Posts Tagged: science fiction

  • Dr Who and the Daleks

    Who is a whovian?

    My Whovian life At 5:15 pm on 23 November 1963, the first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast on BBC One. It was delayed a few minutes because of the announcement of John F Kennedy’s assassination. I was a two and a half year old living in Guisborough, a small town in northern Yorkshire, England. […]

  • An illustration of generic robots and androids

    How do you tell a robot from an android?

    Words for artificial humans The science fiction (sci-fi) genre has created many near-human creatures. There is a whole vocabulary that has grown to describe human-like things that are not humans: robot, android, cyborg, humanoid, and many more. But researching these sci-fi words I found that many of them and the artificial creatures they describe have […]

  • 1950s style image of a rocket ship powered by unobtainium.

    Isotropes of unobtainium found

    Forms of unobtainium have been used in science fiction from the beginning of the genre. HG Wells used the fictional Cavorite to overcome the power of gravity and get his heroes to the moon in The First Men in the Moon. Star Trek uses dilithium crystals to power the warp drive.

  • Artwork from Stranger in A Strange Land book grok was the martian language

    My my, hey hey is grok here to stay?

    It is a stretch of the imagination to suggest that our only Martian word is yet part of mainstream English but grok has survived for almost 50 years!

  • Part of cover of Magaizine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

    Dystopian visionary dies

    The author, J.G.Ballard, died 15 April 2009 (born 15 November 1930). He was known mostly for his successful autobiographical work, Empire of the Sun, but his work is found most often on science fiction shelves. His brand of science fiction created dystopian visions of society challenging his readers’ perceptions. As a young man I had read mountains […]