Futuristic terminology

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triceretops

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I've got a sci-fi novel set about 100 years into the future and found myself tyring to come up with words or phrases that might be used in that time frame.
Have you found yourself inventing a new language? List some of your new-found creations.

Slort--(cross between a slut and whore)
Glidewalk--(a moving sidewalk)
Credit stick--(a metal probe that takes function of credit card)
Puzzel that!--(well, I'll be damned)
Citizen Patriots--(the general populace)
People--(upper poverty class)
Proceed with your affairs--(carry on)
Foam dome--(cheap housing)
Teenonsters (bad teenagers)
The United Western Enterprize (U.S, Canada, central America and South America)
The Eastern Allegience--(All other countries and continents)
Landcruncher, Chummer model--(off-road vehicle)
Snarzler--(a bad dog, gee, wonder where I got that one?)
Nano-licker--(a device for instantly testing DNA, BAC and meds)
Holo-pad--(3-D T.V. boy, this needs changing)
Rally sled--(sports car)
Highscrapers--(sky scrapers)

I had a terrible urge to steal from Demolition Man, Blade Runner, Mad Max Beyong Thunderdome, and a myraid of other books and films. And I'm still running into problems finding ordiscoveing new names for today's products like, Kevlar, helicopters or (hovering type vehicles), agency names, building design and many others.

Care to list some of your creations? How innovative can you get?

Triceratops
 
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Moondancer

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Gee, I had enough trouble finding a title for my WIP, let alone come up with new terminology... I'm kinda gonna do that on the second go round at it. Let the first draft evolve the story.
 

CindyBidar

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I've not written anything set in the future, but I'll throw my two pennies in here anyway...

I'm reading Otherland right now, and one of the things I noticed right away is the use of made up slang. Williams does this so well that the reader instantly knows what the word refers too. I can see that in a lot of the words you listed, Tri. I don't have this skill, myself. :(

But I have also seen the other side, the book that needs a glossary at the end to explain all the terminology. Best to avoid that, if you can.
 

triceretops

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You're right, Cindy, it shouldn't be overdone cause it confuses and clogs the text and dialogue. You certainly don't want to write anything that requires a concordance, if that's the proper term. I think Battlestar Galactica used some terms very sparingly--daggit, micron and a few others.

I removed an offensive listing, forgetting that we have some very young readers in this group--please forgive. I left one marginal one in there, thinking that it wasn't too out-of-line.

Tri
 

HConn

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Triceretops, have you read A Clockwork Orange?

It's full of slang--so much so that each of the first ten pages require many many trips to the glossary in the back.

Soon, though, the slang just slides by like any other word. A wonderful, amazing book.
 
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Birol

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That's a good question right now.
I collect unusual words I encounter and turn them into slang.

For instance, squonk. There is a myth about a creature, called a squonk, that is so ashamed of itself, it hides in the woods and cries. If captured, it dissolves into tears.

In my list of words and terms I keep for myself, I've marked:

squonk

Slang
Feeling sorry for oneself. Depressed. Sulking. (Derogatory.)
 

preyer

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ah, frak the droogies.

you've got some good slang there. for my WIP (which i need to get back into) set in the future, vernacular is something i'm struggling with. i don't need to recreate everything, cars are still cars, but cultural references have changed a bit.

dink ~ urban free-thinker, usually young and idealistic artistic-type not with the gameplan. not bad, people, just kids looked at with a certain distain by everyone else

blunt ~ a cop

there's a few more i can't remember, lol. then again, my story isn't as stylized as yours seems to be. i think my favourite is 'foam dome' for cheap housing. most people in my world will live in super-cities of a 100 million people, stretching obviously for hundreds of miles, the suburbs even further. for example, the east coast super-city is anchored by new york and stretches to atlanta barring natural barriers. the idea is the city itself is a cycle of what's new today will be tomorrow's slum, and through urban regeneration, slums will be torn down and made into the posher districts. but, there's a plan there because that's the way it is in real-life (this plan isn't real, per se, just that i'm following the idea of there actually being city planners).

anyway, because my version of the future isn't terrifically or radically different than today, no flying cars, no robot love slaves, no computer chip implants, no barcode tattooes/marks of the beast, that leaves basically how people themselves will change and their slang. speach patterns are hard to predict when society becomes more and more mixed. i mean, what the hell is a hamburger gonna be called once you throw, say, an equal part latino influence into the recipe and turn it on 100 years into the future?

i think about these things.

fortunately, my story doesn't require extensive slang. stories that do, though, i don't hesitate downloading slang libraries. those things are great. it's funny, too, because the definitions of the slang often give me a much better understanding of that culture and lifestyle than any amount of research can do, albeit i have to risk piecing it together. one i found particularly interesting and probably very fitting for a lot of fantasy is the gypsy slang dictionary.
 

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First off, don't discount the continuance of words that are in use now and not likely to fall out of favor. The "F" words is supposed to have been in use now for over 500 years. With that in mind, I think it would be best if you keep the new terms to just a few that have just the right touch to them.

As to population, it should be remembered that we're already near the limits of what the planet can support. New studies are discovering that the oceans are no longer bouncing back from species depletion. This is across the board and not just among a few. Disease control has become more difficult to manage than before because of imports and exports. Whole herds and flocks within large areas have been destroyed just to regain control. This is unlikely to improve. We are already using artificial substitutes in excess. This will deteriorate even more until whole segments subsist on artificial food that doesn't have the necessary nutrients because those can't be manufactured as well as in natural products. This was also recently noted among artificial supplements, so this isn't likely to get any better.

Diseases among people are likely to get worse which those tend to do among high density populations. Therefore, there are limits as to just how many people can be placed in any single area. If there are too many such areas, the supporting ecology finds itself less and less capable of snapping back, let along supporting such density. That's a fact that's been demonstrated several times using islands where one species expanded to the detriment of others until it reduced naturally because of disease. Such environments took many years to rebound to a proper balance.
 

preyer

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that's good stuff to bear in mind. i actually considered the ecology of these giant cities, but just surface considerations, nothing researched yet. sort of my governing theory is it's not a continual stretch of urbanized areas, rather long patches basically connected by subway/train systems where there has to be a break. i'd have to actually do some math and look at a map, too, and i haven't even gotten that far. the idea isn't particularly crucial to the plot, though i've taken population control as one aspect of creating the living system. i would change it if i can't make it plausible. one of the major aspects of the super-city, to me, is that the majority of people don't even actually live in the city. like you said, it's unrealistic to have a happy population densely populated like some stories i've heard about the japanese or in san fran's chinatown. that densely packed, disease and different potentials come into play. rather one part of the super-city itself is to provide an urban area yet give people enough elbow room. basically, how much room do a 100 million people need to survive comfortably? they've been doing it in new york for a long time now, but i'd like to thin that out a bit. i'm sure once research starts on it, i'll come across some formula of sorts.

another thing about my future is corporations have been actually held accountable for their ecologic dessecrations, so while the city itself isn't very ecological, the fact that the earth isn't being destroyed any more than it absolutely has to be in areas that cause sometimes irrepairable damage, such as the mutating frogs in the midwest as a result of industry pollution. i've also considered that an ecology east of the SC will be slightly different than the west, but other than mentioning that, i'm not going to devote a lot of time with the repercussions. a SC, i'd venture to say, is at least no more detrimental to most ecology as real-life's humanity spreading into every nook and cranny able to turn a profit, er, support life comfortably. the fact is, though, that humans will destroy ecologies whether spread out or contained in a reasonable living space, eh? i'm not trying to make any statements about anything, per se, in the novel, just trying to use these aspects to my advantage.

another aspect of the SCs is to reduce sprawl. because the world is a one-world gov't, standards are across the board, so there are no longer varying practices of quality inspection. sure, you'd still have your checkpoints in australia checking to make sure east doesn't collide with west and such, but now it's controlled like that everywhere there's a potential danger.

as to food, my MC takes a daily vitamin, free and provided for by the gov't.. my future people eat better, so my theory is if they eat better, the less they need supplements, real or artificial. daily a daily vitamin is generally a good idea anyway. so, eat right and take your vits and it's a positive snowball effect. more energy, less hunger, better immunity system. these are good things.

yep, i've given *some* consideration to all these things. not mentioned here are politics, gov't. system, economy, religion, education, welfare, population's morale, police and medical services and the justice/penal system, to name just some major aspects off the top of my head. things are a lot better in my WIP's future, though i try to make them plausible and still works-in-progress themselves and not the end-all-be-all of the way it *should* be. they're striving for the ideal, but, realistically, chances are slim they'd get there in a mere 150 years from now.

like i said, i've research to do. it's good to have other pieces of aspects to think about, and i encourage that. to me, reading your post, DK, reinforces to an extent the rough ideas i've thought about. while it's a character-driven book, these details will sink you with a reader if they're not on target. one of the biggest mistakes i think i can make here is picking out how some small european country does it better and thinking that it's going to still work with huge, diverse populations like ours, which is like saying if our country ran like the walton's household, everything would be better.
 

DaveKuzminski

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100 million in New York? Not very likely. There are around 7 million now. Placing 100 million would be equivalent to placing one-third of the current US population in it.
 

preyer

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no, new york would be the anchor city of the super city, which would stretch to atlanta (just a preliminary destination barring further research). all those people would live along that stretch. sorry, must not have made myself clear on that. i'm not trying to imply that that's an ideal living situation, either.
 

DaveKuzminski

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Even as you're refining the definition of the super-city, there's still a major problem. Political control. If you have such a city, it becomes in effect a political force equivalent to several states, especially since it now encompasses several. The states are not going to cede their power to any city. Therefore, it will not be one continuous commercial district referred to by a single name.

Also, it has to be viewed from a logistical as well as population based viewpoint. Unless the super-city goes back to the use of huge apartment dwellings, there's no place for such an expanded commercial district to obtain workers. Likewise, the logistics require that there be certain districts where different processes can take place safely. Any city that doesn't do that is dooming itself to one or more disasters.

Lastly, it has to be looked at from the angle of environment and geology. A city so large that it covers the length of some rivers would have terrible consequences on the ecology because that would effectively remove access to much of the wildlife and prohibit other forms from growing.

Then, again, that's where geology comes in to the rescue of almost all of these other factors. Not all land is suitable for building upon. Some lands are better suited to be wetlands that serve to replenish certain resources needed by wildlife that then support other parts of the ecology and eventually prop up the food chain that supports people. Other land is unsuitable for large buildings simply because the land isn't stable enough. More is appropriate only for farming or forestry. When it comes down to it, only certain places are stable enough to support huge buildings. So, it's just unrealistic to envision a super-city.
 
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