It would look cool on a t-shirt, too.

Mr. Underhill answered the question. "Because the name is the thing," he said in his shy, soft, husky voice,  "And the true name is the true thing. To speak the name is to control the thing."

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Rule of Names

As I've mentioned previously, one of the great things about doing this blog is that it can lead me off in all sorts of unexpected directions.  As a case in point, right now I should be finishing off a posting on Hugo Gernsback, whose least successful contribution to the genre of science fiction was his attempt to have it called "scientifiction".

With absolutely no malice intended, I'm not all that sorry that Mr. Gernsback lost the coin toss on that one, the term scientifiction doesn't fall trippingly from the tongue.  Hold on, though - Gernsback's failed definition is legendary, but where did we get the winner?  Who first uses the term "science fiction"?

My copy of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction talks a great deal about the difficulty of defining the genre, to the point of stating:

There is really no good reason to expect that a workable definition of SF will ever be established.  None has been, so far.

However, they don't seem to touch on the words involved, the naming of the thing, as it were.  Well, let's see if the Internet can shed any light on this.

So, off to Google™ - but wait, typing in "science fiction" is just going to give me a million links to Star Trek and Star Wars.  Well, very often the best approach with Google™ is to ask it exactly what you want to find out:  "origin of the term science fiction". To my surprise, in addition to the usual lot of link farm pages offering wholesale definitions, there's a solid reference to an article by H. Bruce Franklin, a professor at Rutgers University, citing a book published in 1851 which uses the phrase "Science-Fiction". 

The book in question is A Little Earnest Book Upon A Great Old Subject, by William Wilson, and it contains the following wonderful statement:

 Campbell* says "Fiction in Poetry is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanting resemblance." This applies especially to Science-Fiction, in which the revealed truths of Science may be given, interwoven with a pleasing story which may itself be poetical and true...

Further research reveals that some scholars attribute the term "science fiction" to editor and author John W. Campbell**, who was responsible for changing the name of the magazine Astounding Stories to Astounding Science Fiction in 1938, but in my opinion the Wilson reference is the obvious winner.  There's also a certain elegance to the part about the revealed truths of science being interwoven with a pleasing story which appeals to me, and, when you think about it, it's not a bad definition for the field.  I also find the following comment by Wilson to be a fabulous addendum to that definition:

We hope it will not be long before we may have other works of Science-Fiction, as we believe such books likely to fulfill a good purpose, and create an interest, where, unhappily, science alone might fail.

There you have it:  science fiction, where science alone might fail.  What better justification for the genre could there be?

- Sid

* I sincerely hope that this is not a reference to either one of the infamous time-travelling Campbell Brothers, who have made more disruptive appearances in the past and future than Doctor Who.

**  Boy, these Campbell guys are thick on the ground, aren't they?