SF [alternative] Glossary

Alien
A foreigner, needing either a green skin and boggle eyes, or a passport and visa

Amnesia
A forgetful princess

Anaesthesia
Sleeping Beauty’s real name

Artificial Gravity
(1) a useful technology popular in Space Opera that stops the characters turning into jam under the high accelerations needed to keep the storylines down to a 1-hour format
(2) SF that is not as serious as it thinks it is

BDO
A Big Dumb Object with personal hygiene problems

Big Dumb Object
(1) [Fantasy] a large henchman to outwit
(2) [Science Fiction] a gigantic alien artefact

Clone
The effect of heavy makeup and false noses causing them all to look the same

Dyson Sphere
A Big Dumb Object that totally encloses a star. Invented by Freeman Dyson, who then went on to invent the vacuum cleaner

Dystopia
An eye complaint making everything appear bad

Elf
What Fantasy readers would get if they put the book down and got some exercise instead

Elf Service
That which is provided by writers of High Fantasy

FTL
Faster Than Light: the effect of eating too much junk food

Goblin
A small, unpleasant Fantasy creature that eats too fast

Golden Age
A fictional time when the books were so much better than those produced today

Goldilocks Zone
The region where you find planets inhabited by bears

Grey Goo
The effects of cooking with nanotechnology

Handwavium
A material with amazingly useful and versatile properties, but we are not sure exactly how it works

Hard SF
The opposite of Easy SF

High Elves
What you might see after too much mead

Iain Banks
See Iain M Banks

Iain M Banks
See Iain Banks

Light year
Like a regular year, but with fewer calories (thanks to Steve Martin)

Magical Realism
(1) a TV show by Derren Brown
(2) the opposite of books by Dan Brown

Matrix
Something with more questions than answers

Mutant
A shared female relative

Myth
Opposite of a moth

Oxymoron
A stupid cow

Phaser
Laser with a lisp

Ring World
(1) Middle Earth
(2) Big Dumb Object that provides gravity by spinning and drama by its inhabitants.

Singularity
Someone who is too dense to have more than one thought

Soft SF
Science fiction that has been left out in the rain

Space Opera
Like its musical namesake, it has grandiose themes and unlikely plots, but usually less singing, though Joss Whedon has a lot to answer for on that score.

Steampunk
Used by 1980’s rebels to iron their clothes

Terra
The feeling had by non geeks on reading SF

Time Travel
Ridiculously easy in one direction, impossibly difficult in the other

Troll
What you have to pay to cross a bridge

Unobtanium
The strongest material in the known (and unknown) universe; unfortunately it hasn’t been discovered yet...

Utopia
An eye complaint making everything appear rose coloured

Vampire
(1) the cremation of a femme fatale
(2) vamp rental

Virtual Reality
A computer technology that is nearly there

Please feel free to fill in the gaps