![]() ![]() Its re-introduction to a modern audience received a positive reception, according to Dennett. That is true, whether you are talking about physics, chemistry, evolutionary psychology, sociology, medicine – you name it – rock music, country western. ![]() In 2013, philosopher Daniel Dennett championed Sturgeon's law as one of his seven tools for critical thinking. Corollary 2 The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field. Corollary 1 The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and it is regrettable but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere. The Revelation Ninety percent of everything is crud. It is in this vein that I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of S.F. The adage appears again in the March 1958 issue of Venture, where Sturgeon wrote: All things – cars, books, cheeses, hairstyles, people, and pins are, to the expert and discerning eye, crud, except for the acceptable tithe which we each happen to like. It came to him that is indeed ninety-percent crud, but that also – Eureka! – ninety-percent of everything is crud. The first written reference to the adage is in the September 1957 issue of Venture:Īnd on that hangs Sturgeon’s revelation. The statement was subsequently included in a talk Sturgeon gave at a 1953 Labor Day weekend session of the World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia. In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be "This book is worthless ." Īccording to science fiction author William Tenn, Sturgeon first expressed his law circa 1951, at a talk at New York University attended by Tenn. Ī 1946 essay Confessions of a Book Reviewer by George Orwell asserts about books: But the remnant is worth the trouble for its own sake. Discussion Ī similar adage appears in Rudyard Kipling's The Light That Failed, published in 1890.įour-fifths of everybody's work must be bad. However, almost all modern uses of the term Sturgeon's law refer to the second, including the definition listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. ![]() The second adage, variously rendered as "ninety percent of everything is crud" or "ninety percent of everything is crap", was known as "Sturgeon's Revelation", formulated as such in his book review column for Venture in 1957. Sturgeon deemed Sturgeon's law to mean "nothing is always absolutely so" in the story "The Claustrophile" in a 1956 issue of Galaxy. It was coined by Theodore Sturgeon, an American science fiction author and critic, and was inspired by his observation that, while science fiction was often derided for its low quality by critics, most work in other fields was low-quality too, and so science fiction was thus no different. Sturgeon's law (or Sturgeon's revelation) is an adage stating "ninety percent of everything is crap". The cover of the September 1957 issue of Venture Science Fiction, in which Sturgeon first published "90% of everything is crud." ![]()
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