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"A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content."
- Theodore Sturgeon

Dark Side  
  Referring to the unlit part of a planet's surface.  

As far as I know, the first use of the phrase "dark side" with this meaning in science fiction (if not elsewhere, see below).

The main telescope on the dark side is almost never turned on to the central observatory. It is the most delicate, the most perfect, of all the instruments on the Power Planet. Its scanning-disk alone took three years to make, with over one hundred thousand apertures to the inch. At its highest amplification, it will magnify something more than ten thousand diameters.
Technovelgy from The Power Planet, by Murray Leinster.
Published by Amazing Stories in 1931
Additional resources -

This phrase was also used in The Mercurian Menace (1939) by Nelson Bond.

"...You must have seen plenty of night over on the dark side of Mercury.”

“The dark side?” Carson stared at the investigator in amazement; then slowly shook his head. “No ma’am! Not Mr. Carson, lady. He stays away from the dark side of Mercury!”

“I’m not sure I understand you,” said the girl slowly. “You mean to say that you’ve made no investigations whatsoever on the dark side?”

“My dear young lady,” said Buzz seriously, “there are some things that even a space scout doesn’t go out of his way to meet..."

I'm sure this phrase was in use in the nineteenth century. I recall a famous quote by Mark Twain, taken from his 1880 travel guide A Tramp Abroad:

"Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."

Compare to farside from We Have Fed Our Sea (1958) by Poul Anderson.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Power Planet
  More Ideas and Technology by Murray Leinster
  Tech news articles related to The Power Planet
  Tech news articles related to works by Murray Leinster

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