I turned on my television over the weekend and realized that the Sci Fi channel had vanished.
The same shows were there, but the name wasn't.
In its place is something called the Syfy channel.
Whose dumbed-down, look-down-the-nose idea was this, anyway?
Do the network honchos think this is the next, hip iteration of the texting-literate generation? Or that we R 2 dum 2 no betr?
Sci fi, the venerable shorthand for science fiction -- a noble genre of literature and art and entertainment in its own right, with giants like Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin -- has been reduced by this phonetic and simple-minded non-word to something that looks like it's traded on the stock market.
I read that the execs who thought of this say it will allow them a ''broader range of content'' in programming. Terrifying words, those. Don't think for a minute that they mean more original programming, or more film classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner and even Barbarella. My guess -- infomercials, and worse. The slick thinking must go that spelling it ''Syfy'' absolves the channel of any responsibility to the spirit of ''Sci Fi.''
Just the way that reducing the name from Kentucky Fried Chicken to ''KFC'' sent the web wild with speculation on the possibility that there might no longer be any real ''chicken'' in ''KFC,'' so now will people be, with much better reason, monitoring the amount of actual science fiction content in Syfy.
The Syfy channel exhorts me to ''imagine greater.''
So all right, I will:
I am imagining Rod Serling siccing the Kanamits on whoever thought this was a great idea. "Let's do lunch," they'll say. "You be lunch."
Follow Patt Morrison on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Op-ed columnist
"The former [science fiction] says responsibility for your life is the key. The latter [sci-fi] assures you that you ain't got the chance of a hariball in a cyclotron. . . . It is obscurantism in illiteracy raised to the level of dogma. It requires that you be as ignorant today as you were yesterday. That you be no brighter than the sap who keeps playing three card monty on the street corner with a hustler who will never cut you a break. Sci-fi is what the Rancho Santa Fe sleepers were, not science fiction In that flashy but adolescent shell game called "Waiting for the UFO," they were philosophical suckers who turned away from the genuine wonders of the real world and all its solvable mysteries to embrace this sophomoric horse pucky of astrology and government conspiracies and re-casting of Jesus as Deep Space Navigator that had nothing to do with the problem solving and curiosity of science fiction. And it has everything to do with monsters, fear and dread produced by the dumbness of sci-fi. Greedy thugs only want to sell you movie tickets and poisonous delusions that enrich them by your stupidity and your fear. Because the truth is this: Neither heaven nor hell and certainly not a flying saucer can be found in the tail of a comet."
I mean a "SyFy" show will be recognized as being on or from the SyFy network as opposed to it being seen as a "Sci Fi" show being produced for NBC or CBS or USA, or any number of other outlets..
But Patt, this post is so beneath you. Why don't we read more of you here? I catch you on KPCC sometimes. You are such a professional that you never interject your opinions in those conversations. Why can't we hear them on HP? Inquiring minds want to know!
that long lost sister to Saffy on AbFab.
air back to back commercials for phone sex, male enhancement drugs, junk food, and job training programs. Are there really THAT many frustrated, lonely, average-endowed, unemployed, and overweight men out there watching this program? I immediately surf over to a 4th rerun of Iron Chef America.
-Egon Spengler