https://www.ft.com/content/dfcacff9-9613-4b5e-a94b-4ea7f01bba9b
"The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, a free online resource
that went live last week, should come with a warning — it is a
delightful black hole that will suck in word nerds and SF geeks alike.
Painstakingly compiled and crowdsourced by Jesse Sheidlower, a former
editor for Random House and the Oxford English Dictionary, who teaches
at the Columbia University writing program, the dictionary’s 1,800 or so
chosen words span three centuries of the history of fantasy, science
fiction, and SF fandom.
After a happy week spent exploring the HDSF website, I stepped in for a
brief five minutes this morning to look up the origin of “alien” and
tumbled into a parallel universe, bouncing from “Big Dumb Object” to
“biopunk”, “contragravity” to “cyborg”, all the way to “wormhole”,
“xenology” and “zap gun”. It is now the afternoon and I am inexplicably
late on my deadline."
Via Jim Douglas.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
