May Sound Like Science Fiction, Visualized

Long-time correspondents may recall that back in 2007 I collected numerous examples of the phrase "may sound like science fiction." At the time, the phrase generated 19,600 Google hits. Today, Google claims 118,000 hits.

There are 1700 hits in Google Books alone. Bing.com claims 6900 hits for the phrase.

With the availability of Google Ngram Viewer, we can plot the frequency of this phrase and its cousin, "may seem like science fiction," as it changes in time within the Google Books English corpus.



Rising in the mid-1980s, MSoundLSF has become about twice as popular as it was in the 1970s and early 80s. MSeemLSF has been approximately flat.

I have also learned that "straight out of science fiction" can give MSoundLSF a run for its money, and (if we adjust the window to 2008) appears to be on the rise these days.