Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Science fiction.
  • adjective Of, relating to, being, or similar to science fiction.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun informal Science fiction; -- a common shortened form for the name of the literaray genre. See science fiction.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun colloquial Short for science fiction.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Re the SF/sci-fi label: when a non-genre mag reviewed my books and described me as a ’sci-fi supremo’ d’you think I was going to write in and bitch about it?

    The New Comprehensible, or, This is Not a Literary Manifesto, Thank God « Whatever 2007

  • Yet the term sci-fi, for Ms. Atwood, properly applies only to "things that could not possibly happen," like H.G. Wells's invasions from Mars in "War of the Worlds" 1898.

    The Future of Science Fiction Tom Shippey 2011

  • In a piece published in the New York Times in 1965, Vonnegut insisted that he did not want to be classified as a sci-fi author and said some wounding things about sci-fi enthusiasts: They were clannish and childish about matters outside technology; and not many sci-fi writers could really write.

    And So It Went Tom Shippey 2011

  • As Rebecca, Jones is an intriguing discovery, and Neill classes up the joint, but overall, the script has some of the sparkless blah that has plagued Fox's other big-name sci-fi show this season, "Terra Nova."

    www.startribune.com 2012

  • As Rebecca, Jones is an intriguing discovery, and Neill classes up the joint, but overall, the script has some of the sparkless blah that has plagued Fox's other big-name sci-fi show this season, "Terra Nova."

    www.startribune.com 2012

  • As Rebecca, Jones is an intriguing discovery, and Neill classes up the joint, but overall, the script has some of the sparkless blah that has plagued Fox's other big-name sci-fi show this season, "Terra Nova."

    www.startribune.com 2012

  • But overall, the script has some of the sparkless blah that has plagued Fox's other big-name sci-fi show this season, "Terra Nova."

    Washington Post: Breaking News, World, US, DC News & Analysis Hank Stuever 2012

  • His prose, casually neologistic and making deft use of sci-fi tropes, is bracingly sharp.

    Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past by Simon Reynolds – review 2011

  • Where water really is scarce—on planets other than Earth—novelistic imaginations have created wonderfully tyrannical dystopias, most extravagantly in Frank Herbert's "Dune" 1965, a worthy sci-fi favorite.

    Any Drop to Drink? Felipe Fernandez-Armesto 2011

  • Its sci-fi shoot-'em-up thriller Half-Life 2 has sold 2 million copies since 2004 and is the highest-rated PC game on the Web site Metacritic.

    The Master of Online Mayhem Oliver Chiang 2011

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