Full record for sense of wonder n.

Definition a feeling of awakening or awe brought on by an expansion of one's awareness of what may be possible; the primary emotional experience of reading science fiction
OED requirements antedating 1881
Earliest cite 'History of Sangamon County, Illinois'
Comment We would still like citations for this phrase in a science fiction context earlier than 1936.

Leah Zeldes submitted a 1959 cite from Fancyclopedia II. James A. Landau submitted a cite from Damon Knight's article "The Classics" in a 1968 reprint of "In Search of Wonder"; Alistair Durie verified the 1956 original printing in Future Science Fiction. Enoch Forrester submitted a cite from a 1978 reprint of Brian Ash's 1977 "A Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction". Jeff Prucher submitted a cite from a 1995 reprint of David N. Samuelson's 1973 "Childhood's End: A Median Stage of Adolescence". Jeff Prucher submitted a 1981 cite from Vonda McIntyre's "The Straining Your Eyes Through the Viewscreen Blues". Jeff Prucher submitted a cite from a 1967 edition of Damon Knight's "In Search of Wonder" (in a review of Chad Oliver's "Another Kind"); Mike Christie verified the original appearance in the March 1956 "Original Science Fiction Stories". Jeff Prucher submitted a 1984 cite from David Hartwell's "Age of Wonders". Fred Galvin submitted a 1963 cite from Sam Moskowitz in "The Proceedings; CHICON III". Fred Galvin located and Alistair Durie submitted a 1951 cite from Milton Lesser's "The Sense of Wonder". Fred Galvin submitted a 1946 cite from Henry Kuttner's "Absalom". Fred Galvin submitted cite from a reprint of Clemence Dane's "American Fairy Tails" which Jeff Prucher verified in the original 1936 publication in The Fortnightly.

Fred Galvin submitted a 1956 cite from Roger De Soto in Amazing Stories which suggests that Sam Moskowitz originated the phrase in his columns in "fan-and-prozines"; we would like to see cites from his earlier columns.

Bill Mullins submitted a 1912 cite from Seymour Currey's "Chicago, its history and its builders". Bill Mullins submitted an 1881 cite from the "History of Sangamon County, Illinois".
Last modified 6 July, 2008

Citations for sense of wonder n.

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1956 D. Knight In Search of Wonder (1968) 13 Science fiction exists to provide what Moskowitz and others call ‘the sense of wonder’: some widening of the mind's horizons, no matter in what direction—the landscape of another planet, or a corpuscle's-eye view of an artery, or what it feels like to be in rapport with a cat.
1956 ‘R. Randall’ Guest Editorial in Infinity Sci. Fiction Oct. 86/2 A lot of people have been complaining lately that modern writers don't have the old ‘sense of wonder’, and they blame it on this very business of slanting—among other things. Everybody has their own ‘Golden Age’ that they point to and say: ‘Now, them was the good old days. Gee! I really got a kick outa them stories! Stories are interesting now, but they ain't got that kick any more.’ All right, chums—examine yourselves. When did you feel that ‘sense of wonder?’ Yeah. When you first started reading science fiction! My own Golden Age was during the late thirties and early forties. Mr. Silverberg admits that his was during the middle and late forties. You can see we're both somewhat younger than, say, Sam Moskowitz. Hugo Gernsback, the Grand Old Man of S-F editors, is sure that the best science fiction was written by Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.
1971 W. F. Nolan Edge of Forever 24 [Damon] Knight commented on ‘the deeply moving treatment of cultural impacts,’ and found in Oliver's work, ‘a “sense of wonder”—the feeling which science fiction exists to create—in such measure that it hits you with an almost physical jolt.’
1973 D. N. Samuelson Childhood's End: A Median Stage of Adolescence in Sci. Fiction Studies Spring 93 Technological extrapolation, the enthronement of reason, the ‘cosmic viewpoint’, alien contact, and a ‘sense of wonder’ achieved largely through the manipulation of mythic symbolism are all important elements in this visionary novel.
1981 V. McIntyre Straining Your Eyes Through Viewscreen Blues in F. Herbert Nebula Winners Fifteen When I was a kid I used to wonder why people in sf stories always wrote with a stylus; I was curious what a stylus was and what made it different from a pencil or a pen. Imagine the damage to my sense of wonder when I realized that a stylus was a pencil or a pen, that all those exotic-sounding cold drinks were martinis or beer, that all those interesting hot drinks were coffee or tea.
1982 D. Hartwell The Golden Age of Science Fiction is Twelve in Top of News (1982, issue number unknown) 42 A sense of wonder, awe at the vastness of space and time, is at the root of the excitement of science fiction.
1982 R. Arbur Leigh Brackett in T. Staicar Feminine Eye (1982) i. 6 ‘Sense of wonder’ is science fiction's analogue of mainstream literature's ‘shock of recognition’.
1992 Locus Aug. 30/2 Mars offered us good old-fashioned sense-of-wonder sf, with the politics fairly well in the background.
1993 Sci. Fiction Age Jan. 6/2 While you're busy lost in the sense of wonder and excitement of it all, the message is being slipped to you between the lines.
1993 Sci. Fiction Stud. Nov. 354 Much less postmodern in tone (although still able to generate a certain ‘sense of wonder’) are the necroscopic brain-scans portrayed in much SF cinema and television of the latter 20th century.
1994 B. Bova Craft of Writing Sci. Fict. that Sells ii. 8 Science fiction's sense of wonder attracts new writers.
2001 Sci. Fiction Chron. July 38/1 The conflict seems an internal one to the genre as well, reappearing year after year in new garb, whether as cries bemoaning the loss of the ‘sense of wonder’ or cries to reanimate Heinlein's serious term ‘speculative fiction’.