On Inventing the Word “Cyberspace”

The word cyberspace was my one big score in the world of neologism and word invention. I needed it desperately for an early short story. I needed it in a very complex way. I needed a buzz word that would catch the reader’s imagination, that would seem pregnant with mystery and meaning. I was starting to write science fiction and space was no good for me. I didn’t believe in it emotionally. I needed a vehicle. I needed a vehicle, because I needed something technological to attach the passion of my protagonist to, and a rocket ship wouldn’t work for me. I couldn’t believe in it emotionally. So in this funny moment with no eureka at all, I came up not with the word cyberspace, but with some vague idea of some kind of notional space. The term virtual reality, as far as I know, didn’t exist then. I came up with the idea of this sort of notional space within a computer. It was just a very, very vague idea. I was making this list, and I remember I had dataspace. That’s just no good, right? Like, dataspace– dead. Infospace– cyberspace. Cyberspace– oh. There was just something– I thought, wow, that’s great. It sounds cool, and it doesn’t mean anything. It’s completely conceptually empty. It sat there on the page. It had no meaning, and yet, I knew somehow that it would hold water. So then, in effect, I spent however many short stories and at least three novels filling that word with various meanings. At some point, to my continued amazement, it jumped into the real world. I imagine it appears at least once every day in every newspaper in the English language. The meaning of it today, in terms of its usage in the world at large, probably doesn’t have very much to do with the meanings that I cobbled up for it in my early fiction. But it’s interesting that it’s there.