he English-speaking world is divided into two kinds of people: Those who find it fascinating to browse the Oxford English Dictionary, and those who don't. If you are one of the former—a word-head, an etymology nut, a lover of language—and you are also a reader of SF, then you need to visit the site known as Science Fiction Citations for the OED. Here, you will not only be rewarded with fascinating tidbits about the derivation of many words found in the SF literary canon (and that includes SF criticism and SF fandom), but you'll also become part of a vast distributed project, contributing to scholarship and the unending quest for meaning that characterizes the OED.
The layout of this site is simplicity itself. The main page describes the project: amateur word sleuths of all stripes are invited to offer citations ("cites") that will help nail down the ultimate origins of SF words in the three areas of literature, criticism and fandom. Clicking on those three buttons brings up the list of words in play. Here's where the truly alluring and mysterious atmosphere begins. By each word is the trail to date: cites and their contributors in a chain extending ever backward in time. The roll call of players is a Who's Who of the genre. Can you beat the earliest date so far adduced? Get cracking! Perhaps you can offer a cite that fills in a long gap or brings a word seemingly abandoned into the present. In any case, you'd best click on "How to Cite" so you can learn the necessary format.
But just reading the lists is educational. Did you have a hunch that Philip K. Dick invented the term "precog"? Well, you were right. When exactly did Theodore Sturgeon coin "Sturgeon's Law"? And why was it first called "Sturgeon's Revelation"? All these answers and more await you—and also the chance to go down in history as the person who found a reference to "death rays" earlier than 1919!
— Paul Di Filippo
Site of the Week—February 2, 2004
osted by The Discovery Channel and with spinoff sites for Canada, Asia and Europe, Spaceref seeks to be the ultimate online resource on the topic of space science and exploration, a deep well of reference materials for students, professionals and space buffs everywhere.
The site is a dense nest of links and articles about every aspect of space, from current NASA missions to the dynamics of space weather. It has a gallery of photos and multimedia offerings and a calendar of space-related events like launches and scientific conferences. With Spaceref, a user can track the investigation into the space shuttle Columbia disaster, follow
current remote explorations of Mars or develop a basic layperson's understanding of proposed future technologies like a space elevator. Digging back a few years into the site's archives, visitors can also relive older space stories—read up on the demise of the Mir space station, for example—as if they were happening today.
Spaceref supports various space-related research projects, currently acting as sponsor to the Arthur Clarke Mars Greenhouse. This structure is a remotely operated greenhouse located in Nunavut, Canada, designed to teach scientists about some of the ins and outs of possibly operating a greenhouse—or several—on the surface of Mars in the future.
Frequently updated, easy to navigate, and very rich in content, Spaceref is an obvious online stopping-place for anyone with an appetite for space news, facts and exploration science.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—January 26, 2004
t's a fan's, fan's, fan's, fan's world!
Back in the very early years of the 20th century, hobbyists with an interest in journalism began congregating in "amateur press associations," national groups that provided home-produced outlets for their writings. H.P. Lovecraft was perhaps the most famous member of such. With the birth of genre science fiction in 1926 and the magazine letter columns that facilitated contact among ardent readers, another network bloomed. Shortly, out of the fusion of these two subcultures, full-blown, true-blue science-fiction fandom emerged as we know it today, a welter of fanzines, personalities, conventions, customs and traditions. All other fandoms since—mystery, western, comic, romance and media—relied on the pioneering efforts of SF fans. And with the broader culture as a whole increasingly reflecting a fannish obsession with the entertainment industry's gossip and news, it's safe to say that the once outcast, nerdy fan is now Everyman.
If you'd like to learn more about the origin of fandom—and to stay in touch with its current incarnations—there's no better place to visit than The Fanac Fan History Project. The opening line on the main page describes its purpose perfectly: "This site is devoted to the preservation and distribution of information about science fiction and science fiction fandom." Galleries of photos await your inspection. Check out Robert Bloch sharing cocktails with Larry Niven. Or perhaps you'd like to brush up on fannish jargon. In that case, Rich Brown's Dr. Gafia's Fan Terms offers endless hours of fascination. You can look at digitized issues of famous old fanzines, such as Red Boggs' Sky Hook, or get pointers to several e-zines. Learn from the experts how to stage a convention. Finally, you can click on the SF Fandom Webring to be transported to a host of allied sites.
You might very well emerge from this experience chanting "FIAWOL!" And if you don't recognize that acronym, you need to visit Fanac now!
— Paul Di Filippo
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