The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, run by @jessesheidlower
Joined October 2020
- Tweets479
- Following1
- Followers305
- Likes36
New fandom entry! The famous _slan shack_, a commune of fans. From the early 1940s, esp. in reference to the first one called this, in Battle Creek, Michigan.
sfdictionary.com/view/2243/s…
New fandom entry: "fanarchy", for the opposition to organized fandom.
We'd added _fanarchist_ a few years ago, but skipped _fanarchy_, which is very slightly earlier. This is now remedied.
sfdictionary.com/view/2917/f…
New entry! "feghoot", for a very short story with a groaner pun as the punchline, after the protagonist of a series of such stories written by Reginald Bretnor. Now used beyond SF.
sfdictionary.com/view/2008/f…
New entry! "neuronic", describing incapacitating (but usu. not fatal) weapons. Coined by Asimov (as "neuronic whip," a compound also used in the Star Wars universe), but regularly used thereafter (quotes from Milton Lesser, Lin Carter, N. Spinrad, &c.)
sfdictionary.com/view/1156/n…
Yet more administrative news: Every quotation from Galaxy (240 total) is now linked to its original source.
New entry: "hopepunk". Coined by Alexandra Rowland in 2017, in explicit contrast to "grimdark".
sfdictionary.com/view/2911/h…
Small antedating: "holovision" for 3D video is now found slightly earlier in the context of actual (if theoretical) TV technology than in SF proper.
sfdictionary.com/view/483/ho…
New entry: "stealthed". From 1983–, with quotes from Joe Haldeman, K.S. Robinson, Charlie Stross, + more.
We mainly focus on Golden Age terms so it's nice to have a newer (if still 40+ years old) one.
sfdictionary.com/view/2391/s…
Still still more administrative news: all 185 quotations from Startling Stories are now linked to their original sources.
Still more administrative news: Every quotation from Planet Stories (there are 193) is linked to its original source, for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!
More administrative news! I can now report that every* quotation from Amazing Stories (+ related) is now linked to its original source—about 620 quotations. Enjoy!
Administrative announcement: I'm happy to announce that _every_ quotation from Astounding is now linked to its original page image! All 1,096. Mostly to the @internetarchive, some (when not available there) to other databases. Huzzah!
Belay this announcement! There are in fact still a number of un-linked Astounding quotations. SQL error caused by a wetware malfunction; I'm sourcing these ASAP.
Because I can't focus on anything else today, I revised the entry for "viewphone"—fixed all the biblio, removed the weird def, brought it fully up to date.
Right, back to doomscrolling.
sfdictionary.com/view/2134/v…
Fantasy fans take note!
Thanks to a reader for a major discovery: an antedating of _sword and sorcery_, coined by Fritz Leiber in 1961, but now found in a one-off newspaper headline of a review of an L. Sprague de Camp novel in 1953.
sfdictionary.com/view/235/sw…
It's been hard to do research with the ongoing disruption to the Internet Archive, but I can announce a seven-year antedating of _three-D_, to 1948 (and we cleaned up the entry & some related links/x-r's):
sfdictionary.com/view/1080/t…
New entry for all you beach lovers! "space-burn", from 1937; we had "-burned" but not this (earlier) base form. Also adjusted x-r's for related terms ("tan" etc.).
sfdictionary.com/view/2781/s…
New entry! Been working on this for a while: the complicated "portal", from the early 1930s onwards. Related to other dimension/FTL/etc. terms like "gate" etc.
sfdictionary.com/view/2569/p…