James D. Nicoll

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James Davis Nicoll (born March 18, 1961^[1]^{[unreliable source?]}) of Kitchener, Ontario is a Usenet personality 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. Nicoll is a former role-playing game store owner, a freelance game and speculative fiction reviewer and also works as a first reader for the Science Fiction Book Club.^[2]

1 "The Purity of the English Language"
2 'Nicoll Events'
3 'Brain Eater'
4 Influence on SF genre
5 Nicoll-Dyson Laser
6 References
7 See also

[edit] "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 rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.^[3]

(The original post had "riffle" for "rifle"; however, a followup acknowledged that this had been a spelling error.^[4]

Over the years it has spread over the internet, often misattributed to other individuals including Booker T. Washington 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^[5]. Amateur linguists Jeremy Smith^[6], Richard Lederer^[7], and Anu Garg^[8] have also referenced Nicoll's quote.

Professional linguists who have referenced the quote online include Professor of Linguistics Mark Liberman of the University of Pennsylvania and Language Log^[9]; Associate Professor of Linguistics Suzanne Kemmer of Rice University^[10], who also posted her research into the quote at the LINGUIST mailing list^[11]; and Second Language Acquisition Ph.D. student Rong Liu^[12]. There are also amateur philologists who have used the quote, including Garg of the English language site Wordsmith.org^[13], journalist Suw Charman^[14], and journalist Vale White.^[15]

[edit] '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 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 Jo Walton wrote him a poem in 2002, available at her Livejournal.

[edit] 'Brain Eater'

A post on soc.history.what-if credits Nicoll with coining the phrase "Brain Eater"^[16] which is supposed to "get" certain writers such as Poul Anderson^[17] and James P. Hogan.^[18]. Nicoll claims the 'brain eater' has affected Hogan, because of Hogan's expressions of belief in Immanuel Velikovsky's version of catastrophism,^[19] and his advocacy of the hypothesis that AIDS is caused by pharmaceutical use rather than HIV (see AIDS denialism).^[20] The term has been adopted by other Usenet posters^[21] ^[22],[1], as well as elsewhere on the Internet ([2], [3], [4]) and use of the term within Usenet has been criticised. ^[23], [5]

[edit] Influence on SF genre

In addition to his influence as a first reader for the Science Fiction Book Club^[24], Nicoll often offers ideas and concepts to other writers, primarily through the medium of Usenet. After winning the 2006 Locus Award for his novella Missile Gap, Charles Stross thanked him, writing that Nicoll "came up with the original insane setting^[25] — then kindly gave me permission to take his idea and run with it."^[26]

[edit] Nicoll-Dyson Laser

Nicoll proposed the Nicoll-Dyson Laser concept where the satellites of a Dyson Swarm act as a phased array laser emitter capable of delivering their energy to a planet-sized target at a range of millions of light years.^[27]

E. E. Smith first used the general idea of concentrating the sun's energy in a weapon in the Lensman 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.