# Heinlein question -- "Gulf" & "Friday" (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 19, 2010, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715 "2010-10-19T23:30:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2015, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/81 "2015-03-20T16:02:42Z")
> [@MIchelleRose](#): > > LOL. 1953 predates me somewhat, yes. But I was **WRONG**! :smack: WorldCon53 actually _was_ in Glasgow in 1995 and it was _WorldCon54_, also designated LAConIII (now that I’ve checked my old badge. Yes, I save all of them) that I attended in 1996. It was in Anaheim at the Hilton and the Convention Center, just across the parking lots from Disneyland. Forgive my goofy mistake, please. I apologize for confusing some of you. Now it gets even more bizarre, because **I was there too**! Missed that panel, though. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2015, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/82 "2015-03-20T16:42:02Z")
> [@MIchelleRose](#): > > I have a little insight into the Hieronymus Machine and Campbell. I was at WorldCon53, attending a panel with Ellison, Silverberg and Pohl. They talked about “difficult” editors of the Golden Age. (you would have laughed yourself sick over some of the things they said about Horace Gold!) Someone in the audience asked about Campbell and the Hieronymus Machine. Hieronymus on Campbell: _"I appreciated Mr. Campbell’s interest in my work, but over the years since then, I have concluded that he set back the acceptance of my work at least a hundred years by his continual emphasis on what he termed the supernatural or ‘magic’ aspects of a mind-controlled device he built by drawing the schematic of my patented instrument with India ink. The energy flowed over the lines of this drawing because India ink is conducting, but it isn’t worth a tinker’s damn for serious research or actual treating._" ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2015, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/83 "2015-03-20T16:52:25Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Hieronymus on Campbell: _"I appreciated Mr. Campbell’s interest in my work, but over the years since then, I have concluded that he set back the acceptance of my work at least a hundred years by his continual emphasis on what he termed the supernatural or ‘magic’ aspects of a mind-controlled device he built by drawing the schematic of my patented instrument with India ink. The energy flowed over the lines of this drawing because India ink is conducting, but it isn’t worth a tinker’s damn for serious research or actual treating._" Damn. Excellent example of why crossing the woo streams can be _ **BAD** _. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2015, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/84 "2015-03-20T17:25:40Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Damn. Excellent example of why crossing the woo streams can be _ **BAD** _. It’s\* just\* possible that the Hieronymus Machine is like the Dean Drive- it may generate a interesting but useless phenomena. Like the aeolipile. It’s also possible it’s all woo. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2015, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/85 "2015-03-20T17:40:58Z")
Since we’re far from the topic, and I don’t know where else to put this, I’ll just throw this in here. _Brave New Words, The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction_, gives Heinlein the credit for coining the term “sci-fi.” The cite is to an October 1, 1949 letter to his agent, Lurton Blassingame. > [@](#): > > I have two stories that I am very hot to do, one a bobby-sox for Calling All Girls and one a sci-fi short which will probably sell to slick and is a sure sale for pulp. The typewritten original is in the Heinlein archives. It clearly shows that Heinlein used “sci-fic” and not “sci-fi.” It got truncated in transition. So does sci-fi revert back to Forey Ackerman, who isn’t mentioned at all in _Brave New Words_? Wikipedia cites his using it “at UCLA in 1954,” with a footnote going to _The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition_. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2000. That’s probably not right either. The online OED commentary for [sci-fi](http://www.jessesword.com/sf/view/210) bypasses SF for the coinage: > [@](#): > > Forrest J. Ackerman had previously been generally credited with coining the term sci-fi in 1954. The term seems very much like a Varietyism, and Fred Shapiro found an example from Variety earlier in 1954 than Ackerman’s use. > > Jeff Prucher submitted a cite from a 1949 letter printed in Robert Heinlein’s “Grumbles from the Grave”, a collection of letters, but this was subsequently shown to be an editorial mistranscription; the original is clearly sci-fic (see sci-fic). We would like any (genuine) antedating. > > Fred Galvin submitted a December, 1954 cite from an article by Forrest J. Ackerman in Imagination. > > Fred Shapiro submitted a February, 1954 cite from Variety. Frustratingly, the actual text and date of this Variety cite is nowhere to be found on that page. You have to go elsewhere to find: > [@](#): > > 1954 Variety 17 Feb. 38/4 ‘Junior Science’, aside from its positive qualities, is a rewarding change of pace from the more thunderous sci-fi and spaceship packages. _Junior Science_ was a TV show for kids so obscure IMDb has no information on it. It was a 15-minute public service educational series, hosted by Dr. Gerald Louis Wendt, director of science for UNESCO. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2015, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/86 "2015-03-20T17:53:04Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > Didn’t Gold believe whatever screwball economic…um…theory was behind Pohl’s brilliant parody “The Midas Plague”? I’m sure I remember a story about how Gold lectured Pohl on it over and over and Pohl wrote the story to show how damn silly it was…but I can’t find a cite. Gold was big on taking conventional ideas and situations and reversing them in which society is based on , so I can see him pushing Pohl to reverse economics for The Midas Plague, without actually believing in the idea. Other examples of Gold’s fondness for this strategy are “Beyond Bedlam” ([https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1951-08/Galaxy\_1951\_08#page/n3/mode/2up](https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1951-08/Galaxy_1951_08#page/n3/mode/2up)) which Gold published in Galaxy - it’s about a society in which everyone has two personalities which take turns occupying the body that is shared, and the only taboo is one personality sleeping with the other personality’s wife, and Asimov’s "The Deep where a mother’s love is an abomination. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2015, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/87 "2015-03-20T19:43:32Z")
Heinlein and Oscar Wilde share the trait of being the go-to assumption for everything in their respective (and large) spheres. This famous quip from Dorothy Parker needs no recasting to be understood in that context: If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2015, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/88 "2015-03-21T02:31:59Z")
Rather than continue to hijack\* this thread to argue about dolphins, I started a [new one](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=18224142#post18224142). Carry on. * * * - Can we really hijack this thread, given how far afield the discussion is ranging? Oh well. ---
**Author:** ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2015, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/89 "2015-03-21T16:41:47Z")
> [@MIchelleRose](#): > > …I live in Oregon and don’t travel much, so it has to be West Coast or I don’t go. (sigh) … Will you be attending [WorldCon 2015](http://sasquan.org/)? Be sure to come on by the dealer’s room and introduce yourself at Lookout Mountain Bookstore. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2015, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715/90 "2015-03-25T18:20:28Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > IIRC, the members of the genius organization can communicate faster and even think faster than anyone else, by using a constructed language designed to pack content into every phoneme, so that it might take just a few syllables to express what takes several sentences in English. > > I don’t know if that’s actually possible. [Ithkuil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil) looks like a (somewhat) reasonable attempt at that. It’s a constructed language designed to be efficient and logically unambiguous. Not sure if there’s anyone who actually converses in it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/heinlein-question-gulf-friday-open-spoilers/557715.md?page=4)