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"...science fiction is sort of like a sociological genome. It's a huge range of possible futures, most of them useless; some vital. You never really know in advance."
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![]() As far as I know, the first use of the word "singularity" in the sense of a natural phenomenon in science fiction is in this story by Arthur C. Clarke. I'll discuss the other use below.
Robert Silverberg uses a similar scenario in his 1966 short story Halfway House:
They had no dying stars in this laboratory. But for a price they could simulate one.
Fans of Larry Niven may recall this unusual use of the word in his classic 1970 novel Ringworld:
This usage was unusual, in that it didn't describe (as I recall) a black hole, just the gravitational field associated with a planet like Earth, and the sun.
The first known use of "singularity" in the social sense, dated about 1958 or a bit earlier, (a "technological singularity") is attributed to mathematician John von Neumann in this eulogy by Stanislaw Ulam:
(John von Neumann: 1903-1957 by Stanislaw Ulam)
Most people are more familiar with the formulation by sf writer and computer scientist Vernor Vinge, in this essay published by Omni magazine in 1983:
I can't seem to find the first use of singularity in the social sense in a science fiction story, although some near misses come to mind. Comment/Join this discussion ( 0 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
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'...it was all composed of tiny, identical cubes, carefully laid to form a tilelike surface.'
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