Jeff Prucher

This dictionary of science fiction includes words and phrases invented by SF writers (assuming they then became widely familiar, e.g. "warp drive"), scientific terms commonly used in SF, terms used in discussion or literary criticism of science fiction, and in-group jargon (much of it slangy or jocular) used by SF fans. It presents all of this OED-style, with a short definition of each word followed by a meticulous series of citations.

Honestly, there's probably not much reason to own this unless you're a real scholar of the history of science fiction, or of language use, or both. And yet, despite the fact that I am neither of these, but rather a simple SF reader, I must say I enjoy owning this, and I at least skimmed every page of the thing, in a couple months' worth of spare moments.

If nothing else, the sheer amount of work and dedication that must have gone into this is impressive. And I'd say it'd be worth the cover price just for having taught me the phrase "cognitive estrangement" -- "the effect brought on by the reader's realization that the setting of a text (film, etc.) differs from that of the reader's reality, especially where the difference is based on scientific extrapolation, as opposed to supernatural or fantastic phenomena" -- which I am now going to use at every available opportunity. It was also interesting to note just how many different terms writers have come up with to describe a drive that makes spaceships go faster than light, or the astonishing variety or words and phrases you can put the word "space" in front of.

I did, however, often find myself wistfully wishing there were more to this project than just a dictionary. I would have loved a deeper dive into the etymologies of some of these words, or an account of how they spread from one writer to another, or how science and science fiction have traded terms back and forth. (As it is, it's often not at all obvious which direction a particular word has gone in.) I suppose it's hardly fair, though, to complain that the book is something that it was never intended to be.

One limitation, though, is probably worth pointing out: the focus here is very much on written SF and literary SF fandom. There are some basic terms that come from SF television and its fans, but most of the jargon specific to media-SF fandom (a subculture that overlaps with but is far from identical to literary SF fandom) is not to be found here, and there is one notable case of a term from the fanfiction-writing subset of fandom that's defined in a way that is not in fact, how that group actually uses it.… (altro)