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SFdictionary

@SFdictionary

The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, run by @jessesheidlower

New fandom entry! The famous _slan shack_, a commune of fans. From the early 1940s, esp. in reference to the first one called this, in Battle Creek, Michigan. sfdictionary.com/view/2243/slan…


New fandom entry: "fanarchy", for the opposition to organized fandom. We'd added _fanarchist_ a few years ago, but skipped _fanarchy_, which is very slightly earlier. This is now remedied. sfdictionary.com/view/2917/fana…


New entry! "feghoot", for a very short story with a groaner pun as the punchline, after the protagonist of a series of such stories written by Reginald Bretnor. Now used beyond SF. sfdictionary.com/view/2008/fegh…


New entry! "neuronic", describing incapacitating (but usu. not fatal) weapons. Coined by Asimov (as "neuronic whip," a compound also used in the Star Wars universe), but regularly used thereafter (quotes from Milton Lesser, Lin Carter, N. Spinrad, &c.) sfdictionary.com/view/1156/neur…


Yet more administrative news: Every quotation from Galaxy (240 total) is now linked to its original source.


New entry: "hopepunk". Coined by Alexandra Rowland in 2017, in explicit contrast to "grimdark". sfdictionary.com/view/2911/hope…


Small antedating: "holovision" for 3D video is now found slightly earlier in the context of actual (if theoretical) TV technology than in SF proper. sfdictionary.com/view/483/holov…


New entry: "stealthed". From 1983–, with quotes from Joe Haldeman, K.S. Robinson, Charlie Stross, + more. We mainly focus on Golden Age terms so it's nice to have a newer (if still 40+ years old) one. sfdictionary.com/view/2391/stea…


Still still more administrative news: all 185 quotations from Startling Stories are now linked to their original sources.


Still more administrative news: Every quotation from Planet Stories (there are 193) is linked to its original source, for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!


Because I can't focus on anything else today, I revised the entry for "viewphone"—fixed all the biblio, removed the weird def, brought it fully up to date. Right, back to doomscrolling. sfdictionary.com/view/2134/view…


Fantasy fans take note! Thanks to a reader for a major discovery: an antedating of _sword and sorcery_, coined by Fritz Leiber in 1961, but now found in a one-off newspaper headline of a review of an L. Sprague de Camp novel in 1953. sfdictionary.com/view/235/sword…


It's been hard to do research with the ongoing disruption to the Internet Archive, but I can announce a seven-year antedating of _three-D_, to 1948 (and we cleaned up the entry & some related links/x-r's): sfdictionary.com/view/1080/thre…


New entry for all you beach lovers! "space-burn", from 1937; we had "-burned" but not this (earlier) base form. Also adjusted x-r's for related terms ("tan" etc.). sfdictionary.com/view/2781/spac…


New entry! Been working on this for a while: the complicated "portal", from the early 1930s onwards. Related to other dimension/FTL/etc. terms like "gate" etc. sfdictionary.com/view/2569/port…


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