11 Everyday Words That Were Coined in Sci-Fi Stories

language It is constantly evolving, with new words emerging from a variety of places. Some are borrowed from other languages ​​(“karaoke”), others are two words mashed together (“doomscrolling”), and some are simply abbreviated (“decaf”). Since language is the writer’s vocation, it should not be surprising that a number of new words are born books.

Science fiction is a particularly abundant genre for the introduction of new words, largely due to… Authors They came up with unique and otherworldly terms to describe their science fiction worlds. Here are 11 common words that began their lives in science fiction books, short stories, and plays.

1. Robots and robots
2. Cyberspace
3. astronaut
4. Your puppy
5. Terraform
6. Virus
7. Metaverse
8. New language
9. Empathy
10. Atomic bomb

Robots and robots

The word “robot” It can be traced back to Czech writer Karel Čapek and his science fiction play RUR (1920). The title stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti, or Rossum’s Universal Robots in English. Čapek’s word “roboti” is derived from the Czech word robotnik, which means “forced worker.” translator Into English by Paul Silver as a robot in 1921. But although the word “robot” now usually refers to mechanical beings, Chapek’s robots were actually made of Flesh and blood.

when I am a robot author Isaac Asimov He then used the word “robots” two decades later in his short story “Liar!” (1941), it simply is Presumably The word was already in use by scientists, similar to linguistics and mathematics. But Asimov later discovered that he had actually coined the word, being the first known person to add the suffix ics to robot.

Cyberspace

In the early 1980s, William Gibson had an idea for a story set in what was essentially an interconnected online world, but he wasn’t sure what to name the environment. “The data space didn’t work, the information space didn’t work,” he explained in 2013. interview. He finally settled on “Cyberspace: “It looked as if it meant something, or might mean something, but as I stared at it in red Sharpie on a yellow legal plate, my complete happiness was that I knew it meant nothing at all.”

Gibson first used cyberspace in the 1982 short story “Burning Chrome” and then expanded the idea into… Neuromancer (1984), which became his most famous work. for him a description The cyberspace of the novel had a chilling prescience: “A graphical representation of data extracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unimaginable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-spatial space of the mind, clusters and clusters of data. Like city lights, receding…”

astronaut

“astronaut“It is a compound of two Greek words: astro, meaning “star,” and notus, meaning “seaman.” The first person to put these words together was Percy Gregg in his 1880 science fiction novel via the zodiacwhere the hero of the story uses a spaceship called the Astronaut on a trip to Mars. The first use of the word to describe a person as a space explorer occurred in French in 1925. Joseph-Henri Honoré Box (writing under the pseudonym J. H. Rosny Aine) used the word “astronaut” in Navigators of infinity (Navigators of infinity), which also happens to be about a trip to Mars.

Your puppy

Robert A. Heinlein A stranger in a strange land (1961) follows Valentine Michael Smith, A Man was born and raised on MarsWhere he experiences the Earth for the first time. Having grown up on the Red Planet, Valentin naturally uses some Martian words, including “Your puppyIn the story, this word is literally translated as “to drink,” but the Martians use it to figuratively mean “to understand empathically.” Fans of the novel began using the word “grok” themselves, and the word eventually became the name of the novel. pneumatic Built-in X.

Terraform

You might think that the idea of ​​terraforming planets, moons, and asteroids comes from science, but the idea first appeared in science fiction, specifically “Collision Orbit” (1942) by Jack Williamson (writing under the pseudonym Will Stewart). The word is a mix From Latin and English, with “terra” from the previous word meaning “earth, earth”.

While the modern understanding of the word typically involves forcibly changing a planet’s natural environment to make it more like Earth, the process in Williamson’s short story involves sustained artificial support, with practical This is accomplished “by implanting a plume into the core (of the asteroid) to stabilize gravity, generate oxygen and water from metal oxides, and release absorbing gases to trap the weak heat of the distant Sun.”

Virus

The word “Virus“—as in an infection that replicates within a living host—can be traced back to the late 14th century, but the definition in computational terms comes from Gregory Benford’s short story “The Man with the Scars” (1970). In the late 1960s, Benford worked on ARPANET Project– He is basically an experimental pioneer of the Internet – which is Predict risks Malware spreads from computer to computer. He decided to write a short story about this danger and named the program VIRUS.

However, the term did not come into widespread use until 1984, with the emergence of computer scientist Fred Cohen. Credit He generalized the definition through his research paper “Computer Viruses – Theory and Experiments.”

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Metaverse

In 1992, Neil Stevenson Snow crash Introduce the word metaverse to the world. The film is set in a dystopian future, where characters use virtual reality headsets to connect to a globally used virtual world called the “Metaverse.” Although virtual reality headsets are now sometimes used to interact with the online world, especially in games such as Minecraft and World of Warcraft– Attempts to create Expansive Metaverse in the real world It wasn’t entirely successful.

“I think it could exist,” Stevenson said He said In 2022. “Whether it should exist or will exist… those are different questions.”

As well as formulating the metaverse, Snow crash It also popularized the word and concept Avatar– A graphic symbol that acts as a representative of the user online. Although it was first used a few years ago in 1986 article Written by Margaret Morabito About an online role-playing game created by Lucasfilm – Stevenson’s book introduced “Avatar” to a wider audience, and he claims to have come up with it on his own. “It was independent thinking.” He explained.

New language

George OrwellA dystopian science fiction novel Nineteen eighty-four (1949) Ft Many new words And phrases to the world. Apart from “Big Brother” – which became the name of A Famous reality TV show-One of the most frequently used words in the book is “newspeak“, the name of the tightly controlled and deliberately limited language that is imposed in the story. Outside of the novel, the ‘new modern’ came to He means Any speech – especially from those in positions of authority – is propaganda or deceptive in nature.

Empathy

Use of the word “Empathy” This term has emerged in recent years, as the term – derived from empathy – refers to a person who experiences the feelings of others to a greater degree than usual. But this word was not coined by a psychiatrist; Rather, it comes from Scottish science fiction writer JT Mackintosh (pen name of James Murdoch MacGregor). In his 1956 short story “Sympathy”, the titular people who have this ability have… Supernatural power To understand the feelings of others.

Atomic bomb

Although the scientists who worked on Manhattan Project If they were the ones who brought the atomic bomb back to life in 1945, they were not the ones who gave the name to the deadly invention. This credit goes to H.G. Wells, who described “Atomic bomb“As a weapon that constantly explodes and can be dropped from airplanes in his 1914 novel The world is liberated.

Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard, who worked on the Manhattan Project and theorized the nuclear chain reaction that led to the bomb, had read Wells’s novel. Although The world is liberated He did not give him the scientific key to making the bomb, but rather warned him of the destructive effects of such a weapon. “Knowing what that meant — and I knew it because I had read H.G. Wells — I didn’t want this patent to become public,” Szilard said. books In his memoirs.