If terms like “robotics” and “genetic engineering” seem too good to have been made up by scientists, it’s because they weren’t. Isaac Asimov invented the word “robotics” and the adjective “robotic” in his science fiction story Liar! and Jack Williamson coined the term “genetic engineering” in his novel Dragon’s Island. The Oxford University Press blog compiled these and seven other scientific terms that actually came from science fiction, including “zero-gravity” and computer “virus.”
(Thanks, 3 Quarks Daily.)
