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Indlæser... Brave new words : the Oxford dictionary of science fiction (2007)af Jeff Prucher
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Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog. Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog. A dictionary of words used in science fiction with their etyomology, definition, and examples of their uses in science fiction from earliest use to present. It includes words that were coined by science fiction writers (such as unperson, precog, generation ship, and chrononaut) and words that were appropriated by scifi authors (such as alien and sharecropping). 809.38762 B826
This book functions best as a fun historical companion to mid-twentieth century writing (with a few nods to other media) and fandom. Here you can learn all about 1940s fanzines and weird old concepts that have morphed (a word first used in 1982 by the way) into new ones. And that's the joy in this book: Discovering discarded concepts like "wireheads" (people who stimulate the pleasure centers of their brains with wires), "waldoes" (remote-controlled biological avatars), and "spy rays" (a beam of energy that can hear transmissions or thoughts). HæderspriserDistinctions
Henvisninger til dette værk andre steder. Wikipedia på engelsk (16)The first historical dictionary devoted to science fiction. It shows the development of science-fiction words and their associated concepts over time, with full citations and bibliographic information. Citations are drawn from science-fiction books and magazines, fanzines, screenplays, newspapers, comics, folk songs, and the Internet. The dictionary reveals how many words we consider to be everyday expressions, like "space shuttle", "blast off", and "robot", have their roots in imaginative literature and not in hard science. It also charts the transfer of science-fiction vocabulary to different subcultures and endeavours, such as neo-paganism, aerospace, computers, and environmentalism.--From publisher's description. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerNo genres Melvil Decimal System (DDC)809.3876203Literature By Topic History, description and criticism of more than two literatures Fiction Genre Fiction Mystery and Speculative Fiction Speculative Fiction Science FictionLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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Honestly, there's probably not much reason to own this unless you're a real scholar of the history of science fiction, or of language use, or both. And yet, despite the fact that I am neither of these, but rather a simple SF reader, I must say I enjoy owning this, and I at least skimmed every page of the thing, in a couple months' worth of spare moments.
If nothing else, the sheer amount of work and dedication that must have gone into this is impressive. And I'd say it'd be worth the cover price just for having taught me the phrase "cognitive estrangement" -- "the effect brought on by the reader's realization that the setting of a text (film, etc.) differs from that of the reader's reality, especially where the difference is based on scientific extrapolation, as opposed to supernatural or fantastic phenomena" -- which I am now going to use at every available opportunity. It was also interesting to note just how many different terms writers have come up with to describe a drive that makes spaceships go faster than light, or the astonishing variety or words and phrases you can put the word "space" in front of.
I did, however, often find myself wistfully wishing there were more to this project than just a dictionary. I would have loved a deeper dive into the etymologies of some of these words, or an account of how they spread from one writer to another, or how science and science fiction have traded terms back and forth. (As it is, it's often not at all obvious which direction a particular word has gone in.) I suppose it's hardly fair, though, to complain that the book is something that it was never intended to be.
One limitation, though, is probably worth pointing out: the focus here is very much on written SF and literary SF fandom. There are some basic terms that come from SF television and its fans, but most of the jargon specific to media-SF fandom (a subculture that overlaps with but is far from identical to literary SF fandom) is not to be found here, and there is one notable case of a term from the fanfiction-writing subset of fandom that's defined in a way that is not in fact, how that group actually uses it. ( )