If you can hear the crickets, it generally means that ‘we got nothing’.
Which is our status this morning.
Not entirely true. There’s tons of stuff to write about, comment on or poke a stick into. (Which reminds me. Taking issue with puppy-related foolery is kind of like shooting a hornets nest with a slingshot. You’re close enough that you can see the resultant outraged chaos, but not so close that the bugs can recognize a target for their venom. Well no, it’s not like that at all actually. It’s more like watching a swarm of inebriated killer bees – angry, vicious, dangerous in large numbers but unable to focus on a target….)
But we’re taking a short break from having to think too hard, so you’ll have to be satisfied with crickets.
Crickets do play an important role in our community’s history dontchyaknow?
Sometime back in the early 1950’s, one Forrest J. Ackerman – 4SJ – the Ackermonster – SF’s sole #1 Fan (he was given a Hugo Award to prove it) determined that Science Fiction needed a shortened, hip-sounding abbreviation for the genre and he came up with Sci Fi, most likely having been inspired by the hipster nickname for High Fidelity stereophonics or HiFi. (Anecdotally, 4E claims he was driving and listening to the radio in his car at the time, but why should we trust what some guy who thinks Sci Fi is a good nickname says? Don’t even get me started! The guy probably campaigned for his Hugo Award, though the fact that he tried to give it to another fan is a bit difficult to explain away…) (It’s ok if some of these words like stereophonic aren’t familiar to you folks. I’m old enough that when I hear “IRA”, my first thoughts are of the Irish Republican Army, not retirement funds.)
A young hipster #1 fan (though not officially declared as such) named Harlan Ellison took great umbrage at that nickname and in an attempt to boycott its usage by fandom at large, declared publicly that “Sci Fi’ sounds like the sound of crickets fucking“. (He probably campaigned for his Hugo Awards – of which he has many – also.)
Many of us agree that naming our genre should not invoke images of insect fornication. Save that for Starship Troopers.
Others seem completely unaffected by thinking about sweaty, pulsating ovipositors, six-legged embraces and the caressings of antennae along the side of silky smooth thoraxes….best to leave the rest of what those people think about to other imaginations.
Puppies 2015 sure ain’t the first feud we’ve ever had. And it’s still going on in a very low-key way. So word to the wise regarding current kerfuffles.
And here’s the sounds of some crickets fornicating just in case that does it for you.
