infodump n.

a large (often unwieldy or indigestible) amount of information supplied all at once; spec. as background or descriptive information in a narrative

SF Encyclopedia


SF Criticism

  • 1978 Proceedings of the Southeastcon Region 3 Conference 353

    Would you like a hard copy info dump of the current case?

  • 1990 Washington Post (Nexis) 25 Feb. x8

    Writers in my neck of the woods call this stuff ‘infodump’—putting in your research without bringing the narrative flow to a screeching halt.

  • 1993 D. Langford Editor my Destination in Quantum Spring–Summer 13/3 David Langford

    Worst of all, the crucial repetition of the ’Gully Foyle is my name‘ jingle near the end of the book is lost—jettisoned along with the disposable info-dump sentence that reminds us who the Scientific People are.

  • 1994 Interzone May 57/2

    The four young men—whose lives The Quorum traces through flashbacks and infodumps for 20 years.

  • 1995 Interzone Oct. 59/2

    Most of the first two hundred pages are taken up with long discussions between Moh and Janis about what is going on and what it all means, interspersed with cluttered flashbacks and long infodumps.

  • 2001 Locus June 23/2

    Kress orients the reader with her usual admirable lack of infodumps or bland narrative omniscience.

  • 2005 Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest Fall 18

    Corrupt info-dumps from the Fat Merchant Princes meant we might have a rogue Accountant on our hands.

  • 2005 C. Stross Accelerando v. 174 Charles Stross bibliography

    They’ll be out of the buffer in another couple of days. Maybe a bit longer in the case of the lawyer. He’s got a huge infodump packaged on his person. Probably another semisapient class-action lawsuit.

Research requirements

antedating 1978
Research History
Added to OED3 in June, 2004.

Last modified 2020-12-16 04:08:47
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.