SF Scene: KGB Fantastic Fiction 8/21/08

As the Tor.com staffer who most habitually goes to speculative fiction events in New York City, I’ve been planning on covering them in some manner, but I’ve been wary about how to do so without painting a scene-y and insular portrait with nothing to offer those of you following at home. The tactic I’ve decided to try out is to ask everyone I get a chance to talk to at the event the same silly question. I’m calling it the Tor.com Ridiculous Survey.

Our pilot voyage was at the Fantastic Fiction reading series, where our readers were Jeff Somers and James Patrick Kelly. And since Fantastic Fiction is held in the Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosty... I mean, KGB... Bar (an esteemed drinking establishment in the East Village that holds literary readings nearly every night of the week), I decided to ask everyone for their favorite SFnal acronym.

The answers lie below the cut. Take a look to see how many you recognize and tell us your own.

(And yes, we did have several pedantic discussions about whether acronyms were required to form words or be pronounceable. It turns out that even the experts don’t agree on this one, so anything goes.)

• Cheryl Barkauskas: TANSTAAFL
• Douglas Cohen: SHIELD
• Dustin Kurtz: TOR
• Ellen Datlow: SMERSH
• Ellen Kushner: WASTE
• Eugene Myers: CUSFS
• Genevive Valentine: B.U.M.M.E.R.
• Irene Gallo: SMOF
• John Joseph Adams: CIRCE
• John Oden: TOAW
• Josh Jasper: TANJ
• Kris Dikeman: U.N.C.L.E.
• Liz Gorinsky: a tie between ROUSes and the SEP field
• Luke Hannafin: SQUIP
• Mary Robinette Kowal: FTL
• Matt Kressel: TANSTAAFL
• Matt Withers: HRSFA
• Meghan McCarron: HAL
• Mercurio D. Rivera: RUR
• Nora Jemisin: SNAFU
• Paul M. Berger: SQUID
• Rajan Khanna: HAL
• Rick Bowes: DWARFlet (warning: with Rick, there's an 80% chance he's pulling our legs)
• Rob Bland: WALL-E
• Ron Serdiuk: TANSTAAFL
• Rose Fox: GAFIAte
• Susan Marie Groppi: AT-AT

Queried but not responded (apparently it’s harder to come up with these on the fly than I thought): Devi Pillai, Gary Heidt, Gordon Linzner, Jim Kelly, Jim Munroe. It’s entirely possible that I noted some details incorrectly, so if I got your response wrong—or if you'd rather I linked to a different page or didn't use your full name—please let me know via my shoutbox. And if I missed you this time, please come find me at the next event!

(Image courtesy of Anosmia.)