What's the "proper" term?

[Cloud]

I was always under the impression that no true fan of science fiction would ever use the term, "Sci-Fi," preferring "SF" instead as the informed choice. That "Sci-Fi" is for wannabes, doubters, and those who think science fiction fans are all pimply 14 year old boys who grow out of it.

To be honest, I'm not sure where I got this idea, and science fiction has made major inroads into the popular consciousness, so maybe it's no longer valid. But--

Do you feel that "Sci-Fi" has a negative connotation?
Do you prefer SF over Sci-Fi?
Do you care?

[Loner]

I never heard of sci-fi as a negative term. I use the term all the time and don't mean it in a pejorative sense.

I don't mind which term people use, i just wish more people were into it!

[Nesacat]

I'll second Loner. I don't mind what people choose to call it; I'd just like to see more people reading the books and watching the movies and discussing the ideas.

I tend not to use either Sci-Fi or SFF. I think I only started using it here since it's faster to type but in normal conversation I say either Science Fiction or Fantasy. For some reason I can't speak in acronyms or SMS speak as seems to be very common now and tend to spell everything out.

I don't see Sci-Fi as being negative and I can see as it would be much more attractive to say out loud than SFF. Sci-Fi has a sort of sharp, crip rhythm to it. very cutting edge almost.

[nixie]

I only use sci-fi when typing too.

[j. d. worthington]

Okay, brief history lesson: The term was actually coined by Forrest J Ackerman, back when the actual term for this was "scientifiction" (the Gernsback era). A lot of people in the field and out found it a bit objectionable, as it was the only genre to have such a designation (some of the comments were: "well, you don't see 'dic-fic' for detective fiction, or 'wes-fic' for western fiction", etc. -- though there was "horse opera" to go with "space opera"), and it sounded somewhat childish, so the term "s-f" became more acceptable. There was also, for a brief while, a variant: "sci-fic" ... it periodically makes a slight recrudescence, but never for very long. At any rate, by the 1960s, "sci-fi" was very much disliked, and most of the commentators got to seriously ridiculing it -- Ellison was very vocal on the matter, for instance; and this was about the time science fiction began to gain some respectability in the mainstream (at least for a while), so they wanted to shun anything that might detract from that. It wasn't until the 1980s that the term began to be used again by people inside the field, though they were mostly newcomers to it -- with the exception of Forry, who'd used it all along. And even then, it was mostly through the visual media, not the books, that the term began to see new life -- via Hollywood, in other words. And, since films are seen more than books are read.... it's stuck, but with the newer generations, as noted, it doesn't have the negative connotations it does for some of us older readers.

[SpaceShip]

Why change what we say when we write it? Everybody knows what you are talking about when you say sci-fi. But do they latch on to what you're talking about if you were to say ess-eff? Keep it simple.

[steve12553]

I think also the fact that the Sci-Fi is called that has given a certain amount of respectability to it. I, personally, will spell out Science Fiction and capitalize it when I'm writing, but that's just me. I work in a technical field which has tons of abrieviations and acronyms and I get involved with production employees and quality employees who have their own sets of abrieviations and acronyms. I hate to bring any home with me. The keyboard requires very little effort on almost no resources and I'm not in a hurry.

[j. d. worthington]

Steve: point of clarification... Do you mean the Sci-Fi Channel (or Network, depending)? Otherwise, I'm not quite sure what you're referring to....

[steve12553]

Channel. Where I am that's all I'm aware of. See, I make enough mistakes even without hurrying.

[j. d. worthington]

Just wanted to make sure I understood what you were referring to. Thanks.

[Thadlerian]

I've heard about "sci-fi" being negatively charged, read about it on some Danish SF site. It seems to me that it's being used like: "Oh, that idea is just completely sci-fi!", meaning something hopelessly unrealistic, somthing only attainable in science fiction (a genre which is being treated with some sort of akward anyone-know-what-to-do-with-this? in Norwegian media whenever it arises (rarely), and for the rest of the time being just ignored).

[j. d. worthington]

Yes, it's still got a lot of the "Buck Rogers" connotations to it, I'm afraid. That's still what the majority think when they hear "sci-fi" ... spaceships, bug-eyed-aliens (or little green men), and immature writing aimed at teens and pre-teens ... as if writing for teens and pre-teens couldn't also be "good writing". But, alas, it's strongly tied to sf's pulp history, which -- to be honest -- often earned all the nasty comments like that it got. I believe it was John Campbell that once said that, in order to fill up a magazine regularly, there were times that he'd have to print a story that he'd much rather see in a competitor's pages....

[Gav]

Depends on what you mean by Sci-fi...

I forget who, but someone coined the term Skiffy to represent the pulpy rubbish that a lot of people think of when they discuss SF. Typically low-grade TV, poor effects movies, puply novels and the like.

[Nesacat]

Is the first time I'm hearing about Skiffy so I typed it into Google and the result was quite interesting indeed. There are several debates going on about exactly what this thread is discussing and here's what Wiki has to say about Skiffy.

Skiffy is a pejorative term used by science fiction readers to refer to the sub-genre of other-media science fiction (usually film or television) that is noted for its lack of understanding of science and/or science fiction terms, poor quality, low budget and cliche-ridden writing.

ALT MEANING: In everyday colloquial use, skiffy has come to be used by fans as an ironic fan insider's way of referring to science fiction generally, just as the original term "sci fi" gained general acceptance as just another (non-pejorative) way to say "science fiction".

The word originated as a mispronunciation of the term "sci fi," which had been coined by Forrest J Ackerman in 1954. Ackerman was a film review writer who became the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, which celebrated the schlock (some would say "campy") monster/sf movies which were frowned upon by many hardcore science fiction fans as being too poor in quality to be taken seriously and definitely not to be confused with "real" science fiction.

Eventually, skiffy became synonymous with any poorly made, low-budget science fiction film or schlocky science fiction work with a high camp humor value. For example, under such usage, Plan 9 from Outer Space is definitely considered skiffy.

Skiffy was the name of the science fiction and fantasy fan club at the University of Chicago during the 1980s through 2003, when it was disbanded. Notable U of C skiffy members include Richard Garfinkle, award-winning science fiction author, and Kenneth Hite, noted role-playing game designer.

Skiffy is also the name of the science fiction and fantasy club at the College of William and Mary, as well as an affectionate shorthand for the American cable channel, Sci Fi.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Gav

Depends on what you mean by Sci-fi...

I forget who, but someone coined the term Skiffy to represent the pulpy rubbish that a lot of people think of when they discuss SF. Typically low-grade TV, poor effects movies, puply novels and the like.

But that is for people who know enough about the genre to make the distinction. The reason that the term "sci-fi" came into disrepute in the first place was because that was the sort of thing that was the popular conception of science fiction, largely nurtured by the often garish covers of the pulp magazines. As I noted earlier, in the 1980s, that began to be somewhat different, because an entirely new generation grew up with things like the Sci-Fi channel, and films in the field that were more easily accepted, even if the majority of them really were far behind what was being done in written sf at the time -- Star Wars was basically the sort of tale that had been done back in the 20s and 30s in the magazines, Back to the Future was close to some of the ideas from the late 30s and 1940s (especially some of what was published in Unknown and some of the less "hard" sf magazines), Alien was close to A. E. Van Vogt's Voyage of the Space Beagle (especially "The Black Destroyer"), etc.

But still, for the general public, "sci-fi" tends to carry that rather muddy idea of "anything can happen in it without attention to rules, or good writing, or even making sense" ... a very crude idea that is backed still by a lot of things released as "sci-fi" in films, for example. For the cognoscenti, it's somewhat different. But for the general reader, it still tends to carry that deprecatory tone.

EDIT: Good citation, Nesa. I do question, however, that bit about Ackerman coining the term in the 1950s... It may be correct, but I've run into citations that indicated it dated back to the mid-1930s. So (as most of my sf is currently in storage, including my reference works), I'll bow to the citation given....