Over the last few days Lavie Tidhar, ubiquitous sf writer, has been putting together a tongue-in-cheek dictionary of new critical terms for science fiction. He calls it The Science Fiction Dictionary of New Criticism and you can find it here. A couple of days ago, this resulted in a few people providing him with suggested terms and definitions on Twitter. I came up with several, but they were a bit too silly to use. As you can see below…

Blogposer n, a writer who hopes to boost their book sales by regularly posting contentious articles to their blog.

Disstopia n, a pessimistic science fiction novel in which the characters show no respect to each other.

Lard sf n, a sub-genre of science fiction set in the near-future and in which the population of the earth is morbidly obese.

Slipsteam n, interstitial fiction on the border between the mainstream and steampunk genres.

Smearp v, the practice of a writer basing alien races/fauna in their book on unflattering portraits of enemies or rivals. Term derived from “calling a rabbit a smeerp”.

Spockalypse n, a type of science fiction in which the survivors of a global or galactic disaster are entirely unemotional and logical; or any global or galactic disaster brought about by people who are entirely unemotional and logical.

Fuckerization n, the practice of a writer inserting the names of enemies or rivals into a novel and having said characters meet gruesome ends. Term derived from “tuckerization“.

Pingularity n, a science fiction trope in which humans have themselves uploaded into microwave ovens.

Peckulative fiction n, a sub-genre of science fiction in which birds have taken over the earth.

Yurtual reality n, a science fiction trope describing any invented artificial environment which simulates the steppes of Central Asia.