Concepts from fiction

Q. What concepts

A. Those ideas and characters that originated in literature but which have passed into the language and become part of our everyday gallery of concepts.

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Q. How about a few examples

A. Science fiction and literary visions of the future have supplied many of these ideas. One early example is Frankenstein. Back in 1816 Lord Byron, John Polidori, the poet Shelley and Shelley's 19-year-old wife Mary whiled away a summer writing ghost stories. Polidori wrote The Vampyre and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. This story of unfettered progress was one of the earliest flickers of doubt about the supremacy of science, and over the years describing something as a 'Frankenstein's monster' has implied science gone mad. More recently the term 'Frankenstein Food' has been used in reference to genetically modified foods and plants.

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And while we're on about science, did you know that the term the term Cyberspace was coined by author William Gibson in the 1986 novel Neuromancer And how about robots The idea of machines designed to emulate humans appeared in the 1921 play RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Czech author Karel Capek. However, the roots of the word robot go back to the Middle Ages and the Slavic word robota, which meant 'forced labour'. Like Frankenstein's monster, Capek's robots try to destroy their creators.

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Q. It's not all sci-fi though, is it

A. Indeed not. One of the most famous examples of this is the concept of Utopia, the perfect society. The word was invented by Sir Thomas More for his book Libellus de optimo republicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia (Concerning the highest state of the republic and the new island Utopia), which was published in 1516. The name was compounded by More from the Greek words ou (not) and topos (place), meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere', thus 'an imaginary state'. Dystopia was coined to describe its opposite.

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Then, of course, we have Catch-22, from Joseph Heller's novel of wartime insanity. The central conundrum is that in order to get out of combat you have to prove that you're mad, but anyone who had the wherewithal to do so is obviously sane. So a Catch-22 situation is one where you can't win whatever you do.

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Q. How about George Orwell

A. Orwell is possibly the modern author who has contributed most in this regard, largely from his celebrated vision of a totalitarian future, 1984. Not only did he dream up the Thought Police, who were the sinister secret organisation who kept Big Brother's subjects in check, he also devised Room 101, the room in which all your worst fears came true. If all that wasn't enough Orwell gave his name to Orwellian, a term which describes a highly organised and brutal totalitarian society.

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In a similar way Kafkaesque is used to describe a nightmarishly complex, bizarre or illogical quality, and was named for the Czech author Franz Kafka (1883-1924). His central themes were the impotence of individuals swept up into governmental, legal or bureaucratic madness and his tales are full of fear, paranoia and the impotence of the ordinary man. His best known works include The Trial (in which one Joseph K is being tried, though no one will tell him what for) and the story 'Metamorphosis' , in which the central character wakes up one day having turned into a cockroach while he was asleep.

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And then we have The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic exploration of the opposing forces inherent in the human character, which has given rise to saying that someone is a 'Jeckyll-and-Hyde character'. And if you're a tad on the mean side, don't be surprised if someone calls you a 'scrooge'. Possibly Charles Dickens's most famous creation, Ebenezer Scrooge, who appeared in A Christmas Carol, was the miser who hated other people to be happy, exploited his employees and regarded Christmas as 'humbug'.

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Q. What about the Peter Pan of Pop, then

A. Harry Webb, better known to us all as Sir Cliff Richard, is surely the embodiment of J.M. Barrie's magical creation, the boy who remains forever young - well, isn't he Actually a Peter Pan is likely to be someone derided for trying to remain young despite the passing of the years: mutton dressed as lamb, in fact.

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Continuing this theme, no doubt you've heard people being referred to as possessing the qualities of Dorian Grey. Oscar Wilde's creation kept a portrait in the attic, which took on all the decay and degeneration, both moral and physical, that the dissolute Dorian heaped upon himself through his thoroughly debauched lifestyle, while the man himself remained the very picture of a health.

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And finally we have Lolita. Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel gave a name to something which had been largely unacknowledged - at least in polite society - that of the sexually provocative young, even underage, girl.

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Q. So is there any really recent stuff is likely to be remembered this way

A. Hard to say, but Bridget Jones is a possibility.

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See also the answerbank articles on Utopia, Joseph Heller, George Orwell and science fiction

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By Simon Smith