极客必知：这些炫酷科幻词是怎么来的（一）

Robotics 机器人学

While the noun robotics is commonplace today, it wasn't back in the 1941 when sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov coined the term in a short story published in Astounding Science Fiction. It took another 20 years before the term really took off, and by the 1980s, robotics had firmly planted itself in the English language.

虽然今天听起来很常见，但机器人学这个名词其实是1941年才出现的，当时科幻作家艾萨克·阿西莫夫在《Astounding Science Fiction》上发表的一篇短篇小说中创造了这个词。过了20年它才真正被接受，到1980年代，机器人学这个词终于进入英语语言中。

Time travel 时空旅行

While time travel has been considered since as early as The Mahabharata, H. G. Wells gave the English language much-used terminology on the subject. In 1894 Wells coined terms related to time travel such as time travelling and time traveller in his story with the heading "Time Travelling: Possibility or Paradox."

虽然时空旅行的想法在《摩呵婆罗多》中就出现过，但是，将这个术语带入英语的是H·G·威尔斯。1894年，威尔斯在名为《时空旅行：可能还是悖论》的故事中创造了时空旅行、时空旅行者等相关词语。

Zero g 零重力

Zero gravity was coined by Arthur C. Clarke in Sands of Mars, his first science-fiction novel. A year later, he coined the term zero g, where g is short for "gravity," in his novel Islands in the Sky. This concept of zero g became official terminology of astronauts as the Space Race accelerated in the 1960s, and today, it's viewed more as a science term than a sci-fi term.

亚瑟·C·克拉克在他的首部科幻小说《火星之沙》之中创造了零重力这个词。一年后，他又在小说《空中列岛》中创造了零重力的缩写Zero g。1960年代，太空竞赛加速，零重力的概念成为了宇航员的官方术语。如今，它更多地被看作是科学术语而非科幻术语了。

Warp speed 翘曲速度

If you're traveling in a spacecraft at a speed faster than light, you're moving at warp speed. The word warp comes from the Old English wearp which refers to threads running over fabric. The first known usage of warp in relation to speed was in a 1968 Star Trek script, "All Our Yesterdays."

如果你在宇宙飞船里以超光速飞行，你就是以翘曲速度在前进。Warp一词源自古英语wearp，指织物上的线。Warp首次表达跟速度相关的用法是在1968年的《星际迷航：原初》剧本中。

Droid 类人机器人

Droid, or a robot in human-like form, is a shortened form of android which was used as early as the 1700s. Droid was first published in the 1950s in magazines like If that printed sci-fi short stories. The 1977 film franchise Star Wars brought droid into mainstream usage.

Droid是android的简称，意为类人机器人。Android一词早在18世纪就有，droid则是1950年代才在《If》等刊登科幻小说的杂志上出现。1977年的《星球大战》电影系列使类人机器人这个词开始被大量使用。