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Originally Posted by mknopp
I have been told by older science fiction fans that scifi is a derogatory term, but I have never ran into it used as such in over three decades. I just use it because it flows better. SF is hard to say, and just sounds unnatural. Science fiction is just too long. Scifi is short and rolls off of the tongue. It is just the term that me and my friends have always used.
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SciFi was coined by the late Forrest J. Ackerman (author, editor, agent, and possessor when alive of the world's largest SF/Fantasy collection) as a contraction of Hugo Gernsback's "Scientifiction", which he used to describe what he published in Amazing Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. SF had been published in the pulps before Hugo came along. He gave the genre a name and devoted magazines to it.
SF fans have long had mixed feelings about "SciFi". Back when, the genre was looked down upon and you were fussy about who you told you read it. It
was a derogatory term. It was not helped by the lurid covers of older SF magazines featuring scantily clad heroines menaced by slavering aliens. SciFi tended to connote everything people who didn't read it looked down on, and SF fans preferred to just call it SF.
I tell people " I watch SciFi. I
read SF."
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As for social commentary. Many of Robert A. Heinlein's books are chock full of social commentary. Friday is perhaps one of my favorites in this regard. I still wonder how long it is going to be before a government enacts his California law, where it was determined that people with college degrees receive preferential treatment in the job market so the government decide to just give everyone a degree to make it fair.
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We are approaching that now without government encouragement. And I've encountered college graduates who would have flunked out of high school back when with the knowledge and skill sets they demonstrate.
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Dennis