I remember hearing about an interview that Leonard Nimoy gave someone yrs back where the writer used the term SciFi and Mr. Nimoy took some heat for it from some fans so it's not too unbelievable that some people are easily irritated. What I don't like myself is the ScyFy (I think I've spelled it right) that they show on the Science Fiction channel now days. It's plain sloppy spelling I think, and not at all attractive.
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I haven't seen them lately, but there are still knee jerk reflexes.
The term SciFi was coined by the late Forrest J. Ackerman (a/k/a "4SJ"), as a contraction of Scientifiction, the term coined by Hugo Gernsbach to describe what he was publishing in his pulp magazines Amazing Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories in the 20's. SF had been around before, but Hugo was the first to devote publications to it and give the genre a name. Despite his status as a member of First Fandom, author, editor, agent, and owner of the world's largest SF/Fantasy collection, a lot of folks never quite forgave Forry for coining the appellation.
Unfortunately, SF took a long time to gain acceptance in the mass market. It was the sort of thing you wrapped in a disguising cover, to fend of the "You read that SciFi crap?" comments. To the rest of the world, the term connoted lurid pulp trash and nonsensical Buck Rogers movie serials.
Serious fans of literary SF vastly preferred SF to SciFi as the descriptor, and there was a strong movement in the 60's and 70's to call the genre Speculative Fiction instead of Science Fiction. The late Judith Merrill once proposed in one of her Best SF anthologies that SF might stand for "Space Fish".
But fighting against SciFi was always a rear guard action. At this point, pretty much everyone has grudgingly accepted that SciFi is the term people will use, and console themselves that at least the genre now has mass market acceptance, with SF/Fantasy being regular fare in movies and TV, and SF and Fantasy titles hitting best seller lists.
I just tell people "I watch SciFi. I read SF."
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Dennis
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