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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/dictionary-science-fiction-runs-afrofuturism-zero-g-180977224/>
"In the summer of 1987, movie audiences first met
Robocop in the science
fiction classic about violence and corrupt corporate power in a future,
dystopian Detroit. But the title word is much older than that, going back at
least to a 1957 short story by writer Harlan Ellison, in which a tentacled
“robocop” pursues a character. The prefix “robo-,” in turn, dates at least to
1945, when
Astounding Science Fiction published a story by A.E. van Vogt
mentioning “roboplanes” flying through the sky. “Robo-,” of course, comes from
“robot,” a word created by Czech author Karel Čapek in his 1920 play
R.U.R.:
Rossum's Universal Robots, about synthetic humans created to perform drudge
work who eventually rebel, destroying humanity.
This is the kind of rabbit hole a reader can go down in the Historical
Dictionary of Science Fiction, a resource decades in the making that is now
available to the public in an accessible form. Lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower
started the project years ago, when he was an editor at the Oxford English
Dictionary."
Via Esther Schindler.
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
