Question about Grumbles From The Grave

[The Real Fred Bloggs]

I was a member of the alt.fan.heinlein group several years ago (I used my own name then, but I would rather not use it now, except in private), until Microsoft destroyed my access to email and newsgroups. Life got in the way, so I never really returned to newsgroups.

But I've recently got interested in the origins of terms for science fiction. I seem to recall that there was some discussion on the group about seventeen years ago, about the the use of the term which rhymes with hi-fi (I refuse to write it, because I'm old-school and prefer it to be SF), as it appears in one of the letters in Grumbles From the Grave.

Wikipedia now advises that although the term is normally credited to Forrest Ackerman in 1954, Heinlein used the term six years earlier. I recall a post which explains that Heinlein in fact wrote "sci fic" is his original letter, but that a copy-editor (ignorant of science fiction) on the book "corrected" it.

I've tried to search the group to find the post, but Google doesn't show anything.

Can anybody put an old man out of his misery and confirm that my memory is not faulty?

I also lost the book in a house move, so I can't even cite a page number.

[Roger Christenson]

I used to visit this group years ago too. Exchanged a few messages with Mrs. Heinlein. Now there are many groups on facebook, primarily The Heinlein Forum group with many members that used to be here, but also Heinleiners, Apostles of Heinlein, and Roughnecks. I'm doing tweets for the Heinlein Society on twitter, which isn't as active nor interactive.
Personally I've used the term sci-fi affectionately for 40 years; looking down on it feels like pretentious intellectual snobbery, but I respect the opinions of others -- there are so many different ones on the internet!