Word of the day: nyctohylophobia
The word means: a fear of dark forests or wooded areas. It occurs in the English translation of the Chinese science fiction novel “Death’s End” by Cixin Liu.
In the context of this novel, the ‘forest’ refers to the theory that, in the vastness of the universe, there are countless other civilisations. The ‘dark’ rests on the notion that no advanced civilisation would want to reveal itself for fear of invasion and annihilation.
It is one way of responding to the Fermi Paradox: that is, why – after long and hard searching – have we not found any evidence for any other life in the infinite space that we call the universe?