dayside n.

the side of a planet or moon that is in daylight, sometimes in the context of a planet with one side permanently facing its sun

  • 1914 J.R. Kippax Call of Stars 334

    The day side of the Moon is exposed to the Sun’s intense heat for a fortnight at a stretch, the temperature rising very high, probably reaching the boiling point, whilst through the long lunar night of a fortnight, the surface freezes in the icy cold, the temperature of the night side of the Moon falling very low, perhaps to 200 or 250 below zero.

  • 1935 S. G. Weinbaum Parasite Planet in Astounding Stories Feb. 69 (footnote) page image Stanley G. Weinbaum bibliography

    It was not known then that while the night-side life of Venus can eat and digest that of the day side, the reverse is not true. No day-side creature can absorb the dark life because of the presence of various metabolic alcohols, all poisonous.

  • 1942 C. L. Moore There Shall Be Darkness in Astounding Science-Fiction Feb. 20/2 C. L. Moore

    Artificial lighting is rare on Venus, which never knows true darkness on Dayside.

  • 1950 F. Leiber Gather, Darkness! 101 Fritz Leiber

    Out there in the darkness—and on the day-side of Earth, too—something was gnawing at that empire, as mice might gnaw at the strands of some vast net.

  • 1955 E. F. Russell Waitabits in Astounding Science Fiction July 73/1 Eric Frank Russell

    The Thunderer went up, came down four hundred miles within the night-side. The tactic, decided Leigh, represented a right smart piece of figuring. Aroused aliens on the day-side would now require about twelve days to reach them.

  • 1957 P. Anderson Life Cycle in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction July 55/2 Poul Anderson bibliography

    But damn it, there’s Dayside life, too. Life that never comes into Twilight.

  • 1957 P. Anderson Life Cycle in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction July 65/2 Poul Anderson bibliography

    Male and female had to come from the same race, evolving together—they couldn’t have arisen separately, one in the hell of Dayside and one in the endless purgatorial dusk of Twilight.

  • 1988 A.C. Clarke 2061: Odyssey Three 55 Arthur C. Clarke

    But our beam is fixed on Lucifer, so we can only see them for a few minutes while they're in transit. And your Mount Zeus is just on the dayside—so it’s always hidden then.

  • 1993 P. Anderson Harvest of Stars (1994) 1 Poul Anderson bibliography

    We will not shelter our awareness on dayside.

  • 1994 ‘L. A. Graf’ Firestorm i. 2 Julia Ecklar Karen Rose Cercone bibliography

    Kirk shook his head in wonderment, turning back toward where the roiling black mass was quickly obscuring a large swath of the planet’s dayside.

  • 2005 R. J. Sawyer Mindscan xiii. 89 Robert J. Sawyer

    I watched as the nightside part of Earth—lenticular in this perspective, like a cat’s black pupil abutting the blue crescent of the dayside—kissed the gray lunar horizon.


Research requirements

antedating 1914

Earliest cite

John R. Kippax, 'The Call of the Stars'

Research History
Fred Galvin submitted a cite from a 1951 reprint of C.L. Moore's 1942 "There Shall Be Darkness", which Mike Christie verified in its 1942 first publication.
Ralf Brown submitted cites from a 1989 reprint of Arthur C. Clarke's "2016: Odyssey Three", which Mike Christie verified in the 1988 first edition.
From his etext collection, Ralf Brown suggested Fritz Leiber's "Gather, Darkness", and Douglas Winston submitted a cite from a 1969 reprint, which Mike Christie located in the 1950 first book publication.
Fred Galvin submitted a cite for "day-side" from a 1964 reprint of Eric Frank Russell's "The Waitabits", which Mike Christie verified in its 1955 first publication.
Fred Galvin submitted a cite for "day side" from a book copyrighted in 1951, "Men of Other Planets" by Kenneth Heuer.
Fred Galvin submitted a cite for "day side" from a 1949 reprint of Stanley G. Weinbaum's "Parasite Planet"; Jesse Sheidlower verified this in its first publication (Astounding Stories, February 1935). This source also used "day-side" as an adjective.
Fred Galvin submitted a 1957 cite from Poul Anderson's "Life Cycle"
Fred Galvin submitted a 1914 cite for "day side" from John R. Kippax's "The Call of the Stars"

Last modified 2023-11-08 14:10:56
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.