31 Essential Science Fiction Terms And Where They Came From

http://io9.com/31-essential-science-fiction-terms-and-where-they-came-1594794250 There are so many words and phrases that we use in science fiction—and even science—without giving it much thought. But where did we get terms like "death ray," "terraforming," "hive mind," "telepathy," and "parallel universe"? Top image from Philip Barshofsky's One Prehistoric Night as published in Wonder Stories, an early science fiction example of using "alien" to mean "a being from another planet." Key sources for this post include Jeff Prucher's wonderful Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction (Prucher also wrote the fascinating post on scientific words that originated in science fiction), the Oxford English Dictionary science fiction words citation project, and the Oxford English Dictionary itself. They're all great places to get lost for a few days. 10 Words You Might Think Came from Science (But Are Really From Science Fiction

) Last week it came to our attention that the phrase "blast off" was coined—not in a purely …