science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

, 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''" w ...

. 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 scholarsh ...

'', ''

Science Fiction Eye Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

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

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.

References

Fanspeak Science fiction studies {{slang-stub