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I believe it was in the sixties that I was first told (quite firmly) that one does not say "sci-fi" when referring to what I thought was called sci-fi. "Sci-Fi means bug-eyed monsters," I was told. "B movies. The Blob. Hollywood." "Well, but," I said, struggling with this new concept. "Isn't sci-fi just short for science fiction? What's wrong with that?" "And that's another thing," said my friend. "We don't call it science fiction anymore. It's speculative fiction." "Ah," said I, feigning enlightenment. Not wishing to offend, I refrained thereafter from using the forbidden acronym. Speculative fiction, however, seemed quite a mouthful for casual conversation, so I settled for "SF" despite the fact that I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and knew darn well SF meant San Francisco (also called "The City," but never "Frisco": name magic is a powerful thing). When I first heard of the Sci-Fi Channel I thought that was all right: it was television, which emanates from Hollywood and would therefore naturally call itself "Sci-Fi." No problem. Then, soon after I uploaded the first version of the SFWA Website, I was given Science Fiction Weekly's "Sci-Fi Site of the Week" award, which included a little graphic to put on the SFWA page announcing my good fortune. I was pretty pleased to get the award, but a little embarrassed by the graphic: a picture of a hugo with "SCI-FI" written in comparatively large print right there on the SFWA Web page. What to do? What I did was forget about it. I was proud of the award, so I added the graphic to the page. As I tend to do all my Web browsing with graphics off, I seldom saw the offending acronym: even if I was checking the page design and so had my graphics turned on, I knew where that one went and didn't really look at it. When Damon Knight emailed me one day to express surprise at finding "sci-fi" right there on the front page of the SFWA site, I had to ask him where he'd found it. Being ever on the lookout for new material for the SFWA page, I also asked him to write a brief piece about the controversy. Instead, he instigated a conversation about it on Genie and suggested I post quotes from that on the Web. Not a bad plan: it was an illuminating conversation that raised several points of which I had been unaware. But see for yourself. If you've been told not to call it sci-fi, but couldn't get a satisfactory answer as to why not, perhaps reading these SF/F writers' and fans' comments will give you a clearer understanding.
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