I’m pretty sure it’s a throwback to the early days of radio serials, which were called “wireless fiction.”
(ahh well, maybe hi-fi isn’t quite as dead as I’d hoped.)
That’s dreadful! I approve. 
Lynn is no doubt referring to the pair of Bat Durston stories on the back cover of Galaxy Vol. 1, No. 1, which made exactly her point.
Sci-fi is science fiction, of course. The definition of sf never says anything about it being good.
I’m sensitive to this, since when I was on Jeopardy Alex said something about my being a sci-fi fan (not what I told the AD.) I started saying that sf not sci-fi, then I thought of Forry, who I had met at the Ackermansion, and didn’t want to diss him on national TV. It came out a mess which luckily they cut most of in favor of Fred getting his car.
Or it could refer to the Venus Equilateral stories too.
y is proper plural.
Apparently, Sci-Fi has bit the wax tadpole, and chosen a word that means ‘a couple cases of syphilis’ in Polish.
Well that’s hardly fair is it? According to your own link, the word can also mean “filth” or “pimples.”
Yes, I can certainly see the cross-marketing potential in “The Acne Channel.” That should really broaden their appeal beyond the basement-dwelling geeks that they’re traditionally associated with. Maybe if they emphasize the syphilis in their advertising…
Excellent catch, E-Sabbath. Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to track down that information? As opposed to the marketing team who were paid to screen those 300 potential names (and none of whom apparently were Polish-- or at least one was, and secretly didn’t like SciFi).
When they first introduced those adverts I was recovering from surgery and on some pretty heavy pain killers and those commercials always messed with my mind. For some reason I just couldn’t follow how they got from SciFi to iF. Once I was free of the drugs I looked back and couldn’t figure out what was so freaking difficult.
It’s stupid.
But you know, I can sort of see their point, in terms of branding. You cannot use “Sci-Fi” or “SciFi” as a distinct brand. Lynn aside, to the English-speaking word “Sci-Fi” is a generic terms for all science fiction. Trying to create a brand and branch out into other forms of business with “Sci-Fi” would be similar to trying to do it with a name like “Westerns” or “Drama” or “Comedy.”
So dumb though SyFy might seem now, in five or ten years it may turn out well.
Pretty much. There’s no real point in trying to assign different meanings, because most people will never understand the difference.
On the other hand, getting people to understand that SF is not a catch-all term that includes fantasy is a cause I heartily approve of.
If the people who actually like science fiction and would, in fact watch the channel if it truly showed any of same don’t like the old name, much less the new name, it does make a difference what you call it. However, the network has clearly never intended to program for such people, so it’s irrelevant. There are only only a handful of shows I’ve ever watched on Sci-Fi, mainly Doctor Who (and The Sarah Jane Adventures) when I miss them on BBC America. I did like their original series The Dresden Files which only survived a handful of episodes probably because it was actually good (and was written with the blessing and input of the books’ author Jim Butcher).
Is their new tagline going to be “yF?”
It’s positioning itself to become “The Furry Channel”. So the tagline will be “yiFF”…
That is disturbing on so many levels!:eek:
After TNN was folded into MTV Networks, they pretty much did call their viewers unsophisticated hicks, and promptly switched over to “Spike - the channel for men” or somesuch.
I note that they’ve totally dropped the “TV for men” moniker, but otherwise things seem to have worked out pretty well.
Bout twenty minutes after inspiration. Most of which was spent verifying that ‘y’ is a plural in Polish.
Me, too. I mean, while one could technically argue that science fiction is a type of fantasy, most fantasy has little to do with science of any sort. So why has sci-fi become the catch-all term for speculative fiction?
And to people who don’t read SF/sci fi/science fiction (and to a huge chunk of people who do), the distinction doesn’t mean anything. So yeah, they cut it because it’s meaningless to 99% of the population and it meant you were probably rambling on and on about something no one had any clue about.
I was about to split the same hair. And so the new name seems to emphasize the schlock factor, like sci-fi to the nth.
In the library world, it hasn’t. While sci-fi and fantasy are often stored together, and the section is referred to shorthand as the “sci-fi section”, it’s very rare for the real name of the section not to be Science Fiction & Fantasy.
I don’t mind if they go so far as to actually name it as such (although it’s still better if they store them in separate–but usually adjacent sections–sections). The distinction between SF&F can be blurry in some instances, but they’re still distinct genres, and ‘science fiction’ does not accurately describe both. It’s a bet of a pet peeve of mine, if you haven’t already guessed.
Of course, that’s assuming the library has any sections at all, which is another rant entirely twitch
Reading Stuart Elliots’s column about this in the Times, I think Dio was correct on page one. This is purely a trademark thing, necessary if the business plan of the channel includes branding other stuff. I’m not sure what name would be better than SyFy given this.
I wonder how they are going to distinguish SyFy material from all the science fiction and sci-fi out there already, besides being stuff they show on the network. How would one distinguish a SyFy book from an sf book besides the trademark on the cover?