極客必知：這些炫酷科幻詞是怎么來的（一）

Robotics 機(jī)器人學(xué)

While the noun robotics is commonplace today, it wasn't back in the 1941 when sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov coined the term in a short story published in Astounding Science Fiction. It took another 20 years before the term really took off, and by the 1980s, robotics had firmly planted itself in the English language.

雖然今天聽起來很常見，但機(jī)器人學(xué)這個名詞其實(shí)是1941年才出現(xiàn)的，當(dāng)時科幻作家艾薩克·阿西莫夫在《Astounding Science Fiction》上發(fā)表的一篇短篇小說中創(chuàng)造了這個詞。過了20年它才真正被接受，到1980年代，機(jī)器人學(xué)這個詞終于進(jìn)入英語語言中。

Time travel 時空旅行

While time travel has been considered since as early as The Mahabharata, H. G. Wells gave the English language much-used terminology on the subject. In 1894 Wells coined terms related to time travel such as time travelling and time traveller in his story with the heading "Time Travelling: Possibility or Paradox."

雖然時空旅行的想法在《摩呵婆羅多》中就出現(xiàn)過，但是，將這個術(shù)語帶入英語的是H·G·威爾斯。1894年，威爾斯在名為《時空旅行：可能還是悖論》的故事中創(chuàng)造了時空旅行、時空旅行者等相關(guān)詞語。

Zero g 零重力

Zero gravity was coined by Arthur C. Clarke in Sands of Mars, his first science-fiction novel. A year later, he coined the term zero g, where g is short for "gravity," in his novel Islands in the Sky. This concept of zero g became official terminology of astronauts as the Space Race accelerated in the 1960s, and today, it's viewed more as a science term than a sci-fi term.

亞瑟·C·克拉克在他的首部科幻小說《火星之沙》之中創(chuàng)造了零重力這個詞。一年后，他又在小說《空中列島》中創(chuàng)造了零重力的縮寫Zero g。1960年代，太空競賽加速，零重力的概念成為了宇航員的官方術(shù)語。如今，它更多地被看作是科學(xué)術(shù)語而非科幻術(shù)語了。

Warp speed 翹曲速度

If you're traveling in a spacecraft at a speed faster than light, you're moving at warp speed. The word warp comes from the Old English wearp which refers to threads running over fabric. The first known usage of warp in relation to speed was in a 1968 Star Trek script, "All Our Yesterdays."

如果你在宇宙飛船里以超光速飛行，你就是以翹曲速度在前進(jìn)。Warp一詞源自古英語wearp，指織物上的線。Warp首次表達(dá)跟速度相關(guān)的用法是在1968年的《星際迷航：原初》劇本中。

Droid 類人機(jī)器人

Droid, or a robot in human-like form, is a shortened form of android which was used as early as the 1700s. Droid was first published in the 1950s in magazines like If that printed sci-fi short stories. The 1977 film franchise Star Wars brought droid into mainstream usage.

Droid是android的簡稱，意為類人機(jī)器人。Android一詞早在18世紀(jì)就有，droid則是1950年代才在《If》等刊登科幻小說的雜志上出現(xiàn)。1977年的《星球大戰(zhàn)》電影系列使類人機(jī)器人這個詞開始被大量使用。