Definition of "novum" []

• A new feature. (noun)
• A game of dice, properly called novem quinque, the two principal throws being nine and five. (noun)

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• "A future tense narrative creates a special case: the limits of known science do not apply to what “will happen”, so the novum is not impossible and the alethic modality remains “could happen”."
• "The plausibility of the novum is crucial in this type of SF because the argument being made in these narratives is that the ruling paradigm, the accepted nomology in which the events of the narrative "could not have happened", is false, and that the hypothetical nomology, the alternative paradigm in which the events "could have happened", is in a very real sense, a truth of temporal possibilities."
• "Even when a novum is constructed in a fiction which plays with existing tropes, familiarity is of less import than the estrangement, the peculiar novelty it capitalises on."