极客必知：这些炫酷科幻词是怎么来的（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一词源自拉丁语的alienus，意为“属于另一个的”。14世纪进入英语时，alien指的是外来者、生于其他国家的人或不熟悉的人。直到1920年代，alien才有了科幻含义“外星人”。同样，当earthling一词最早进入英语时，指的是地上的人，而非天堂的人。19世纪中期，它才有了科幻含义“地球人”。

Nanotechnology 纳米技术

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.

纳米人，或小尺寸微型机器人的概念最早出现在科幻小说中，后来被科学家所研究，希望能将这一概念变为现实。这种机器人有时也被称作nanomachines、nanorobots或nanobots，未来它们将在生活中有很多应用。首次畅想纳米技术的科幻作家可能是尼古拉·列斯克夫，他在1881年的一个故事中曾描述过这种难以察觉的机器人，需要放大500万倍才能看见。

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.

克隆一词首次进入英语是在1903年，当时是植物用语，源自希腊语的klon，意思是“嫩枝”，它还和klados有关，这个词的意思是“一棵植物的分支”。后来，阿尔文·托夫勒在1970年出版的《未来的冲击》中赋予了它科幻含义，指“复制人类”。

Cyberpunk 赛博朋克

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世纪下半叶出现了科幻小说亚类赛博朋克。这类作品一般背景设定为工业化的反乌托邦，情节涉及计算、黑客、大型贪污公司等。这个词有记录的最早使用出自布鲁斯·贝斯克1983年的作品《赛博朋克》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.

赛博朋克派系的科幻作家赋予了病毒一词新的含义：计算机病毒。杰格瑞·班福德1970年发表的短篇小说中出现了这种病毒。书中，一个名为VIRUS的恶意程序通过调制解调器感染了电脑。不到五年，大卫·杰洛德、迈克尔·克莱顿、约翰·布鲁勒尔都发表了有关电脑病毒的科幻小说。从此以后，携带病毒的计算机就不单存在于科幻小说中了，它成为了我们语言和生活的一部分。