xenobiologist n.

a specialist in xenobiology n.

  • 1954 R. A. Heinlein Star Lummox in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction May 60 page image Robert A. Heinlein bibliography

    Once the xenobiologists got their hands on Lummox they would never let him go.

  • 1956 ‘A. North’ Plague Ship iv. 46 page image Andre Norton bibliography

    Being an amateur xenobiologist of no small standing himself, the shapes of the carvings more than the material from which they fashioned [sic] held his attention.

  • 1971 U. K. Le Guin Lathe of Heaven (1973) x. 160 Ursula K. Le Guin

    They're intelligent but Irchevsky, our best xenobiologist, thinks they may not be rational at all.

  • 1982 C. Yoke From Alienation to Personal Triumph in T. Staicar Feminine Eye (1982) ix. 117

    Events again force her to rely on alienated individuals: Hywel, her husband…and Tam, the shape-changing, alien, xenobiologist.

  • 1991 O. S. Card Xenocide v. 73 Orson Scott Card

    Only a few people understood how much was riding on the work that Ela and Novinha, as Lusitania’s xenobiologists were doing.

  • 1994 B. J. Bayley Gnostic Endings in Interzone (#85) July 9/1 page image Barrington J. Bayley bibliography

    The search was for life. Those drones which returned—about 30 per cent—came back with an increasingly dismal picture. The ubiquitous gas giants were targeted first. All were sterile, a puzzle to prospective xenobiologists.

  • 1996 J. Gunn Joy Machine iii. 37 James E. Gunn

    A group of xenobiologists believed it was close to opening communication.

  • 1996 B. Aldrin & J. Barnes Encounter with Tiber 473

    Xenobiologists—a field that had come into existence in four years flat and now boasted four monthly journals—had managed to establish that the tissues of all the dead Tiberians had various kinds of damage brought on by the way their immune systems reacted to long-term exposure to Earth proteins, so they not only had to have been to the Earth, they had to have spent years here eating the food.

  • 1999 M. J. Friedman My Brother’s Keeper i. vi. 72 Michael Jan Friedman bibliography

    One was Mayhar-Perth, the xenobiologist.

  • 2004 P. F. Hamilton Pandora's Star v. 118 Peter F. Hamilton

    What CST actually conducted was planetary surveys, the province of geologists and xenobiologists; they weren’t interested in the void between the stars, there was no striving to bridge the distance.


Research requirements

antedating 1954

Earliest cite

1954 R. Heinlein 'The Star Lummox'

Research History
Connie Bomster suggested several early quotes from Andre Norton; Jesse Sheidlower found one in her 1956 novel _Plague Ship_.

Last modified 2024-06-05 01:37:54
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.