Two interesting articles about the same thing (i.e. fake cussin’). On io9.com (aka “This was the shortest, cheapest URl we could get”) we get The Best Swear Words in SF.A big shout-out to the Browncoats, as Gorram does make the list as well as two pseudo “f words” from BSG and Farscape and Red Dwarf’s classic Smeg, which to this day makes my tummy quiver.
The eternal conundrum of the Fake Swears is an interesting one. Over on MGK.com, we get a tiny dig at Jim Shooter in which Bird continues his “I should write the Legion!” series by promising no fake swears.
He gives a pretty compelling argument, since many of the current Anglo-Saxon vulgarities have been around for longer than the Church of England. But the problem is that artificial cursing allows two wonderful things: It gives a certain ‘cachet’ to characters, since it makes them seem rough around the edges, but still keeps you censor safe, and it says “hey, this place is different! They swear without actually swearing, in addition to having sex with robots!”
They’re different arguments, though; the variety of fake SF swears can usually be justified in that the characters are usually from a different place (or, in the case of Farscape, are just on a really bad show) instead of being Terran Humanity in X years. I also think that grife came about during a post-apocalyptic period when Earth was primarily inhabited by humanoid animals.
