Neil Rest wrote:
----------
I'm startled that this slice of history has fallen so completely below
the
horizon.
<snip>
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.
<snip>
You may have other opinions on the tags selected, but the distinction,
pre-Star Wars and pre-Star Trek, was important.
<snip>
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.
<snip>
Is this any help?
----------
>From an historical perspective, yes. And it is certainly important to
have that perspective. But I think that the rigidified distinction,
which probably was important, as you say, "pre-Star Wars and pre-Star
Trek" is no longer nearly so important. I don't think that we have to
separate SF from sci-fi to lend it legitimacy.
Obviously, there is a big difference between Le Guin and B-grade sci-fi
film, but now that SF has as large an acceptance as it does, I think it
is counter productive to make that rigid break along what I think is a
fairly continuous spectrum.
In other words, I think that there are a lot of works that fall somewhere
in between, and should not necessarily be dismissed in their entirety
simply for being cloaked in the guise of one side or the other. I think
that there is a lot of "SF" that is very entertaining, and a lot of
"sci-fi" that can be thought provoking, and contain literary elements.
What do you think?
Rhian
rhian.m.merris@cpmx.saic.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:38 PDT