stfdom, by S.Fowler [sic] Wright. | 2026-05-22 |
| stfdom n. | 1942 Yhos (#5) Winter 5 ‘Old Faithful’ was the only Tremaine story that ever appealed to my emotions as much as ‘Helen O’Loy’, ‘Rust’, ‘Lifeline’, ‘Jay Score’, etc, especially those by Del Rey, stfdom’s first and foremost ‘tear-jerker’. | 2026-05-22 |
| stfandom n. | 1938 Letter in Science Fiction News Letter (#47) 22 Oct. 2 I am prepared to support, with a quotation from one of Michel’s letters, the statement of Master Moskowitz that the CPASF is the Communist Party's representative in stfandom, trying to turns us all into YCs; provided the aforementioned Mister Michel will give his permission. | 2026-05-22 |
| unperson n. | 1975 Letter in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Jan. 159/2 We don’t have to take him into account, because he doesn’t write the kind of science fiction that we think ought to be written, and we have therefore decreed that he is an unperson. | 2026-05-21 |
| big dumb object n. | 1987 The Redemption of Urth in Washington Post (Book World section) 25 Oct. 7/2 The vast spaceship through which Severian hunts and is hunted is…the stock Big Dumb Object of space opera, meant to awe us with eclipse-causing bulk. | 2026-05-20 |
| big dumb object n. | 1992 Works in Interzone (#56) Feb. 63/3 Everything that is juvenile about sf is wrong with this novel—clunkily written, barely characterized, and with a fixation on Big Dumb Objects. | 2026-05-20 |
| big dumb object n. | 2025 The Reference Library in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Nov.–Dec. 206/1 (review of Daryl Gregory’s When We Were Real) These characters…signed up with Canterbury Tours to take a road trip across a landscape filled with seven ‘Impossibles’, which winked into existence a few years ago. Daryl Gregory’s When We Were Real is built around these big dumb objects that seemingly violate the laws of physics. | 2026-05-20 |
| dirtside adv. | 2017 To Guard Against the Dark iii. 29 Strictly speaking, Trade Pact Enforcers had no jurisdiction dirtside. | 2026-05-19 |
| prozine n. | 2014 Living & Working with Poul Anderson in G. Bear & G. Dozois Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson’s Worlds (2016) 122 They planned simultaneous hard and soft cover editions of Brain Wave, whose first half had appeared in a dying prozine. Re-writing was minimal. | 2026-05-19 |
| prozine n. | ?1941 Bonfire (National Fantasy Fan Federation) (vol. 1, no. 3) 5 IDEA #9. Trying to stress to prozine readers the necessity of better Letters to the Editor, with ‘reasons’ for our likes and dislikes. | 2026-05-19 |
| dirtside adv. | 1964 The Diogenes Planet in Worlds of If Nov. 87/2 Behave yourselves dirtside this trip. No tricks, no stealing, no lies. Not on the Diogenes Planet. For the sake of all of us, keep your noses entirely clean. | 2026-05-19 |
| slan n. | 1943 Light Flashes in Light (#129) Winter 2/1 When I received word that I had been accepted into the elite organization of candidates of sundry booby hatches (definition by non-fans, not slans) I kicked my heels to the skies and shouted ‘whoopee’. | 2026-05-18 |
| slan n. | 1952 Books in Science-Fiction Advertiser Sept. 16 Self-styled s-f ‘slans’ reading this will disagree. | 2026-05-18 |
| slan n. | 1946 Grulzak (#1) Oct. 5 Devoted little slan that we are, it was only by crouching down next to the transmitter and bending a steady ear to the speaker that we were able to follow the story at all. | 2026-05-18 |
| slan shack n. | 1943 Matters of Opinion (#13) 13 Mar. (unpaged) The homeland: This is impracticable in fandom now. The nearest thing we have to it is the desire for club rooms, in LA, the Slan Shack proposed for Battle Creek, Decker Indiana, the PSFS apartment, Futurian House, the Flat, etc. | 2026-05-18 |
| Miskatonic adj. | 2021 Rue Morgue Sept.–Oct. 55/1 The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies offers horror history, theory and production classes with regular branches in London, New York, Los Angeles, and online. | 2026-05-14 |
| Miskatonic adj. | 1973 (title of fanzine) The Miskatonic. | 2026-05-14 |
| Miskatonic adj. | [1920 The Picture in the House (manuscript) 2 I had been travelling for some time amongst the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data; and from the remote, devious and problematical nature of my course, had deemed in convenient to employ a bicycle despite the lateness of the season.] | 2026-05-14 |
| Miskatonic adj. | 1941 Out of the Jar in Stirring Science Stories 19 Feb. 103/1 Halpin, at this time, was still under thirty, yet he had become already a recognized authority in this country of that queer borderland of mystic occult study that Churchward, Fort, Lovecraft and the Miskatonic school represent. | 2026-05-14 |
| Miskatonic adj. | 1963 Nottingham Evening Post & News 19 Sept. 12/4 This contains stories mainly by authors under the patronage of his own publishing firm, Arkham House, started primarily to issue the works of Lovecraft and other writers of the so-called ‘Miskatonic’ school. | 2026-05-14 |
| Miskatonic adj. | 1969 Famous Monsters of Filmland (#55) May 11/2 ‘It’s a wise Thing that knows its own mother’ — Old Miskatonic Adage. | 2026-05-14 |
| Miskatonic adj. | 1991 Comic Buyer’s Guide 18 Oct. 26/3 The characters belong to a group known as the Miskatonic Project, named after Lovecraft’s fictional New England school, Miskatonic University. | 2026-05-14 |
| Miskatonic adj. | 1992 H. P. Lovecraft—An Avenue in S. Dwyer Rapid Eye 2 74 If Cthulhu and the Old Ones were Lovecraft’s ACTIVE agents of terror, then the passive agent was surely the Arkham/Dunwich/Miskatonic landscape in which they operated. | 2026-05-14 |
| Miskatonic adj. | 2014 et al. Mythos Expeditions: Trail of Cthulhu (game manual) 28/1 It also adds other significant dates in Miskatonic history and the Mythos during this period. | 2026-05-14 |
| Miskatonic adj. | 2018 Dan’s Papers 25 May 142/3 Congrats to former Dan’s Papers editor Valerie San Filippo upon her receipt of the inaugural Miskatonic Scholarship for horror writers, founded to help a horror writer to attend the Odyssey Writing Workshop, the acclaimed, six-week residential writers training program in Manchester, New Hampshire. | 2026-05-14 |