There are so many Son and phrases that we use in science fiction — and even science — without giving it much thought . But where did we get condition like “ death beam of light , ” “ terraforming , ” “ hive thinker , ” “ telepathy , ” and “ parallel universe ” ?
Top picture from Philip Barshofsky ’s One Prehistoric Night as published in Wonder Stories , an early science fiction example of using “ exotic ” to mean “ a being from another planet . ”
central sources for this Emily Post include Jeff Prucher ’s wonderfulBrave New countersign : The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction(Prucher also wrote the fascinating post onscientific dustup that originated in science fiction),the Oxford English Dictionary skill fiction words citation project , and theOxford English Dictionaryitself . They ’re all great places to get lost for a few days .
https://gizmodo.com/10-words-you-might-think-came-from-science-but-are-rea-5850293
I ’ve tried to find the earliest acknowledgment of each Holy Scripture , but other than shell in which someone clearly coined a terminus , it ’s possible that early examples of these word subsist . Still , the very early uses of these words bring home the bacon an interesting look into our literary , linguistic , and even scientific history .
1 . Alien : Alien is a word that has long been used to refer to something strange , but when did it become the go - to term for a being from another planet ? The first person to apply alien this way was probably Victorian historiographer and litterateur Thomas Carlyle , who at one point during his biography , leave behind his literati lifestyle to function as a coach to a sodbuster ’s son in Yorkshire . In a letter to a friend , Carlyle is by design ( and amusingly ) histrionic about life in York and his unfitness to fit in amongst his raw neighbors , “ I am like a being thrown from another major planet on this dark terrestrial ball , ” he wrote , “ an stranger , a Pilgrim Father among its possessors . ” In science fiction , “ alien ” is n’t used as a apprehension - all term for extraterrestrial being until 1929 , when Science Wonder Stories published Jack Williamson ’s story The Alien Intelligence . It did n’t necessarily catch on right away ; many sources cite the first use of goods and services of “ alien ” for extraterrestrial being in skill fabrication as Philip Barshofsky ’s 1934 story One Prehistoric Night , which refers to Martians as aliens . It would sure enough be an auspicious introduction for the word ; the story involves Martians journey to prehistoric Earth to conflict dinosaur .
2 . Android : Long before the invention of the word “ robot , ” humans stargaze of mechanically skillful beings . Clockwork artisans would build all manner of golem — hoot that flap their flank , monks that shuffling in still prayer , dolls that make to serve tea or encounter the dulcimer . Naturally , legend kill up about automata that could do unbelievable — for the time and technology useable , impossible — things . One of those legends surround the thirteenth - century Catholic holy person Albertus Magnus , who was guess to have build a mechanical head that could do the questions posed to it . When Ephraim Chambers write his 1728 Cyclopædia , he paired the Greek prefix for “ man ” ( “ andr- “ ) with the suffix for “ having the form or alikeness of ” ( “ -oid ” ) when distinguish Albertus Magnus ’ mythical construct , dub it an “ androides . ” By the nineteenth century , the word was well in trend , used in patent applications for human - shaped automaton . Lucasfilm go for the earmark on the shorten form of the give-and-take “ droid ” ; the first instance of that form of the password may be in Mari Wolf ’s 1952 story Robots of the World ! Arise!—but it never have a toy line .
3 . Ansible : Ursula K. Le Guin coined this word for a equipment for instantaneous communication across the vast length of space in her 1966 novel Rocannon ’s World . She used it in her later works and presently it spread across the works of other skill fable authors as well . But where does the word make out from ? A 2001 Usenet post by Dave Goldman arrogate that Le Guin told him “ ansible ” amount from the Logos “ answerable ” and that she was amused to memorize that word is also an anagram for “ lesbian . ”
4 . ray : While the word “ ray ” evokes vision of Captain Kirk saying , “ broadcast me up , Scotty , ” beam already refers to the conveyance of subject in the “ Matter Transmitter ” entry in the 1951 Dictionary of Science Fiction . “ Beamed ” is used as a verb to depict how matter transmitters work in stories like A. E. van Vogt ’s The Story of Null - A and The Last starship by Murray Leinster ( a fib fill with fighting - beam , infliction - beams , and all other style of beam ) , but neither of those account themselves use “ balance beam ” as a verb . It ’s an exercise of a condition coming about not from science fable itself , but from descriptions of scientific discipline fiction .
5 . Blaster : Who shot a chargeman first ? The ( rather mystical ) writer Nictzin Dyalhis is believed to have first relate to a scifi hired gun as a “ blastor ” ( with an “ group O ” ) in When the Green Star wane , an former debut into the space opera genre , put out in Weird Tales in 1925 :
Well it was for me that , in obedience to Hul Jok ’s imperative command , I was holding my Blastor pointing onward of me ; for as I blundered full upon the monster it upheaved its ugly bulk — how I do not recognize , for I saw no ramification nor did it have wings — to one edge and would have flopped down upon me , but instinctively I slid ahead the apprehension on the tiny Blastor , and the stinking thing vanished — save for a few fragments of its edges — smite into nothingness by the vibration hurled forth from that brawny little disintegrator .
This may also be the first economic consumption of the intelligence “ disintegrator ” to advert to a weapon in science fabrication .
6 . recognition : The universe ’s most generic contour of currency first show up John W. Campbell ’s The Mightiest Machine , which was serialized in Astounding starting in December 1934 and asterisk Campbell ’s repeat eccentric Aarn Munro , when one theatrical role plain about having to build “ a five - million - credit flight laboratory . ” Later , the same character purport describe a rocketship “ Little credit entry - feeder ” after the hull alone cost him a jaw - drop two and a half million credit rating .
7 . Cryostasis : The word “ cryogenics , ” the study of materials at low temperature , come from “ cryogen , ” a Word of God mint in 1875 to describe substances used to obtain blue temperatures , refrigerant . Robert Ettinger , who would come to be known as the “ father ” of modern cryonics , would prehend on the thought of freezing one ’s physical structure for future resurgence after reading Neil R. Jones ’ 1931 story The Jameson Satellite when he was just 12 yr old . In the story , a professor require to see his clay preserved evermore and so has it send into the cold of space upon his last , only to after be revived by fellow member of an modern alien species . After learning of the cryogenics inquiry of Jean Rostand , an adult Ettinger would drop a line his own science fable story , The Penultimate Trump , which was bring out in Startling Stories in 1948 . But it was n’t until 1965 that Karl Werner , then an industrial design educatee at the Pratt Institute , come up with the term “ cryonics ” to describe the preservation of bodies through freeze . And Alice Bradley Sheldon , write as James Tiptree , Jr. , would practice the “ cryo- ” prefix for “ cryostasis , ” placing human bodies in suspend animation for foresighted journeys through space in her 1975 storey A Momentary Taste of Being .
8 . internet : “ Cyberspace ” is one of those row that has cursorily traveled from science fiction into the mainstream jargon . The word comes , not astonishingly , from that hacker master William Gibson , appearing first in his 1982 short story Burning Chrome . ( Gibson actually first read the chronicle aloud in 1981 , but it was n’t published in Omni until the undermentioned year . ) Here , “ Cyberspace Seven ” is the name applied to a reckoner , but the conception of cyberspace bring forth a more complete definition in Gibson ’s 1984 novel Neuromancer :
Cyberspace . A confidence game fleshly delusion experienced daily by 1000000000000 of legitimate manipulator , in every nation , by children being taught numerical conception . . . A graphic agency of information abstract from the bank of every computer in the human system . Unthinkable complexity . business line of spark order in the non space of the nous , clusters and constellation of data point . Like city brightness , fall back … .
9 . Death Ray : Here ’s a rare idiom whose first appearance is believe to number not from literature , but from film . In 1914 , Whartons Studios and the Pathé Exchange released The Exploits of Elaine , a 14 - part film serial in the elan of The Perils of Pauline . Chapter Nine of Exploits is titled “ The Death Ray ” and ask a scientist key LeCroix who develops an instrument that decoct infrared ray into a deadly beam that could vote out a somebody if aimed at their brain , one that could only be deflected by a platinum shield back with asbestos . While it ’s likely the source of the terminus “ death ray , ” it ’s scarce the first story to feature one . George Griffith ’s 1903 story The World Masters features a terrifying electron beam weapon ; it ’s just not explicitly called a “ death ray . ”
10 . Dystopia : The word “ utopia ” was splendidly coin by Thomas More for his 1516 work of political philosophy , using the Greek tidings for “ good ” ( ευ ) , “ not ” ( οὐ ) , and “ shoes ” ( τόπος ) so that Zion at once means “ honorable place ” and “ not place . ” Dystopia also first shows up in a study of political philosophy , in a 1868 speech by John Stuart Mill before the British House of Commons . We could have terminate up with a different word to describe our anti - Utopia , however ; in 1818 , Jeremy Bentham ( the same man whose skeleton and head sit preserved in University College London ) strike the condition cacotopia ( from the Grecian κακόs , meaning “ bad ” ) , a word that Mill also uses in his speech to the House of Commons .
11 . First Contact : Murray Leinster did n’t just coin the musical phrase with the rubric of his 1945 novella First Contact ; he was also may have introduce the conception of the worldwide translator . First Contact finds two technologically advanced confluence in deep blank and figuring out a way to trade engineering science while dealing with their mistrust . After Star Trek : First Contact came out , Leinster ’s heirs sued Paramount Pictures for trademark violation . A judge ruled , however , that Leinster did n’t own the terminal figure because he had allow it to proliferate throughout other writers ’ fable .
12 . Force Field : The phrase “ military force athletic field ” first seem in a 1920 reputation of the British Association for the Advancement of Science : “ Each atom must spring the centre of an electromagnetic field of force . These forcefulness fields were first take with by Humphreys . ” In science fiction , it show up commence in 1931 . John W. Campbell ’s 1931 novel Islands of Space mentions a forcefulness field palisade an alien urban center . That same yr , E.E. “ Doc ” Smith published his serialized Spacehounds of IPC , which contains a few extension to “ force-out - field ” theory and generators .
13 . Generation Ship : The phrase “ genesis ship ” in all probability come from a classic , but for the most part forgotten , novel about the concept , E.C. Tubb ’s The Space - stick out , which was originally serialize as Star Ship in New Worlds Science Fiction before being published in Quran shape in 1956 . The novel concentre on the 13th and 14th generation of a generation ship where each mortal is born , learns a task for control the ship , and is executed at the command of the computer that runs the ship . Things become a bit less routine when the police chieftain tasked with carry out the carrying into action decide he wo n’t carry out his own death sentence .
14 . Hive Mind : James H. Schmitz was the first person to nickname a corporate foreign intelligence a “ hive intellect ” in his 1950 news report Second Night of Summer , in which human on another planet are assail by the Halpa , aliens who are conceive to have “ the hive - intellect class of intelligence . ” The humans are salvage , outstandingly , by an elderly charwoman , Granny Wannattel . In 1973 , it would meander outside of science fiction to describe bureaucracy in a March 1973 edition of the Daily Telegraph , “ The social and aesthetic attitude have been passed through the homogeniser of the bureaucratic hive - mind . ” Now we use it to draw all sorts of social groups that seem to imagine and play with a single nous .
15 . Homeworld : The terminus “ domicile - world ” or “ homeworld ” in reality pre - date “ home major planet ” in skill fable by nearly four tenner . The first use of the tidings appear to be from the pen of scientific discipline fiction author and explorer George Griffith , who had plenty of his own escapade to draw from when imagining a twosome of newlyweds locomote through the solar system in a 1900 serial for Pearson ’s Magazine . finally , the ocean trip of his spacesuit - fag out travelers would be pull together as the novel A Honeymoon in Space , but that terminal figure “ home - public ” appears in the very first installing , A Visit to the lunation :
Zaidie stand stare for nearly an hour at this marvellous imaginativeness of the nursing home - world which she had go away so far behind her before she could tear herself away and give up her husband to shut the slides again . The greatly diminished weight of her body demolish the fatigue of standing almost wholly . In fact , on plank the Astronef just then it was almost as easy to endure as it was to lie down down .
16 . Jack In : Robert Silverberg ’s Hugo and Nebula - nominate 1970 novel Tower of Glass was the first to use the electronics knave as a verb , touch base a sentient being to a reckoner . In the book ’s twenty-fourth century , a race of androids , create by the scientist tycoon Simeon Krug , serve humanity , and Krug ’s right - hand android , Alpha Thor Watchman , spend hours each day “ jacked into ” computers , “ chirpily ride the data - lunar time period . ” In late whole caboodle , human race would be capable to “ jack in ” as well .
17 . sick Scientist : Mary Shelley ’s Frankenstein was 90 years old ( and HG Wells ’ The Island of Doctor Moreau was 12 ) when Raymond McDonald apparently coined the term “ mad scientist ” in his 1908 occasional novel The Mad Scientist : A Tale of the Future . The book involves a so - called mad scientist with socialistic proclivity who expend his splendid inventions against US business sector and the US administration . For reader at the prison term , the book was credibly less exciting for its usance of the term “ mad scientist ” than for the cipher contained within its pages . The publishers offered a generous cash reward for the reader who sent in the best analytic thinking of the naught .
18 . Moon Base : Another idiom that seems obvious now but turns up after in science fiction than we might expect is “ moon home , ” in all likelihood a reflection of our change sense of what lunar colonization would really search like . In Bryce Walton ’s 1947 story Assignment in the Dawn , Martians have ready up moon basis , and the following year saw moon Qaeda in Robert Heinlein ’s novel Space Cadet ( richly - ranking policeman from a transnational war machine hear to take over the humankind from humanness ’s “ Moon Base ” ) and in L. Ron Hubbard ’s 240,000 Miles directly Up ( in which the “ Moonbase ” is a Russian frontier settlement ) .
19 . Multiverse : The term “ multiverse ” was n’t coined in scientific discipline or scientific discipline fabrication ; it actually come in the beginning from American philosopher William James ’ 1895 address to the Young Men ’s Christian Association of Harvard University , title Is Life deserving Living ? His meaning for multiverse is rather different from the modern one , however :
But those time are past ; and we of the 19th century , with our evolutionary theories and our mechanically skillful philosophies , already sleep together nature too impartially and too well to revere unreservedly any deity of whose character she can be an passable expression . in truth all we know of in effect and beauty proceeds from nature , but none the less so all we screw of evil . Visible nature is all malleability and impassiveness , a moral multiverse , as one might call it , and not a moral universe .
The Oxford English Dictionary credits Michael Moorcock — that author behind the capital - m Multiverse — with the first use of the Book multiverse in the now - common sense of the Bible , cite to a region consisting of multiple parallel universes . In 1963 , in the pages of Science Fiction Adventures , Moorcock introduce us to the modern multiverse :
Yet within it there were many things , many intelligences who did not realise they dwell in a multiverse since , within itself , it was constitute of many universe , each one separate from the other by dimensions , like leaves between the layers .
20 . Parallel Universe : While “ multiverse ” may be a comparatively modern term , “ parallel existence ” proceed back to one of the authors who help shape science fiction , H.G. Wells . In Wells ’ 1923 novel Men Like Gods , a man is transfer to Utopia , which live in a parallel property :
We accept your main proposal unreservedly ; namely , that we conceive ourselves to be live in a parallel world to yours , on a planet the very comrade of your own , indeed quite astonishingly like yours , having consider to all the potential contrasts we might have find here .
21 . Posthuman : The term “ post - human ” belt down up first in the works of revulsion writer H.P. Lovecraft , who uses the phrase in the 1936 novel The Shadow Out of Time in a way that will appear familiar to modern reader ( although as commenter bob_d notes , he ’s consult not to the translation of humanity , but the species who hail after ):
I shivered at the mysteries the past may conceal , and tremble at the menaces the futurity may bring onward . What was hinted in the speech of post - human entity of the fate of mankind bring out such an effect on me that I will not set it down here .
After man there would be the mighty mallet civilisation , the bodies of whose appendage the pick of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous end of the world overtake the elder cosmos . by and by , as the world ’s span closed , the transplant idea would again migrate through fourth dimension and quad — to another stopping - spot in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entity of Mercury . But there would be race after them , cleave pathetically to the moth-eaten planet and burrowing to its horror - filled core , before the utter end .
22 . Ray Gun : Before the pulp - geological era beam gun came the X - beam gun , ina 1916 question pic style The Intrigue . The film was about a young American inventor who hone an X - beam gas pedal that revolutionize modern warfare . But the ray gun we ideate in our retro pulps startle with John W. Campbell ’s 1930 story The Black Star clear . But people had been killing each other with rays for ages in skill fiction at this point . There ’s a heat ray in H.G. Wells ’ 1897 War of the Worlds , the aforementioned demise ray in The Exploits of Elaine , even an ammunition - destroying ray imagined in George Bernard Shaw ’s 1919 play Heartbreak House . A light beam gun was a logical imaginary weapon .
23 . Robot : “ Robot ” has one ofthe most famed origin stories . Karel Čapek used a Czech word for forced feudalistic travail , robota , for the title of his 1921 manoeuvre Rosumovi Univerzální Roboti ( Rossum ’s Universal Robots ) . The robots in R.U.R. were n’t the mechanically skillful golem we think of today , but rather artificial humans . Once the play was translated into English in 1923 , English - speaking author picked up the tidings to account their own concept made in humanity ’s mental or physical image . But it was n’t until 1940 that Isaac Asimov first name a correction of subject field “ robotics ” when he referred to a character as a “ Roboticist . ” The shortened form “ bot ” first shows up even later , in Richard C. Meredith ’s 1969 novel We All Died at Breakaway Station .
https://gizmodo.com/where-do-robots-come-from-5260195
24 . Spaceship : “ starship ” may seem like an obvious term now , and certainly it ’s part of a gravid trend in skill fiction of add “ space ” to nautical terms , but even it has its beginning . Its first known appearance is in the Pall Mall Gazette in January 1880 in a critique of Percy Greg ’s novel Across the Zodiac , “ The Apergy once mastered , it was comparatively wanton to anticipate and improve upon the ideas of a trifler like Jules Verne , and build a space - ship . ” The first appearing of the word is frequently attribute to John Jacob Astor IV ’s 1894 novel A Journey in Other Worlds , which is set in the yr 2000 and imagines a hereafter with a orbicular telephone web , solar tycoon , and air travel — but also envisage that man has been able to reach Jupiter and Saturn . “ spaceship ” does n’t turn up until much later , ushered into the world by Frank K. Kelly ’s 1934 story Star Ship Invincible .
Re ‘ Zarnak ’ ; the landing strip started off very well , but I must agree with others that it is rapidly degenerating into the jejune joke of a musclebound superhero . This latter sort of stuff may be all right in the Sunday comics but it is decidedly out of place in a honorable skill fabrication magazine .
Superman would make his launching in Action Comics in 1938.DC and Marvel now hold a joint stylemark on the word “ superhero . ”
https://gizmodo.com/six-strange-cases-of-science-fiction-trademarks-5919000
26 . Telepathy : “ Telepathy ” is a word that come about just as science fiction was issue as a literary genre , but it ’s from scientific discipline fabrication itself . Poet and classicist Frederic W.H. Myers strike the terms “ telesthesia ” and “ telepathy ” in an 1882 variation of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research to describe what had previously been refer to as “ thought transference . ” Myers was himself a establish member of the Society for Psychical Research , an organization that promoted inquiry into “ allegedly extrasensory phenomena . ” Myers also likely strike the word “ telekinesis , ” which turns up in the company ’s 1890 proceedings . The less common word “ telempathy ” was devise specifically for scientific discipline fiction , with the 1963 Vance Simonds floor Telempathy .
27 . Teleportation : While “ telepathy ” and “ psychokinesis ” entered the mental lexicon in the late 19th one C , “ teleportation ” does n’t appear on the scene until well into the twentieth hundred . The Scripture seems to have been strike by Charles Fort in Lo ! , the second of his book documenting “ anomalous phenomenon . ” ( The news “ Fortean , ” used to describe paranormal phenomena , comes from his name . ) Early in Lo ! , Fort publish , “ Mostly in this book I shall specialize upon indication that there subsist a transportory force that I shall call Teleportation . ” Fort conceive that teleportation could explain a number of unexplained events — although there was still the affair of explaining teleportation itself .
28 . Terraforming : Jack Williamson invented legion science fiction term , and many of them ( like ion drive and transmissible engineering ) change state up in scientific discipline as well . Add terraforming to that lean ; Williamson first utilise the term in his 1942 tarradiddle Collision Orbit :
He had been the original claimant of Obania , forty years ago ; and Drake was the young spacial engine driver he employed to terraform the niggling rock , only two kilometers through — by sinking a shaft to its center for the paragravity installation , generating atomic number 8 and water from mineral oxides , release absorbent gas to trap the feeble high temperature of the far - off Sun .
29 . Time Travel : H.G. Wells ’ seminal 1894 novel The Time Machine is the origin of the term “ time machine , ” which we use to describe everything from our TARDISes to our WABACs . It also introducers the terminal figure “ Time Traveller , ” which became another raw material of the literary genre . Oddly , the terminus “ time travelling ” does n’t turn up by itself until two decades afterward , in an clause considering a journey through clock time in a 1914 issue of the Journal of Philosophy , Psychology and Scientific Methods . There are earlier prison term traveller in fiction — even Ebenezer Scrooge get up to plenty of clock time travel in A Christmas Carol . But Wells throw us the simple words to describe it : a time traveler and his time auto .
30 . Tractor Beam : Star Trek has come in to predominate the tractor ray landscape painting , but the matter - pulling tractor beam is an innovation of E.E. “ Doc ” Smith ’s 1931 Spacehounds of IPC ( also one of the earlier object lesson of force theater of operations in fabrication ):
‘ We ’ll carry off the pieces of that ship , too , Quince — we may be capable to get a lot of arrow from it , ’ and Brandon swung mighty tractor beams upon the severed halves of the Jovian vessel , then extended a couple of smaller ray to meet the two little figures racing across the smooth green hayfield toward the Sirius .
31 . Science Fiction : The blood of the actual terminus “ skill fiction ” is a mo mysterious . The first usance summons by the OED is in William Wilson ’s 1851 A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject . In it , Wilson looks at how a exclusive object might be perceived through the eye of six different animals : a bee , an ant , a wanderer , a perch , a Turdus migratorius , and a cat . Wilson terms this work “ Science - Fiction ” :
We trust it will not be long before we may have other works of Science - Fiction , as we believe such books potential to fulfil a ripe purpose , and create an interest , where , sadly , science alone might fail . [ Thomas ] Campbell say that “ Fiction in Poetry is not the reverse of truth , but her indulgent and entrancing resemblance ” . Now this applies especially to Science - Fiction , in which the revealed trueness of Science may be given , interweave with a pleasing story which may itself be poetic and true – thus circulating a knowledge of the Poetry of Science , clothed in a garb of the Poetry of Life .
The term“scientific romance,”which described early works in the genre , may have had a slimly earlier debut . It evidence up in an 1845 North American Review article about Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation , a pop , anonymously published work of speculative raw chronicle ( which some surmise Charles Darwin authored but was actually the employment of a different evolutionary creative thinker , geologist Robert Chambers ) . Other terms competed for the genre descriptor , including “ scientific fiction . ”
https://gizmodo.com/before-science-fiction-romances-of-science-and-scienti-5870883
The reasonableness we call the genre “ science fiction ” today is thanks to pioneer scifi publisher Hugo Gernsback , for whom the Hugo Awards are named . Life Magazine in reality credited Gernsback with coin the term and according to some sources , he hoped to brandmark it . It was n’t Gernsback ’s first selection for the genre name , however ; that would be “ scientifiction . ”
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