This time I’m blogging about fanspeak terms that got picked up in non-fannish contexts: http://blog.oup.com/2009/06/fanspeak/. (This overlaps to some degree with an earlier post here, but I think the info is interesting enough to merit a revisiting of the idea, particularly in light of the massive success of my last OUPblog post.)
In this instance, a very nice review from Annalee Newitz of io9.
OUPblog has a new post about Star Trek terms that includes some info from BNW. Other Trek-related words she doesn’t mention are starfleet, “beam me up”, and, of course, Mary Sue.
The Telegraph has a nice article, based in part on my “Nine Words…” OUPblog post and its subsequent comments (including a nice discussion of the Thagomizer, a great word that makes me sad that The Far Side is probably insufficiently science-fictional to be able to include it in BNW). (Malcolm Farmer posted this in the comments of an earlier post; I’ve moved it up here for them of you what don’t read the comments.)
In news completely unconnected to me, OUPblog also has a nifty piece from Michael Quinion on various problems in communication with aliens.
There’s a (very nice) new review of BNW, and an interview with moi, at SFRevu.com.
As Fred mentioned in the comments a couple posts down, the paperback of BNW is in stores now.
I have a guest post over at OUP Blog: Nine Words You Might Think Came from Science but Which Are Really from Science Fiction. In the comments, someone pointed out that one of my words is really from science after all. This is what happens when you try to assert firstness about things, but it was fun drawing up the list anyway.
The paperback edition of Brave New Words has been announced. They let me fix a bunch of embarrassing typos that snuck into the first edition, so I’m extra-happy to see this come out. It’s also got a spiffy new cover. Oxford’s website gives a date of February, Amazon April. I’ll post again when I know more.
[Update: The official release date is April, athough copies may start to show up before then.]
is more lolxicography! In honor of Dictionary Day (look it up), I present you with these new lolz. (Old lolz iz here.) (Click the images if you’re confused.)
Today I have a guest post on OUP blog about the Hugo, right here.
Another dorky thing the bored author can do is use Powerset to find all references to oneself in Wikipedia (because who wouldn’t want to do that?). Here are the results for me (the actual page is here):
It’s fun to see BNW in use as a reference book, with my definition of “science fiction” appearing the appropriate article, and two citations for Gibson’s coinage of “cyberspace”, again in the obvious places. (Well, duh, you say — of course it’s being used as a reference book — it is a reference book! But you don’t usually get to see the reference in action is what I’m saying.) The odd entry is Tom Smith — the reference there uses BNW not as a lexicographic, etymological, or linguistic reference, but as a secondary source for a quotation included as a citation for the work “filker”. Granted, the citation is from a convention program book, and therefore extremely hard to track down, but it’s interesting to see BNW being used as a book of quotations as well as a dictionary.
