Word.ws English Dictionary

rubber science

rubber science noun: convincing quasi-scientific explanations used in science fiction to aid the suspension of disbelief.

Noun

rubber science (uncountable)

  1. Convincing quasi-scientific explanations used in science fiction to aid the suspension of disbelief.

Origin of rubber science

Coined by Norman Spinrad in his essay "Rubber Sciences", published in The Craft of Science Fiction (1976). He defined it as "pseudo-science […] made up by the writer with literary care that it not be discontinuous with the reader's realm of the possible."

Questions about rubber science

What does rubber science mean?
Rubber science means convincing quasi-scientific explanations used in science fiction to aid the suspension of disbelief.
What part of speech is rubber science?
Rubber science is a noun.

Words near rubber science in the dictionary

  1. rubber rings
  2. rubber room
  3. rubber rooms
  4. rubber saw
  5. rubber saws
  6. rubber science
  7. rubber shoe
  8. rubber shoes
  9. rubber stamp
  10. rubber stamp politics
  11. rubber stamped

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rubber science (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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