Welcome to the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction. This work-in-progress is a comprehensive quotation-based dictionary of the language of science fiction. The HD/SF is an offshoot of a project begun by the Oxford English Dictionary (though it is no longer formally affiliated with it). It is edited by Jesse Sheidlower. Please explore the menu links to learn more.

EmilyKun from the Hatventures Minecraft server drew this picture of herself, Siejo82, and me exploding from a giant sakura tree that I filled with TNT and then lit too soon.

Watch the episodes in this order: IV, V, II, III, VI.

“Nerds will still be nerds, and trust me, their adolescences will still be awful enough to provide fodder for a lifetime of creativity and humor, if they’re lucky. The thing that everyone seems to forget is that nerddom, in its purest form, is a teenage affliction, something that many, if not most, people grow out of. They figure out how to be passionate about their interests without being smug and humorless about them. They learn to laugh at their past humiliations, and to celebrate this newfound comfort in their own skins, they proudly take on the epithet so long slung in their direction: they call themselves nerds. And that’s it. If done in the true spirit of awareness and goodnatured self-deprecation, the day you call yourself a nerd is the day you become an ex-nerd.”