transhuman adj.

having the qualities or characteristics of transhumans

SF Encyclopedia


  • [1904 The Gentlewoman 9 Jan. 38/1

    When a Frenchman proudly informs you that he is ‘pere de famille’ (the father of a family), he means that he owns a son or a daughter. With undivided sway the newcomer rules, not the nursery (nurseries being unknown in France), but the entire household. He is regarded as a quite transhuman entity, a phenomenon, a small divinity whose humour under no circumstances whatever is to be crossed.]

  • 1967 R. Silverberg Those Who Watch 81 Robert Silverberg

    When you return to my office, you’ll be much more deeply aware of the meaning of this unique and wonderful moment in human and transhuman history.

  • 1967 R. Silverberg Those Who Watch 81 Robert Silverberg

    There were the saucer people: superb specimens of transhuman life, muscular, magnificent, with expressions of ineffable wisdom.

  • 1978 R. C. W. Ettinger Introduction: Transhuman Condition xi R. C. W. Ettinger

    But we must remind ourselves how this challenges the writer. The storyteller must interpret the transhuman condition to humans. He must convince the tired wage earner, relaxing with a beer and baseball, or watching Mary Hartman’s friend drown in a bowl of chicken soup, that superhumans are interesting and sympatico.

  • 1979 G. Rix Review in Science Fiction Rev. Jan.–Feb. 50/1 Gretchen Rix bibliography

    ‘Chanson Perpetuelle’, from a work in progress by Thomas M. Disch is one of these. It is used to lead off this transhuman future anthology; a bit of a mistake since you hate for this tale to end.

  • 1979 G. Rix Immortal in Science Fiction Review Jan. 50/2 Gretchen Rix bibliography

    They will resemble their parents except in some not so subtle respects. They will be hermaphrodites and lack human hormonal responses. They will be logical, not emotional. They will move differently; they will think differently. They will be transhuman.

  • 1988 V. Vinge The Blabber in Threats…and Other Promises 243 Vernor Vinge

    These guys are freaks, Professor! You could rain transhuman treasure on them and they’d call it spit!

  • 1990 E. Regis Great Mambo Chicken & Transhuman Condition (1991) 147

    Time for a major overhaul, one that would take the human animal to a new level, to a more fitting, trans human condition.

  • 1993 Science Fiction Studies Nov. 411

    The other [i.e., mythic writing or magical realism] is an exploration of elements taken as expressing, and therefore as implicitly symbolizing, certain deep-lying aspects of human and transhuman existence.

  • 1994 Science Fiction Eye Spring 36/2

    They believe the Techno-Rapture will happen on or about February 13th, 2013, with waves of nanoassemblers spreading across the planet and rewiring the carbon-unit brains in one rapturous orgy of transhuman uploading, a veritable Drexlerian rhapsody in blue goo.

  • 2001 M. Pesche in True Magic in True Names & Opening of Cyberspace Frontier 224

    If the relationship between man and artifact is simultaneously both chaotic and prosaic, the vision of technology infinitely extended—the trans-human era—is a steady-state universe where the unbelievable is taken as a given.

  • 2005 C. Stross Accelerando ii. 76 Charles Stross bibliography

    He’s still explaining to her how he’s laying the foundations for the transhuman explosion due early in the next decade when she picks him up in both arms, carries him to her bedroom, and commits outrageous acts of tender intimacy with him.

Research requirements

antedating 1967
Earliest cite

R. Silverberg 'Those Who Watch'
Research History
Malcolm Farmer submitted a cite from a 1991 reprint of Ed Regis' "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition".
Malcolm Farmer submitted a 1994 cite from an anonymous article in SF Eye.
Malcolm Farmer submitted a 2001 cite from Mark Peschke's "True Magic". Malcolm Farmer submitted a 1988 cite from Vernor Vinge's "The Blabber".
Malcolm Farmer submitted a 1979 cite from a review by Gretchen Rix of the 1978 anthology "Immortal: Short Novels of the Transhuman Future" (ed. by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois"); Fred Galvin also found a reference to an article by R.C.W. Ettinger in this collection, and Irene Grumman submitted a 1978 cite from Ettinger's article "Introduction: The Transhuman Condition" in the book.
Irene Grumman submitted a 1967 cite from "Those Who Watch" by Robert Silverberg.
Malcolm Farmer submitted a cite for "trans-human" from a 1999 reprint of Ian MacDonald's 1998 "The Days of Solomon Gursky".
Simon Koppel submitted a 1904 cite, in a non-SF context.

Last modified 2021-04-09 11:27:29
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.