Bob wrote,
> "Sci-fi" is not *neccessarily* a bad term in larger context.
I read somewhere that the word was coined by Forry Ackerman back
in the 50s, supposedly to rhyme with hi-fi. (My wife may have a
chance to meet him at DragonCon.) But none of the serious SF
fans I know ever used it. Sci-fi was picked up as a word by the
press, to describe stuff like the Star Wars movies. And if I
dared show the books I was reading to some of my teachers,
they'd call it sci-fi, and wouldn't consider it valuable reading
material.
There are other examples of this sort of thing, where outsiders
have their own words for stuff that goes on in a group, and those
words either betray ignorance or contempt.
As far as sci-fi is concerned, I haven't really seen any evidence
that fandom's suspicions of the term have gotten any less. The
advent of the "skiffy" channel should have accomplished that, if
anything did, but it hasn't. In fact, I think that new
productions from the Sci-Fi Channel are viewed by fans with a
great deal of criticism, precisely *because* the Sci-Fi Channel
betrays its outsider status by its use of that name.
When fans do use the word, it's to label stuff that is genre but
not serious. For example, all of the media properties are usually
tossed into that category. While most fans admit that media
properties have helped raise the genre's visibility and popular
respectability, most also point out that those who create the
media properties seem to be abysmally ignorant of the genre's
basic ideas, and that none of them have managed to contribute
significantly to the genre's literary heritage.
--
Helge Moulding
mailto:[log in to unmask] Just another guy
http://hmoulding.cjb.net/ with a weird name
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