Brave New World

Author: Aldous Huxley

Some time ago, the critic Gary Westfahl tried to argue that you could use the number of neologisms in a work as a measure of how science fictional it was. The idea was nonsense, of course, but it does suggest how important new words are in sf. And that's why this book, also called The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, is so important. Here you will find everything from the words science fiction has invented, like "robot" or "spaceship"; to the language sf fans use, like "sercon" or "gafia"; to the jargon used in sf criticism, like "expository lump" or "widescreen baroque". Just like any Oxford Dictionary, you'll not only find the definition (or definitions) of the word, but also the citations for where it was first used, and some of the other places where it has been used since. If science fiction is a language (see The Jewel-Hinged Jaw above), or even if it isn't, the genre certainly uses words in its own very distinctive way, and it invents an awful lot of words as well. So this is an invaluable reference book to help you keep clear about exactly what is being said.

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Other literary dystopias from the period that are well worth reading include Swastika Night by Katherine Burdekin, in which she imagined the world of Hitler's thousand-year reich, and One by David Karp which imagines a totalitarian future America.

Of course, we can't forget about 1984 as THE dystopian novel to read. Fahrenheit 451 is also another important dystopian novel you should read.