Newest Quotations
| Word | Quotation | Date Added |
| realspace n. | 1952 Suicide’s Grave in Astounding Science Fiction Apr. 42/2 He’d been in too big a hurry to plan a normal flight, drop into real space at the rim of the Solar System and decelerate across to Earth. He had no reason to hurry. But he set the automatic pilot for an emergency course that would save him no more than a day—to drop into space near the orbit of Terra at a real velocity of zero. | 2026-10-14 |
| realspace n. | [1942 Second Stage Lensmen in Astounding Science Fiction Feb. 98/1 ‘We made it!’ Kinnison shouted in relief when he had assured himself that they had emerged into ’real’ space inside the Second Galaxy, only a few parsecs away from their point of departure.] | 2026-10-14 |
| realspace n. | [1940 Lancelot Biggs: Master Navigator in Fantastic Adventures May 37/1 Then, suddenly, we were literally scorching through space again! Real space—not that phoney hyperstuff of the vacuole.] | 2026-10-14 |
| realspace n. | 1972 Open Up Dem Purly Gates in WSFA Journal (#80) May F2 The pilot answered, ‘We’re not in realspace—all those clouds are just aether drifts.’ I sat, and mused and mulled mentally for the rest of the trip, which wasn’t long. Figured out by myself, if everything out of realspace is intangible, then I was also intangible, and everything here, even though intangible, was mutually tangible—even though it was all intangible. The sky pilot let me off at the pearly gates as I thought he would, and took off to pick up another soul. | 2026-10-13 |
| gravitically adv. | 1949 Astrophobos in Shangri-La (#11) Mar. 11 The world was strangely unstable, just as this little asteroid was gravitically unstable, and it held little security—any threat to that security—even Leib’s babblings—were felt as serious threats. | 2026-09-30 |
| gravitically adv. | [1958 Big Sam Was My Friend in Science Fiction Adventures Mar. 106/2 He did have the escape plate there, which whisks him anti-gravitically over the heads of the animals should there be trouble.] | 2026-09-30 |
| farside n. | 1949–50 Nobody Wants Utopia! in Science-Fantasy Review Winter 4/1 He liked to play with a ukelele while thinking, sleep in the sun make corny puns, and generally enjoy life both on Earth and as a spaceman. He ended up by marrying, in Luna Farside Observatory, a statuesque blonde from Norway. | 2026-09-22 |
| earthfall n. | 1997 Ask Arlen in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Sept. 21/1 He took careful notes of each description of the earthfall, paying special attention to where the correspondent claimed to be at the time of the sighting. If he was lucky he would be able to use the information to triangulate and fix the landing site. | 2026-09-17 |
| earthfall n. | 1965 The Long Result (1970) iii. 22 There was always a chance of an error developing in the remote controls which took over the visiting ships at the edge of the stratosphere and guided them to a safe and precise Earthfall. | 2026-09-17 |
| earthfall n. | 1943 in Fan-Tods (#4) Fall 9 I hope not too many astrogators failed to make earthfall because of the excessively stupid error in physics on which I based a supposedly learned discussion in the June issue. | 2026-09-17 |
| cyborgized adj. | 1987 Playing to High Hopes in Philadelphia Inquirer (Entertainment/Art section) 26 July 1-I/1 This is Peter Weller talking…. The man who is RoboCop—the cyborgized law enforcer with the metallic sci-fi suit and the soul of a dead Detroit police officer—is pacing his hotel room over Central Park. | 2026-09-11 |
| cyborgized adj. | 2013 A Map of Mercury in G. Dozois The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 27 (2014) 291 ‘Were you…like this?’ ‘Cyborgized, you mean? No, not at all. A few simple implants, but they don’t really count.’ [ellipsis in orig.] | 2026-09-11 |
| cyborgization n. | 2016 The Borg As Techno-Totalitarian Transhumanists in K. S. Decker & J. T. Eberl The Ultimate Star Trek & Philosophy 88 In accordance with Borg philosophy, life will be enhanced and prolonged through both genetic engineering and cyborgization: body-improving prosthetic technology will replace deteriorating body parts. | 2026-09-10 |
| cyborging n. | 1980 A Dragon in the Man in J. Baen Destinies Feb.–Mar. 314 My parents forced cyborging into the dragonman awareness from a very young age. | 2026-09-10 |
| cyborging n. | 1968 A Specter is Haunting Texas in Galaxy Aug. 115/2 I concluded that cyborging involves no direct control of the nervous system, but is merely a means of chemical and hypnotic supervision, the command plugs transmitting both an audio background of tranquilizing propaganda and also the orders of a Texan overseer observing the work site directly or by 3D. | 2026-09-10 |
| cyborged adj. | 1968 A Specter is Haunting Texas in Galaxy Aug. 74/2 He may have thought he was symbolizing the strength of the working, or rather cyborged, class. [Ibid. 115/2] The orders…of a cyborged Mex strawboss, in turn overseen by a Texan, who in this fashion control as many as a dozen work-gangs. | 2026-09-10 |
| cyborg v. | 2014 Vladimir Chong Chooses to Die in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Sept. 44/1 We could freeze you…until such time as you wish to be awakened…. You could be cyborged. | 2026-09-10 |
| cyborged adj. | 2004 My Mother, Dancing in Asimov’s Science Fiction June 11 The creations are cyborged replicators, programmed for self-awareness. | 2026-09-10 |
| Bradburian adj. | 1951 A LynnHavention Diary in Quandry (#8) Mar. 9 We then recorded a brief and rather Bradburian fantasy by Bill Entrekin, with Bill and his wife as the male and female leads, and myself doing the narration. | 2026-09-02 |
| Bradburian adj. | 1992 Interview in G. F. Sander Serling xi. 167 I think that when he [sc. Rod Serling] was around Bradbury, he felt Bradbury to be the greater celebrity. I think that a lot of Bradbury was used in The Twilight Zone. A lot of his most unique and most Bradburian ideas were common property. | 2026-09-02 |
| meat puppet n. 1 | 1989 Cyber-Slang in SpaceGamer Oct.–Nov. 7/1 Meat Puppet A person who rents their body out for various types of ‘work’, their consciousness either suppressed or in cyberspace, the body controlled By another person or Computer [capitalization sic]. | 2026-08-31 |
| meat puppet n. 1 | 2023 Red Goblin (#5) June (unpaged) That little….that little offcut and the cosplay Spider-Man just threw me out of my own damn meat puppet! | 2026-08-31 |
| meat puppet n. 1 | 2011 A Good Man Goes to War (Doctor Who episode) 4 June in Doctor Who Magazine (#599) Feb 2024 63/2 ‘This base belongs to the Monks—and they don’t need weapons.’ Strax replied: ‘Because they are meat puppets—designed to respond to the simplest commands.’ | 2026-08-31 |
| meat puppet n. 1 | 1997 Freeware (1998) iv. 86 For all I know, you’re a moldie-run meat puppet playing the part of the innocent oaf. | 2026-08-31 |
| meat puppet n. 1 | 2006 I, Row-Boat in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007) 2 ‘Don’t drop those meat puppets in our waters,’ the reef warned. | 2026-08-31 |
| meat puppet n. 1 | 2018 Mission Accomplished in Analog Science Fiction & Fact May–June 137/2 Our kind are either dying off, getting put in solitary on sedition charges, or being replaced by meat puppets. I think we’re some of the last holdouts. | 2026-08-31 |
| meat puppet n. 1 | 1984 Neuromancer 147 Where’s the meat puppet? | 2026-08-31 |
| meat puppet n. 1 | 2008 From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled in Asimov’s Science Fiction Feb. 14 You must remain a meat puppet for the duration of this mission. | 2026-08-31 |
| meat puppet n. 2 | 1990 Heart Gravel in Interzone (#35) May 60/2 (review of Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland) A clan of Thanatoids or living dead also marks time in Vineland, mirroring the belatedness of his condition, the only time kept being the tick-tock ageing of his meat-puppet body. | 2026-08-30 |
| star cruiser n. | 1928 Crashing Suns in Weird Tales Aug. 209/1 Though the globe-men have gravity-screen ships, like our own old-fashioned ones, in which they can travel from planet to planet, they have no such star-cruisers as this one of ours. | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 2002 Ailoura in M. H. Greenberg et al. Once Upon a Galaxy 88 Owning a strangelet was akin to owning a pet black hole, and just as useful for various purposes, such as powering star cruisers. | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 2009 The Invasion in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Apr. 68/1 If you do not reply, I will dispatch several Planetpulverizer-class star cruisers to your world so my tentacle-picked captains can receive your answer in person. | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 2017 The Legends of Luke Skywalker (Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi) 79 I was back in space, a disembodied consciousness observing the battle from somewhere in high orbit, the all-powerful Imperial fleet drifting beneath me, an army of giants being nipped at by underpowered rebel star cruisers and their swarming fighters. | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 1979 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1981) xxxi. 194 A million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers [were] poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command. | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 1929 Outside the Universe in Weird Tales July 57/1 Its forces would be preparing to meet that attack, and from the central sun of Canopus the alarm would be flashing out across our universe from star to star…. And even while that warning flashed, the great star-cruisers of the Interstellar Patrol would be gathering in answer. | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 1952 Blood’s a Rover in Astounding Science Fiction May 30/1 A star cruiser on operations was never dull and there were books to read and reports to write…. The star cruiser worked efficiently and effectively in support of Administration units in the Sirius area, sliding through the blackness of space like some leviathan of the deep. | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 1965 Marque & Reprisal in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Feb. 52/2 As far as the world was concerned, she had gone out to check on the loading of the star cruiser. | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 1989 in Interzone (#29) May–June 66/1 (Review of Carolyn See’s Golden Days) I don’t get this feeling from most of the American sf and fantasy I read—after all a collapsium-plated star -cruiser is a collapsium-plated star-cruiser in Poughkeepsie or in Peckham. Sf is, like rock music, a common frame of reference between the USA and the UK. | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 1976 Star Wars (Revised fourth draft) 23 Well, my little friend, you’ve got something jammed in here real good…were you on a star-cruiser or a…. [ellipses in orig.] | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 1942 Gears for Nemesis in Startling Stories Jan. 106/2 The intricate propulsive mechanisms of the interstellar craft…could hurl the star cruiser across the hyper-dimensional shortcuts of space, traversing light-years of distance in months’ time. | 2026-08-28 |
| star cruiser n. | 1995 Brightness Reef (2000) 9 Our ancestors may have been sinners, in coming to breed on this taboo planet, but they flew a mighty star-cruiser dodging Institute patrols and dangerous Zang and Izmunuti’s carbon storms to get here. Sinners or not, they must have been awfully brave and skilled to do all that. | 2026-08-28 |
| meat puppet n. 2 | [1900 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz vi. 68 ‘He is my dog, Toto,’ answered Dorothy. ‘Is he made of tin, or stuffed?’ asked the Lion. ‘Neither. He’s a—a—a meat dog,’ said the girl.] | 2026-08-28 |
| Campbellish adj. | 1940 Letter in Spaceways (#12) Apr. 23 I must take my hat off to Editor Campbell for answering Sam Moskowitz. ...Now Mr. Campbell, you must admit that everybody wants smooth edges, better paper, better artists, and non-hacky stories. Now, you have given us the first, and to a certain extent the last. But your stories are as Sam said, too Campbellish—and typed. | 2026-08-26 |
| Campbellish adj. | 1952 Club House in Amazing Stories Dec. 155/1 Third story has a Campbellish title, ‘Aftermath From Angle Two’, by Al Leverenz, the official Onlooker of the editorial staff. The blurb for this one is, ‘Sometimes you can’t write a blurb...’ And after reading it I agree with him. It’s a strange mood piece. | 2026-08-26 |
| Campbellish adj. | 1989 Universal Principles of Operation from ‘World Beyond the Hill’ in N.Y. Review of Science Fiction Aug. 6/1 Campbell and Hamilton had been fellow members of a New York area SF writers circle. After he became editor, Campbell asked most of the writers he knew, including Hamilton, to contribute stories to his magazine. And Hamilton was glad to dash one off for him. But then Campbell did the Campbellish thing. He pointed out flaws in the story and asked for a rewrite. Ed Hamilton was an old pro accustomed to turning out first-draft copy, to repeating his plots, and to selling everything that he wrote. So he was quite taken aback by this request. He fixed the story, but he didn’t send any more to Campbell. | 2026-08-26 |
| Campbellish adj. | 1943 Letter in Acolyte (#5) Fall 31 I’m afraid I can’t agree with Bloch’s nomination of Conjure Wife for the top of all top positions. It was plenty good, but it was also plenty good and Campbellish. Therefore it may last for a day or for a decade, depending on the tastes of America in the coming years. | 2026-08-26 |
| Campbellish adj. | 1947 Letter in Canadian Fandom (#12) July 17/1 Very entertaining. I like the informal, personal type of editorial, and not the type Ashley had in Nova, nor do I like the Campbellish stuff, even though some Fen say it’s as good as any textbook. | 2026-08-26 |
| Campbellian adj. | 1943 in Fan Dango Sept. 8 As a matter of fact, I believe that an impartial survey will show that Mary [sc. Gnaedinger] gives us far greater variety—in any case, I find the Campbellian tales highly monotonous as a steady diet. | 2026-08-26 |
| meat puppet n. 2 | [1972 On the Impact of the Computer on Society in Science (vol. 176, no. 4035) 12 May 610 The possibility that the computer will, one way or another, demonstrate that, in the inimitable phrase of one of my esteemed colleagues [sc. Marvin Minsky], ‘the brain is merely a meat machine’ is one that engages academicians, industrialists, and journalists in the here and now. How has the computer contributed to bringing about this very sad state of affairs? ] | 2026-08-26 |
| alternative history n. | 1970 Some Thoughts on Language in Science Fiction in Speculation (#26) May 20 In science fiction we are likely to be stuck with homo insipiens and his toys, games and tantrums for a few decades, provided SF survives that long. Some refreshment may be gained by the presentation of alternative-Earths, alternative-histories, variations of the theme of humanity. | 2026-08-24 |
| alternative history n. | 2014 To Vax or Not to Vax in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Nov. 7/1 The owners of the gift shop on the Oregon Shakespeare Festival campus will probably continue to stock books proclaiming Shakespeare did not write Shakepeare’s plays, so long as there remains a market for such books. Yet, swarming alternative histories not withstanding, I remain hopeful for the future. | 2026-08-24 |
| genre science fiction n. | 2018 The Reference Library in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Jan.–Feb. 194/2 Prior to the emergence of genre science fiction in the late 1920s, Australia had its own share of what we might consider ‘proto-SF’…. Genre SF emerged in American pulp magazines during the late 1920s and early 1930s. | 2026-08-12 |
| genre science fiction n. | 1961 The Wailing Wall in Void (#27) Oct. 21 Anyway, back to Vonnegut. ‘Report on the Barnhouse Effect’ is a story of a psi-type weapon, and its non-appearance in ASTOUNDING (olav hasholem) is probably due to two factors: 1) Jno. C. Campbell Jr. was then (1950) still high on Dianetics; 2) Kurt Vonnegut Jr. can do simple arithmetic as well as most men, better than some, and COLLIER’S fiction rates started at $850... Read today by someone used to the complexities of genre science fiction, it seems not only slick but flat: plot, situations, characters alike appear fatiguingly over-familiar. | 2026-08-12 |
| dystopic adj. | 1983 Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text iv. 147 The story of a society dominated by a rapacious ‘Big Brother’ who controls everybody’s movements by means of omni-present cameras, and keeps them timid with specially manufactured gas as he collects his oppressive taxes. A different SF coding was laid over these by director Pennant Roberts, who recast the dystopic themes visually and dramatically. | 2026-08-10 |
| dystopic adj. | 1972 The Problem of Sympathy in M. Moorcock New Worlds 4 12 It is in touches like these—parodies and extensions of the new brutalities, the mental and psychic curtailments of liberty practised on the aged, the socially inferior, the helpless—which reveal that a change of emphasis has not simply accompanies but motivated Story’s shift to this kind of dystopic subject matter. | 2026-08-10 |
| dystopian adj. | 1969 Authorgraphs in Worlds of If Apr. 119/1 Most of the best modern science fiction belongs to the dystopian and anti-Utopian school, the school of the early Wells, and Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984. They see nothing good coming out of progress; even if science solves our problems, it destroys us in the process. | 2026-08-10 |
| dystopic adj. | 2016 Introduction in Afrofuturism 2.0 xvi DETROPIA’s dystopic present anticipates tomorrow’s urban crises, while illuminating black change agents and environmentalists who envision a new city beyond existing racial paradigms. | 2026-08-10 |
| dystopic adj. | 1962 in Fanac (#85) 7 Feb. 4 Amis then quotes Bradbury (from ‘Fahrenheit 451’) on ear-plug radios, now a reality—the same ref he had made in ‘New Maps of Hell’—and makes other references to stf, mostly dystopic ones. | 2026-08-10 |
| mad scientist n. | [1871 Daily Patriot (Washington, D.C.) 21 Aug. 2/3 We find twenty mad scientists airing their crotchets of differential expansion, strength in weakness, and the like. This is not testimony of experts at all, but vagary of eccentrics. ] | 2026-08-02 |
| WKF n. | 1953 Letter in Pendulum Mar. 16 Clarkson is the only fan that I know of who became a WKF by just acting as a publicity manager. | 2026-07-30 |
| WKF n. | [1942 The Editors Speak in Voice of the Imagi-Nation (#21) mid-Feb. (unpaged) Here’s who U’re seeing: 1 thru 9, Anglofans: TED CARNELL, All Out Fan; HARRY TURNER, ToWs artist, publisher the novacious femme Zenith; ERIK NEEDHAM, general fan;…SID BIRCHBY, w.k. fan; FRANK ARNOLD, author ‘Mecanica’, ex-official the Assn; [etc.]. ] | 2026-07-30 |
| Tuckerized adj. | 1964 Logorrhea Apr. 2 Dick [i.e. Richard E. Geis] is, by the way, the author of Pajama Party, the Tuckerized novel that had Breen and Boardman wondering a few months ago. | 2026-07-23 |
| Tuckerize v. | 1963 in Fanac (#95) Autumn (unpaged) But LESBO LODGE, despite its reverse Tuckerizing of various LASFans, has to take a back seat to PAJAMA PARTY by ‘Peggy Swenson’. This is one MZB’s Checklist would dismiss as ‘scv’; it details the adventures of five luscious femmes in a no-boys-allowed weekend party, in & out of bed, bath & pool—femmes named Shirley Burbee, Ruth Johnson, Joan Eney, Caroline Lee; and the 5th, Myra Holt, has a house in Westwood and a boyfriend named Eric Moomaw. | 2026-07-23 |
| Tuckerization n. | 1961 Operation Flipback 15 Dec. in Ipso Facto (#4) (Jan. 1962) 23-6 Adrienne Martine’s Tombemonde is not yet completely formed, but it, like Stanbery’s Coventry, is a Tuckerization*, and I have an avatar there. [footnote] *Tuckerization: using people you knew (or just their names) as characters in a story. Or can you think of a better term? | 2026-07-23 |
| future history n. | [1930 White Lily in Amazing Stories Quarterly Winter 29/1 The ensign and the president were studying his face as attentively as if it were a map of the whole world’s future history.] | 2026-07-22 |
| future history n. | 1940 in Thrilling Wonder Stories May 123 [Edmond Hamilton…is the future’s Number 1 historian. He has compiled the geographies, the habitats, the colonizations, the conquests and the wars of all the nine planets with encyclopedialike thoroughness. And whenever he wants a plot for a story he merely thumbs through his fifty cubic feet of reference notes, finds a likely subject, and taps out a corking yarn….] The most ambitious piece of writing I have ever undertaken is one that will never be published. It is my ‘History of the Solar System’, a non-fiction work to which I have been slowly adding for some time. I began it as a simple chronology…. I’ve tried to stick to this framework in my stories since then. It covers only the main tides of future history, the greater crises and changes. | 2026-07-22 |
| 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. | 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |