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| − | (Did you mean a [[Sercon (US)|convention]]?)
| + | #REDIRECT [[Serious Constructive]] |
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| − | == (1) A Kind of [[Fan]]==
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| − | Short for SERious and CONstructive (or SERious and CONscientious). One of several [[fan]] terms which has altered from its original meaning over time. "Sercon" was coined by [[insurgent]] [[Canadian]] [[fan]] [[Boyd Raeburn]] in the early 1950s as a put-down of overly serious [[fans]] (already being satirized by [[Los Angeles]] [[insurgents]] [[Charles Burbee]] and [[Francis T. Laney]]) because they tended to take not only [[science fiction]] but themselves and their involvement in [[fandom]] far too seriously – they valued making lists over genuine critical insight, would rather pontificate than tell a joke, looked askance at those whose approach was more [[fannish fandom|lighthearted]] than their own and saw it as their scientifictionally patriotic duty to "promote" [[science fiction]] to the place where it belonged in [[mundane]] considerations, i.e., surely at the top of the pile of all Literature. [[Sf fandom]] was founded by serious [[fans]] who wrote letters to [[prozines]] to comment on and criticize the stories, and serious [[sf]] criticism has always been a staple in the [[microcosm]], but by the mid-1940s enough stuffed shirts had attached themselves to [[fandom]] that some [[fans]] with a more humorous bent were beginning to poke fun at them.
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| − | Few of them took it (or fun poked at the genre, as a rule) at all kindly. Thus, "sercon" and "[[fannish fandom|fannish]]" were regarded as polar opposites, the former being identified with the philosophy of [[FIAWOL]] and the latter with the philosophy of [[FIJAGH]]. Beginning in some [[fan]] quarters as early as the 1960s and certainly by the time of the early 1970s, however, the term had lost much of its derisive clout, as newcomers misapplied it to straightforward works of serious and at least somewhat constructive criticism, and even some [[fans]] aware of the former pejorative implications nonetheless felt the descriptive usage filled a necessary fan-linguistic niche. Some still use it as a put-down, of course, but where that's the case you'll have to judge by context.
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| − | == (2) A Euphemism==
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| − | In the late 1980s, "getting sercon" became a euphemism for getting stoned.
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| − | {{fanspeak}}
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