novum

A new feature, a novelty.

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

An 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.

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.

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.

A 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.