science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...

, sercon is "serious and constructive" criticism, often published as

science fiction fanzines A science-fiction fanzine is an amateur or semi-professional magazine published by members of science-fiction fandom, from the 1930s to the present day. They were one of the earliest forms of fanzine, within one of which the term "''fanzine''" wa ...

. The term was originally coined in the 1950s by Canadian fan Boyd Raeburn as a pejorative to mock those fans who took science fiction, its criticism, and themselves too seriously. The term began by the 1970s to be used without pejorative intent to describe fanzines and even conventions which were of a more studious or literary bent.brown, rich. "Dr. Gafia's Fan Terms" 10.29.2005
/ref> Examples of sercon fanzines and semi-prozines include ''

The New York Review of Science Fiction ''The New York Review of Science Fiction'' is a monthly literary magazine of science fiction that was established in 1988. It includes works of science fiction criticism, essays, and in-depth critical reviews of new works of fiction and scholarshi ...

'', '' Science Fiction Eye'', ''

Cheap Truth ''Cheap Truth'' was a free series of one-page, double-sided newsletters (i.e., fanzine) published in the period between 1983 and 1986. Its headquarters was in Austin, Texas. It was not-copyrighted and explicitly encouraged "xerox pirates" to circu ...

'', ''Nova Express'', '' Thrust/Quantum'', and '' SF Commentary'', among others. Conventions sometimes described as sercon include

WisCon WisCon or Wiscon, a Wisconsin science fiction convention, is the oldest, and often called the world's leading, feminist science fiction convention and conference. It was first held in Madison, Wisconsin in February 1977, after a group of fans att ...

Potlatch A potlatch is a gift-giving feast practiced by Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada and the United States,Harkin, Michael E., 2001, Potlatch in Anthropology, International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Scienc ...

, and

Readercon Readercon is an annual science fiction convention, held every July in the Boston, Massachusetts area, in Burlington, Massachusetts. It was founded by Bob Colby and Eric Van in 1987 with the goal of focusing almost exclusively on science fiction/ ...

References

Fanspeak Science fiction studies {{sf-stub