I ran across a succinct exposition of why the term "sci-fi" is objectionable to some fans of SF (and I don't mean the country of Finland or the Californian city of San Francisco). I remember a few decades back referring to some science fiction story as being great sci-fi (pronounced to rhyme with hi-fi) and being taken to task mightily by my friend Laurence. Years later, when I first discovered Usenet, I read of the preferred pronunciation of the dread term sci-fi as skiffy. V. and I immediately and iconoclastically started to refer to all SF (good, bad, and ugly) as skiffy from then on. Well, this, and my recent entry on strange and hypercorrective plurals of latinate words lead me to think about nerdish plurals. You know, the plural of Vax is Vaxen and of fan is fen, though Unix becomes Unices. (These are based on analogies with ox / oxen, man / men, and index / indices.) In high school I did the same thing with sister, marking the plural as sistern (based on brother / brethern) and puerilely reminding one of cistern. What would Freud have said?
Posted by jim at May 28, 2003 07:53 AMThanks for the link to the "sci-fi" discussion; as an old time sf (ahem) lover who has always had the traditional revulsion against the term, I was fascinated. I must say, though, I found the last statement surprising:
Damon Knight: I'm pretty sure the division between the sci-fi lovers and haters came about in the first place because some people were offended by the implied mispronunciation of "science fiction" and some weren't.
Can Damon really think such an idiotic thing? It's quite obvious that the reason is simply that the earliest fans called it "sf," and thus "sci fi" came to be used by, and identified with, non-fans, to the inevitable scorn of insiders. Intellectually, I recognize that "sci fi" has taken over and there's no point wasting breath or indignation on it, but I yam what I yam and I can't help disliking it.
Posted by: language hat on May 31, 2003 02:49 PM