極客必知：這些炫酷科幻詞是怎么來的（二）

Alien comes to English from the Latin alienus meaning "belonging to another." When it first entered English in the 1300s, it referred to an outsider, someone born in another country, or someone who is unfamiliar. It was not until the late 1920s that alien took on its sci-fi meaning of "an intelligent being from another planet." Similarly, when earthling first entered English in the late-1500s, it meant someone who lived on earth, not in heaven. Only in the mid-1800s did it take on the sci-fi meaning of a person who is not an alien.

Alien一詞源自拉丁語的alienus，意為“屬于另一個的”。14世紀進入英語時，alien指的是外來者、生于其他國家的人或不熟悉的人。直到1920年代，alien才有了科幻含義“外星人”。同樣，當earthling一詞最早進入英語時，指的是地上的人，而非天堂的人。19世紀中期，它才有了科幻含義“地球人”。

Nanotechnology 納米技術(shù)

Nanites, or tiny robots built on the small scale, were a concept first realized in science fiction and later researched by scientists in the hopes of making these minute robots a reality. Sometimes called nanomachines, nanorobots, or nanobots, these robots will one day have many real-life applications. Perhaps one of the first science fiction writers to imagine nanotechnology was Nikolai Leskov, whose 1881 story described imperceptible robots, requiring 5,000,000 times magnification to be seen.

納米人，或小尺寸微型機器人的概念最早出現(xiàn)在科幻小說中，后來被科學家所研究，希望能將這一概念變?yōu)楝F(xiàn)實。這種機器人有時也被稱作nanomachines、nanorobots或nanobots，未來它們將在生活中有很多應(yīng)用。首次暢想納米技術(shù)的科幻作家可能是尼古拉·列斯克夫，他在1881年的一個故事中曾描述過這種難以察覺的機器人，需要放大500萬倍才能看見。

Clone 克隆

When clone first entered English in 1903, it was used in the context of botany. It comes from the Greek klon meaning "a twig" and is related to klados meaning "offshoot of a plant." Later, clone took on the sci-fi sense of "artificially duplicated person" thanks to Alvin Toffler's 1970 book Future Shock.

克隆一詞首次進入英語是在1903年，當時是植物用語，源自希臘語的klon，意思是“嫩枝”，它還和klados有關(guān)，這個詞的意思是“一棵植物的分支”。后來，阿爾文·托夫勒在1970年出版的《未來的沖擊》中賦予了它科幻含義，指“復(fù)制人類”。

Cyberpunk 賽博朋克

The second half of the 20th century saw the birth of the cyberpunk sci-fi subgenre. Often set in industrial dystopias, the cyberpunk genre features plots related to computing, hackers, and large corrupt corporations. Perhaps the earliest recorded use of the term was in Bruce Bethke's 1983 story "Cyberpunk."

20世紀下半葉出現(xiàn)了科幻小說亞類賽博朋克。這類作品一般背景設(shè)定為工業(yè)化的反烏托邦，情節(jié)涉及計算、黑客、大型貪污公司等。這個詞有記錄的最早使用出自布魯斯·貝斯克1983年的作品《賽博朋克》中。

Virus 病毒

Science fiction writers of the cyberpunk persuasion introduced the world to a new sense of virus: the computer virus. This sense of virus appears in a short story by Gregory Benford published in 1970 in which a malevolent computer program called VIRUS infects computers via their modem connections. Within five years David Gerrold, Michael Crichton, and John Brunner had all published sci-fi novels featuring computer viruses, and from there, computers along with the viruses that aim to corrupt them became part of language and life beyond science fiction.

賽博朋克派系的科幻作家賦予了病毒一詞新的含義：計算機病毒。杰格瑞·班福德1970年發(fā)表的短篇小說中出現(xiàn)了這種病毒。書中，一個名為VIRUS的惡意程序通過調(diào)制解調(diào)器感染了電腦。不到五年，大衛(wèi)·杰洛德、邁克爾·克萊頓、約翰·布魯勒爾都發(fā)表了有關(guān)電腦病毒的科幻小說。從此以后，攜帶病毒的計算機就不單存在于科幻小說中了，它成為了我們語言和生活的一部分。