novum

plural novums · plural nova

1. countableuncountableA new feature, a novelty.

   we find among the cultured devotees a tendency to idealize a foreign civilisation — a novum in Chinese history.

   1959, Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist conquest of China, volume 1, page 266

2. countableuncountablehuman sciencesAn innovation which is fictional, but, following the logic of cognitive estrangement (characteristic of science fiction), is afforded plausibility by the assumption that the fictional setting is scientifically consistent.

   2 more examples

   In his book Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979), Suvin introduced a number of ideas that remain central in sf criticism: cognitive estrangement, the novum and sf's genetic link with utopia.[…]Even more influential in sf theory than cognitive estrangement is Suvin's concept of the novum.[…]Suvin adopts the concept of the novum from the work of Ernst Bloch, for whom the term refers to those concrete innovations of lived history that awaken human collective consciousness out of a static present to awareness that history can be changed. The novum thus inspires hope for positive historical transformations.

   2003, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., “7: Marxist theory and science fiction”, in Edward James, Farah Mendlesohn, editors, The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, Cambridge University Press, page 118

   It seems that this ‘point of difference’, the thing or things that differentiate the world portrayed in science fiction from the world we recognise around us, is the crucial separator between SF and other forms of imaginative or fantastic literature. The critic Darko Suvin has usefully coined the term ‘novum’, the Latin for ‘new’ or ‘new thing’, to refer to this ‘point of difference’ (the plural is ‘nova’). An SF text may be based on one novum, such as [...]. More usually it will be predicated on a number of interrelated nova, such as [...]. This ‘novum’ must not be supernatural but need not necessarily be a piece of technology.

   2006, Adam Roberts, Science Fiction, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), pages 6–7

3. obsoleteuncountableA game of dice, properly called novem quinque, the two principal throws being nine and five.

   Abate throw at novum, and the whole world again Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein.

   c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Loues Labour’s Lost”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii], lines 540–541