Brave New Words has been chosen by the New York Library Association for this year’s “best of reference” list! This is a list compiled by a committee of librarians of books, websites, and other resources based on their usefulness in library collections. This year’s list is mighty impressive, and a lot of the items on it look like they’d be useful for anyone with a bad reference habit. Thanks, NYLA!
Locus has announced the finalists (the top five vote-getters in each category) for this year’s Locus Awards, and Brave New Words made the cut! The pool is impressive — I feel pretty honored to be ranked with the likes of Gene Wolfe*, Joanna Russ, and Barry Malzberg. The final results will be announced on June 21.
*I know, the Wolfe book is actually credited to the editor, Peter Wright, but the contents are mostly Wolfe himself.
Several reviewers have commented, in less than glowing terms, on my inclusion of fannish words in Brave New Words. (It’s also worth noting that some reviewers liked the fannish entries. I wonder, but have no way to really determine this, if the response has anything to do with the relative fannishness of the reviewer.) Generally speaking, one of the main things people like to do with dictionaries is complain about words that aren’t included that they think should be, or about words that are included that they think shouldn’t be. I even do this with other people’s dictionaries. It’s probably impossible not to, at least for someone interested enough in language to be reading a dictionary thoroughly enough to notice what’s missing/wrongly included, and is not really worth remarking on. Sometimes specific suggestions turn out to be good ones, too; there are several terms suggested by reviewers I’ll probably include in future editions (given the chance). But since we’re talking about a whole class of words, I thought it might be worth going into some of my reasoning for including the fannish entries, because I think it’s important. By “fannish” entries, I should add, I mean those that are from fanspeak, the slang or jargon of the science fiction and fantasy fan community.
There are multiple reasons, the least compelling of which is simply that, because of the OED’s SF citation project, I had the data. Another, slightly more compelling reason, is that at certain points, it’s extremely hard to differentiate between fannish and “critical” terms. (NB: the three major categories of terms in BNW are those coined in science fiction writing, those coined to refer to science fiction writing, and those coined by science fiction fans.) So any division between fannish and critical terms would necessarily be arbitrary. Also, I think that fanspeak is interesting, and it’s highly under-represented in mainstream dictionaries, including those dedicated to slang and jargon; those that do include it tend to do so badly.
That last one, in and of itself, would probably be enough justification for me to have included fanspeak. But one of the things that most excited me about writing BNW was the realization of just how many words that were coined in SF, about SF, and by fans, have spread into wider use, and how little that had been documented. (Obviously, the OED SF citation project is the major exception to this.) So I’d like to highlight a few terms, coined by fans, that have made the leap from fandom to the wider world. Some of these are very much a part of everyday speech; others have spread only into another subculture.
The big success storise are, of course, fanzine and zine. Fanzines originally referred only to SF and fantasy-related amateur publications. The earliest reference to non-SF use I have is from 1968, referring to a fanzine for Zane Grey fans, although this is surely too late. The shortened form zine came to mainstream prominence I’d guess in the late 1980’s, as part of a DIY, self-publishing subculture; the term itself has been around in SF fan use since 1944 (and almost certainly before then). Even fanmag has broken out into mainstream use, although I’d hazard a guess that it’s not as common as the other two.
The suffix -con, used in the names of conventions, has also been widely adopted; at first, by groups with ties to SF fandom like roleplaying games and comics, and later by others. A quick search for “computer conventions” reveals the existence of CodeCon and Wescon. I’d be willing to bet that the short form con has also started to seep out, but I don’t have any hard evidence for that (well, I’ve heard people refer to comics conventions as “cons”, but hearing it doesn’t get it into a dictionary).
Completism, the desire to possess (some might say unhealthy obsession with possession) a complete set of something, has spread from SF fandom to collectors of all stripes. [Completist has as well, it’s worth noting, although I failed to supply evidence for that fact in BNW. Oops.]
Ish, short for “issue”, was originally used to refer to issues of fanzines and SF magazines (what were called prozines), but the OED added an entry for it in 2004; only the first three citations pertain to SF.
Mundania, the realm of things non-fannish, has apparently found a foothold in neo-paganism (where it presumably means the realm of things non-pagan).
Fan fiction pretty much encompasses all manner of creative endeavor now, and is arguably a subculture in its own right, and much of the terminology now used by fanficcers of all stripes began in SF fandom, including fan fiction itself, fanfic and slash, fan fiction depicting an erotic relationship between fictional characters. (Heck, there’s even slash fiction about real people now. Once upon a time, this would merely have been called either pornography or erotica [when it wasn’t called libel], but now it’s called slash. Go figure.)
And, what is surely one of the most purely fannish items of all, the word ghod, which basically means “god”, somehow managed to creep into the underground comix scene.
This list is probably not exhaustive (I don’t seem to have maintained a handy list of them, so this is just off the top of my head), but should serve to illustrate the point. Which, briefly, is that fanspeak is both interesting and influential, and well worthy of being included in dictionaries of all stripes, let alone one specifically dedicated to the language of science fiction.
A while back, I was musing on the definitions of horror, and wondering if there wasn’t something missing from the standard definitions — namely that I had a sense that there was a def. of horror that basically included anything involving vampires, werewolves, et al. (as opposed to the standard definition of including works that seek to instill fear in the reader or viewer) — although I lacked any evidence other than my own impressions. Well, Locus magazine has come to my rescue, in the form of the Feb. 2008 issue’s recommended reading discussion. In it, editor-in-chief Charles N. Brown discusses the various categories they use for recommendations and such:
As with bookstores, we’ve been listing anything with vampires and werewolves as horror, and anything with witches and magic as fantasy.
So there exists at least one place where this definition has been used. But he says it as a prelude to a change in policy:
Chicklit witches and other supernatural creatures don’t really make it as fantasy, and romantic vampires and werewolves don’t make it as horror. They need their own category.
This pretty much backs up my impression of the broader sense of horror: it’s used as a convenience, because you have to call these books (i.e., the non-horrific horror books) something, and in the case of a bookstore, you absolutely have to put them somewhere. This also makes me wonder if my impression about this use of horror comes partly from my having worked for Locus once-upon-a-time, and having internalized their standards; it certainly has a basis in having shelved the genre books at a bookstore. Lexicographically speaking, of course, this is nowhere near enough evidence to support including this def. in a dictionary, but it does at least a) prove that I’m not crazy (at least in this one regard), and b) suggest that it’s worth pursing this question to see how common the usage is.
“Hi, SF Community. How’s it going? Do you have any plans for today?”
“Funny you should ask! As it happens, I’m planning to spend today making fun of the VanderMeers and/or Tachyon Publications!”
I’m incredibly pleased to announce that Brave New Words has been nominated for a Hugo award in the “Best Related Book” category. (For those of you who don’t follow the minutiae of SF awards, the “best related book” category is for:
Any work whose subject is related to the field of science fiction, fantasy, or fandom, appearing for the first time in book form during the previous calendar year, and which is either non-fiction or, if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text.
Full list of nominees is here: www.denvention.org/hugos/08hugonomlist.php.
Now the phrase “Hugo-nominated author” can be pre-pended to my name for the rest of my life! (And beyond, even!)
My first encounter of Arthur C. Clarke was in the 10th grade, when we were allowed to choose a book for a book report from a fairly long and broad list; Childhood’s End was one of them, and I was so excited to get to read science fiction for a book report. (There was also a Vonnegut title on the list, Cat’s Cradle, I think, which was described as “typical, if you like Vonnegut.”) I got marked down for totally omitting the whole “Overlords are devil figures” theme. I just didn’t think it was all that big a deal. (Note that the only thing I remember about the paper is that I didn’t mention the devil figures theme.)
One of his greatest contributions to the world was the idea of the geosynchronous orbit, which he mentioned in a letter published in Wireless World in April 1945, and expounded on in a full article the following October. In tribute to him, here is a scan of the letter:
A scan and OCR version of the full article can be found here.
As additional tribute, I thought I would list all the terms in Brave New Words for which his is the earliest citation:
And, of course, Clarke’s three laws, and Clarke orbit (a phrase that was likely coined by Keith Laumer in Clarke’s honor).
I have a guest-blog at OUPblog today (I’m pinch-blogging for Ben Zimmer), about organleggers and organlegging. Pop on over and take a look!
This Saturday and Sunday I will be at WonderCon, sitting at the table of the estimable Steve Leiber and inestimable Sara Ryan. I’ll have books to sell and sign, so if you’re planning on attending, drop on by. I’ll probably only be at the table for a few hours each afternoon, so plan your day accordingly!
The other thing about definitions of horror that bothers me (and this goes for my own definition in BNW), is that I have this inkling that something is being left out. I get the sense, based largely on visits to bookstores and libraries, and to a lesser extent, book reviews, that “horror” is applied to works of fiction that merely partake of the furniture of horror (vampires, ghosts, werewolves, elder gods, the word “eldritch”, etc.), but which are not particularly evocative of the emotion of horror (fear, shock, dread, etc.). And I mean that they are not evocative of these feelings by authorial choice, as opposed to, say, bad writing. For example, the Laurel K. Hamilton “Anita Blake” series of books, which is about a vampire-hunter, and includes all kinds of were-beasts and whatnot, is primarily (at least in the later installments) erotic in nature, and not particularly fear-inducing. But her books are almost invariably shelved in the horror sections of book stores.
Wikipedia’s entry for horror fiction includes this sentence: “Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called ‘horror’.” This could possibly be interpreted as supporting my hypothesis, in that works that are merely “morbid,” “gruesome,” or “surreal” are not necessarily written to induce feelings of horror. But that’s the closest I can come to finding a citation that supports my inkling. Reviews are not especially useful for this sort of defining, since, unless one has actually read the work under review, it’s hard to know which sense the reviewer intends; in the absence of evidence, the standard definition is safest to apply, although, as I said, I’ve seen reviews that give me the impression that the use of “horror” might be broadening. (And unfortunately, I didn’t save any, and don’t even recall what works were under review, so it’s entirely possible that I’m imagining novel uses in my spare time. But I don’t think I am.) Time will tell, I suppose.
