Science fiction is a language. Not just a vocabulary, all those funny words that can make newcomers to the genre run away
screaming, but a grammar, a syntax, a set of perspectives and attitudes entailed by the words and structure of the fiction that is simply untranslatable to some readers. A
dictionary doesn''t just codify the language, it can help to understand its structure and history.
Unfortunately,
Brave New Words appears to be at least three dictionaries. There is, indeed, as advertised, a dictionary of science fiction. This contains all those words that originated in the genre, or that were adopted and transformed by the genre, and that have
acquired a life beyond their origin. . It is fascinating to note, for instance, how quickly the word "robot" acquired a life of its own. We all know that the word was coined by Karel Capek in his play
R.U.R., which was first translated into English by Paul Selver in 1923, yet already in June of 1923 the
Times of London is quoted using the word in a way that would suggest it expected its readers to be familiar with the term. Such discoveries are part of the delight of a dictionary like this. Unfortunately, a dictionary based on historical principles is meant to show also how words and their meanings evolve over time. The entry on "robot," for example, gives 11 citations for its first meaning, "an intelligent or self-aware artificial being," ranging from Capek''s original Czech (1920) up to a quotation from
Locus from 1988. Yet read these as you might, you would get no notion of the way the usage of the word has changed over time; Capek''s original was closer to what science fiction writers now tend to call a "cyborg," while the "metal man" of popular imagination was something that came later, developing out of American science fiction of the 1930s and 40s.
The interesting thing about most of the science fiction terms contained here is how many of them have outgrown the genre. Perhaps unnoticed by the majority of people who use the English language, science fiction has been the source of most of the vocabulary with which we are able to talk about the world today: "laser weapon" and "robotics" and (computer) "virus." At the same time, that means that most of these words will appear in any current standard dictionary also, and with essentially the same definitions and perhaps even some of the same citations as here. There is also the reverse process on display here. That word "virus," for example, is a perfectly common medical word that was taken up by science fiction (the first citation here is David Gerrold''s
When Harlie Was One, 1972) and given a new but analogous usage. It is one of the most common ways that science fiction writers construct their neologisms.
"Spaceship" is the obvious example, but going on from that starting point you will also find in this dictionary "boat", "craft", "cruiser" and "vessel." All of these are, of course, standard English words and their use in science fiction is not too dissimilar to their use outside science fiction.
One thing to remember with all these words, of course, is that the only words defined here are those that have acquired some form of common usage. A disproportionate number of words and phrases, for instance, have been taken from television programmes -- "beam me up," "smeg" -- because they are known to a wider audience, have therefore acquired a certain popular currency, and also their usage can be traced in novelisations and internet fan sites.
But, without caring to differentiate between them, this dictionary of science fiction words is only one of the tasks this book has set itself. It is also a dictionary of critical terms about science fiction.