[ExI] sci fi, sci-fi, skiffy, syfy, SF, sf, s-f

Damien Broderick thespike at satx.rr.com
Mon Apr 20 17:16:30 UTC 2009


At 03:40 PM 4/19/2009 -0700, Spike wrote:

> > ... almost all the Year's
> > Best books use SF/sf in the title or introductions.)
>
>Cool SF it is.  Anything SF always reads San Francisco to me, but I will get
>over it.

That's one reason I prefer the lowercase form, "sf", which presumably 
nobody uses for the city.

Science fiction veteran Robert Silverberg uses "s-f" , once common 
when the term of art was "science-fiction" rather than "science 
fiction". So it goes. Hi ho.

The stupidest attempt at rebranding is the (ugh) SciFi Channel's 
change to Syfy, which they claim is pronounced exactly the same but 
is way cooler, and dispels all those loathsome earlier associations 
with geeky acned 40 year old virgins living in their parents' 
basement wearing stick-on Spock ears. Yeah, right. It never occurred 
to any of these disdainful marketing geniuses that Syfy would 
immediately be pronounced "syphy" with loathsome associations with syphilis.

Damien Broderick




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