meat puppet: the human body; a physical human being, especially in contrast to virtual reality or artificial intelligenceovermind: a single, nonmaterial consciousness composed of the consciousnesses of a large number of beingscorpsicle: a cryogenically frozen person; someone in cold sleep; (occasionally) a frozen corpsedirtsider: a person who lives on a planet (in contrast to a person who lives or frequently travels in space)telempath: a person who has the psionic ability to sense others’ emotionstranshuman: a person who has gained abilities, through genetic engineering or cybernetic augmentation, sufficiently advanced that they are regarded as a different speciesposthuman: a descendant of humans who is sufficiently different from present-day humans in form or capability to be regarded as a new speciesunperson: a person who, usually for political reasons, is deemed not to have existed and whose name is removed from all public records; a person regarded as less than human
Excerpts from a list in the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, an online resource that began as a project of the Oxford English Dictionary, via Harper's.
Passing that "Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction" link along to the "A Way With Words" folks.
ReplyDeleteCorpsicle is a good one. I thought it was coined by Larry Niven, but it turns out he borrowed it from Frederick Pohl. Even funnier was when Bruce Willis referred to himself as a Meat Byproduct in The Fifth Element.
ReplyDeleteLarry did predict flash-mobs and organlegging.
DeleteIn NYC, the frozen bodies of transients found in the city's waterways were referred to as "bumsicles."
ReplyDelete*awkward chuckle*
Delete"Unperson" sounds a lot like Ancient Rome's "homo sacer"...
ReplyDelete