So here’s a random thought: who first coined the term "starship"? Was it Gene Roddenberry from Star Trek, or did he get the term from some older source? A short search online yields little.
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August 2nd, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” preceeds Roddenberry’s “Star Trek” by about a decade (the original harcover version appears to be from 1959)
August 2nd, 2006 at 3:02 pm
I don’t have any data, but I’m sure it dates back even further than Starship Troopers… probably had something to do with Von Braun. Everything else seems to.
August 2nd, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Ah, Heinlein, of course. I wonder if Verne or Wells ever used the term…
August 2nd, 2006 at 3:34 pm
A quick search reveals “Starship first attested 1934 (in “Astounding Stories”)” at http://www.etymonline.com – I would have imagined it being earlier still.
August 2nd, 2006 at 3:51 pm
It wasn’t Heinlein either, even though that would have been cool.
Your question shows that you’re not much of a SF ‘reader’ BA. It would never have entered your head that Star Trek might have been the first use of the word, otherwise.
Etymology Online submits that the first occurrence of the compound word “starship” was in Astounding Stories in 1934. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=s&p=40
Unfortunately, their citation does not mention by whom.
Also, http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=71426 has a nice little piece on the origin of the word, but gets kind of vague about anything before G. Harry Stine’s use of it for ‘Starship Through Space’, then mentions that “Countless pulp stories of the Golden 1920s and 1930s used it.”, without citing any. I have no doubt of it though.
This is my first post, but I’ve been lurking since day one. Keep up the good work.
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Actually I do read SF (well, not as much now as I used to), but I just didn’t think of it. Funny how the brain works sometimes.
August 2nd, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Dang, I was hoping I would be the first to point out the reference
at etymonline. If only I weren’t babysitting. But John has a good point, if a 1934 equivalent of “amazing stories” used it, it was probably coined rather anonymously in the pop-culture at the time.
August 2nd, 2006 at 5:03 pm
It seems to me that EE ‘Doc” Smith may have used that term and he did have the Skylark of Valeron published in Astounding Stories in 1934.
August 2nd, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Hmmm a ship that travels to the stars….dosnt seem like anyone invented it, prolly just came about naturally
August 2nd, 2006 at 5:58 pm
To answer the BA, I’ve read many of Verne’s and Wells’ works.
I don’t recall seeing references to the term “starship”.
At most, there is “extra-terrestrial”.
August 2nd, 2006 at 6:05 pm
According to the SF Citations project for the Oxford English Dictionary (http://www.jessesword.com/sf/), the current origin is the Astounding Stories one mentioned above.
See http://www.jessesword.com/sf/view/117 for details.
August 2nd, 2006 at 6:14 pm
I’m surprised nobodies mentioned Jefferson Starship & a Monty Python skit yet…
August 2nd, 2006 at 6:34 pm
I woudn’t be surpised if the word “starship” dates all the way back to those Hugo Gernsback pulp mags pre-1920.
August 2nd, 2006 at 8:03 pm
Short note – the two posts at 3:34 are not both from me – just a really cool coincidence!
jbs
August 2nd, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Starship must go way back, nothing as bad as: “We Built This City On Rock ‘N’ Roll” could possibly have been made in our day and age….
August 3rd, 2006 at 12:46 am
A Google Books search of books prior to the Amazing Stories citation doesn’t turn up much.
A poetry anthology edited by Reginald Chauncey Robbins published in 1917 (titled Poems of Personality) includes a poem by “Leibniz” (presumably Gottfried Leibniz) that uses the word. But in a way that I’m not sure what is meant by it.
It also appears in a 1913 book titled “His Great Adventure” by Robert Herrick but it appears to be using “starship” like “lordship” but in relation to a celebrity. Same for the July-December 1871 issue of “The Gentleman’s Magazine” from London.
1895′s “From Elim to Carmel: Aspects of Christian Doctrine and Experience” by William Jones uses it in relation to an actual star, but to mean the state of being a star (“and one star differeth from another star in glory but not in starship”).
So, if it existed prior to that citation to refer to a vehicle for moving between stars, it probably wasn’t widely in use or appearing in books.
August 3rd, 2006 at 1:21 am
No one’s mentioned Norman Conners yet, so I thought I’d throw that saucer-shaped hat into the ring.
“You are my starship; come take me up tonight, and don’t be late.”
And I didn’t even have to Google that.
Dang, I’m gettin’ old.
August 3rd, 2006 at 1:55 am
Since we can’t credit H.G. Wells with starship, he is generally credited with coining “atomic bomb” in 1911.
August 3rd, 2006 at 7:22 am
Louise, that’s fascinating. Did Wells have a basic understanding of how an atomic bomb would work, or was that just a fortuitous naming coincidence?
August 3rd, 2006 at 8:00 am
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I cannot recall an H.G.Wells novel that had anything to do with interstellar travel, only interplanetary travel – Mars etc. So why would one use a ‘Starship’ just to go next door, so to speak?
Ivan.
August 3rd, 2006 at 8:12 am
I believe the concept for a “starship”, although not the word itself, is from “The True History”, by Lucian of Samosata. This writing is often referred to one of the oldest science fictions. Lucian appairently wrote it as a parody of the other popular authors of the day, like Homer.
August 3rd, 2006 at 9:38 am
Now that I’m wasting time at work instead of chilling at home, I can use our academic subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary. Our friend the OED notes that “star-ship” can refer to the southern constellation Argo Navis, and gives a citation from 1606. (“SYLVESTER Du Bartas II. iv. I. Tropheis 216 ‘Twixt Eridanus And th’ Heav’nly Star-Ship.”) The second sense is the one we care about, and here is what the OED says about it:
August 3rd, 2006 at 9:58 am
Starship in lit: I was able to narrow the Dec. ’34 reference (thanks Hamish) to Astounding down to authors and their works here. I’m leaning towards Campbell since he’s also credited with coining “hyperspace” in his first installment of “The Mightiest Machine” in that Dec issue, but have hit a wall for now.
Starship in history: Rocky, I thought of a reference that might go a little further back: In ancient Hindu Vedic texts, there are many references to the Vimanas, flying machines that had the ability to travel in the sky and to the stars (as far as concept goes, of course – I’m not suggesting there actually were flying machines in ancient India).
Eric
August 3rd, 2006 at 10:07 am
I believe the first interstellar spaceship story was E.E. Smith’s ‘Spacehounds of I.P.C’ As near as I can make out, it was published in parts of Astounding in 1931 (which predates the attribution). I’ll check on my copy tonight to see if ‘starship’ was used.
August 3rd, 2006 at 10:09 am
Sorry, just after I posted this. It was ‘Skylark of Space’, not ‘Spacehounds of IPC’, and it predates Astounding.
August 3rd, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Eric Marschall, thank you. I’m going to have to Google that and do some reading. I’ve heard of the Vendic texts, but have never read any.
Thanks again!
August 3rd, 2006 at 4:04 pm
Now that “starship” has been done, there is another word that is very often falsely credited to Star Trek: warp. Obviously I mean warp in the space opera sense and not warping of wood or whatever. I know Harlan Ellison used the term “warp” prior to Trek. I once read the term in a work a few decades prior. If memory serves correctly, it was in E.E. “Doc” Smith though it has been a long time so my memory. It is easy to confirm though, that Smith used “subspace” prior to Trek.
August 4th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
I was thinking why don’t we call airplanes ‘air ships’, the answer (I believe) is that airships usually refer to lighter than air crafts durigibles. If air planes came first I wonder if they’d have that name?
August 7th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Of course the terms ‘gasbag’ or ‘windbag’ have a healthy history prior to the invention of dirigibles, but does anybody use the terms for the latter? What about ‘starship’ in other languages (I’m reminded of Daniel Jackson’s correction of the Egyptian in ‘Stargate’ from something else). The Yahgan term would be apurinik- aanan.
March 25th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Updating the earliest reference to the word ‘starship’, currently a well-trafficked and universally accepted term in the Sci-Fi genre…
First published English translation in 1976 from the Persian and Arabic, compiled by the Research Dept. of Universal House of Justice at the Bahai World Center, Haifa, from the Writings of the Bab, Forerunner and one of Twin Founders of the Bahai Faith. The Bab wrote extensively from 1844 to 1853.
Not printed, at this point, anywhere else in the Bahai Writings, the word ‘starship’ appears only in the condensed paragraph as follows;
‘THE acts of Him Whom God shall make manifest are like unto the sun, while the works of men, provided they conform to the good-pleasure of God, resemble the stars or the moon… Thus, should the followers… observe the precepts… and regard themselves and their own works as stars exposed to the light of the sun, then they will have gathered the fruits of their existence; otherwise the title of ‘starship’ will not apply to them. Rather it will apply to such as truly believe in Him, to those who pale into insignificance in the day-time and gleam forth with light in the night season.
(The Bab, Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p. 97)