VOYAGES OF IMAGINATION

Review by Kevin Lauderdale

Pop quiz: The term "science fiction" first evolved as a more pronounceable version of Hugo Gernsback's "scientifiction," which was coined in 1916.

False. It may have been adopted as such in the 1920s, but editor Jeff Prucher cites an occurrence of "science fiction" from the year 1851.

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction follows the same historical dictionary format as the venerable Oxford English Dictionary: Along with the definition, it presents the earliest verified use of a word and then a number of later instances to show the variety / longevity of the term. There are also word origins, usage labels (hist: historical and obsolete; Joc: humorous), and the occasional pronunciation guide.

Having seen Blade Runner, most of us probably don't need to look up "replicant" (an android that can pass as a human), but it's fun to read the entry and see when the Atlantic Monthly called someone a "Reagan replicant." Like the OED, it is BNW's historical citations that provide most of the content quality. "Stepford" (disturbingly conformist) has a quote from Vanity Fair. "TARDIS" (or "Tardis"--coming from OUP, the book utilizes the Britishism of not capitalizing acronyms--an object larger on the inside than it is on the outside), cites the Times (London), the Christian Science Monitor, and the Campaign for Real Ale's Good Beer Guide.

Along with magazines, newspapers, books, and internet posts, BNW quotes from films and television programs. Which leads me to my one criticism of the book: scripts and credits. The entry for "Dark Side" (as in evil: "Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force...") cites George Lucas' The Adventures of Luke Starkiller, 1976. Fortunately the bibliography in the back explains that that's the screenplay for Star Wars. Actually that's the title of an early draft of the screenplay. The final screenplay would eventually just be called Star Wars. Which begs a question. The first appearance of a word is when it's published. Is the first appearance of a term in a film when the film is released, or when the writer writers it on the page? If you make up a word for a script and the film doesn't get made for another decade, what's the correct date for that citation? Isn't it the final product that counts and not any earlier versions? Shouldn't that source be just Star Wars, 1977? The entry for "galactography" (mapping the positions of celestial objects) cites a January 1950 story by Isaac Asimov. No one would argue that the citation should really read some date in 1949, when the story was written. Ditto "cloaking device," which attributes a line from The Empire Strikes Back to Donald F. Glut. True, Glut wrote the novelization of the film, so, yes, he did write those words. But first they were written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan. Granted that after the first citation for each entry (which is the earliest) the editor is free to pick and choose, but in reference to any particular film, shouldn't credit go to screenwriters? (And if you're going to say "Tardis," then why does the bibliographic entry for the first Harry Potter book give its later, U.S. title and publisher rather than the earlier British ones?)

Star Trek terms are well-represented. Today we all know what a "phaser" (energy weapon that fires a beam) and "cloaking device" (which renders something invisible or undetectable), are. And now we have an authoritative source to turn to when arguments arise about whether or not they originated in Star Trek. And--look!--an entry for "redshirts" (crewmembers who were frequently killed after arriving on a new planet). Cool.

All three of Arthur C. Clarkeís Laws are here (there's more to him than just "indistinguishable from magic") as well as a couple of column inches deservedly dedicated to Ted Sturgeon's Law ("ninety percent of everything is crud").

For hard-core fans (the book's most likely readers) BNW won't be used as a reference tool because they'll already know the definitions of utopia and tractor beam. (And in some cases you shouldn't be turning to a dictionary anyway. Some of the words here were created by writers who didn't give them definitions. Heinlein didn't want you stopping to lookup "dirtside." You were supposed to be able to imply the meaning as you read.) But fifty years from now someone might want to know what "beam me up, Scotty" (to express disbelief or a desire to depart quickly) means. BNW provides the history and the context, as in American Banker magazine: "Beam me up, Scotty, there's no prospect of finance down here." The second definition is simply describing anything "science fictional," followed by the cold warning: "Not generally used within the science fiction community." BNW is prescriptive as well as descriptive. On "sci-fi", Prucher says that the term's "perceived overuse by the media and non science fiction readers has caused many fans to disdain it, and its use may brand the user as an outsider." In other words, only a "mundane" (person who is not a science fiction fan) would use it.

Speaking of which . . . The letter F is filled with fan-related words, from "fann" (someone more interested in fandom than S.F. itself), "faned" (fanzine editor), "fan fic," "fanspeak," etc). So, along with such terms as "steam punk" (nineteenth century setting with technologies extrapolated from that era, but not actually invented at the time ) and "generation ship" (a ship traveling distances so great that multiple generations of travelers will live their lives aboard), BNW is peppered with fan and fandom definitions. An "X-phile" is fan of the t.v. show The X Files. "Shippers" hope for a relationship between two characters in someone else's universe (TV show, book series). A "Gafiate" is a person no longer active in science fiction fandom (someone who Got Away From It All). Is S.F. a genre defined by the fact that its fans have so many ways of referring to themselves and activities? Sure, there are (were?) Deadheads (who went to a lot of Grateful Dead concerts), but there are no special terms for people who no longer go to every Rush concert or no longer follow the San Francisco Giants baseball team (and it's not because no one ever leaves those camps). Why are we so obsessed with ourselves?

BNW had a number of surprises between its covers. I knew that the term "robot" (an artificial being) originated in Karel Capek's R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots), but I had always thought Capek made it up. Turns out it's from the Czech word for forced labor, robota. I was also unfamiliar with "Tuckism" (putting your friends names into stories). Like the man who was amazed to learn that he'd been speaking prose all his life, I've been doing it for years but didn't know it had a name. As someone who has written Star Trek fiction, I'm also apparently a "sharecropper" (one who writes licensed stories set in someone else's universe --Trek, Warhammer, etc). Likewise, I was delighted to learn about the "cosy catastrophe" (where the end of the world is an improvement of circumstances of a character).

Minor quibbles aside, BNW is a solid piece of scholarship which accurately and entertainingly reflects the breadth and depth of the genre and its many facets. And it's even printed on acid-free paper. Well worth the purchase. I'll be turning to it again and again.