YEREVAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Romance and Germanic Philology

English Philology Chair
Specialty: English Language and Literature

MASTER’S DEGREE
THESIS

Theme: The study of Neologisms in Science Fiction

 CHAPTER 1

1.1 Science Fiction and its Subgenres

Science fiction is a genre of fiction with imaginative but more or less plausible content such as
settings in the future, futuristic science and technology, space travel, parallel universes, aliens,
and paranormal abilities. Exploring the consequences of scientific innovations is one purpose of
science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas". Science fiction has been used by authors and
film/television program makers as a device to discuss philosophical ideas such as identity, desire,
morality and social structure etc.

Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures.[2] It
is similar to, but differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements
are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of
nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation).

The settings for science fiction are often contrary to consensus reality, but most science fiction relies
on a considerable degree of suspension of disbelief, which is facilitated in the reader's mind by
potential scientific explanations or solutions to various fictional elements. Science fiction elements
include:

A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, or in a historical past that contradicts known
facts of history or the archaeological record.

A spatial setting or scenes in outer space (e.g. spaceflight),on other worlds, or on subterranean earth.

Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots.

Futuristic technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers.

Scientific principles that are new or that contradict accepted laws of nature, for example time
travel, wormholes, or faster-than-light travel.

New and different political or social systems, e.g. dystopian, post-scarcity, or post-apocalyptic.

Paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation.

Other universes or dimensions and travel between them.

Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a wide range of subgenres and themes.
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED Online) defines science fiction as “imaginative

fiction based on postulated scientific discoveries or spectacular environmental

changes, frequently set in the future or on other planets and involving space or time
travel”. Science fiction scholars, however, have not reached a consensus on how to

define the genre in a watertight way. In fact, the subject is still fiercely contested

(Roberts 2006: 37). Everyone, whether a scholar or a casual consumer of science

fiction, may have their own, slightly different image of the genre. Casual consumers

have probably formed their general idea of it based on a number of earlier samples of science fiction
that they have seen or read; scholars for their part try to form a

universal definition that would not leave room for questions and criticism, although

they are aware of the fact that this could be simply impossible.

One proposal for a comprehensive definition of science fiction has been

made by the renowned science fiction critic Gary Westfahl. He has aimed for a

definition – or ‘description’ as he prefers to call it – that would not limit the genre too

much but would instead “account for all the forms of writing that have been regularly

published under the aegis of science fiction” (1998: 299). His description goes as

follows:

Science fiction is a twentieth-century literary genre consisting of texts

labelled ‘science fiction’ which manifest the following characteristics:

1. In theory, the genre explicitly or implicitly claims that each of its

texts has these three interrelated traits:

A. It is a prose narrative;

B. It includes language which either describes scientific facts, or

explains or reflects the processes of scientific thought; and

C. It describes or depicts some aspect or development which does

not exist at the time of writing

2. In practice, the genre embraces, or is accompanied by, two types of

texts: texts which have all three of the listed traits, or texts which

have only two of the three listed traits. (ibid. 298) First, when Westfahl refers to
science fiction as a ‘literary genre’, surely he includes in this definition science fiction

films, television series and other similar material? As these are usually based on

manuscripts (i.e. written material), they are probably automatically considered as

literary texts.

Second, Westfahl states that any two features of the following three –

prose narrative, scientific language and non-realistic subject matter – suffice to make

a text science fiction. However, a text that is in prose narrative and includes scientific

language could as well be a romance novel about doctors and nurses in sunny

California. The only thing that prevents this kind of interpretation is Westfahl’s explanation in the
beginning of his description that science fiction consists of “texts

labelled ‘science fiction’” that then have two or three of the afore-mentioned traits. In

other words, a text is science fiction if it has the three traits that Westfahl has listed,

and if it is additionally considered to be science fiction.

This does not sound like a very explicit definition of a genre, as people

can have very different ideas on what should be considered science fiction and what

not. Westfahl’s perception of science fiction is enlightening and has several valid

points, but his theory is still arguable among scholars, signalling how difficult it is to

pin point the genre. It is equally difficult to agree on when and where science fiction

first emerged. In one way or another, humans have been interested in things such as

space and other worlds for centuries, for millennia even, although writings

resembling our present-day idea of science fiction only started emerging from the

17th century onwards. Writers such as Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne

and H. G. Wells were in the frontline of the development of science fiction in the 19th

century, and the term ’science fiction’ itself was coined in 1927 by the American

magazine editor Hugo Gernsback, which shows us that the genre had become a

recognised literary trend by that time (Roberts 2006: 38; Clute & Nicholls 1993: 568).

Science fiction naturally emerged first in printed media, but it has also held a position
on film and in television from the early stages of these media’s history. The first

science fiction film is considered to be the French 14-minute-long Le voyage dans lalune from 1902,
directed by Georges Méliès. Some popular early science fiction

television series for their part were the American Lost in Space (1965–1968) and the

original Star Trek (1966–1969), and the British Thunderbirds (1965–1966) and

Doctor Who (1963–1989). (Clute & Nicholls 1993: s.v. “cinema”, “television”.)

Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition
of pornography: you don't know what it is, but you know it when you see it. Vladimir
Nabokov argued that if we were rigorous with our definitions, Shakespeare's play The
Tempest would have to be termed science fiction.

According to science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, "a handy short definition of almost all
science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on
adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the
nature and significance of the scientific method. Rod Serling's definition is "fantasy is the
impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible. Even the devoted
aficionado—or fan—has a hard time trying to explain what science fiction is", and that the reason
for there not being a "full satisfactory definition" is that "there are no easily delineated limits to
science fiction.
A categorization of science fiction into various subgenres can be problematic, because these
subcategories are not simple pigeonholes. Some works may overlap two or more commonly defined
genres, whereas others are beyond the generic boundaries, either outside or between categories.
Moreover, the categories and genres used by mass markets and literary criticism differ considerably.
One of the main subgenres of science fiction is hard science fiction.
Hard science fiction, or "hard SF", is characterized by rigorous attention to accurate detail in
quantitative sciences, especially physics, astrophysics, and chemistry, or on accurately depicting
worlds that more advanced technology may make possible. Many accurate predictions of the future
come from the hard science fiction subgenre, but numerous inaccurate predictions have emerged as
well. Some hard SF authors have distinguished themselves as
working scientists, including Gregory Benford, Geoffrey A. Landis and David Brin, while
mathematician authors include Rudy Rucker and Vernor Vinge. Other noteworthy hard SF authors
include Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Hal Clement, Greg Bear, Larry Niven, Robert J.
Sawyer, Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds, Charles Sheffield, Ben Bova, Kim Stanley
Robinson and Greg Egan. Another subgenre is Soft and social SF.
The description "soft" science fiction may describe works based on social sciences such
as psychology, economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology. Noteworthy writers in
this category include Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Dick. The term can describe stories focused
primarily on character and emotion; SFWA Grand Master Ray Bradbury was an acknowledged
master of this art. The Eastern Bloc produced a large quantity of social science fiction, including
works by Polish authors Stanislaw Lem and Janusz Zajdel, as well as Soviet authors such as
the Strugatsky brothers, Kir Bulychov, Yevgeny Zamyatin and Ivan Yefremov. Some writers blur
the boundary between hard and soft science fiction.

Related to social SF and soft SF are utopian and dystopian stories; George Orwell's Nineteen
Eighty-Four, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale are
examples.

The cyberpunk is another genre which is emerged in the early 1980s;

combining cybernetics and punk, the term was coined by author Bruce Bethke for his 1980 short
story "Cyberpunk". The time frame is usually near-future and the settings are often dystopian in
nature and characterized by misery. Common themes in cyberpunk include advances in information
technology and especially the Internet, visually abstracted as cyberspace, artificial intelligence,
and prosthetics and post-democratic societal control where corporations have more influence than
governments. Nihilism, post-modernism, and film noir techniques are common elements, and the
protagonists may be disaffected or reluctant anti-heroes. The

‘cyber’ part of cyberpunk distinguishes it from science fiction and instead of dealing with
spaceships and robots, turns its attention to cybernetics. The ‘punk’ part suggests at the
rebellious attitudes of street- and subcultures of urban settings . The
characters in cyberpunk literature come from the “fringe of society: outsiders, misfits and
psychopaths”. Elias notes that cyberpunk presented itself by “making
nobodies, losers and outlaws as heroes”. In its deepest sense, cyberpunk
represents a “power united by minorities and the rebelled underground layers of society” .
Even though cyberpunk distinguishes itself from science fiction,
it has its “roots deeply sunk in the sixty-year tradition of modern popular SF” .
The influence of science fiction grew in the
1980s due to the introduction of “video games and desk computers, and the emergence of
genetic engineering as the dominant popular model of techno-science”, which contributed to
the rise of cyberpunk literature (Csicsery-Ronay 2005: 54). Although cyberpunk literature has
specific ideas, Michael Levy points out that even though cyberpunk declared itself different
from SF, it never completely was so due to its “clear roots” in the works of other science
fiction authors (Levy 2009: 155). McHale (2010: 5) also points out that there are few
“absolute novelties” in cyberpunk. He notes that most themes used in cyberpunk have been
used in earlier science fiction (McHale 2010: 5).
Sterling and his suggestion that cyberpunk, similar to the rebellious nature of punk rock music,
Noteworthy authors in this genre are William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, and Pat
Cadigan. James O'Ehley has called the 1982 film Blade Runner a definitive example of
the cyberpunk visual style.
Time travel stories have antecedents in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first major time travel novel
was Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The most famous is H. G. Wells's
1895 novel The Time Machine, which uses a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully
and selectively, while Twain's time traveler is struck in the head. The term "time machine", coined
by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle. Stories of this type are complicated by
logical problems such as the grandfather paradox. Time travel continues to be a popular subject in
modern science fiction, in print, movies, and television such as the BBC television series Doctor
Who.
Alternate (or alternative) history stories are based on the premise that historical events might have
turned out differently. These stories may use time travel to change the past, or may simply set a
story in a universe with a different history from our own. Classics in the genre include Bring the
Jubilee by Ward Moore, in which the South wins the American Civil War, and The Man in the High
Castle by Philip K. Dick, in which Germany and Japan win World War II. The Sidewise
Award acknowledges the best works in this subgenre; the name is taken from Murray Leinster's
1934 story "Sidewise in Time." Harry Turtledove is one of the most prominent authors in the
subgenre and is sometimes called the "master of alternate history".
Military science fiction is set in the context of conflict between national, interplanetary, or
interstellar armed forces; the primary viewpoint characters are usually soldiers. Stories include detail
about military technology, procedure, ritual, and history; military stories may use parallels with
historical conflicts. Heinlein's Starship Troopers is an early example, along with the Dorsai novels
of Gordon Dickson. Joe Haldeman's The Forever War is a critique of the genre, a Vietnam-era
response to the World War II–style stories of earlier authors. Prominent military SF authors
include John Ringo, David Drake, David Weber, and S. M. Stirling. The publishing company Baen
Books is known for cultivating military science fiction authors.
Superhuman stories deal with the emergence of humans who have abilities beyond the norm. This
can stem either from natural causes such as in Olaf Stapledon's novel Odd John, and Theodore
Sturgeon'sMore Than Human, or be the result of intentional augmentation such as in A. E. van
Vogt's novel Slan. These stories usually focus on the alienation that these beings feel as well as
society's reaction to them. These stories have played a role in the real life discussion of human
enhancement. Frederik Pohl's Man Plus also belongs to this category.

Apocalyptic fiction is concerned with the end of civilization through war (On the Beach), pandemic
(The Last Man), astronomic impact (When Worlds Collide), ecological disaster (The Wind from
Nowhere), or some other general disaster or with a world or civilization after such a disaster.
Typical of the genre are George R. Stewart's novel Earth Abides and Pat Frank's novel Alas,
Babylon. Apocalyptic fiction generally concerns the disaster itself and the direct aftermath, while
post-apocalyptic can deal with anything from the near aftermath (as in Cormac McCarthy's The
Road) to 375 years in the future (as in By The Waters of Babylon) to hundreds or thousands of years
in the future, as in Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker and Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for
Leibowitz.

Space opera is adventure science fiction set in outer space or on distant planets. The conflict is
heroic, and typically on a large scale.
Space opera is sometimes used pejoratively, to describe improbable plots, absurd science, and
cardboard characters. But it is also used nostalgically, and modern space opera may be an attempt to
recapture the sense of wonder of the golden age of science fiction. The pioneer of this subgenre is
generally recognized to be Edward E. (Doc) Smith,. L. Ron Hubbard'sBattlefield Earth is an
example of this subgenre. The Star Trek television series franchise is often described as space
opera that encourages this sense of wonder, in that most of the scripts are generally about peaceful
space exploration and examinations of cultural differences rather than about conflict between
civilizations.
Space Western could be considered a sub-genre of space opera that transposes themes of
the American Western books and film to a backdrop of futuristic space frontiers. These stories
typically involve "frontier" colony worlds (colonies that have only recently been terraformed and/or
settled) serving as stand-ins for the backdrop of lawlessness and economic expansion that were
predominant in the American west. Examples include the Sean Connery film Outland,
the Firefly television series, and the film sequel Serenity by Joss Whedon, as well as
the manga and anime series.

 Science fiction include many other subgenres too. One of them is considered to be
Anthropological science fiction which is a sub-genre that absorbs and discusses anthropology
and the study of human kind.
Biopunk focuses on biotechnology and subversives.

 Comic science fiction is a sub-genre that exploits the genre's conventions for comic effect.

 Feminist science fiction poses questions about social issues such as how society constructs
gender roles, the role reproduction plays in defining gender and the unequal political and
personal power of men and women. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works
have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or
gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender
inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue. Joanna Russ's
work, and some of Ursula Le Guin's work can be thus categorized.
Steampunk is based on the idea of futuristic technology existing in the past, usually the 19th
century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science
fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G.
Wells and Jules Verne, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier
date. Popular examples include The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling,
 Dieselpunk takes over where Steampunk leaves off. These are stories that take over as we usher in
the machine-heavy eras of WWI and WWII. The use of diesel-powered machines plays heavily. In
this (like its steam counterpart), the focus is on the technology.

 Science-fiction poetry is poetry that has the characteristics or subject matter of science fiction.
Science fiction poetry's main sources are the sciences and the literary movement of science
fiction prose. An extended discussion of the field is given in Suzette Haden Elgin's The Science
Fiction Poetry Handbook, where she compares and contrasts it to both mainstream poetry and to
prose science fiction. The former, she maintains, uses figures of speech unencumbered by
noncompliant details, whereas these details can be key elements in science-fiction poetry. Prose
in science fiction has the time to develop a setting and a story, whereas a poem in the field is
normally constrained by its short length to rely on some device to get a point across quickly.
Elgin says that the effectiveness of this kind of poetry pivots around the correct use of
presupposition. The Science Fiction Association is an international organization of speculative
poets, which gives the annual Rhysling awards for speculative poetry. An early example of
science fiction in poetry is in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Locksley Hall", where he introduces a
picture of the future with "When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see...." This poem
was written in 1835, near the end of the first Industrial Revolution. Poetry was only sparingly
published in traditional science-fiction outlets such as pulp magazines until the New Wave. By
the 1980s there were magazines specifically devoted to science-fiction poetry.
Other Related genres

Speculative fiction, fantasy, and horror

The broader category of speculative fiction includes science fiction, fantasy, alternate
histories (which may have no particular scientific or futuristic component), and even literary stories
that contain fantastic elements, such as the work of Jorge Luis Borges or John Barth. For some
editors, magic realism is considered to be within the broad definition of speculative fiction.
Fantasy
Fantasy is closely associated with science fiction, and many writers have worked in both genres,
while writers such as Anne McCaffrey, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Marion Zimmer Bradley have
written works that appear to blur the boundary between the two related genres. The authors'
professional organization is called the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). SF
conventions routinely have programming on fantasy topics, and fantasy authors such as J. K.
Rowling have won the highest honor within the science fiction field, the Hugo Award.
In general, science fiction differs from fantasy in that the former concerns things that might someday
be possible or that at least embody the pretense of realism. Supernaturalism, usually absent in
science fiction, is the distinctive characteristic of fantasy literature. A dictionary definition referring
to fantasy literature is "fiction characterized by highly fanciful or supernatural elements. Examples
of fantasy supernaturalism include magic (spells, harm to opponents), magical places supernatural
creatures (witches, vampires, orcs, trolls), supernatural transportation (flying broomsticks, ruby
slippers, windows between worlds), and shape shifting (beast into man, man into wolf or bear, lion
into sheep). Such things are basic themes in fantasy. Literary critics have characterized the
difference between the two genres by describing science fiction as turning "on a formal framework
determined by concepts of the mode of production rather than those of religion" - that is, science
fiction texts are bound by an inner logic based more on historical materialism than on magic or the
forces of good and evil. Some narratives are described as being essentially science fiction but "with
fantasy elements". The term "science fantasy" is sometimes used to describe such material.
Horror fiction
Horror fiction is the literature of the unnatural and supernatural, with the aim of unsettling or
frightening the reader, sometimes with graphic violence. Historically it has also been known
as weird fiction. Although horror is not a branch of science fiction, many works of horror literature
incorporates science fictional elements. One of the defining classical works of horror, Mary
Shelley's novel Frankenstein, is the first fully realized work of science fiction, where the
manufacture of the monster is given a rigorous science-fictional grounding. The works of Edgar
Allan Poe also helped define both the science fiction and the horror genres. Today horror is one of
the most popular categories of films. Horror is often mistakenly categorized as science fiction at the
point of distribution by libraries, video rental outlets, etc.
Mystery fiction
Works in which science and technology are a dominant theme, but based on current reality, may be
considered mainstream fiction. Much of the thriller genre would be included, such as the novels
of Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton, or the James Bond films. Modernist works from writers
like Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, and Stanisław Lem have focused on speculative
or existential perspectives on contemporary reality and are on the borderline between SF and the
mainstream. According to Robert J. Sawyer, "Science fiction and mystery have a great deal in
common. Both prize the intellectual process of puzzle solving, and both require stories to be
plausible and hinge on the way things really do work Isaac Asimov, Walter Mosley, and other
writers incorporate mystery elements in their science fiction, and vice versa.
Superhero fiction
Superhero fiction is a genre characterized by beings with much higher than usual capability and
prowess, generally with a desire or need to help the citizens of their chosen country or world by
using his or her powers to defeat natural or super powered threats. Many superhero fiction characters
involve themselves (either intentionally or accidentally) with science fiction and fact, including
advanced technologies, alien worlds, time travel, and interdimensional travel; but the standards of
scientific plausibility are lower than with actual science fiction.
Science fiction fandom is the "community of the literature of ideas... the culture in which new ideas
emerge and grow before being released into society at large". Members of this community, "fans",
are in contact with each other at conventions or clubs, through print or online fanzines, or on the
Internet using web sites, mailing lists, and other resources.
SF fandom emerged from the letters column in Amazing Stories magazine. Soon fans began writing
letters to each other, and then grouping their comments together in informal publications that
became known as fanzines. Once they were in regular contact, fans wanted to meet each other, and
they organized local clubs. In the 1930s, the first science fiction conventions gathered fans from a
wider area. Conventions, clubs, and fanzines were the dominant form of fan activity, or "fanac", for
decades, until the Internet facilitated communication among a much larger population of interested
people.

1.2 A Very Brief History of Science Fiction

As a means of understanding the world through speculation and storytelling, science fiction has
antecedents back to mythology, though precursors to science fiction as literature can be seen
in Lucian's True History in the 2nd century, some of the Arabian Nights tales, The Tale of the
Bamboo Cutter in the 10th century and Ibn al-Nafis' Theologus Autodidactus in the 13th century.
A product of the budding Age of Reason and the development of modern science itself, Jonathan
Swift's Gulliver's Travels was one of the first true science fantasy works, together
with Voltaire'sMicromégas and Johannes Kepler's Somnium Isaac Asimov and Carl
Sagan consider the latter work the first science fiction story. It depicts a journey to the Moon and
how the Earth's motion is seen from there. It is argued that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) was
the first work of science fiction.
Following the 18th-century development of the novel as a literary form, in the early 19th
century, Mary Shelley's books Frankenstein and The Last Man helped define the form of the science
fiction novel later Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a flight to the moon. More examples
appeared throughout the 19th century.

Then with the dawn of new technologies such as electricity, the telegraph, and new forms of
powered transportation, writers including Jules Verne and H. G. Wells created a body of work that
became popular across broad cross-sections of society. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898)
describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines
equipped with advanced weaponry. It is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth.
In the late 19th century, the term "scientific romance" was used in Britain to describe much of this
fiction. This produced additional offshoots, such as the 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many
Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott. The term would continue to be used into the early 20th
century for writers such as Olaf Stapledon.
In the early 20th century, pulp magazines helped develop a new generation of mainly American SF
writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine. In 1912 Edgar
Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, the first of his three-decade-long series of
Barsoom novels, situated on Mars and featuring John Carter as the hero. The 1928 publication of
Philip Nolan's original Buck Rogers story,Armageddon 2419, in Amazing Stories was a landmark
event. This story led to comic strips featuring Buck Rogers (1929), Brick Bradford (1933),
and Flash Gordon (1934). The comic strips and derivative movie serials greatly popularized science
fiction. In the late 1930s, John W. Campbell became editor of Astounding Science Fiction, and a
critical mass of new writers emerged in New York City in a group called the Futurians,
including Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Donald A. Wollheim, Frederik Pohl, James Blish, Judith
Merril, and others. Other important writers during this period and later, include E.E. (Doc)
Smith, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Olaf Stapledon, A. E. van Vogt, Ray
Bradbury andStanisław Lem. Campbell's tenure at Astounding is considered to be the beginning of
the Golden Age of science fiction, characterized by hard SF stories celebrating scientific
achievement and progress. This lasted until postwar technological advances, new magazines such
as Galaxy under Pohl as editor, and a new generation of writers began writing stories outside the
Campbell mode.
In the 1950s, the Beat generation included speculative writers such as William S. Burroughs. In the
1960s and early 1970s, writers like Frank Herbert, Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, and Harlan
Ellison explored new trends, ideas, and writing styles, while a group of writers, mainly in Britain,
became known as the New Wave for their embrace of a high degree of experimentation, both in
form and in content, and a highbrow and self-consciously "literary" or artistic sensibility. In the
1970s, writers like Larry Niven and Poul Anderson began to redefine hard SF. Ursula K. Le
Guin and others pioneered soft science fiction. In the
1980s, cyberpunk authors like William Gibson turned away from the optimism and support for
progress of traditional science fiction.[32] This dystopian vision of the near future is described in the
work ofPhilip K. Dick, such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and We Can Remember It
for You Wholesale, which resulted in the films Blade Runner and Total Recall. The Star Wars
franchise helped spark a new interest in space opera,[33] focusing more on story and character than
on scientific accuracy. C. J. Cherryh's detailed explorations of alien life and complex scientific
challenges influenced a generation of writers.[34] Emerging themes in the 1990s
included environmental issues, the implications of the global Internet and the expanding information
universe, questions about biotechnology and nanotechnology, as well as a post-Cold War interest
in post-scarcity societies; Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age comprehensively explores these
themes. Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan novels brought the character-driven story back into
prominence.[35] The television series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) began a torrent of new
SF shows, including three further Star Trek spin-off shows and Babylon 5.[36][37]Concern about the
rapid pace of technological change crystallized around the concept of the technological singularity,
popularized by Vernor Vinge's novel Marooned in Realtime and then taken up by other
authors.[citation needed]

Forrest J Ackerman used the term sci-fi (analogous to the then-trendy "hi-fi") at UCLA in 1954. As
science fiction entered popular culture, writers and fans active in the field came to associate the term
with low-budget, low-tech "B-movies" and with low-quality pulp science fiction. By the 1970s,
critics within the field such as Terry Carr and Damon Knight were using sci-fi to distinguish hack-
work from serious science fiction, and around 1978, Susan Wood and others introduced the
pronunciation "skiffy". Peter Nicholls writes that "SF" (or "sf") is "the preferred abbreviation within
the community of sf writers and readers".[43] David Langford's monthly fanzine Ansible includes a
regular section "As Others See Us" which offers numerous examples of "sci-fi" being used in
a pejorative sense by people outside the genre.[44]
Science fiction has criticised developing and future technologies, but also initiates innovation and
new technology. This topic has been more often discussed in literary and sociological than in
scientific forums. Cinema and media theorist Vivian Sobchack examines the dialogue between
science fiction films and the technological imagination. Technology impacts artists and how they
portray their fictionalized subjects, but the fictional world gives back to science by broadening
imagination. How William Shatner Changed the World is a documentary that gave many real-world
examples of actualized technological imaginations. While more prevalent in the early years of
science fiction with writers like Arthur C. Clarke, new authors still find ways to make currently
impossible technologies seem closer to being realized.

Conventions (in fandom, shortened as "cons"), are held in cities around the world, catering to a
local, regional, national, or international membership. General-interest conventions cover all aspects
of science fiction, while others focus on a particular interest like media fandom, filking, etc. Most
are organized by volunteers in non-profit groups, though most media-oriented events are organized
by commercial promoters. The convention's activities are called the "program", which may include
panel discussions, readings, autograph sessions, costume masquerades, and other events. Activities
that occur throughout the convention are not part of the program; these commonly include a dealer's
room, art show, and hospitality lounge (or "con suites").
Conventions may host award ceremonies; World cons present the Hugo Awards each year. SF
societies, referred to as "clubs" except in formal contexts, form a year-round base of activities for
science fiction fans. They may be associated with an ongoing science fiction convention, or have
regular club meetings, or both. Most groups meet in libraries, schools and universities, community
centers, pubs or restaurants, or the homes of individual members. Long-established groups like
the New England Science Fiction Association and the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society have
clubhouses for meetings and storage of convention supplies and research materials.[87] The Science
Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) was founded by Damon Knight in 1965 as a non-
profit organization to serve the community of professional science fiction authors,[69] 24 years after
his essay "Unite or Fie!" had led to the organization of the National Fantasy Fan Federation.
Fandom has helped incubate related groups, including media fandom,[88] the Society for Creative
Anachronism,[89] gaming,[90] filking, and furry fandom.
Fanzines and online fandom
The first science fiction fanzine, The Comet, was published in 1930. Fanzine printing methods have
changed over the decades, from the hectograph, the mimeograph, and the ditto machine, to modern
photocopying. Distribution volumes rarely justify the cost of commercial printing. Modern fanzines
are printed on computer printers or at local copy shops, or they may only be sent as email. The best
known fanzine (or "'zine") today is Ansible, edited by David Langford, winner of numerous Hugo
awards. Other fanzines to win awards in recent years include File 770, Mimosa,
and Plokta.[93] Artists working for fanzines have risen to prominence in the field, including Brad W.
Foster, Teddy Harvia, and Joe Mayhew; the Hugos include a category for Best Fan Artists.[93] The
earliest organized fandom online was the SF Lovers community, originally a mailing list in the late
1970s with a text archive file that was updated regularly.[94] In the 1980s, Usenet groups greatly
expanded the circle of fans online. In the 1990s, the development of the World-Wide Web exploded
the community of online fandom by orders of magnitude, with thousands and then literally millions
of web sites devoted to science fiction and related genres for all media.[87] Most such sites are
small, ephemeral, and/or very narrowly focused, though sites like SF Site offer a broad range of
references and reviews about science fiction.
Fan fiction
Fan fiction, known to aficionados as "fanfic", is non-commercial fiction created by fans in the
setting of an established book, film, video game, or television series. This modern meaning of the
term should not be confused with the traditional (pre-1970s) meaning of "fan fiction" within the
community of fandom, where the term meant original or parody fiction written by fans and
published in fanzines, often with members of fandom as characters therein ("faan fiction").
Examples of this would include the Goon Defective Agency stories, written starting in 1956 by Irish
fan John Berry and published in his and Arthur Thomson's fanzine Retribution. In the last few years,
sites have appeared such as Orion's Arm and Galaxiki, which encourage collaborative development
of science fiction universes. In some cases, the copyright owners of the books, films, or television
series have instructed their lawyers to issue "cease and desist" letters to fans.

The study of science fiction, or science fiction studies, is the critical assessment, interpretation, and
discussion of science fiction literature, film, new media, fandom, and fan fiction. Science fiction
scholars take science fiction as an object of study in order to better understand it and its relationship
to science, technology, politics, and culture-at-large. Science fiction studies has a long history dating
back to the turn of the 20th century, but it was not until later that science fiction studies solidified as
a discipline with the publication of the academic journals Extrapolation (1959), Foundation - The
International Review of Science Fiction (1972), and Science Fiction Studies (1973), and the
establishment of the oldest organizations devoted to the study of science fiction, the Science Fiction
Research Association and the Science Fiction Foundation, in 1970. The field has grown
considerably since the 1970s with the establishment of more journals, organizations, and
conferences with ties to the science fiction scholarship community, and science fiction degree-
granting programs such as those offered by the University of Liverpool and Kansas University.
The National Science Foundation has conducted surveys of "Public Attitudes and Public
Understanding" of "Science Fiction and Pseudoscience". They write that "Interest in science fiction
may affect the way people think about or relate to science....one study found a strong relationship
between preference for science fiction novels and support for the space program...The same study
also found that students who read science fiction are much more likely than other students to believe
that contacting extraterrestrial civilizations is both possible and desirable
Mary Shelley wrote a number of science fiction novels including Frankenstein, and is treated as a
major Romantic writer. Many science fiction works have received widespread critical acclaim
including Childhood's End and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the inspiration for the
movie Blade Runner). A number of respected writers of mainstream literature have written science
fiction, including Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-
Four, Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Nobel
Laureate Doris Lessing wrote a series of SF novels, Canopus in Argos, and nearly all of Kurt
Vonnegut's works contain science fiction premises or themes.
The scholar Tom Shippey asks a perennial question of science fiction: "What is its relationship to
fantasy fiction, is its readership still dominated by male adolescents, is it a taste which will appeal to
the mature but non-eccentric literary mind?"[99] In her much reprinted essay "Science Fiction and
Mrs Brown,"[100] the science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin has approached an answer by first
citing the essay written by the English author Virginia Woolf entitled "Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown"
in which she states:
I believe that all novels, … deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach
doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so
clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved … The great novelists
have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would
not be novelists, but poets, historians, or pamphleteers.
Le Guin argues that these criteria may be successfully applied to works of science fiction and so
answers in the affirmative her rhetorical question posed at the beginning of her essay: "Can a
science fiction writer write a novel?"
Tom Shippey[99] in his essay does not dispute this answer but identifies and discusses the essential
differences that exists between a science fiction novel and one written outside the field. To this end,
he compares George Orwell's Coming Up for Air with Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth's The
Space Merchants and concludes that the basic building block and distinguishing feature of a science
fiction novel is the presence of the novum, a term Darko Suvin adapts from Ernst Bloch and defines
as "a discrete piece of information recognizable as not-true, but also as not-unlike-true, not-flatly-
(and in the current state of knowledge) impossible".[101]
In science fiction the style of writing is often relatively clear and straightforward compared to
classical literature. Orson Scott Card, an author of both science fiction and non-SF fiction, has
postulated that in science fiction the message and intellectual significance of the work is contained
within the story itself and, therefore, there need not be stylistic gimmicks or literary games; but that
many writers and critics confuse clarity of language with lack of artistic merit. In Card's words:
...a great many writers and critics have based their entire careers on the premise that anything that
the general public can understand without mediation is worthless drivel. [...] If everybody came to
agree that stories should be told this clearly, the professors of literature would be out of job, and the
writers of obscure, encoded fiction would be, not honored, but pitied for their impenetrability."[102]
Science fiction author and physicist Gregory Benford has declared that: "SF is perhaps the defining
genre of the twentieth century, although its conquering armies are still camped outside the Rome of
the literary citadels."[103] This sense of exclusion was articulated by Jonathan Lethem in an essay
published in the Village Voice entitled "Close Encounters: The Squandered Promise of Science
Fiction."[104]Lethem suggests that the point in 1973 when Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow was
nominated for the Nebula Award, and was passed over in favor of Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous
with Rama, stands as "a hidden tombstone marking the death of the hope that SF was about to merge
with the mainstream." Among the responses to Lethem was one from the editor of the Magazine of
Fantasy and Science Fiction who asked: "When is it [the SF genre] ever going to realize it can't win
the game of trying to impress the mainstream?"[105] On this point the journalist and author David
Barnett has remarked:
The ongoing, endless war between "literary" fiction and "genre" fiction has well-defined lines in the
sand. Genre's foot soldiers think that literary fiction is a collection of meaningless but prettily drawn
pictures of the human condition. The literary guard consider genre fiction to be crass, commercial,
whizz-bang potboilers. Or so it goes.
Barnett, in an earlier essay had pointed to a new development in this "endless war":[107]
What do novels about a journey across post-apocalyptic America, a clone waitress rebelling against
a future society, a world-girdling pipe of special gas keeping mutant creatures at bay, a plan to rid a
colonizable new world of dinosaurs, and genetic engineering in a collapsed civilization have in
common?
They are all most definitely not science fiction.

Although perhaps most developed as a genre and community in the United States, Canada, and the
United Kingdom, science fiction is a worldwide phenomenon. Organisations devoted to promotion
and even translation in particular countries are commonplace, as are country- or language-specific
genre awards.
Mohammed Dib, an Algerian writer, wrote a science fiction allegory about his nation's politics, Qui
se souvient de la mer ("Who Remembers the Sea?") in 1962. Masimba Musodza, a Zimbabwean
author, published MunaHacha Maive Nei? the first science-fiction novel in the Shona
language,[109] which also holds the distinction of being the first novel in the Shona language to
appear as an ebook first before it came out in print. In South Africa, a movie titled District 9 came
out in 2009, an apartheid allegory featuring extraterrestrial life forms, produced by Peter Jackson.
African American author, Octavia Butler, contributes to the genre of African Science Fiction. She is
the author of the Patternist series, Kindred, Lilith's Brood, and the Parable series.[citation needed]
Science fiction examines society through shifting power structures (such as the shift of power from
humanity to alien overlords). African science fiction often uses this genre norm to situate slavery
and the slave trade as an alien abduction. Commonalities in experiences with unknown languages,
customs, and culture lend themselves well to this comparison. The subgenre also commonly
employs the mechanism of time travel to examine the effects of slavery and forced emigration on the
individual and the family.

1.3 Science fiction all over the world

Asia and the Middle East

Indian science fiction, defined loosely as science fiction by writers of Indian descent, began with the
English-language publication of Kylas Chundar Dutt's A Journal of Forty-Eight Hours in the Year
1945 in theCalcutta Literary Gazette (June 6, 1835). Since this story was intended as a political
polemic, credit for the first science fiction story is often given to later Bengali authors such
as Jagadananda Roy, Hemlal Dutta and the polymath Jagadish Chandra Bose (see Bengali science
fiction). Similar traditions exist in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and English.[110] In English, the modern era
of Indian speculative fiction began with the works of authors such as Samit Basu, Payal
Dhar, Vandana Singh and Anil Menon. Works such as Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta
Chromosome and Salman Rushdie's Grimus and Boman Desai's The Memory of Elephants are
generally classified as magic realist works but make essential use of SF tropes and techniques.
Modern science fiction in China mainly depends on the magazine Science Fiction World. Many
famous works were published in installments in it originally, including the most successful
fiction Three Body, written by Liu Cixin.
Chalomot Be'aspamia is an Israeli magazine of short science fiction and fantasy stories. The
Prophecies Of Karma, published in 2011, is advertised as the first work of science fiction by
an Arabic author, theLibanese writer Nael Gharzeddine.
The main German science fiction writer in the 19th century was Kurd Lasswitz.[111] Current well-
known SF authors from Germany are five-time Kurd-Laßwitz-Award winner Andreas Eschbach,
whose booksThe Carpet Makers and Eine Billion Dollar are big successes, and Frank Schätzing,
who in his book The Swarm mixes elements of the science thriller with SF elements to an
apocalyptic scenario. The most prominent German-speaking author, according to Die Zeit, is
Austrian Herbert W. Franke.
In 1920's Germany produced a number of critically acclaimed high-budget science fiction and horror
films. Metropolis by director Fritz Lang is credited as one of the most influential science fiction
films ever made.
A well known science fiction book series in German is Perry Rhodan, which started in 1961. Having
sold over one billion copies (in pulp format), it claims to be the most successful science fiction book
series ever written worldwide.[115]
In the French speaking world, for the most part, the colloquial use of the term sci-fi[116] is an
accepted anglicism for the word science fiction. This probably stems from the fact that science
fiction writing never expanded to the extent it did in the English world, particularly with the
dominance of the United States. Nevertheless, France has made a tremendous contribution to
science fiction in its seminal stages of development.
Although the term "science fiction" is understood in France their penchant for the "weird and
wacky" has a long tradition and is sometimes called "le culte du merveilleux". This uniquely French
tradition certainly encompasses what the Anglophone world would call French science fiction but
also ranges across fairies, Dada-ism and Surrealisme. Some more recent and famous French science
fiction novels and short stories include those written by René Barjavel and Robert Merle, for
example.
In Belgian and French films, science-fiction is represented, but not nearly as much as drama,
comedy, or historical film. In Belgian and French comic books, on the other hand, science-fiction is,
among other things, a well established (and often pessimistic) genre.[citation needed] Among the notable
French science fiction comics, there is Valerian et Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude
Mézières, a space opera franchise lasting since 1967. Metal Hurlant magazine (known in US
as Heavy Metal) was one of the largest contributors to Francophone science-fiction comics. Its
major authors include Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, creator of Arzach, Chilean Alejandro Jodorowsky,
who created a series of comics, including L'Incal and Les Metabarons, set in Jodoverse, and Enki
Bilal with Nikopol Trilogy. Giraud also contributed to French SF animation, collaborating with René
Laloux on several animated features. Many artists from neighbouring coutries, such as Spain and
Italy, create science fiction and fantasy comics in French aimed at a Franco-Belgian market[citation
needed]
.
In the case of Canada's Québec, Élisabeth Vonarburg and other authors developed a related tradition
of French-Canadian SF. The Prix Boreal was established in 1979 to honour Canadian science fiction
works in French. The Aurora Awards (briefly preceded by the Casper Award) were founded in 1980
to recognise and promote the best works of Canadian science fiction in both French and English.
Also, due to Canada's bilingualism and the US publishing almost exclusively in English, translation
of science fiction prose into French thrives and runs nearly parallel upon a book's publishing in the
original English. A sizeable market also exists within Québec for European-written Francophone
science fiction literature.

Although Russians made their first attempts in science fiction long before the Revolution,[117] it was
the Soviet era that became the genre's golden age. Soviet writers were prolific,[118] despite being
sometimes hampered by state censorship. Early Soviet writers, such as Alexander Belayev, Alexey
N. Tolstoy and Vladimir Obruchev, employed Vernian/Wellsian hard science fiction based on
scientific predictions.[119] The most notable books of the era include Belayev's, Amphibian
Manand Professor Dowell's Head; Tolstoy's Aelita and Engineer Garin's Death Ray. Early Soviet
science fiction was influenced by communist ideology and often featured a leftist agenda or anti-
capitalist satire.[120][121][122] Those few early Soviet books that challenged the communist worldview
and satirized the Soviets, such asYevgeny Zamyatin's dystopia We or Mikhail Bulgakov's Heart of a
Dog and Fatal Eggs, were banned from publishing until 1980s, although they still circulated in fan-
made copies.
In the second half of the 20th century, a new generation of writers developed a more complex
approach. Social science fiction, concerned with philosophy, ethics,utopian and dystopian ideas,
became the prevalent subgenre.[123] The breakthrough is considered to have been started by Ivan
Yefremov's utopian novel Andromeda Nebula (1957). He was soon followed by brothers Arkady
and Boris Strugatsky, who explored darker themes and social satire in their Noon Universe novels,
such asHard to be a God (1964) and Prisoners of Power (1969), as well as in their science
fantasy trilogy Monday Begins on Saturday (1964). A good share of Soviet science fiction was
aimed at children. Probably the best known[119][124] was Kir Bulychov, who created Alisa
Selezneva (1965-2003), a children's space adventure series about a teenage girl from the future.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, science fiction in the former Soviet republics is still written
mostly in the Russian language, which allows an appeal to a broader audience. Among the most
notable post-Soviet authors are H. L. Oldie, Sergey Lukyanenko, Alexander Zorich and Vadim
Panov.[125] Science fiction media in Russia is represented with such magazines as Mir
Fantastiki and Esli.
Oceania
Australia: David G. Hartwell noted that while there is perhaps "nothing essentially Australian about
Australian science-fiction", many Australian science-fiction (and fantasy and horror) writers are in
fact international English language writers, and their work is commonly published worldwide. This
is further explainable by the fact that the Australian inner market is small (with Australian
population being around 21 million), and sales abroad are crucial to most Australian writers.[126][127]
North America
]Latin America
Although there is still some controversy as to when science fiction began in Latin America, the
earliest works date from the late 19th century. All published in 1875, O Doctor Benignus by the
BrazilianAugusto Emílio Zaluar, El Maravilloso Viejo del Sr. Nic-Mac by the Argentinian Eduardo
Holmberg, and Historia de un Muerto by the Cuban Francisco Calcagno are three of the earliest
novels which appeared in the continent.[128]
Up to the 1960s, science fiction was the work of isolated writers who did not identify themselves
with the genre, but rather used its elements to criticize society, promote their own agendas or tap
into the public's interest in pseudo-sciences. It received a boost of respectability after authors such
as Horacio Quiroga and Jorge Luis Borges used its elements in their writings. This, in turn, led to
the permanent emergence of science fiction in the 1960s and mid-1970s, notably in Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Cuba. Magic realism enjoyed parallel growth in Latin America, with a
strong regional emphasis on using the form to comment on social issues, similar to social science
fiction and speculative fiction in the English world.
Economic turmoil and the suspicious eye of the dictatorial regimes in place reduced the genre's
dynamism for the following decade. In the mid-1980s, it became increasingly popular once more.
Although led by Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, Latin America now hosts dedicated communities
and writers with an increasing use of regional elements to set them apart from English-language
science-fiction.
Neologisms have been allotted a lot of different definitions.

1.4 The Scope of Neologisms in Science Fiction

New words are often the subject of scorn because they are new, because they are perceived as
unesthetically or improperly formed, or because they are considered to be unnecessary. They are,
however, a normal part of language change; with frequent use and the passage of time they become
unremarked items in everyday use. A neologism (Greek νεολογισμός [neologismos], from νέος
[neos] new + λόγος [logos] word, speech, discourse + suffix -ισμός [-ismos] -ism) is a word, term,
or phrase which has been recently created (coined) - often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize
pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary. Neologisms are
especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas which have taken on a new
cultural context. The term e-mail, as used today, is an example of a neologism. Neologisms are by
definition “new”, and as such are often directly attributable to a specific individual, publication,
period or event. The term neologism was itself coined around 1800; so for some time in the early
19th Century, the word neologism was itself a neologism. Neologisms can also refer to an existing
word or phrase which has been assigned a new meaning”.
We live in a society that constantly develops. New objects in different spheres arise and they need to
be named. That is why no science can exist without neologisms, new words. Though the neologisms
dominate in the field of knowledge, other people, not only scientists, can also feel the necessity to
express and interpret reality by new ways and create new words that would reflect it. Sometimes old
words receive new meaning, change their word category or get new affixes or suffixes.
If we want to come across a neologism we do not have to search for it very strenuously. Every day
the mass media and advertisements want to attract our attention and one way for achieving it is
creating of new words. We notice immediately that our vocabulary does not contain the created
word and we start to think about it. Also many marketing strategies are based on this principle. We
are flooded by these words through television, we can see them on billboards. Many neologisms
have come from popular literature, and tend to appear in different forms. For example,
manufacturing, call-center, accounting, and computer programming jobs are not as abundant in
developed countries, as they used to be, as firms have looked abroad to meet these needs, frustrating
many people who used to work in these industries. These displaced workers often spent many years
gaining specialized education, training, and experience, and don't want to start over at the bottom
rung in a new industry. However, many older workers may have no choice but to take a "McJob",
because an employer will prefer to hire a younger person who has just finished college for an entry
level job.
New words come from many sources but most commonly; the jargon from professional
organisations, innovation in society, the modernisation of a word from another language,
colloquialisms, teen-speak, popular artists/creative’s/rappers creating new rhyming words, hysterical
abbreviations we make up on Twitter, and, of course, let’s not forget children and their wonderful
imaginations. Neologisms are often created by combining existing words or by giving words new
and unique suffixes or prefixes.

In spite of the foregoing outline, there are not as many new things in the science fiction universe as
might be intuitively thought. There are maybe half a dozen new inventions (and hence new words to
refer to them) in the

. Clearly, the perception that science fiction is full of new coinages must be because it is a feature
that marks it out from other genres. So it is not that science fiction is packed full of neologisms, but
it is the case that it has more than are encountered in mainstream literature. There is a difference
here as well in the type of neologism generally used. If you take the opening page of a few science
fiction novels or especially short stories, you are likely to find new characters, new places, new
machines, new social groups, new processes, and a host of new objects, all with new names invented
by the science fiction author. Science fiction short stories tend to have an even greater concentration
of such neologisms because the science fictional world has to be evoked in a relatively short space
of text. But if you take the opening page of a few mainstream texts, the only new words you are
likely to

encounter will be new characters‟ names or invented new places. The paraphernalia of everyday life
in

mainstream fiction is simply there with its familiar terms attached.

Whether creating people and places, or borrowing them

from our own historical reality, mainstream fiction is limited in the things with which it can fill
its world.Science fiction, essentially, is distinguished by new concepts and things,

though it additionally has the capacity to use the same created and borrowed words as well.

Relative to mainstream language science fiction exercises its capacity for a greater number and a
greater variety of types of neologisms.

It is important, firstly, to distinguish between new word-shapes and new meanings attached to
existing words; only the former new words are usually called neologisms, from a literal
etymological reading of the Greek neo-logos. However, both constitute new uses of a word and both
are important in the linguistic practice of thegenre.

Words undergo shifts in meaning from the moment they are coined until the moment they „die‟,
when

no one uses them any more and they become archaic. Neosemy thus refers to meaning-shift. If a
word shifts its meaning it can be said to be operating as a new word. Neosemy operates on all words
in the language, and can be seen as a sort of linguistic entropy by which all words mutate or
eventually disappear from current usage. Figure 6a (in 6.3.2) shows the distinction between neoseme
and neologism proper, and outlines the varioussub-types. The first sub-type of neosemy is
broadening, which is a shift in meaning because of generalisation. Of
course all words were once new, and thus any use of the term „neologism‟ involves a notion of
„relative recentness‟.

Furthermore, the sources of neologisms are various. Some are purely derived from science fiction,
some have found their way into science fiction from real science, and some (eg. „cyberpunk‟)
appeared in order to describe a sub-genre of science fiction. In all this, there is a problem in the
overlap between science and science fiction, since hypothesis-formation and terminology in advance
of discovery are types of fiction, and. The prototypical form of neologism is creation.
Creation, though, is a particularly problematic category of neologism. Can there really be any
genuinely new creations of new words, or are all words fundamentally implicated in other similar-
looking words. As long as created neologisms look pronounceable readers often try to interpret them
in terms of words they already know.

If readers do this, then created neologisms are, in the practice of reading, subsumed as derivations or
compounds of other meaningful chunks. There are, then, very few true examples of genuine
creation. Even proper names are often treated as being meaningful in literary reading. Incidentally,
the pulp

science fiction practice of listing consonant graphemes such as „thrsklpttlegggbkggggrhntd‟ as alien

words

betrays a curious view of what words in the English writing system represent. It is obviously not a
spelling from the history of English, so it looks like a new word intended to imitate pronunciation.
However, even as an approximation of pronunciation, this word is impossible in English, because of
the move from voiced to

unvoiced „bkg‟ and „td‟ without an intervening vowel, for example. It may be possible to articulate
in a mouth of alien anatomy, but it is doubtful whether human ears could then distinguish the
phonemes, nor whether s such a sequence of phonemes is physically possible as a sound wave at all.
Clearly, such words are an index of alienness in science fiction, rather than contributing towards
plausibility. Science fiction seems to have a greater spread of types of neologism,
with lots of examples of borrowing, derivation, compounding, and shortening, as well as creations
of both proper nouns and common nouns for new objects. It might even be possible to go further
than this, and look at the frequency of occurrence of particular neologism-types in each of the sub-
genres within science fiction. „Hard‟ science fiction would feature a greater concentration of
borrowings, derivations and compounds of the single word and multiple-word lexical item types.
These are the sorts of neologisms you find in scientific discourse. By contrast, science fiction that
deals more with inner space and psychology is likely to have fewer neologisms as a total, and those
it has might be phrasal circumlocutionary compounds and creations. Cyberpunk writing looks like it
has lots of creations, affixed derivations and various shortened forms. Neologism then becomes part
of the description and definition of genre and sub-genre. Of course, another factor in this is not
simply the type of neologism used but the source of the parts within the new term. If the words
which are borrowed, compounded, shortened or act as the roots for affixing come from particular
lexical fields, then the neologism takes on the flavour of that source, and in turn it will contribute to
the texture of the science fiction narrative. For example, the lexical blends and abbreviations often
found in cyberpunk writing tend to rely on technological product terms and marketing language. The
use of such neologisms helps to give cyberpunk worlds their atmosphere of advanced techno-
capitalism. By contrast, the borrowed and derived words of „hard‟ science fiction are often taken
from the Latin and Greek roots commonly used by the natural sciences and medicine, and lend a
scientific credibility to such science fictional worlds. All of this contributes to
the plausibility of the science fictional narrative, a feature that is a readerly effect of judging the
expected patterns in the text. For example, a text which uses an unexpected set of neologism-types,
and from a strange source, runs the risk of appearing badly written, or having an incoherent world,
or it may even be a signal that the text is parodic. Readers bring different such sets of expectations
with them, of course. Part of the „hardness‟ of „ hard science fiction is that most readers are
unfamiliar with the specialist technical terms that are likely to be used as the source domain for
neologisms in that sub-genre. Part of the enjoyment of pulpstyle is that most readers know that the
technical-

sounding are fairly meaningless derivations designed to sweep quickly over scientific complexities
in order to get on with the ripping yarn. In either case, the comfort or difficulty that different readers
feel when meeting science fiction can partly be seen as a product of their familiarity with the sources
of neologisms used in the text.

In dictionaries, neologism is generally defined as ‘a new word or a new meaning for an established
word’. To be more

specific, Peter Newmark defines neologisms as “newly come lexical or existing units that

acquire a new sense” (Newmark 1988: 140). According to Oxford Dictionary of English

(2003: 1179) a neologism is “a newly coined word or expression that may be in the process of

entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms

are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event. The term

neologism is not used only in linguistics, it can also be found in other sciences. And if we take

some science in particular, we may see that all of them reflect the essence of the notion, as

there is “always something new”. It is possible to create a new definition using all the above -
mentioned ones. This definition might be as follows: a neologism is a word, a term, or a

phrase that has been recently created (or coined) often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize
pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary. Neologisms

are especially useful in denominating inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas that have

taken on a new cultural context. In the present research we will stick to this definition, as it

seems to include all the main characteristic features of neologisms.

As it has already been mentioned the term neologism was coined in English in 1803.

But the English variant of this term was not new because French, Italian and German had their
respective terms, which were invented in the previous 65 years (Oxford Dictionary of English,
2003). The critics of the time conceived of neologism in literature as analogous to the
continuous creation and introduction of new lexical units into the language, and they thought
of language change in general as the process of decay. Thus neologism was condemned on both
aesthetic and linguistic grounds and the term was used pejoratively only. This older
meaning of neologism, and the attitude it reflects, are still alive today.
However, as early as the second half of the 18th century, it became obvious that the
vocabulary of literary expression should and perhaps could not be fully limited. Thus
pejorative neologism was given an ameliorative doublet, neology which meant the
introduction of “approved” or “correct” new words into language (Петрашевский 1846:234).
The old meaning of neologism is synonymous to that of barbarism, gallicism (in
English), anglicism (in French), and even archaism. It is opposed to purism (The American
Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition, 2000).
Such word characteristics as being an archaism or a neologism are historically relative.
To value the level of word topicality, to ascribe to neologism the features of archaism is
possible only by looking at a certain period of social existence of a language.
 CHAPTER 2

2.1 Neologisms in science fiction

Neologisms comes from popular literature in different forms. Sometimes, they are simply taken
from a word used in the narrative of a book; a few representative examples are: "grok" (to achieve
completeintuitive understanding), from Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein; "McJob",
from Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland; "cyberspace",
from Neuromancer byWilliam Gibson; "nymphet" from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
Other times the title of a book becomes the neologism, for instance, Catch-22 (from the title
of Joseph Heller's novel). Alternatively, the author's name may become the neologism, although the
term is sometimes based on only one work of that author. This includes such words as "Orwellian"
(from George Orwell, referring to his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four) and "Ballardesque" or
"Ballardian" (from J.G. Ballard, author of Crash). The word "sadistic" is derived from the cruel
sexual practices Marquis de Sade described in his novels. Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle was the
container of the Bokononism family of nonce words.
Surely the most famous new word coined in science fiction is "robot", in the 1920 play by the Czech
writer Karel Capek': R. U. R. ("Rossum's Universal Robots"). The name "robot" comes from a root
similar to the Russian rabotat, to work. Here, therefore, rather than a word that is completely
invented from nothing. we have a new form of an existing word, expressing a new idea.

"Robot" is therefore some way along the spectrum that extends from those neologisms which are
merely convenient abbreviations (such as "mascon" for "concentratin of mass"), to really new words
and ideas.

Many neologisms in the fantastic literature have become successful enough to make it into
dictionaries and everyday language.

Science fiction has its own specialized vocabulary, words that are immediately understandable to
initiated readers but largely incomprehensible to the world in general—words like hyperspace,
teleportation-is instantaneous transportation. It may be a psychic power, the ability to wish oneself
from place to place. It may be a machine or system of machines to power magical doorways or
telephone booths.
, telekinesis- is another psychic power: matter moved by mind alone. Telepathy and ESP are psychic
senses, the ability to sense another's thoughts and to sense actions at a distance, respectively.
, esper, solarian, terraforming. The subculture known as science fiction fandom has a special esoteric
jargon too, and its words are so cryptic that only a fraction of the main science fiction audience
would understand them—corflu, filk-song, Hugo, gafia, GoH, and many more.
The thing to remember is that none of these terms is binding upon you. Once brought into existence,
these things or powers or concepts may acquire other names. It happens in real life:
Seetee (contraterrene matter) was a science fiction concept. Once physicists had located all of the
components of seetee, they called it antimatter. Today, so do we.
Heat ray, death ray, ray gun all became laser and gain powers nobody thought of.
Rocket ships come in breakaway parts, and each requires a technical name.
We can rename things that don't exist yet. For instance—and all of these have been chosen from
published stories—chronokinesis is a big word for time travel. An extension cage is the part of the
time machine that does the moving, while the rest stays in the "present." 'Vaders, Larries (Llaryans),
Outsiders, and Old Ones all refer to specific aliens. The Alderson Drive is a rigidly worked out FTL
drive. Displacement booths, transfer booths, and stepping discs are all teleportation systems.
Plateau eyes is a psychic power not yet evolved.
There are rules of convenience for choosing these names.

1. Brand names. JumpShift booths, Alderson drive, the Outsider hyperdrive, waldo devices,
Bergenholms.

2. Portmanteau words. Slidewalk, ramscoop, wirehead, singleship.

3. Portmanteau phrases. Boob cube, touch-sculpture, flash crowd.

4. Simple description. Torch drive, duplicator, flying belt. Dolphins' hands and telepathically
operated tools on tractor treads. An ecstasy peddler is the surgeon that puts the wire in your brain, to
fit your droud-and-plug setup.

These rules actually describe what happens to languages. We need one more:

5. Languages evolve.

Words used today will have different meanings tomorrow. "Screw" and "tart" didn't always have
secondary meanings. Every euphemism for night soil, for a toilet or a chamber pot, eventually
requires a euphemism of its own. Some words change because their meanings become obsolete.
Greek "atoms" had no interior structure; "essence" was a precise technical term to an alchemist.
In one of Alfred Bester's futures, "jaunt" had become the word for psychic teleportation. Cordwainer
Smith caused "scanner" to become a specialized profession. Heinlein makes "hotel" into "hilton."
"Cars" usually fly in my stories.

Often you will want to get on with the story rather than deal in detail with some stock concept. You
still don't have to use a stock phrase.
Teleportation, time travel, spaceflight—such basic ideas all come across if you simply describe
what's happening to the character. Certain concepts in science fiction have certain stock names.

FTL, hyperdrive, hyperspace, subspace, all refer to means of traveling faster than light in an
otherwise relativistic universe. A hyperdrive is the motor that gets you in and out of hyperspace.
Hyperspace is a mathematical term. Its use here implies a more generalized universe over ours, in
which more general laws apply. One such law may be that ships can travel faster than light, or that
light speed can be arbitrarily high. Or our universe may have a shape like a crumpled Kleenex when
seen in hyperspace; points very distant in our native geometry might be very close via a hyperspace
path. Subspace is another borrowed mathematical term. A subspace of our universe would obey
more restricted forms of our own physics. FTL means faster-than-light; your use of the term
commits you to almost nothing.

Time machines are vehicles for moving into the past or future. You should know the basic time-
travel paradox, the grandfather paradox: what happens to your character if, via time travel, he kills
his grandfather before his grandfather has sired his father? He will never have existed. But then
there's nobody to kill his grandfather. You cannot write a time-travel story without making some
decision regarding the grandfather paradox and sticking to it.

Multiple time tracks are other, parallel lines of history. ETs or XTs are extraterrestrials, beings
native to other worlds. Use of these terms rather than something more specific would indicate a
large interstellar community of varied life forms.

Place names in science fiction will come from you, of course. The worlds of the solar system are
already named. All other planets are not. Likewise extraterrestrial cities, topographies, even
constellations. By your choice of place names you can often indicate who the colonists were, what
they were like.

Stolid types name their worlds New Eden, Nova Terra, New Chicago. Classicists continue the
tradition of naming worlds after gods, going to Asian or American Indian pantheons for sources.
Religious outcasts choose Felicity, Harmony, Peace. (Or do they? Salt Lake City?)

The worlds of human space are: Jinx (they kept losing ships, and the planet was no prize, except in
size). Down (egotism, or the temptation to name the colony city Downtown?), We Made It (it must
have been an interesting trip), Wunderland, Gummidgy (human pronunciation of a kdatlyno place-
name), Plateau (uninhabitable but for a single mountaintop), and Home. My Uncle Pat accuses me
of irreverence. Not so! I invite him, and you, to check some original California place names. Bitter
Water, Dead Mule...

What kind of people first came to your worlds? A massive colony project breeds stolid names.
Religious outcasts will choose hopeful names. So will real-estate developers (and in both cases you
imply easy space travel). Lone scouts may well indulge themselves. A scout who was hooked on
James Branch Cabell’s writings named the worlds of the Léshy Circuit: Horvendile, Sereda,
Koschei, etc. Others would name their discoveries Birksack's World, Birksack II, or Marcie Is
Waiting, or The Admiral's Ass . . .

And anyone, stolid or lyrical, may name a world or feature thereof for its chief characteristic:
Tabletop (a world of plains), or Dragonback (for the long, narrow chief continent and its spinal ridge
of mountains), or Winter (cold), or Plateau. Remember Salt Lake City.

Names of aliens? You get three choices:

1. The alien's own name, rendered phonetically. Nonsense to you, but you must decide whether it
should be pompous and complex, whether it should include gestures or other signals; and remember
the alien's mouth structure.

2. A human-chosen name may derive from the alien's appearance. Snakes, or Blobs, or Woggle
bugs: such names may well be insulting. But the two-headed Pierson's puppeteer was named for the
brainless heads whose mouths had evolved as hands: like two Cecil the Sea-Sick Sea Serpent
puppets.

3. A bright alien—brighter than human, or one assisted by a bright computer-translator—may

choose his own name. Puppeteers prefer the names of legendary centaurs: Nessus, Chiron. Jock and
Charley were female Motie Mediators contacting a male-oriented society; their sex was not obvious,
and they chose to imitate male voices.

Within the Motie culture there is a form of silliness so common that it is represented by a legendary
being. A Motie goes "Crazy Eddie" by trying to keep things as they are when they are clearly about
to change. He sacrifices long-term for short-term goals.

When a city is so heavily populated that all available vehicles are engaged in moving food and water
in and garbage out, and none are left even to evacuate the inhabitants, then it is that Crazy Eddie
leads the movers of garbage out on strike for better working conditions.

Crazy Eddie fights population pressure by killing off all the nonsentient Doctor forms—except that
Masters who hid their own Doctors will afterward find them priceless.

Obviously the Moties have their own name for him. But when speaking to humans, the Mediators
called him Crazy Eddie.

Robert Heinlein was kind enough to suggest numerous changes in this book. we followed most of
his suggestions and thereby improved the book immensely.
"Since this name must be alien, why not make it something clearly alien. Yddie? Waddie? Kuddie?
Something else? Certainly you want to keep the scansion—but any two-syllable word accented on
the penult will do as long as it doesn't shout that it is a human name."

Wrong! I, being without false modesty, saw fit to lecture that great man for a page and a half on this
trivial subject. He says I convinced him.

The trick is to think like an alien.

The Mediators are frighteningly good at learning languages. They won't teach humans to pronounce
Crazy Eddie's true name. It probably can't be done anyway. (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle:1974)

Many science fictional words, and even some of the fannish ones, have escaped from our microcosm
and established themselves as standard terms in modern language. Words like “robot” and “alien”
and “fanzine.” Robot. Everybody knows what a robot is: a big clunking metal machine, usually, but
not always, anthropomorphic in shape, that does the jobs humans don’t want to do. Robots perform
dangerous tasks inside atomic power plants. Assembly lines in factories use robot arms to put things
together. People who speak in dull, monotonous, mechanical tones are described as “robotic.” The
word is part of the common language. But it comes straight out of science fiction: Karel Capek’s
1923 play, R.U.R—the initials stand for “Rossum’s Universal Robots”—which is about the advent
of intelligent mechanical laborers. Capek didn’t have to reach very far to invent a name for his
machines. It came from his native language, Czech, where it means “work,” usually with the
implication of hard, boring work. It is found in other Slavic languages, too,
1. Robotics. This is probably the most well-known of these, since Isaac Asimov is famous for
(among many other things) his three laws of robotics. Even so, I include it because it is one of the
only actual sciences to have been first named in a science fiction story (“Liar!”, 1941). Asimov also
named the related occupation (roboticist) and the adjective robotic.

2. Genetic engineering. The other science that received its name from a science fiction story, in this
case Jack Williamson’s novel Dragon’s Island, which was coincidentally published in the same year
as “Liar!” The occupation of genetic engineer took a few more years to be named, this time by Poul
Anderson.

3. Zero-gravity/zero-g. A defining feature of life in outer space (sans artificial gravity, of course).
The first known use of “zero-gravity” is from Jack Binder (better known for his work as an artist) in
1938, and actually refers to the gravityless state of the center of the Earth’s core. Arthur C. Clarke
gave us “zero-g” in his 1952 novel Islands in the Sky.

4. Deep space. One of the other defining features of outer space is its essential emptiness. In science
fiction, this phrase most commonly refers to a region of empty space between stars or that is remote
from the home world. E. E. “Doc” Smith seems to have coined this phrase in 1934. The more
common use in the sciences refers to the region of space outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.

5. Ion drive. An ion drive is a type of spaceship engine that creates propulsion by emitting charged
particles in the direction opposite of the one you want to travel. The earliest citation in Brave New
Words is again from Jack Williamson (“The Equalizer”, 1947). A number of spacecraft have used
this technology, beginning in the 1970s.

6. Pressure suit. A suit that maintains a stable pressure around its occupant; useful in both space
exploration and high-altitude flights. This is another one from the fertile mind of E. E. Smith.
Curiously, his pressure suits were furred, an innovation not, alas, replicated by NASA.

7. Virus. Computer virus, that is. Dave Gerrold (of “The Trouble With Tribbles” fame) was
apparently the first to make the verbal analogy between biological viruses and self-replicating
computer programs, in his 1972 story “When Harlie Was One.”

8. Worm. Another type of self-replicating computer program. So named by John Brunner in his
1975 novelShockwave Rider.
9. Gas giant. A large planet, like Jupiter or Neptune, that is composed largely of gaseous material.
The first known use of this term is from a story (“Solar Plexus”) by James Blish; the odd thing about
it is that it was first used in a reprint of the story, eleven years after the story was first published.
Whether this is because Blish conceived of the term in the intervening years or read it somewhere
else, or whether it was in the original manuscript and got edited out is impossible to say at this point.

From robot we move smoothly to android, a word that in its SF usage generally is intended to mean
a kind of artificial human that more closely resembles the real thing than a robot does: not a metal
creature but one made of synthetic flesh. It, too, is widely used in standard English these days.
Brave New Words tells us that it was in use centuries ago to describe artificial beings supposedly
manufactured by alchemists, so perhaps we ought not to credit its coinage to science fiction writers,
though they were the ones who popularized its usage, beginning in the 1930s. But its variant, droid,
even more widely used nowadays, unquestionably comes straight out of SF—from George Lucas’s
movie Star Wars, which gave us the beloved and not at all human-shaped droid R2D2, among
others. Science fiction movies and television shows have much greater audiences than even the most
popular SF novel, which is why their coinages pass so readily into the language. Beam me up,
Scotty—even the stodgy magazine American Banker was using the phrase as far back as an issue of
July 1984, according to Brave New Words, in its sense of “Get me out of here fast.” It originated, of
course, on Star Trek, as did many another phrase now in colloquial use.

The ease with which people use the expression “ET” to describe some strange creature that they
have encountered is another example of the power of Hollywood science fiction to transform our
language. I have heard the term used by real-world people, people who don’t know Bradbury from
Heinlein, when speaking of an odd-looking cat, a peculiar aquarium specimen, even a funny-looking
baby. “ET,” of course, is short for “extraterrestrial,” which means “not of this earth.” That word was
once part of our private lingo, traceable back at least to a 1941 pulp story by C.M. Kornbluth. “ET,”
the abbreviation, turns up as far back as 1944 in a fan publication. But it was Stephen Spielberg who
put it into the public vocabulary with his 1982 movie, E.T.: the Extraterrestrial, which showed
umpty million filmgoers that a creature from another world could be charming, winsome,
lovable...and extraterrestrial.

It was another film that gave us that dreadful term “outer space,” so widely and unfortunately used
today—1953’s It Came from Outer Space. (Not a very distinguished movie, though it was adapted
from a story by Ray Bradbury, and let us hope Bradbury had nothing to do with coining that silly
locution. Where is “outer” space? How far out there do we have to go to reach it?) The movie did
lead British novelist J.B. Priestley to urge writers, a year later, to devote themselves instead to the
literary exploration of inner space, “the hidden life of the psyche,” and “inner space,” too, has
passed into our language as the antithesis of the place where the dumb sci-fi movies are set.
Oh, sci-fi. Another hateful term that will never be eradicated from our language. It was coined,
apparently, by analogy with “hi-fi,” a twentieth-century term short for “high fidelity,” referring to
superior reproduction of musical sound. It’s reasonable enough to collapse “high fidelity” into “hi-
fi,” I suppose, and even “science” into “sci-,” but abbreviating “fiction” as “fi” has always struck me
as barbarous. I used to blame the old-time SF fan Forrest J Ackerman for setting “hi-fi” loose in our
midst somewhere in the 1950s, but to my chagrin Brave New Words has found a 1949 citation for it
in a letter from none other than Robert A. Heinlein, talking about his writing a “sci-fi” short story.
Perhaps we don’t owe “outer space” to Bradbury, but evidently Heinlein was using “sci-fi” long
before Ackerman, and more’s the pity. (Heinlein also provided us with grok, from his 1961 novel
Stranger in a Strange Land, which everybody has used since the hippie era to mean “to understand”
or “to be in tune with” or, well, “to dig,” in the sixties sense of that verb. It doesn’t belong to
Heinlein any more. You see it everywhere from TV Guide to People Magazine to The New York
Times.)

What about science fiction itself? It’s a term that the whole world understands, but once upon a time
it was exclusively ours, right? Well, not exactly. Brave New Words has found an 1851 essay talking
about science fiction as a kind of fiction that offers “a knowledge of the Poetry of Science, clothed
in a garb of the Poetry of Life.” A little flowery, perhaps, but as good a definition as any I’ve heard,
even though it does anticipate the founding of the first science fiction magazine, Hugo Gersback’s
Amazing Stories, by seventy-five years. Gernsback himself can be seen in a 1927 issue of Amazing
referring to Jules Verne as “a sort of Shakespeare in science fiction,” but in fact he preferred to call
the stuff he published “scientifiction,” an ugly neologism formed by smoodjing together “scientific”
and “fiction.” The term never caught on, unlike, alas, “sci-fi,” which seems here to stay.
JRR Tolkien came up with the race and name hobbit and invented many words to describe the
different aspects of his Middle Earth. As a linguist who used to make up new languages as a hobby,
his invented words can be enjoyed on several levels, often belonging in a specific language and
having an (invented) etymology.

Acronymic words are of course popular in SF and author Larry Niven uses 'tanj' as futuristic
expletive in his 'Known Space' stories (eg Ringworld). He explains 'tanj' as being a abbreviation of
the phrase 'there ain't no justice'.

And yes, before you say it, one Douglas Adams, who wrote a radio series/book/tv series about
Arthur Dent's travels through space and time also invented some words, such as hooloovoo (a super-
intelligent shade of the colour blue) and frood (a cool person).

Astronomers use the term “gas giant” to speak of big, vaporous planets like Jupiter or Neptune,
whose apparent great size results from having a vast quantity of gaseous material wrapped around a
relatively small solid core. They probably aren’t aware that James Blish coined the term in 1952 in a
science fiction story called “Solar Plexus.” (The story wasn’t one of Blish’s best, but he was
tremendously proud to see his coinage pass into the language of science.) The phrase “flash crowd”
is often used nowadays to mean a rapidly assembled large group that is called together via cellphone
or the Internet. Larry Niven invented it in 1973 in a story of just that name. (I remember it well. I
published it in an anthology I was editing.)
If you regard George Orwell’s 1984 as science fiction, and I am one of those who do, you must
credit it with coining a whole array of words that are by now indispensable to any discussion of
political life: doublethink, thoughtcrime, Big Brother, unperson, and many more—to which we must
add the adjective Orwellian, honoring the author himself. They all come out of a 1948 book that
took place thirty-six years in the future, and I think novels set in the future qualify as science
fiction.

Science fiction also gave us alien (in the sense of a being from another world), spacesuit, time
machine, blastoff, and a host of other words that seem like perfectly standard English today. A
fanzine used to be a mimeographed magazine published by some science-fiction reader in an edition
of one hundred copies or so and full of essays on the stories in last month’s Astounding Science
Fiction, letters from SF fans, and, sometimes, amateur science fiction. I wrote for fanzines myself,
sixty years ago, before magazines started paying me for my stories. (The term, derived from “fan
magazine,” goes back to 1944.) Today a fanzine is more usually a big, glossy publication devoted to
video games, the collecting of sports memorabilia, the life and times of some pop star, or any other
sort of hobby, and they are very commercial enterprises indeed. Then there are viruses—not the
ones that give us the flu, but the kind that want to infest our computers. David Gerrold wrote about
them in his 1972 novel When Harlie Was One, years and yearas before most of us ever expected to
be using computers in our daily lives. (The companion tech-term, “worm,” meaning invasive code
that travels in viral fashion from computer to computer, comes from John Brunner’s novel
Shockwave Rider of 1975.)

And so it goes, as a writer who wrote a lot of great science fiction but didn’t want it called that once
said. We live in a world shaped in large measure by the images and ideas of science fiction—and the
language we speak has been shaped the same way.

Writers like words, and speculative fiction writers in particular like to make them up. The best
neologisms are successful enough to cross over from literature to everyday language; “cyberspace”
(W. Gibson’s Neuromancer) and “robot” (K. Capek’s R.U.R.) are just two examples. However, not
every made-up word is created equal. We examine what makes a good neologism in fantasy or
science fiction, and how ignoring the basics of science or language development can mutilate a
perfectly good story. Neologisms are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or
old ideas which have taken on a new cultural context. The term e-mail, as used today, is an example
of a neologism. Neologisms are by definition “new”, and as such are often directly attributable to a
specific individual, publication, period or event. The term neologism was itself coined around 1800;
so for some time in the early 19th Century, the word neologism was itself a neologism. Neologisms
can also refer to an existing word or phrase which has been assigned a new meaning”.
We live in a society that constantly develops. New objects in different spheres arise and they need to
be named. That is why no science can exist without neologisms, new words. Though the neologisms
dominate in the field of knowledge, other people, not only scientists, can also feel the necessity to
express and interpret reality by new ways and create new words that would reflect it. Sometimes old
words receive new meaning, change their word category or get new affixes or suffixes.
New words are often the subject of scorn because they are new, because they are perceived as
unesthetically or improperly formed, or because they are considered to be unnecessary. They are,
however, a normal part of language change; with frequent use and the passage of time they become
unremarked items in everyday use. The aim of the work is the investigation of neologisms, used in
the language of mass-media, newspapers, magazines, Internet, science, literature.

Every day we either consciously or not owing to our work or just for entertainment come across
different types of mass media, internet, television, radio. They promptly and in a simple way present
us big amount of various information and make us more intellectually powerful, according to the
saying “who knows a lot controls the world’. But the world changes very quickly as a result our
language changes new words, terms notions appear
A neologism (Greek νεολογισμός [neologismos], from νέος [neos] new + λόγος [logos] word,
speech, discourse + suffix -ισμός [-ismos] -ism) is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently
created (coined) - often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make
older terminology sound more contemporary. Neologisms are especially useful in identifying
inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas which have taken on a new cultural context. The term e-
mail, as used today, is an example of a neologism. Neologisms are by definition “new”, and as such
are often directly attributable to a specific individual, publication, period or event. The term
neologism was itself coined around 1800; so for some time in the early 19th Century, the word
neologism was itself a neologism. Neologisms can also refer to an existing word or phrase which
has been assigned a new meaning”.
We live in a society that constantly develops. New objects in different spheres arise and they need to
be named. That is why no science can exist without neologisms, new words. Though the neologisms
dominate in the field of knowledge, other people, not only scientists, can also feel the necessity to
express and interpret reality by new ways and create new words that would reflect it. Sometimes old
words receive new meaning, change their word category or get new affixes or suffixes.
If we want to come across a neologism we do not have to search for it very strenuously. Every day
the mass media and advertisements want to attract our attention and one way for achieving it is
creating of new words. We notice immediately that our vocabulary does not contain the created
word and we start to think about it. Also many marketing strategies are based on this principle. We
are flooded by these words through television, and so on. Many neologisms have come from popular
literature, and tend to appear in different forms. Most commonly, they are simply taken from a word
used in the narrative of a book; for instance, McJob (McJob is slang for a low-pay, low-prestige job
that requires few skills and offers very little chance of intra-company advancement. The term comes
from the fast-food restaurant McDonald's, but applies to any low-status job where little training is
required and workers' activities are tightly regulated by managers. Most perceived McJobs are in
the service industry, particularly fast food, copy shops, and retail sales.). The term is used to
emphasize the fact that many desirable middle-class jobs are being eliminated, either due to
productivity gains (often the result of automation) or due to the shifting of operations to second- or
third-world countries where labor costs are cheaper. For example, manufacturing, call-center,
accounting, and computer programming jobs are not as abundant in developed countries, as they
used to be, as firms have looked abroad to meet these needs, frustrating many people who used to
work in these industries. These displaced workers often spent many years gaining specialized
education, training, and experience, and don't want to start over at the bottom rung in a new
industry. However, many older workers may have no choice but to take a "McJob", because an
employer will prefer to hire a younger person who has just finished college for an entry level job.
The term was coined in 1991 in Douglas Coupland's book Generation X: Tales For An Accelerated
Culture. The word McJob was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in late 2003. Sometimes the
title of the book becomes a neologism. For instance, Catch-22 (from the title of Joseph Heller's
novel) and Generation X (from the title of Coupland's novel) have become part of the vocabulary of
many English-speakers. Catch-22 is a 1961 novel by Joseph Heller about the madness of war.
(A magazine excerpt from the novel was originally published as "Catch-18," but Heller changed the
title after another World War II novel, Leon Uris's Mila 18, was published.) Also worthy of note is
the case in which the author's name becomes the neologism, although the term is sometimes based
on only one work of that author. This includes such words as Orwellian (from George Orwell,
referring to his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four) and Ballardesque (from J.G. Ballard, author of Crash).
Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle was the container of the Bokononism family of Nonce words. The
word "sadistic" is derived from the cruel sexual practices Marquis de Sade described in his novels.
Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle was the container of the Bokononism family of nonce words.
Another category is words derived from famous characters in literature, such as quixotic (referring
to the titular character in Don Quixote de la Mancha by Cervantes), a scrooge (from the main
character in Dickens's A Christmas Carol), or a pollyanna (from Eleanor H. Porter's book of the
same name). James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, composed in a uniquely complex linguistic style,
coined the words monomyth and quark.
Lewis Carroll has been called "the king of neologistic poems" because of his poem, "Jabberwocky",
which incorporated dozens of invented words. Some Jabberwocky-related words have entered the
English language. They are es follows
Brillig": four o'clock in the afternoon -- the time when you begin broiling things for
dinner.
"Slithy": lithe and slimy. Lithe is the same as smooth and active.
"Toves": curious creatures that are something like badgers, something like lizards, and something
like corkscrews. They make their nests under sun-dials and live on cheese.
"To gyre": to go round and round like a gyroscope.
"To gimble": to make holes like a gimblet.
"Wabe": the grass-plot round a sun-dial. It is called like that because it goes a long way before it,
and a long way behind it. And a long way beyond it on each side.
"Mimsy": flimsy and miserable
"Borogove": a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round; something like a live
mop.
"Mome rath": a 'rath' is a sort of green pig. Humpty Dumpty is not certain about the meaning of
'mome', but thinks it's short for "from home"; meaning that they'd lost their way.
"To outgrabe": 'outgribing' is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in
the middle.the latter from "chuckle" and "snort."
The early modern English prose writings of Sir Thomas Browne are the source of many neologisms
as recorded by the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). The children's book Frindle by Andrew
Clements is a story about neologism.
Popular examples of neologism can be found in science, fiction, branding, literature, linguistic and
popular culture. Examples include laser (1960) from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of
Radiation, robotics (1941), genocide (1943), and agitprop (1930s).
Many neologisms have come from popular literature and tend to appear in different forms. Most
commonly, they are simply taken from a word used in the narrative of a book; a few representative
examples are: "grok" (to achieve complete intuitive understanding), from Stranger in a Strange Land
by Robert A. Heinlein
Every day different organizations and enterprises, scientists and scholars offer new words, word-
combinations and phrases to name things. These new words may be equivalents for the already
existing terms or may denote something new. For example, the International Society for Animal
Rights (ISAR) in the USA, having met problems with too many no longer needed cats and dogs in
America, has proposed the new term “pet overpopulation” to be included into English dictionaries.
This term may be explained as - too many animals suffer from being abandoned by their owners and
are to be subjected to euthanasia.
The former president of the USA Bill Clinton often used the word “gridlock” when he talked about
difficult situations. But in the majority of dictionaries we can find only the translation of its
compounds: grid is translated as решетка or сеть and lock as замок or шлюз. But the new meaning
of this word is тупик, безвыходное положение.

2.2 Examples of Social Networking and Technology Neologisms

Internet has greatly promoted language change. A neologism used on the Internetis spread almost
instantly to readers who are miles away from the physical
location of the creation of this word. In today’s wired world, neologism appearing
on the web also enters verbal communications in people’s real life, Internet, has provided rapid
sharing of information to 40 million registered users. It has greatly amplified the influence of
neologism, by giving web browsers a chance to quote a neologist unlimited times to an infinite
number of audience who might adapt intuitively this very expression at various degrees to suit
certain contexts. In this process, a neologism gradually transforms into a real-life linguistic being.
The Internet and computers in particular have spawned a large and specialized jargon. For example,
the prefix “e-” is particularly productive in generating new terms such as e-mail, e-commerce, e-
solution, e-vite, e-newsletter, e-book, e-publishing, e-politics and e-government, to name just a very
few. e- can be added to almost any term to create a reference to the online computer world. The
prefix e- is also unique in that it is only a single letter. Although there are
other instances of neologisms being formed in English from other single letter prefixes (eg. Algeo
1998: he points to A-bomb, F-word, S-curve, U-boat, V-neck and G-string), none of these are
productive in that they can attach themselves to numerous other words in the same way that e- can.
When a culture integrates something new—a new technology, for example, or an art form or belief
system—new vocabulary enters the language, giving us the vocabulary we need to talk about it.
There are many ways of handling this—sometimes a language will borrow words from another lan-
guage, but often we draw on the resources of our own language.

Technologies have only been in widespread use for the last 20 or 30 years, the words that have
entered the language are very new. But they are so pervasive and widely used that we don't even
think of them as new anymore! Mouse, virus, cookie, thumbnail and icon: these words are now used
in a completely different sense than had originally been intended. Or new compounds that we've cre-
ated: upload, download, log-in, homepage, World Wide Web, website, flash drive, smart phone, and
so on. Acronyms such as GPS, OMG, LOL, PC, DVD, CD, URL and USB; blends such as mal-
ware (from malicious software) and blog (weblog); clippings such as app (short for application) and
net (for Internet); and the use of trade names and products such as Google, Skype, iPod, and iPhone.

Google: To use an online search engine as the basis for looking up information on the World Wide
Web.

Tweet cred: social standing on Twitter.

404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message 404 Not Found, meaning
that the requested document could not be located.

Crowdsourcing: The activity of getting a large group of people to contribute resource to project,
especially by using a website where people can make contributions.

Spam: Flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force t
he message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it.

eobragging: Repeated status updates noting your location in an attempt to get attention or make
other people jealous.

App: Software application for a smartphone or tablet computer.

Noob: Someone who is new to an online community or game.

Troll: An individual who posts inflammatory, rude, and obnoxious comments to an online
community.

Ego surfer: A person who boosts his ego by searching for his own name on Google and other
search engines.

2.3 Neologisms from 2000 up to our days

Each list of neologisms contains 'new' words beginning from 2000 up to our days . According to our
system, new words are those which have not occurred in previously processed newspaper text of the
same type. They are therefore not all new coinages.
The new words offered to you have been selected on an arbitrary basis, as 'interesting or amusing'
examples.
Neologisms of 2000
- weaselings -
e.g. It forces every one of us to look into ourselves and decide what's right. It allows no political
weaselings. No hiding place.
- battle-rallying –e.g. It was the prime minister's bid for a major part on the global stage, and it was
used to justify his passionate advocacy of military intervention in Kosovo, at a cost of some £5 bn.
Now a test looms, determining whether that was simply battle-rallying rhetoric or the first sketch of
a consistent political vision.

2005
Flunkophobia –
Meaning: Fear of failure.
Usage: Everytime I gave the Machine Drawing test, I used to have seizures of flunkophobia.
Pronunciation: Flunk-ko-phobia.
Root: To flunk is to fail.
Spliterature -
Usage : The Brad-Jen spliterature ate up quite a few rain forests.
Pronunciation: sounds like literature
Root : Split + literature
Zippie –
Meaning: A young person who is always in a rush.
Usage: "Just ask that zippie to spare a moment to listen to me will you," commanded father to
mother about son.
Pronunciation: Zip-ee
Root: zip & hippie
Gastrolepidopia –
Meaning: The state of having butterflies in your stomach.
Usage: Gastrolepidopia is the reason why many great communicators make goofy speeches.
Pronunciation: Gas-tro-lay-pee-dopey-ah.
Root: Gastro (stomach in greek) + Lepido (as in butterfly in greek).
Nakeup -
Nakeup: The feeling of nakedness experienced by some women when they are not using make up.
Usage:She felt embarrassed when he barged in especially since she was nakeup.
Pronunciation: Nake (as in snake)- up
Origin: Naked & make-up.
302 –
Meaning: A murderer.
Usage: It's difficult to be non violent when you're in the company of 302s.
Pronunciation: Three-knot-two.
Root: Section 302 pertains to murder in the Indian and British penal code
Boeing 404 –
Meaning: A missing plane.
Usage: Mayday! Mayday! We have a Boeing 404!
Pronunciation: Bo-ing-four-knot-four
Root: 404 is the error message flashed in the web world for 'not found' or 'missing'. And Boeing has
this habit of giving 3-digit names to its aircrafts like 747 or 707
2006
Xenohow գիտելիք այլմոլորակայինների և նրանց վարքի մասին
Meaning: Knowledge on aliens and their behaviour.
Pronunciation: Xee-know-how.
Usage: Life would have been far more interesting if I had acquired xenohow instead of a degree in
mining engineering.
Root: Xeno (alien) + Knowhow (knowledge).
Fisterical անկառավարելիորեն բռնի
Meaning: Uncontrollably violent.
Pronunciation: Fist-terry-cull.
Usage: The English hooligans turned fisterical when England where denied the penalty.
Root: So hysterical that one gets into fistcuffs.
Heetotaller մեկը ով հեռու է մնում տղամարդկանցից
Meaning: Someone who abstains from men.
Pronounciation: He+tow+tull+er
Usage: Been in a relationship? Then you'll know the advantages of being a heetotaller!
Root: He+Teetotaller (One who abstains completely from alcoholic beverages)
Related word: Shetotaller
Loutspeaker –
Meaning: A stupid person speaking to an audience
Pronunciation: Rhymes with loudspeaker
Usage: Most politicians are loutspeakers
Root: Lout + Loudspeaker
Clicktomaniac –
Meaning: He who steals mice and other input devices
Pronunciation: Clik-toh-maniac
Usage: Our office IT guy is a clicktomaniac
Root: Click (mouse-click) + Kleptomaniac
Pseudopolyglot –
Meaning: One who pretends to know many languages.
Pronunciation: Sew-do-poly-glot.
Usage: With a massive vocabulary of 8000 English words, 3 French words, 2 German words and 1
Esperanto word, I passed myself off as a polyglot. But I guess wordminters will call me a
pseudopolyglot.
Root: Pseudo (Fake) + Polyglot (One who speaks many languages).
Blissterical անկառավարելիորեն երջանիկ
Meaning: Being uncontrollably happy.
Pronunciation: Bliss-teri-cull.
Usage: Disneyland makes children go blissterical.
Root: Bliss + Hysterical.
Budrenaline բուդրենալին, ալկոհոլի մեծ քանակություն օրգանիզմում
Meaning: High on alcohol.
Pronunciation: Bud-ri-na-lin.
Usage: 7 out of 10 road accidents at night can be blamed on the budrenaline rush.
Root: Bud (nick for Budweiser) + Adrenaline (State of excitement).
2010
Nobile – մարդ, որը չի սիրում բջջային հեռախոս
Meaning: One who hates to carry a mobile.
Pronunciation: No-bile.
Usage: Nobile young men are not neanderthals or luddites. They are the future of mankind.
Root: No + Mobile.
Buycarbonate ադամանդամոլ
Meaning: A habitual diamond shopper.
Pronunciation: Buy-carb-bun-ate.
Usage: Women turn buycarbonates as a response for hooking up with jerks.
Root: Buy (shop) + Carbon (diamond is carbon stone) + -ate (one who does).

January 21, 2011

Chessperanto- շախմատային խոսք
Meaning: Chess-speak.
Pronunciation: Chess-per-rant-toe.
Usage: In Chessperanto, f3e5 g4qh4 means, 'Fool, you got mated in two moves!'
January 22, 2011
Baatankwad-
Meaning: Bamboozling with verbal threats. Pronunciation: Bath-thunk-vaadh.
Usage: China doesn't believe in diplomacy. It just bullies countries with baatankwad.
Root: Baat (Hindi for talk) + Aatankwad (Hindi for terrorism).
The analysis of neologisms in English allows us to come to the following conclusions:
1. A neologis is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created (coined) - often to apply to
new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more
contemporary.
2. Neologisms tend to occur more often in cultures which are rapidly changing, and also in
situations where there is easy and fast propagation of information.
3. Many neologisms have come from popular literature, and tend to appear in different forms. Most
commonly, they are simply taken from a word used in the narrative of a book.
4. Neologisms often become popular by way of mass media, the internet, or word of mouth.
5. The Internet and computers in particular have spawned a large and specialized jargon. The prefix
“e-” is particularly productive in generating new terms.

Invented Words That Replace Swear Words

In order for literature/TV/Film to become more widely available and achieve better sales, writers
often coin new words that replace swear words. This practice is most common in science fiction,
fantasy and comedy genres, as the suspension of belief is naturally greater. This list is just a short
rundown of the most common:

'Fug' - American author Norman Mailer used this word in The Naked and the Dead as a euphemism
for the f-word.

'Frell' - Characters in the SF series 'Farscape' use this word in times of stress. Most believe this is yet
another allusion to the f-word.

'Smeg' - The writer Grant Naylor created the word smeg (along with goit and gimboid) for their TV
sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf. The word didn't mean anything in particular, it was just a general
expletive. Little did they know that smeg was also the name of a fridge manufacturer and its
closeness to the word 'smegma' has led some to believe that it is a contraction of that word.

'Naff' - The TV sitcom Porridge used the word 'naff' (usually when saying 'naff off') as a general
expletive.

Words or phrases created to describe new scientific hypotheses, discoveries, or inventions

include:
x-ray, or röntgenograph (November 8, 1895, by Röntgen)
radar (1941) from Radio Detection And Ranging
laser (1960) from Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
black hole (1968)
prion (1982)
beetle bank (early 1990s)
lidar (late 90s) from Light Detection And Ranging

Science fiction

Concepts created to describe new, futuristic ideas include,

beaming (1931)
hyperspace (1934)
robotics (1941)
waldo (1942)
Dyson sphere (circa 1960)
grok (1961)
ansible (1966)
phaser (1966)
warp speed (1966)
ringworld (1971)
replicant (1982)
cyberspace (1984)
xenocide (1991)
metaverse (1992)
alien space bats (1998)
teleojuxtaposition (2003)

Literature more generally

See "Neologisms in literature" topic below.

Politics

See also Category:Political neologisms

Words or phrases created to make some kind of political or rhetorical point, sometimes perhaps with
an eye to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, include:
genocide (1943)
Dixiecrat (1948)
meritocracy (1958)
pro-life (1961)
homophobia (1969)
politicalcorrectness (1970)
Californication (1970s)
pro-choice (1975)
heterosexism (1979)
glocalisation (1980s)
sie and hir (pronouns) (1981)
Republicrat (1985)
astroturfing (1986)
dog-whistle politics (1990)
Islamophobia (1991)
soccer mom (1992)
fauxtography (1996)[5]
affluenza (1997)
red state/blue state/swing state (c. 2000)
corporatocracy (2000s)
Islamofascism (2001)
santorum (2003)
Chindia (2004)
NASCAR dad (2004)
datagogy
Saddlebacking (2009)

2.4 Sci fi names –Robots, Androids and Computers from Books, TV, and Movies

Robot, Android or Computer source

Adam Link I, Robot (Eando Binder)
Alfie Barbarella
Alpha 60 Alphaville
Alsatia Zevo Toys
ARDVARC (Automated Reciprocal Data Verifier
Get Smart
And Reaction Computer)
Ash Alien
B.O.B. (BiO-sanitation Battalion) the Black Hole
Bender Futurama
Bishop Aliens
BOSS (Bimorphic Organisational Systems
Dr. Who
Supervisor)
Brackenridge The Rest of the Robots (Isaac Asimov)
C-3P0 Star Wars
Cambot Mystery Science Theater 3003
Cassandra One Android
Cherry 2000 Cherry 2000
Conky 2000 Pee-Wee's Playhouse
Crow T. Robot Mystery Science Theater 3002
Cutie I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
D.A.R.Y.L. (Data Analyzing Robot Youth
D.A.R.Y.L.
Lifeform)
D84 Dr. Who
Data Star Trek: the Next Generation
Dot Matrix Spaceballs
Dynak X Flash Gordon's computer
Ed-209 Robocop
Emma-2 The Rest of the Robots (Isaac Asimov)
Epideme Red Dwarf
EV-9D9 Star Wars
Ez-35 The Rest of the Robots (Isaac Asimov)
Gir Invader Zim
Gort The Day the Earth Stood Still
Gypsy Mystery Science Theater 3001
H.E.L.P.eR. (Helpful Electronic Lab Partner
the Venture Brothers
Robot)
Hal 9000 2001: a Space Odyssey
Hawk Buck Rogers
Hudzen 10 Red Dwarf
Irona Richie Rich's maid
JANICE (Junctioned Artificial Neuro-Integrated
Robotech
Cybernetic Entity)
Jet Jaguar Godzilla vs. Megalon
Jinx SpaceCamp
Johnny-5 Short Circuit
K-9 Dr. Who
Kamelion Dr. Who
KARR [Knight Automated Roving Robot] knight Rider
KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) knight Rider
Kryten Red Dwarf
L-76 The Rest of the Robots (Isaac Asimov)
Landru Star Trek (original series)
Lenny The Rest of the Robots (Isaac Asimov)
Leon Kowalski Blade Runner
M5 Star Trek (original series)
Marvin the Paranoid Android Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Max 404 Android
Max Headroom Max Headroom
Maximillian the Black Hole
Mr. R.I.N.G. (Robomatic Internalized Nerve
Kolchak: the Night Stalker
Ganglia)
Omnius Dune
Orak Blake's 7
Pris Blade Runner
Queeg Red Dwarf
R2-D2 Star Wars
R5-D4 Star Wars
Rachael Blade Runner
Robby I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
Robby The Forbidden Planet
Robot B-9 Lost in Space
Rosie the Maid the Jetsons
Roy Batty Blade Runner
S.T.A.R. (Special Troops Arms Regiment) the Black Hole
SETH, (Self Evolving Thought Helix) Universal Soldier: The Return
SHOCK (Synthetic Human Object, Casualty
V (Thomas Pynchon)
Kinematics)
SHROUD (Synthetic Human, Radiation Output
V (Thomas Pynchon)
Determined)
Slave Blake's 7
Speedy I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
Synergy Jem & the Holograms
T-800 the Terminator
the Oracle Star Trek (original series)
the Tabernacle Zardoz
Tik-Tok Wizard of Oz
Tom Servo Mystery Science Theater 3000
Tony The Rest of the Robots (Isaac Asimov)
Twiki Buck Rogers
V.I.C.I (Voice Input Child Identicant) aka Vicki Small Wonder (tv series)
V.I.K.I., (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence) I, Robot (2004 film)
V.I.N.Cent (Vital Information Necessary,
the Black Hole
CENTralized)
Vaal Star Trek (original series)
WOTAN (Will Operating Thought ANalogue) Dr. Who
Z-1 The Rest of the Robots (Isaac Asimov)
Z-2 The Rest of the Robots (Isaac Asimov)
 Z-3 The Rest of the Robots (Isaac Asimov)
Zen Blake's 7
Zero Earth 2
Zhora Blade Runner

The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in
which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. The winners are:

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your
nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary,
alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are this year's winners:

1. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

2. Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

3. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an
indefinite period.

4. Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very,very high.

5. Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

6. Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

7. Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.

8. Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

9. Karmageddon (n): its like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And
then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

10 Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are
good for you.

11. Glibido (v): All talk and no action.

12. Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

13. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through
a spider web.

14. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the
morning and cannot be cast out.

15. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

16. Ignoranus (n): A person who's both stupid and an asshole.