Questions of this type are rare but on-topic here.
We have a terminology tag and a history-of tag, both of which have a good history of being used for questions which didn't end up closed as off-topic, and both of which seem very pertinent to your question. I haven't seen very many questions like yours here, but it seems to fall within the site's scope, and an expert on the sci-fi genre would be the best person to answer it.
Bear in mind, though, that although questions of this type are OK, most of the (non-story-ID) questions here are about specific works of sci-fi or fantasy. This has meant that our community of 'experts' has gravitated more towards experts in specific SF/F universes rather than experts in the history of the genre. We have a lot of Harry Potter experts, Star Trek experts, Doctor Who experts, and so on, but fewer history-of-scifi experts. We do have a few of the latter, though, and hopefully someone will be able to answer your question.
Since you mention Literature SE, I'll add that this would also be on-topic there. Note that Literature is a much smaller and less active site than SFF, so you'd probably get less eyeballs on your question there ... but on the other hand, terminology / history-of-literature questions like this one are (proportionally) more common there. It's your choice where to post, since it's on-topic on two different sites, but do pick just one of them rather than cross-posting on both sites.
