| Definition | an intelligent alien |
| OED requirements | antedating 1968 |
| Earliest cite | P. J. Farmer "The Day of Timestop" |
| Comment | The OED only has the sense "a wise man". Jeff Prucher submitted a 1989 cite from Norman Spinrad's book review column in Asimov's. Douglas Winston submitted a 2002 cite from Julie Czerneda's "To Trade the Stars". Michael Dolbear submitted a cite from a 1989 reprint of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Paul Edwin Zimmer's "The Survivors". Ralf Brown located and Mike Christie submitted a 1968 cite from Robert Silverberg's "The Man in the Maze". Malcolm Farmer submitted a 1999 cite from Julian May's "Orion Arm". Douglas Winston submitted a cite from a 1968 reprint of Philip José Farmer's "The Day of Timestop"; we would like to check the 1960 first edition (under the title of "A Woman A Day"). Mike Christie checked the 1953 short story version and the cite does not appear there. Douglas Winston submitted a 2000 cite from Brian Stableford's "The Fountain of Youth". |
| Last modified | 6 July, 2008 |
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| 1979 M. Z. Bradley & P. E. Zimmer Survivors (1989) 7 | There had been a time when Dane thought he would never tire of watching the crowds that thronged these streets, lizard-men, cat-men, bird-men—or, to use the terminology of the Unity, the enormous Galactic civilization, protosaurians, protofelines, protoavians; and others, people of every conceivable species of sapient. |
| 1989 Isaac Asimov's Sci. Fiction Mag. Dec. 175/1 | Aliens from another dimension have constructed a complex artificial solar system millions of years after the destruction of Earth and populated it with reconstructed humans, terrestrial life forms, and post-human higher Terrestrial sapients from Earth's past. |
| 2002 J. E. Czerneda To Trade Stars 300 | ‘They do it so they can get away with eating other sapients?’ Ruti demanded in horror‥. ‘Only if those sapients invade their pool.’ |
| 2005 C. Stross Accelerando vi. 249 | The main life-form is an incredibly ornate corporate ecosphere, legal instruments breeding and replicating. They mug passing sapients and use them as currency. |