At 06:49 PM 11/24/97 -0500, Kirsten Corby <MythKC@aol.com> wrote:
>My understanding of this dichotomy has alwys been that it is not a matter of
>quality, but of semantics. By which I mean, those people who are real fans,
>who know SF and love it, refer to it as SF. There's even an adjectival form
>of the word, "SF-nal." "Sci-Fi" is used by people who neither understand SF
>nor like it, but occasionally try to jump on the bandwagon and cash in on it.
> Like the people who made Battlestar Galactica or the movie Starship
>Troopers. This is the only distinction I've ever made. But I suppose, by
>extension, "sci-fi" could then refer to bad SF movies and TV shows made by
>mundanes masquerading as members of the community.
It's just the other way around: it *is* a matter of quality, not just
semantics.
I'm startled that this slice of history has fallen so completely below the
horizon. Fandom is "time-binding", after all. ("Lindy S. L. Lovvik"
<laorka@meer.net> wrote:
>This is the first I have heard of a difference between sci fi
>and SF. I grew up in a small town in Michigan and have mostly
>lived in CA since then, which may partly explain why it all
>seems the same to me.)
The neologism "sci fi" was, indeed, invented by Forrey Ackerman, who has a
number of linguistic and lexocographic bees in his bonnet. (The older,
rarely seen "stfnal" comes from the original coinage "scientifiction" by
Hugo Gernsback.)
"Fans", who were derided for their obsessive interest in a literature
represented to the general public by bimbos in vinyl spacesuits being
abducted by animate anipasto, needed to distinguish the serious, ambitious
literature of ideas to which they were devoted from "The Eggplant That Ate
Chicago", so they use "science fiction" or "sf" (or "SF") for our love, and
"sci fi" for the cheesy 50s movies with the rubber suits.
So when DAVID CHRISTENSON <LDQT79A@prodigy.com> wrote
>> But I suppose, by extension,
>> "sci-fi" could then refer to bad SF movies and TV shows made by mundanes
>> masquerading as members of the community.
he was close. It usually works out that way, but that's not where the
distinction/definition comes from.
You may have other opinions on the tags selected, but the distinction,
pre-Star Wars and pre-Star Trek, was important.
At 06:29 PM 11/25/97 -0500, Barbara Benesch <BJBenesch@AOL.COM> wrote:
>Okay, seriously. I'm very glad you posted this, Lindy, because I'd been
>becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the SF/Sci-Fi distinctions, just
>like I've always been uncomfortable with the "hard"/"soft" science
>distinctions. Personally, I think it's all a lot of hooey.
Barbara, if you were talking about Tepper, LeGuin and, say, _Looking
Backward_, and someone chimed in wanting to know which Terminator movie you
thought was better, you might well consider them off-topic, and perhaps
even of less discriminating taste. Amplify that sort of thing by a couple
of orders of magnitude.
THAT's why Harlan says,
> Call it what you like: speculative fiction, futuristic fiction,
>science fiction. As long as
> you ignore the defamatory neologism "sci-fi," reviled by anyone
>who makes even a
> meager claim to literacy, you're on safe ground.(409)
>
Is this any help?
Neil Rest
NeilRest@tezcat.com
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