Science fiction is complicated to label, as it comprises a spacious range of subgenres and ideas. Author D Knight summed up the complicatedness by stating that “science fiction is what we point to when we say it”, a characterization echoed by novelist Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the meaning of SciFi is approximating the explanation of porn you don’t know what it is, but you know it when you see it.Vladimir Nabokov put that if we were rigorous with our definitions, Shakespeare’s tragedy The Tempest would have to be termed science fiction.

According to SciFi author Robert A. Heinlein, “a handy short definition of almost all Science-Fiction might read: practical speculation in relation to potential future events, dependent steadily on sufficient facts of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough consideration of the character and weight of the scientific method.”Rod Serling’s definition is “fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible.” Lester del Rey wrote, “Even the devoted aficionado– or fan- has a hard time trying to explain what science fiction is”, and that the reason for there not being a “full satisfactory definition” is that “there are no easily delineated limits to science fiction.”

Forrest J Ackerman used the term “sci-fi” at UCLA in 1954. As science fiction entered popular culture, writers and fans active in the field came to associate the term with low-budget, low-tech “B-movies” and with low-quality pulp science fiction. By the 1970s, critics within the field such as Terry Carr and Damon Knight were using “sci-fi” to distinguish hack-work from serious science fiction, and around 1978, Susan Wood and others introduced the pronunciation “skiffy”. scifi books