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You may already know this — in fact, if you are any kind of SF fan, I know you know this — but Arthur C. Clarke has passed away. He was 90 years old. That’s how old my maternal grandpa was when he died.

I’m not sure why I made that connection, but I did. This leads me to the idea behind all good stories. You know the ones I’m talking about. Those stories that you remember for years after reading them, almost as if you read them last week.

Why is that?
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Have you noticed a growth in the number of T.V. shows about U.F.O.s lately? They seem to be proliferating in the wake of the ghost-related shows.

Anyway, I was watching one in the background the other day and I noticed a bit of poor word usage that seems to be common among the, for the lack of a better term, “U.F.O. Community.”

The speaker was talking about a sighting and saying that he didn’t know whether the object in question was a U.F.O. or not.

Now, let’s step back a minute. What does the term “U.F.O.” mean? It means “unidentified flying object.” Therefore, if the object is flying and you don’t know what it is, it is, by definition, a U.F.O.

What I believe the speaker was trying to say was that he didn’t know if the object in question was of alien origin or not.

It really bothers me that people use “U.F.O.” to be synonymous with “flying saucer” or “alien aircraft.” They are not the same. They may overlap, but they are not the same.

Erg! There’s my rant for the month. Do you have any pet peeves that you’ve come across within the science fiction community? Please share them as a comment to this post.