cold sleep v.

to undergo suspended animation for a period of time; (transitive) (rare) to put a person into cold sleep n.

SF Encyclopedia


  • 1956 R. A. Heinlein Door Into Summer in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Oct. 14/2 Robert A. Heinlein

    Damnation, he was quite capable of refusing to let me cold-sleep.

  • 1957 D. Knight Infinity's Choice in Infinity Science Fiction June 120/1 Damon Knight

    Good Guy wakes up in the future, finds a professor who has invented time travel (but is sitting on the discovery for reasons too flimsy to mention), goes back to his own time, gets his revenge, then cold-sleeps again in order to catch up.

  • 1973 R. C. Meredith At Narrow Passage (1975) 107 Richard C. Meredith

    Trebum is standing by…in case he doesn’t make it. Sol-Jodala will then cold-sleep him and try to revive him in Altheon.

  • 1990 A. McCaffrey & J. L. Nye Death of Sleep (1992) 13 Anne McCaffrey Jody Lynn Nye bibliography

    The escape capsule in which he'd cold-slept had had another minor malfunction that left him staring drugged and half conscious through the port glass at open space for two days before the cryogenic process had kicked in.

  • 1992 A. McCaffrey & M. Lackey Ship Who Searched iv. 127

    You don’t have the facilities to cold-sleep fifty people.

  • 1997 Interzone Oct. 55/2

    But the Omphalus is unfinished and empty; the Aristos, extropians who want to coldsleep into a future where immortality is available, are only sketchily portrayed and quickly dismissed.

  • 2014 C. E. Gannon Trial By Fire xvi. 179 page image Charles E. Gannon bibliography

    The hardcopy folder…might hold the secrets of the one hundred hours Caine had lost on the Moon just before being coldslept, fourteen years ago.

Research requirements

antedating 1956
Earliest cite

Robert A. Heinlein, "The Door Into Summer"
Research History
Katrina Campbell submitted a cite from a 1992 reprint of Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye's "The Death of Sleep".
Douglas Winston submitted a cite from a 1975 reprint of Richard Meredith's 1973 "At The Narrow Passage".
Jeff Prucher submitted a cite from a reprint of a Damon Knight book review; Mike Christie verified it in the 1957 first magazine appearance.
Jeff Prucher submitted a cite from a 2000 reprint of Ann McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey's 1992 "The Ship Who Searched".
Fred Galvin submitted a 1956 cite from the magazine serialization of Heinlein's "The Door into Summer".
Ben Ostrowski submitted a 2014 cite for the transitive form.

We would like cites of any date from other authors.

Last modified 2021-02-01 22:28:28
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.