Sci-Fi: Every Idea in One CSV

38 pointsposted 12 hours ago
by FL33TW00D
(gist.github.com)

14 Comments

araes

10 hours ago

Hi @FL33TW00D, thanks for the CSV and the data compilation and sorting work.

Do you care how the file is used? Personal / Professional? Sales like a printed nerd dictionary with public domain images? Is there a license or something similar?

Reaching out per: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61026720/the-default-lic...

Because apparently Gists do not have default licenses.

Other: Its cool, and while having read a bunch of sci-fi over the years, there's still a huge amount I haven't seen or interacted with. However, it almost begs that "Why would you do that?" image meme from online.

Story about why you compiled a ~4000 line CSV of sci-fi ideas?

johndough

10 hours ago

Judging by the filename, I guess the data has been scraped from technovelgy.com, which says "Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved.".

As an example, the data for the first row can be found on the following archived website (the real website seems to be unreachable).

https://web.archive.org/web/20120509005738/https://www.techn...

araes

9 hours ago

Thanks. Totally wasn't even thinking to try a quick word search on Technovelgy. Figured it was just some clever GitHub naming. Seems like this must be a slightly old archive then, as the modern site at: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/ctnlistalpha.asp has 3921 listed currently.

Guess since it's already in violation of the website terms anyways, not like anybody seems to care online.

FL33TW00D

9 hours ago

I've updated the CSV to include the License. It wasn't omitted intentionally, Gists can't have licenses associated as you've determined.

See my tweet crediting the author. https://x.com/fleetwood___/status/1836858127821721749

araes

6 hours ago

Cool, and noted on the credit in the file. Seems like 3Samourai had the same question. Apparently Bill Christensen writes Technovelgy. Thanks FL33TW00D.

ctoth

10 hours ago

I'm pretty sure Banks is responsible for more than ~3 ideas across all of SF.

From Drug glands to The Sublimed. Gridfire to Gelsuits to GSVs.

Special Circumstances itself seems like an innovation.

eesmith

9 hours ago

Drug glands? George Alec Effinger, 'When Gravity Fails', 1986, https://archive.org/details/whengravityfails00effi/page/72/m...

> Bill selected a more subtle, more frightening bodmod: He had one of his lungs removed and replaced with a large, artificial gland that dripped a perpetual, measured quantity of some fourth-generation psychedelic drug into his bloodstream.

At some point you need to wonder what "idea" means, like, what is the idea of a GSV? A giant FTL vessel? The Death Star is one of those. In the Dr. Who episode 'The Pirate Planet' we find the planet they are on is actually a spaceship made of a hollowed-out planet.

Add enough qualifiers and eventually you get something unique.

datadrivenangel

10 hours ago

Cool list, but some of the dates are quite off.

Sky Bikes, Arthur C. Clarke (w/Pohl) (2008) should be 1973 for Rendezvous with Rama, which was not written written with pohl.

pimlottc

10 hours ago

“Sigfrid von Shrink - computer shrink”

This is called Gateway by Frederick Pohl

jeroenvlek

10 hours ago

Amazing list and despite having read sci-fi almost exclusively for the past 5 years, luckily there's still so much more to read!

eesmith

9 hours ago

It's tough to say what "idea" means.

Take the "cap" from John Christopher's Tripods books. The aliens used it to keep adult humans docile. It is placed on them during puberty.

That is not in here as "cap".

But is it some other thing? Perhaps "Remote-Control Slavery Mental control (possibly mediated by radio waves) of individuals of other species."?

And it uses terms as synecdoche, like how 'Bergenholm Drive' is 'A device that renders a spaceship free of inertia', rather than the more general category of 'inertialess drives', which is also used in Warhammer 4k (https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Inertialess_Drive ), Theodore Sturgeon's "Sturgeon" (https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine-1956-08/page/n131...), and others (https://dbpedia.org/page/Inertialess_drive).

Those interested in this list may like the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction at https://sfdictionary.com/ and The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction (https://archive.org/details/bravenewwordsoxf00pruc/).

user

10 hours ago

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