worldlet n.

a small celestial object; a planetoid

  • 1841 M. F. Tupper Author's Mind 26

    As a last round of this giddy climax, after noisy clashing Chaos there shall roll out, ‘perfect, smooth, and round’, green young Worldlets, moving in quiet harmony, and moulded with systematic skill.

  • 1926 Spectator 11 Sept. 375/1

    So in turn we visit the asteroids, that belt of tiny worldlets flinging round the sun.

  • 1937 O. Stapledon Star Maker (1987) 156 Olaf Stapledon

    As the aeons advanced, hundreds of thousands of worldlets were constructed, all of this type, but gradually increasing in size and complexity. Many a star without natural planets came to be surrounded by concentric rings of artificial worlds.

  • 1973 A. C. Clarke Rendezvous with Rama (1974) 43 Arthur C. Clarke

    Bernal and others thought this could be done with mobile worldlets a few kilometres across, carrying thousands of passengers on journeys that would last for generations.

  • 1985 D. Brin Warm Space in D. Brin Otherness (1994) 266 David Brin

    Asteroid-sized arks—artificial worldlets capable of carrying entire ecospheres—remained a dream out of science fiction, economically beyond reach.

  • 1989 Asimov’s Science Fiction Dec. 175/1

    In Eon, an artificial worldlet called the Thistledown, which somehow arrives from the future, contains the machinery for generating ‘The Way’, a kind of tubular wormhole universe, fifty kilometers in diameter and more or less infinitely long, snaking, not only through space and time, but alternate universes too.

  • 1990 A. Steele Clarke County, Space 86—7 Allen Steele

    Blind Boy Grunt had been haunting Clarke County’s information system for the past year, beginning a few months after the colony began operating as an inhabitated [sic] worldlet.

  • 1993 A. C. Clarke Hammer of God 108 Arthur C. Clarke

    Not much larger than a family automobile, it could provide basic life-support for pilot and three passengers for up to a week, allow them to make a fairly detailed examination of the virgin worldlet, and bring back a few hundred kilograms of well-documented samples.

  • 1993 P. Anderson Harvest of Stars (1994) 56 Poul Anderson bibliography

    The worldlet was little more than a darkness, faintly a-sheen where a crest jutted out of shadow, a piece torn from the sky that otherwise encompassed her.

  • 1994 Interzone Jan. 63/3

    Jay discovers that the device may contain the location of the long-lost Godspeed base, hidden somewhere in the swarm of worldlets where the spacers mine asteroids for precious light metals.

  • 1998 ‘L. A. Graf’ War Dragons xii. 170 Julia Ecklar Karen Rose Cercone bibliography

    Our stop, just outside the heavy metal gates of the Anjiri’s manufactured worldlet.

  • 1999 C. Pellegrino & G. Zebrowski Star Trek Next Generation: Dyson Sphere ix. 145 George Zebrowski Charles Pellegrino bibliography

    The worldlet wobbled and cracked… After more than two hours, it was still flinging sparks and hot coals from the wound.

  • 2004 P. F. Hamilton Pandora's Star viii. 199 Peter F. Hamilton

    The little artificial worldlet was self-sufficient, and self-maintaining thanks to the very large array which ran it.

  • 2005 C. Stross Accelerando vii. 303 Charles Stross bibliography

    The grass is cool beneath her feet, and a gentle breeze blows constantly out toward the recirculators at the edge of the worldlet.


Research requirements

antedating 1841

Last modified 2021-01-12 00:34:13
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.