James Davis Nicoll (born March 18, 1961) is a Canadian freelance game and speculative fiction reviewer, former security guard and role-playing game store owner, and also works as a first reader for the

Science Fiction Book Club Bookspan LLC is a New York–based online bookseller, founded in 2000. Bookspan began as a joint endeavor by Bertelsmann and Time Warner. Bertelsmann took over control in 2007, and a year later, sold its interest to Najafi Companies, an Arizo ...

. As a Usenet personality, Nicoll is known for writing a widely quoted epigram on the English language, as well as for his accounts of suffering a high number of accidents, which he has narrated over the years in Usenet groups like rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.fandom. He is now a

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...

ger on Dreamwidth and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

, and an occasional columnist on

Tor.com ''Tor.com'' is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine published by Tor Books, a division of Macmillan Publishers. The magazine publishes articles, reviews, original short fiction, re-reads and commentary on speculative fiction. From 20 ...

. In 2014, he started his website, jamesdavisnicoll.com, dedicated to his

book reviews __NOTOC__ A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is merely described (summary review) or analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review may be a primary source, opinion piece, summary review or scholarly revie ...

of works old and new; and later added ''Young People Read Old SFF'', where his panel of younger readers read pre-1980 science fiction and fantasy, and Nicoll and his collaborators report on the younger readers' reactions.

Background

Nicoll was born March 18, 1961 and grew up in rural

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

. He wrote on Usenet that " fore it exploded one night, I went to a four grade, two room schoolhouse and we had textbooks from the 1940s." He attended

Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School is a high school just outside Baden, Ontario, Canada operated by the Waterloo Region District School Board. It opened in 1955 and is one of two rural high schools in Waterloo Region, the other being Elmira ...

, which he described as "a very rural high school, where 'alternative life style' meant 'Not Old Order Mennonite'".

Influence on SF genre

In addition to his influence as a first reader for the

, a book reviewer for ''

Bookspan Bookspan LLC is a New York–based online bookseller, founded in 2000. Bookspan began as a joint endeavor by Bertelsmann and Time Warner. Bertelsmann took over control in 2007, and a year later, sold its interest to Najafi Companies, an Arizo ...

'', ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

'' and ''

Romantic Times ''Romantic Times'' was an American genre magazine specializing in romance novel A romance novel or romantic novel generally refers to a type of genre fiction novel which places its primary focus on the relationship and romantic love betwee ...

'', and a juror for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, Nicoll often offers ideas and concepts to other writers, primarily through the medium of

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

. After winning the 2006

Locus Award The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine ''Locus'', a monthly magazine based in Oakland, California. The awards are presented at an annual banquet. In addition to the pl ...

for his novella ''

Missile Gap In the United States, during the Cold War, the missile gap was the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR's missiles in comparison with those of the U.S. (a lack of military parity). The gap in the ballistic missile arsenals did ...

'',

Charles Stross Charles David George "Charlie" Stross (born 18 October 1964) is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy. Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. Between 1994 and 2004, he was also an active writer for the magazine '' ...

thanked him, writing that Nicoll "came up with the original insane setting—then kindly gave me permission to take his idea and run with it."

"The Purity of the English Language"

In 1990, in the Usenet group rec.arts.sf-lovers, Nicoll wrote the following epigram on the English language:

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.

(A followup to the original post acknowledged that the spelling of "riffle" was a common misspelling of "rifle".) Over the years it has spread over the internet, often misattributed to other individuals including

Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American c ...

and a nineteenth-century painter also named James Nicoll. In recent years however the epigram has also been quoted, with proper attribution, in books by professor of rhetoric and communication design Randy Harris. Amateur linguists Jeremy Smith,

Richard Lederer Richard Lederer (born May 26, 1938) is an American linguist, author, speaker, and teacher. He is best known for his books on the English language and on wordplay such as puns, oxymorons, and anagrams. He has been dubbed "the Wizard of Idiom," ...

, the Chinese newspaper

Ming Pao ''Ming Pao'' () is a Chinese-language newspaper published by Media Chinese International in Hong Kong. In the 1990s, ''Ming Pao'' established four overseas branches in North America; each provides independent reporting on local news and colle ...

and Anu Garg have also referenced Nicoll's quote. Professional linguists who have referenced the quotation online include Professor of

Linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

Mark Liberman Mark Yoffe Liberman is an American linguist. He has a dual appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, as Trustee Professor of Phonetics in the Department of Linguistics, and as a professor in the Department of Computer and Information Scienc ...

of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

and '' Language Log''; Associate Professor of Linguistics Suzanne Kemmer of

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...

, who also posted her research into the quote at the ''

LINGUIST Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

'' mailing list; and Second Language Acquisition Ph.D. student Rong Liu. There are also amateur philologists who have used the quote, including journalist Suw Charman and journalist Vale White.

"Nicoll events"

Nicoll relates a number of life- and/or limb-threatening accidents that have happened to him, which he has told and retold on various

science fiction fandom Science fiction fandom or SF fandom is a community or fandom of people interested in science fiction in contact with one another based upon that interest. SF fandom has a life of its own, but not much in the way of formal organization (although ...

–related newsgroups. Over the years these stories have also been collected into Cally Soukup's List of Nicoll events. Inspired by Nicoll's collection of accidents, as well as his tendency to take in any stray cat that comes knocking,

fantasy author This is a list of fantasy authors, authors known for writing works of fantasy, fantasy literature, or related genres of magic realism, horror fiction, science fantasy. Many of the authors are known for work outside the fantasy genres. A ...

Jo Walton Jo Walton (born 1964) is a Welsh and Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She is best known for the fantasy novel ''Among Others'', which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012, and '' Tooth and Claw'', a Victorian era novel ...

wrote him a

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...

in 2002.

"Brain eater"

A post on soc.history.what-if credits Nicoll with coining the phrase "brain eater" which is supposed to "get" certain writers such as

Poul Anderson Poul William Anderson (November 25, 1926 – July 31, 2001) was an American fantasy and science fiction author who was active from the 1940s until the 21st century. Anderson wrote also historical novels. His awards include seven Hugo Awards and ...

and James P. Hogan. Nicoll claims the 'brain eater' affected Hogan, because of Hogan's expressions of belief in

Immanuel Velikovsky Immanuel Velikovsky (; rus, Иммануи́л Велико́вский, p=ɪmənʊˈil vʲɪlʲɪˈkofskʲɪj; 17 November 1979) was a Jewish, Russian-American psychoanalyst, writer, and catastrophist. He is the author of several books offering ...

's version of catastrophism, and his advocacy of the hypothesis that AIDS is caused by pharmaceutical use rather than

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

(see

AIDS denialism HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while oth ...

). The term has been adopted by other Usenet posters, as well as elsewhere on the Internet and use of the term within Usenet has been criticised.

Nicoll-Dyson Laser

Nicoll proposed the Nicoll-Dyson Laser concept where the satellites of a Dyson swarm act as a phased array

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fi ...

emitter capable of delivering their energy to a planet-sized target at a range of millions of

light years A light-year, alternatively spelled light year, is a large unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equivalent to about 9.46 trillion kilometers (), or 5.88 trillion miles ().One trillion here is taken to be 1012 ...

E. E. Smith Edward Elmer Smith (May 2, 1890 – August 31, 1965), publishing as E. E. Smith, Ph.D. and later as E. E. "Doc" Smith, was an American food engineer (specializing in doughnut and pastry mixes) and science-fiction author, best known for the '' ...

first used the general idea of concentrating the sun's energy in a weapon in the

Lensman The ''Lensman'' series is a series of science fiction novels by American author E. E. "Doc" Smith. It was a runner-up for the 1966 Hugo award for Best All-Time Series, losing to the ''Foundation'' series by Isaac Asimov. Plot The series begins ...

series when the Galactic Patrol developed the sunbeam (in ''Second Stage Lensmen''); however, his concept did not extend to the details of the Nicoll-Dyson Laser. The 2012 novel ''

The Rapture of the Nerds ''The Rapture of the Nerds'' is a 2012 novel by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. It was released on September 4, 2012 through Tor Books and as an ebook, DRM free, under the CC BY-NC-ND. The book can also be downloaded for free. Synopsis The no ...

'' by

Cory Doctorow Cory Efram Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog '' Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of ...

and

uses the Nicoll-Dyson Laser concept by name as the means by which the Galactic Federation threatens to destroy the Earth.

Science-fictional Lysenkoism

In a discussion on rec.arts.sf.written about why Golden Age science fiction so often uses aliens said to derive from short-lived but well-known stars such as

Rigel Rigel is a blue supergiant star in the constellation of Orion. It has the Bayer designation β Orionis, which is Latinized to Beta Orionis and abbreviated Beta Ori or β Ori. Rigel is the brightest and most massive componentand ...

whose lifespan is probably too brief to ever allow the rise of life due to the long-established mass-luminosity relationship for main-sequence stars, Nicoll identified what he termed the "SFnal Lysenkoist Tendency when actual, tested science contradicts some detail in an SF story, attack the science." He expanded on this idea in an article for online science fiction and fantasy magazine

Awards

Nicoll was a finalist for the 2010, 2011, 2019, and 2020

Hugo Awards The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier ...

for Best Fan Writer. He served as a judge for the 2012

James Tiptree Jr. Award The Otherwise Award, formerly known as the James Tiptree Jr. Award, is an American annual literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one's understanding of gender. It was initiated in February 1991 by science f ...

. In 2021 and 2022, he was nominated for the

Aurora Award The Aurora Awards (french: Prix Aurora-Boréal) are a set of primarily literary awards given annually for the best Canadian science fiction or fantasy professional and fan works and achievements from the previous year."Literary glow of Auroras lure ...

for Best Fan Writing and Publication, for the series "Young People Read Old SFF" published on his review website. Nicoll has also been a Fan Guest of Honor (GoH) at SF conventions, including

ConFusion In medicine, confusion is the quality or state of being bewildered or unclear. The term "acute mental confusion"

2013 in Detroit and

Arisia Arisia is a Boston-area, volunteer-run science fiction convention, named for a planet in the Lensman novels by E. E. "Doc" Smith. The name was chosen in response to an older Boston-area con, Boskone, which took the typical ending for a conve ...

2014 in Boston. In 2020, he was nominated for the

Down Under Fan Fund The Down Under Fan Fund, also known as ''DUFF'', was created in 1970 for the purpose of providing funds to bring well-known and popular members of science fiction fandom familiar to fans on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. History DUFF was create ...

, to visit

in Australasia as a representative of their North American counterparts.

References

External links

*
More Words, Deeper Hole
James Nicoll's DreamWidth weblog
James Davis Nicoll
James Nicoll's public review site
Nicoll's columns for Tor.com
* Nicoll's

posts in

Google Groups Google Groups is a service from Google that provides discussion groups for people sharing common interests. The Groups service also provides a gateway to Usenet newsgroups via a shared user interface. Google Groups became operational in Febru ...

since 20002000–11996–91990–2

A series of reviews by James Nicoll of

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

books set in the year 2000. {{DEFAULTSORT:Nicoll, James Davis 1961 births Businesspeople from Kitchener, Ontario Canadian businesspeople in retailing Canadian literary critics Canadian speculative fiction critics Living people Science fiction critics Science fiction fans Security guards Usenet people