Fiction

Symbols in science fiction and film

Marks made for a story, a studio, or a game, and named here without being copied.

Fiction, here, means a mark made for a story, a studio, or a game. The page names it so you can tell it from the older sign it imitates. It does not reproduce the artwork. A Starfleet arrowhead, a Rebel starbird, a Kryptonian shield, a company wordmark from a film: these are trademarks. The lexicon describes them and says who holds them. A monolith that is only a rectangle in the proportion 1:4:9 is a shape, so that one is drawn. Everything else in this tradition is described, not traced. Fan-made scripts and studio alphabets are included when people search for them as if they were historical writing. They are dated as design. A real rune, a real letter, or a real trefoil that a story later borrowed stays in its own tradition. The story is a section on that page, not a new origin. Owning a story is not the same as owning a triangle, a letter, or a bird that already existed.

The rule is blunt. If a studio holds the mark, this lexicon names it and does not draw it. If the mark is only a proportion, a rectangle of one by four by nine, it can be drawn, because nobody owns the squares of the first three integers. Real symbols that a story borrowed stay in their own traditions, with an “In fiction” section. This hub is for marks whose first job was the story.

9 marks in the lexicon. A symbol can sit in more than one tradition. The page says which use is which.

Start here. Starfleet delta. The Starfleet delta is the fiction mark most often mistaken for a real naval or NASA badge.

• Starfleet deltaOne ship’s patch that became the fleet’s. A trademark. Not a NASA arrowhead.
• Rebel starbirdA crested bird-shape for a fictional rebellion. A cog, in the same films, is the other side.
• MythosaurA skull emblem from a comic, later a helmet, later a television plot.
• House of ElA shield on a chest. An initial, later said to be a word.
• Heptapod BCircular logograms made for a film about a language that is not a line.
• Weyland-YutaniA fictional company’s mark. The first film and the second film do not use the same one.
• MonolithA rectangular solid. The proportion is the whole of the design.
• Standard Galactic AlphabetA substitution alphabet for jokes in a game, later a table in another game.
• LumonA fictional corporation’s wordmark. The series gives it a bottle.