Newest Quotations
| Word | Quotation | Date Added |
| astronavigation n. | 2001 Last Hero 157 ‘We ought to get him home as soon as possible. What’s the usual direction? “Second star to the left and straight on ’til morning”?’ ‘I think that may very probably be the stupidest piece of astronavigation ever suggested.’ | 2024-12-10 |
| planet hop n. | 2011 Mars Armor Forged 87 Lou checked the mechanisms on his short, flexible, twin-tipped skis, wondering if he’d still have his chops when he landed on Mars for the Games. Olympic trials normally took place about two months prior to Day One. This time the selections had to be made the winter before the planet hop, which was coming up in the launch window of June 2037. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 2 | 2004 The Starscape Project 52 ‘Say, you boys had anybody else take off in an interstellar bird tonight?’ ‘Just one, about a half an hour ago: a little planet hopper.’ | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 2 | 1959 The Silent Partners in Nebula Science Fiction (#41) June 33 The new stuff you added to this ship converted it from an ordinary planet hopper to a star ship. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 2 | 1980 The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1981) xviii. 107 The star buggy was a small ship—a totally misnamed one in fact, because the one thing it couldn’t manage was interstellar distances. Basically it was a sporty planet hopper dolled up to look like something it wasn’t. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 2 | 1974 The Hounds of Skaith xxv. 165 Stark was in a…planet-hopper on his way to pick up Tuchvar and the hounds. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 2 | 1981 The Sea Above in Amazing Stories Sept. 73 Listen, Scrymmers, I sent, this hoardable you see in my hand is a weapon. There was no time for a lecture on the Lazmatic’s capabilities. Instead I demonstrated by frying the baby booties off Scuttlebutt’s shell, which had about the same effect as stealing somebody's custom planet-hopper. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 2 | 2011 Shadow Games (Star Wars) vi. 44 The Nova’s Heart was equipped with a secondary shuttle—a prettier, glossier counterpart to the stubby little planet-hopper they’d arrived in. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 2 | 1992 Flare Star viii. 135 You might get there a little short of fuel, Jason…. This ship’s strictly a planet hopper. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 1 | 1936 He Who Shrank in Amazing Stories Aug. 37/2 Everything passed smoothly and without mishap. I was becoming an experienced ‘planet hopper’. Its gravity caught me in an unrelenting grip, and I let my limbs rush downward first in their long curve, to land with a slight jar on solid earth far below. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 1 | 1952 Precedent in New Worlds (#15) May 39 You’ve killed the stowaway. You’ve crushed the nightmare of a whole crew—that some travel-happy bum will endanger their lives. All the bright boys who think it smart to steal a ride. All the footloose men, the romantic kids, the would-be planet hoppers. All of them will think of you—and stay at home. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 1 | 1953 Blood on My Jets in Rocket Stories July 16/2 And, as we’d gone our separate ways, so our ways of thinking had changed. Thorsten—well, he’d taken his choice, and some day I might have to go into the Belt and do something about it, but Mort’s attitude hurt. He didn’t have any respect for me—he couldn’t have, for a man who’d resigned his commission and become a planet-hopper. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 1 | 1963 Judgement on Janus xiv. 140 The suit was old! No modern planet hopper, no matter how out of funds, would entrust his life to a suit from that far in the past. | 2024-12-09 |
| planet-hopper n. 1 | 1995 Star Wars: Jedi Dawn (Lost Jedi Adventure Game Books) 31 There’s no way they could be looking for you! You’re just a planet-hopper, going about his business. Stay calm! | 2024-12-09 |
| fanarchist n. | [1942 Zenith (#5) Apr. 105 To Hell with mutual admiration societies for the glorification of science fiction—with cliques insisting that science fiction is anything more than entertainment…. WE support FANARCHY—a free association of fans who reserve the right to heave half-bricks at the ju-ju of Science Fiction and refuse to heed the dictator of any insane societies.] | 2024-12-04 |
| cyberpunk n. 2 | 1986 Viewpoint in Asimov’s Science Fiction 51/2 Naming the Cyberpunks: A Rough Chronology…. The cyberpunks themselves started using the terms Neo Classicists (the formal morph) or (among themselves) Mirrorshades Writers. | 2024-12-03 |
| hopepunk n. | 2018 Seize the Future in Library Journal 1 Nov. 18 ‘I’m seeing a real hunger for positive stories…stories that focus on the hopeful; depict and encourage progressive, positive outcomes.’…He thinks it goes beyond the ‘hopepunk’ movement. | 2024-12-02 |
| hopepunk n. | 2018 Hopepunk, the Latest Storytelling Trend, Is All About Weaponized Optimism in Vox 27 Dec. Depending on who you ask, hopepunk is as much a mood and a spirit as a definable literary movement, a narrative message of ‘keep fighting, no matter what.’ | 2024-12-02 |
| hopepunk n. | 2017 Post on Tumblr 27 July Hopepunk says that genuinely and sincerely caring about something, anything, requires bravery and strength. Hopepunk isn’t ever about submission or acceptance: It’s about standing up and fighting for what you believe in. It’s about standing up for other people. It’s about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts. Going to political protests is hopepunk. Calling your senators is hopepunk. But crying is also hopepunk, because crying means you still have feelings, and feelings are how you know you’re alive. | 2024-12-02 |
| hopepunk n. | 2021 Interview in SciFiNow 21 Jan. Hopepunk is therefore a sub-genre of science fiction united by a shared impulse to tell stories that free the soul from darkness. That necessitates situating the characters and action in a dark world and then directing the drama and activity towards the light. Whether they reach it or not is part of the story. | 2024-12-02 |
| hopepunk n. | 2022 Make Your Own Luck in New Scientist 15 Jan. 28/1 What I’m Reading[:] The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers—a brilliant piece of ‘hopepunk’ science fiction that portrays an optimistic vision of the future. | 2024-12-02 |
| hopepunk n. | 2023 The Great Transition in Locus Magazine 12 Sept. (electronic ed.) (review) This debut novel from Nick Fuller Googins, whose previous fictional outings have occurred in The Paris Review and other literary journals, is a cli-fi, hopepunk romp jampacked with ideas, energy, attitude, and action. Its themes are urgent and vital, and all the parts of its realtime future hang together cohesively and ingeniously. | 2024-12-02 |
| hopepunk n. | 2017 Post on Tumblr 27 July The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on. | 2024-12-02 |
| grimdark n. | 2019 Path of Exile in PC Gamer Jan. 92/2 The expansion before that had players playing Pokémon, but with a suitable grimdark twist: Capturing different rare monsters to use like baking ingredients in a blood offering in order to modify or create different pieces of gear. | 2024-12-02 |
| grimdark n. | 2022 Guest Reference Library in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Jan.–Feb. 200/1 Readers who enjoy stories about complicated mothers will find much to chew on in this powerful tale, as will readers of grimdark who derive their joy from watching the growth and blurring of genre to shine the light on emotion. | 2024-12-02 |
| matter transmitter n. | 1931 Monsters of Mars in Astounding Stories Apr. 7/1 This the Martians told us, and said they would set up a matter transmitter and receiver on Mars and would aid and instruct us so that we could set up a similar transmitter and receiver here. Then part of us could be flashed out to Mars as radio vibrations by the transmitter, and in moments would have flashed across the gulf to the red planet and would be transformed back from radio vibrations to matter-vibrations by the receiver awaiting us there! | 2024-12-02 |
| matter transmitter n. | 1998 Critical Mass in Science Fiction Chronicle June 39/1 (review of John Barnes’ Earth Made of Glass) The human race is rapidly reuniting after a diaspora that left colonies of genuinely ethnic diversity as well as a number of artificially created ones scattered through the universe. The discovery of the springer, a matter transmitter, has made it possible to reunite these diverse worlds. | 2024-12-02 |
| matter transmitter n. | 1956 Host Age in New Worlds Science Fiction Jan. 7 The matter transmitter, isn’t it? You scan the molecular structure of the thing you want to ship and pipe it down a radio beam. | 2024-11-30 |
| matter transmitter n. | 1946 The Disciplinary Circuit in Thrilling Wonder Stories Jan. 44/1 This very vessel, however, was used by Sten Rendell when the first human colonists came in it to Alphin III, bringing with them the matter transmitter which enabled civilization to enter upon and occupy the planet on which you stand. | 2024-11-30 |
| spy ray n. | 1932 The Electron Flame in Wonder Stories Quarterly Fall 86/1 The Comet Chamber is said to be the most difficult room in the System to reach. Its walls are heavily insulated against sound and spy-rays: an elaborate system of automatic alarms and a score of trusted sentries complete the protection of the grave secrets that are discussed at the massive semi-circular table in the center of its floor. | 2024-11-26 |
| vibroblade n. | 1958 School For Assassins in Amazing Stories Jan. 33/1 He had been taught such things as…how to scale a glass-smooth wall, how to use a vibro-blade and a disruptor. | 2024-11-26 |
| holovision n. | 1966 You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet in TV Guide (1967 TV Set Buyers’ Guide section) 17–23 Sept. (unpaged) Elaborately costumed actors and actresses, almost life-size, appear so real that you feel you actually could touch them. The missing dimension has been added to televison—the dimension of depth…. Holovision is still in the ‘we-think-we-can’ stage. [Ibid.] With the exception of three-dimensional holovision, all of these functions of your future TV center are possible today. | 2024-11-22 |
| stealthed adj. | 2014 Willful Child xii. 171 Head down to Deck Twenty and rig up a stealthed antimatter bomb and put it inside a cargo crate. | 2024-11-19 |
| stealthed adj. | 1994 Martian Childhood in Asimov’s Science Fiction Feb. 150 The boulder car was stealthed, covered by a hollowed-out rock shell that was thermally regulated to stay the same temperature as its surroundings. | 2024-11-19 |
| stealthed adj. | 2004 Plague of Life in Asimov’s Science Fiction Mar. 30 Our friends with the police are already setting up watchers, waiting for a stealthed multirotor. | 2024-11-19 |
| stealthed adj. | 2021 Invisible Sun 369 It’s a really big bomb in a stealthed re-entry capsule. | 2024-11-19 |
| stealthed adj. | 1989 Buying Time 64 Their craft is completely stealthed; no one can track them to the rock by radar. [Ibid. 116] Our Midnight Special is a fully stealthed, radarproof nuclear submarine. | 2024-11-19 |
| stealthed adj. | 1983 Manna in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact June 135/2 The United States Aerospace Force has a number of stealthed objects in a sixty-degree-inclination geosynch orbit. | 2024-11-19 |
| cloak v. | 2017 Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard v. 108 The Romulans, the last time Starfleet had seen them, had perfected their ability to ‘cloak’ their ships from Starfleet detection devices. No doubt in the intervening years their technology had continued to improve. | 2024-11-19 |
| cloaking device n. | 2016 The Gate to Futures Past 372 ‘They appeared in the passenger section with the one called Barac.’ A cloaking device, with some form of personal flightgear? There’d be time for answers once the situation was contained. | 2024-11-19 |
| Tellurian adj. | 1929 Paradox in Amazing Stories Quarterly Summer 386/2 The time-wave, that mysterious force which travels through time, the fourth dimension, will be discovered in the year 2806, just after the second terrible Martio-Tellurian War. | 2024-11-08 |
| viewphone n. | 2012 Remembering Mandy in Strange Worlds 59 A block away he saw a ViewPhone booth and stepped inside…. A moment later a pixyish looking brunette, another Carol, appeared on the screen. | 2024-11-05 |
| viewphone n. | 1983 Hearts Do Not in Eyes Shine in Asimov's Science Fiction Oct. 34 She asked Mary to keep an eye on forex trading and went to her office to use the view[-]phone. | 2024-11-05 |
| viewphone n. | 1994 Down on the 01 Level in Science Fiction Age May 49/2 Back safely on the Top Level in my conapt, I checked first on Oberon with the viewphone. She was not back. | 2024-11-05 |
| viewphone n. | 1972 Other Days, Other Eyes in Amazing Science Fiction May 21/2 He had begun to consider putting his notes away again when the wall viewphone chimed. [Ibid. 22/2] He was bitterly disappointed…because a strange girl with silver lips had not looked at him and developed a ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ syndrome. Across a crowded viewphone channel. | 2024-11-05 |
| sword and sorcery n. | [1955 Readin’ and Writhin’ in Science Fiction Quarterly Aug. 28/2 (review of E. R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros) It tells of a wonderful war between two nations of Viking-like barbarians, in resounding Shakespearean prose, with swordplay and sorcery.] | 2024-11-01 |
| sword and sorcery n. | [1951 Book Reviews in Astounding Science Fiction Apr. 137/2 (review of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Conqueror) A must for those who—like your reviewer—revel in a sanguinary combination of sorcery, skulduggery, and swordplay.] | 2024-10-30 |
| sword and sorcery n. | 1953 Daily Oklahoman (Sunday Magazine section) 13 Dec. 18/3 (review of L. Sprague de Camp’s The Tritonian Ring) (headline) Sword and Sorcery in the Bronze Age…. Swordplay and sorcery take the stage in this latest de Camp book. Set in a prehistoric bronze-age fantasy world, it recounts the adventures of Prince Vakar of Lorsk as he goes forth on a private odyssey in search of the Tritonian ring, which even the gods fear. | 2024-10-30 |
| three-D n. | 1948 School for the Stars in Astounding Science Fiction Oct. 110/1 You must have loaned your three-di projector, too. All you’ve got here is the micrograph projector for your dirty two-dimensional scenes. | 2024-10-29 |
| tri-D n. | 1979 Titan in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact Feb. ix. 133/2 ‘Haven’t you ever seen The Sea Witch?’ ‘I don’t know. Has it been on the treedie?’ ‘It’s a flat movie starring good ol’ John Wayne.’ | 2024-10-29 |
| neo n. | [1954 The Observation Ward in Psychotic (#9) Mar. (unpaged) I was going to let it go as a neo failing and wait until the second issue showed the promised improvement.] | 2024-10-09 |
| neo n. | 1954 He Writ a Pome in Imagination Apr. 128/2 (letter) It’s a good idea to have a con for neo and non-fen. Sure it’s a good idea to have the actifen out of the thing a little more. But you will admit that the neos and nons are not the supporters of sf. | 2024-10-09 |
| neo n. | 1998 Opuntia (#37.1) Apr. 5/2 Welcome warmly a neo into SF fandom. | 2024-10-09 |
| neo n. | 1992 KatzenJammer in Folly (#17) 18 June 2/1 When I was a neo, BNFs tried all forms of fanac. | 2024-10-09 |
| space burn n. | 1937 Raider of the Spaceways in Weird Tales July 64/1 Arn paled beneath his space-burn. | 2024-09-25 |
| space burn n. | 1942 Q Ship of Space in Amazing Stories Jan. 210/1 He was a tall, black-haired, thick-shouldered fellow with a face that bore the leathery black wrinkles of space burn. | 2024-09-25 |
| space burn n. | 1946 For the Public in Astounding Science Fiction Dec. 80/2 He’s got a socialite playboy for a medical officer. He couldn’t tell the difference between simple acne and malignant space burn. | 2024-09-25 |
| space burn n. | 1957 25 Words or Less in Fantastic Universe Apr. 82/1 Do you know how many colonists have died up there? Did you ever hear of space-burn? Space-blindness? Do you know what a meteor strike can do to a man’s lungs? | 2024-09-25 |
| space burn n. | 1964 The HoneyEarthers in Amazing Stories Aug. iii. 20/2 ‘With such brisk blue eyes and such dark-gold tan, you could never seem old to anyone!’…‘That’s spaceburn. Dad used to be a spacer, and spaceburn never fades.’ | 2024-09-25 |
| space burn n. | 1956 Plague Ship ii. 23 His face under its thick layer of space burn was that of an adventurer. | 2024-09-25 |
| space burn n. | 2011 Up Against It xxvii. 359 ‘I only caught a glimpse. A young man, I think. A big white guy with a spaceburned face.’…Ian Carmichael. He was big, white, and blond, a biker with a spaceburn. | 2024-09-25 |
| space burn n. | 2008 Britney’s Labyrinth in Analog Science Fiction & Fact June 14/2 On the vidscreen, Rudolph had a face to mach his nose…cheeks showing the mottled beginnings of lesions that would probably someday need the ministrations of an oncologist. Spaceburn? Or too many days on ozone-damaged sections of Earth? | 2024-09-25 |
| jump gate n. | 2017 Defiant 243 She has control of the reconstructed jump gate, which allows for travel to the inner empire. [Ibid. 262] Precisely at 0900 Maclintock ordered us to break dock, and we did, proceeding in an orderly manner to the jump gate ring for a trip into the unknown. | 2024-09-20 |
| visiplate n. | 1976 The Tame One in Galileo Sept. 33/2 She brought her wrist up and fingernailed the chron on. The tiny visiplate lit up with the time in Galactic Standard. | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 2020 Saints of Salvation 491 We have wormholes and portals stretching almost halfway around the galaxy…. We are not and never will be ‘caged in’. Stop thinking in pre-spaceflight terms. | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 1942 Fugitive from Vanguard in Astounding Science-Fiction Jan. 81/2 A mirrored panel slid aside and revealed the lighted interior of the stowaway’s lodgings with a magical effect, as if a four-dimensional portal had opened among the trees into another region of space. | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 1945 Shining Land in Weird Tales May 38/1 Long ago, my people…first went from our world into yours through the Portal my ancestors had learned to open. They first peopled your Earth! [Ibid. 40/2] Let them go back through the Portal to their own world! | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 1969 All Our Yesterdays (Star Trek episode) (transcription) He did not come with us. He was sent through the time portal to another period in history much later than this one. If I am to find him, there is only one possible avenue. Zarabeth, will you show me where the time portal is? | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 1984 Book Reviews in Amazing Stories Sept. 23/1 Nuel is working on a mysterious project that seems to open on alternate realities, but there’s a hitch, and Nuel volunteers to go through the portal and try to fix it from the other side. Once there, he finds a world much like Earth. | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 1957 Combination Calamitous in Authentic Science Fiction Jan. 57 I walked to one side of the machine and stared at the wall directly behind the frame. It was a normal wall and I should have seen it from the front. Instead, I was looking at something right out of this world. There were trees and a rolling plain…. I forgot them as I saw the people.…. ‘Can they see us?’ ‘Only if they look directly at the portal.’ ‘And we can get to them?’ ‘Certainly.… More current is needed in ratio to the mass of the object passing through the portal.’ | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 1934 Land of the Lost in Astounding Stories Jan. 137/1 Portrero, still stumbling, still clutching vainly in air, pitched forward into black shadow and vanished in the nothingness of the dark shaft that was a portal to a waiting world. | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 1940 Tree on Hill in Polaris Sept. i. 5 I went nearer the stone temple, and a huge doorway loomed in front of me. Within that portal were swirling shadows that seemed to dart and leer and try to snatch me inside that awful darkness. I thought I saw three flaming eyes in the shifting void of a doorway, and I screamed with mortal fear. In that noisome depth, I knew, lurked utter destruction—a living hell even worse than death. I screamed again. The vision faded. | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 1990 Themes & Variations in Thrust (#35) Winter 7/2 The girl is still able to pass through a portal in a painted rock into the spirit world. | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 1970 Crimson Witch in Fantastic Oct. 12/2 Is this the portal to my own world? [Ibid. 13/2] I have to go there. It is there that the portal to my own time line exists. Without it, I must remain here forever. | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 1931 City of Singing Flame in Wonder Stories July 206/1 If I stepped between the columns, could I return to the human sphere by a reversal of my precipitation therefrom? And if so, by what inconceivable beings from foreign time and space had the columns and boulders been established as the portals of a gateway between two worlds? | 2024-09-20 |
| portal n. | 2009 Spellbent (2010) i. 23 How in the name of cold sweat and stomach cramps had we created an intradimensional portal from a simple storm-calling chant? After a couple of beats, my brain shifted out of shock and into more practical questions: Where did the portal lead? I had no clue, but by the look of it, it sure wasn't a beachside resort. | 2024-09-20 |
| cyborgization n. | 1979 Cyborgs in P. Nicholls Science Fiction Encyclopedia 151/2 The functional cyborg made his first significant appearance in ‘Scanners Live in Vain’ (1950) by Cordwainer Smith. Here cyborgization is designed for space flight, and this particular theme dominates stories of both functional and adaptive cyborgs. [Ibid.] Cyborgization in connection with space travel involves cyborg-spaceship stories such as [etc.]. | 2024-09-18 |
| Earthan adj. | 1953 Eyes of Dromu in Famous Fantastic Mysteries Feb. 103/1 And there is the old Earthan suspicion, my friend. We of Dromu are of the solar system, and we have found out what we could about other forms of life in that system. | 2024-09-16 |
| Earthan adj. | 1954 Space Puppet v. 42 Well, she was tall, and dark, and I guess she’d be classed as attractive, in a powerful, intense sort of way. Had a ‘presence’ if you know what I mean. She reckoned to be Earthan, but I wouldn’t like to be sure about that. You can’t always tell. | 2024-09-16 |
| Earthan adj. | 1959 Our Saucer Vacation in Fantastic Universe Dec. 42/1 Earth was as exciting as a basketful of baby grunch, of course. We first surveyed it all from about one-half tentacle of radius, then began to make closer approaches. We would observe Earthan tests of nuclear weapons—the bulletin board back at Center kept us pretty well posted on the when and where of things like that. | 2024-09-16 |
| Earthan adj. | 2014 Lost Planet ii. 18 ‘What’s the capital of Earth?’ ‘Earth?’ ‘Good lords! Earth, your origin planet. You’re Earthan, Chase—come on, you’ve gotta know that.’ | 2024-09-16 |
| Earthan adj. | 2018 Record of a Spaceborn Few (2019) 141 Isabel opened her mouth, about to detail the issue—this one had to do with Earthen historical eras, which was always a thorny thing to delineate—but she took one look at Tamsin and changed her mind. [Ibid. 332] Imagine if the Earthen builders had known their descendants would choose to remain in space, that this transitory life satisfied them, even when empty ground lay within reach. What would the human species look like today were that the case? | 2024-09-16 |
| Earthan n. | 1929 Vision of Education: Being an Imaginary Verbatim Report of the First Interplanetary Conference 23 Friends, Earthans and our visitors from other planets, this is a great occasion. | 2024-09-16 |
| Earthan n. | 1959 Our Saucer Vacation in Fantastic Universe Dec. 42/2 These Earthans looked like arthritic heptapussies with only four tentacles, the other three either cropped off (ugh!) or twined in a permanent tight knot at the tops of their bodies (double ugh!). When Sis first discovered that the Earthans had bones inside their tentacles she actually took sick! | 2024-09-16 |
| Earthan n. | 1987 Primitives in Amazing Stories Feb. 142 ‘Art,’ he chided. ‘Speak Earthan.’ In my anger, I’d slipped back into Naabutari speech. In fact, when I calmed down a bit it surprised me how much it made my throat hurt to use the polyglot we jokingly called Earthan. I’d gotten unused to it. My own language had become the alien tongue. | 2024-09-16 |
| Earthan n. | 1944 Mongrovian Caravan in Thrilling Wonder Stories Fall 72/2 A moment more, the earthans waited, listening, when Halley called suddenly, ‘Look-out, here they come!’ | 2024-09-16 |
| Earthan n. | 1972 Day Dark, Night Bright in R. Hoskins Infinity Four 124 The bakery’s trays were only half-filled and there were few Earthans about—sort of odd. | 2024-09-16 |
| Earthan n. | 2014 Lost Planet vii. 86 Like I was telling you before, he’s a Lyolian. A Khatra’s a Fleet vehicle. He can’t be from the Fleet, because even though they call it the Federal Fleet, it’s pretty much run by Earth and only Earthans are allowed to be soldiers. He’s probably a smuggler. | 2024-09-16 |
| replicant n. 1 | 2012 The Hunting 57 As far as Strindberg was concerned they weren’t even human. These were just replicants. And like all lab rats, their feelings were not a matter for his concern. | 2024-09-11 |
| widescreen baroque n. | 1964 Introduction in C. L. Harness The Paradox Men v. These pure science fiction novels may be categorized as Widescreen Baroque. They like a wide screen, with space and possibly time travel as props, and at least the whole solar system as their setting. | 2024-09-04 |
| widescreen baroque n. | 2008 Laser Fodder in Interzone (#215) Apr. 62/1 (review) Children of Dune…was a shamelessly deadweight misadventure, trashing the messianic appeal of Frank Herbert’s enduring legacy, and replacing David Lynch’s widescreen baroque of dreamscape horrors with feeble CGI. | 2024-09-04 |
| widescreen baroque n. | 2000 On Books in Asimov’s Science Fiction May 137/1 I’m trying to summon up an image of the first expertly crafted book of wild cosmic adventure you encountered that opened up your eyes to what a widescreen baroque canvas the galaxy represented. Mixing pathos and beauty with huggermugger and derring-do in various proportions, these novels are frequently bildungsromans, sending youthful protagonists out to learn just that they and the universe are made of. | 2024-09-04 |
| widescreen baroque n. | 1996 High Culture in New Statesman 26 July 478/2 (review of Iain M. Banks’s Excession) But for those who have already made The Culture’s acquaintance, it bulges with pleasures both great and small. Prominent among the former is the widescreen baroque delight, which only grand-scale space-opera can provide, of a tale played out on the biggest stage the human mind can conceive. Among the latter are the lip-smacking glee with which Banks depicts the roaringly hideous species known simply as The Affront; and another clutch of the wonderful names he gives his Culture spacecraft, including Honest Mistake, Serious Callers Only, Meatfucker and Anticipation Of A New Lover’s Arrival. | 2024-09-04 |
| widescreen baroque n. | 2014 in ‘Utopia is a Way of Saying We Could do Better’: Iain M. Banks & Kim Stanley Robinson in Conversation in Foundation (Winter) I love doing the space opera; I love widescreen, baroque space opera, to quote the admirable Mr Aldiss. I’ve always loved that phrase. I would like to do it a bit more. There is still Culture stuff to come. There're still areas I haven't explored. I'd like to make it more widescreen baroque. Not for me the kitchen-sink drama, Micky Boy, no-no! | 2024-09-04 |
| widescreen baroque n. | 2015 Science Fiction & the Imperial Audience in Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (vol. 26, iss, 1) 9 When empires are most robust the peripheries communicate and exchange goods directly with the core…. Then comes the inevitable senescence—the center cannot hold, peripheries revolt, factionalism and fanaticism erupt, infrastructure decays, external enemies penetrate, peripheral customs become more interesting than central ones. This is history on a blockbuster scale—widescreen baroque melodrama. | 2024-09-04 |
| widescreen baroque n. | 1973 Billion Year Spree x. 247 The latter novel [sc. Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination] in particular is a definitive statement in Wide Screen Baroque—a kind of free-wheeling interplanetary adventure, full of brilliant scenery, dramatic scenes, and a joyous taking for granted of the unlikely. Bester writes with natty panache. [Ibid. xi. 314] [Kurt Vonnegut’s] Sirens of Titan, in particular, is a cascade of absurd invention, its hither-thither technique a sophisticated pinch from the Wide Screen Baroque school. | 2024-09-04 |
| subjunctivity n. | 1981 Interfaces in Foundation (#22) June (review) 98 Humanitarian concern? Yes, despite wide variations in background and subjunctivity, these are stories about people. | 2024-09-04 |
| planet dweller n. | [1895 Mercia, The Astronomer Royal iii. 92 Some serious internal changes are taking place within the body of our sun. Great caverns, about one-fourth of the sun’s diameter have discovered themselves in his centre. We are not the only planet-dwellers suffering from cold at this time, for a difference will be experienced throughout the whole of the solar system.] | 2024-08-29 |
| grounder n. | [1950 The Shadow Men in Startling Stories Jan. 42/2 They were floaters, people who had no home but a house in the sky…. The bitter feeling between the floaters and the grounders, already intense, grew sharper and deadlier with the passing years. Everyone took sides. Some who had been grounders bought floaters and joined the restless throngs in the sky.] | 2024-08-28 |
| grounder n. | 1952 The Martian Way in Galaxy Magazine Nov. 35/2 They wouldn’t like it. The Grounders, I mean. They’re so used to their own lousy little world, they wouldn’t appreciate what it’s like to float and look down on Saturn. | 2024-08-28 |