Brave new words: the Oxford Dictionary of science fiction
edited by Jeff Prucher (Oxford University Press)
Checked your solido album lately? Depressing, isn’t it, how old you’re looking: almost like some gnarled outworlder. Maybe you should consider getting cyborged? Clearly, MSWord hasn’t read the Oxford dictionary of science fiction, because all those words earn its irritated red serration underneath as I type. And yet even for non-nerds, these 340-odd pages offer a fascinating browse, tracking the etymology and use of the neologisms the genre has spawned, from alien to world-building.
The volume is superb in its tracking of classic science fiction and mainstream, predominantly American, writers such as Robert Heinlein and Roger Zelazny. It is less comprehensive — in irrational ways — on new writers and trends from outside the United States.
Steampunk is tracked; New Weird is not. It’s particularly weak on women SF writers: no Mary Gentle or Liz Williams, although Margaret Attwood (who has vehemently denied she writes SF) is there. Jeff Vandermeer has one essay cited; his essential reference compendia on New Weird and Steampunk are surprisingly omitted.
Worth having on your shelves, nevertheless.
And now they are enshrined in a respectable Oxford dictionary, perhaps subeditors will let me use the terms in my columns without forever querying them?