The Skeptics Guide #910 - Dec 17 2022
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What science fiction words originated in literature and who compiled them?
You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality. Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Saturday, September 24th, 2022, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody. Cara Santamaria. Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.
Good afternoon.
folks so no you were not listening to the episode that aired at the end of September we are recording two episodes on this day this episode is coming out in December when we're on our trip to Arizona for our live shows in Arizona this is part two of a six hour live streaming show that we did we recorded two SGU episodes this is the second one so this is the episode four sometime in the middle of December I forget exactly what day it will come out So we're going to get right to some bits for you guys. We have an interview coming up very quickly with an AI expert. But Cara, you are going to start us off with What's the Word?
Yes. So I came across something really fun that I think you guys will enjoy. It is a website that was started by a man named Jesse Scheidlauer. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. He created the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. It went live during the pandemic because he was home a lot and he was bored. I think he used to work for like the Oxford English Dictionary. It's got 1,800 entries. I think it's always growing. And it has information about where these terms, these science fiction terms were first coined. He has the passage from where they were used and a little bit of background about the author. So I thought it would be fun to go into the historical dictionary of science fiction and talk about some common words that, of course, you may or may not know were developed by science fiction writers but are used all the time now in common science parlance.
So the very first one, and it's probably the most famous example of this pretty much across all the coverage that I see online, everybody cites this one first, is the word robot.
Or you are.
Right. So robot. Actually, even before robot was first used, I think it was, well, gosh, it's been used by so many different writers. A lot of people will remember some of the more recent uses. But before anything, it was actually used in a play by a Czech writer. And I probably can't pronounce their name. Maybe it's Čapek. Does anybody know it in Czech with the little thing over the C? Is that a ch sound? I'm not sure. But this Czech author wrote a play called Rossum's Universal Robots. That's translated title in which he used the word robot for the first time. And robot came from, I think, the Latin for forced labor. And that's where the word robot really came into play. And so then it's been iterated multiple times since then.
But the idea really early on, this was back in 1920. And the idea since then has often come from this idea of forced labor, use of labor in factories, use of labor in armies, cheap labor. That's where robots come from. And today they still kind of carry that vibe, I guess. But obviously it's grown to mean so much more than that, just like a non-human technological thing.
thing that does something right that does work before you go off the robot though the uh the idea of of a robot kind of goes back to the ancient greeks you know there was this idea that just not with the word robot not with the word robot just well but you think about mechanical things displacing the labor of humans right that's basically the basic idea of a robot
Actually, this is super old, but the first time the word robot was used was by this Czech playwright. And then, of course, a lot of people think of it from 1940 when Asimov wrote about the actual field of robotics. And he had a character who was a roboticist. And so that's where it really did explode. So first use in the 20s, but then in the 40s, it exploded into our lexicon and it was used all the time after that. Okay, so how about another one? Did you guys know that the word genetic engineering came from science fiction?
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What science fiction words originated in literature and who compiled them?
0:00–4:43
2
Which common sci‑fi terms (robot, genetic engineering, zero‑G, alien) first appeared where and when?
4:43–34:34
3
What are the specs and practical challenges of Hart Aerospace’s proposed electric ES‑30 airplane?
34:34–1:00:37
4
How do experts distinguish sentience, sapience, and agency in AI?
1:00:37–1:03:06
5
What are the technical and practical limits of interstellar propulsion options?
1:03:06–1:06:30
6
How could laser sails and particle beams enable relativistic cargo and solve hazards?
1:06:30–1:15:28
7
Which emerging technologies surprised the panel in Science or Fiction and why?
1:15:28–1:52:08