Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site decwrl.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-pen!kallis From: kallis@pen.DEC Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: re: Sturgeon's Law Message-ID: <2921@decwrl.UUCP> Date: Thu, 27-Jun-85 15:28:45 EDT Article-I.D.: decwrl.2921 Posted: Thu Jun 27 15:28:45 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 1-Jul-85 06:03:00 EDT Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP Organization: DEC Engineering Network Lines: 33 >There have been references to Theodore Sturgeon recently, and also a few >citations on the famous "Sturgeon's Law". I would like to trace down the >actual origin ..." I cannot say whether it was the *first* time Ted uttered it, but I first heard the Law enunciated by him when he was the guest at a meeting of a New York City fan group in 1956 (or 1957 -- I didn't mark down the date at the time). I was a college kid at the time, and in those days, we were all wrapped up in the idea of the Sanctity of *all* SF. I'll try to reconstruct this as close as I can. After a few opening remarks, Ted said, "People are always criticizing the quality of science fiction. Well, I have to say, honestly, that 90 percent of science fction is crap." He paused for a second, which allowed us all to register shock, then he went on: "But then, 90 percent of *all* literatue is crap. However, science fiction is the only form of literature that is judged by its crap." please recall that in the mid- to late 1950s, "crap" was a lot stronger word than it is nowadays. And if it wasn't the very first time he made that utterance publicly, it had to be one of the early versions. Over the years, it became broadened and refined. The shock value was there: having a leading science fiction writer apparently biting the hand that fed him (though saving it with a sort of judo-twist in the next sentence) was to us in those days like discovering that our parents were hokers, or worse. Sturgeon's Law has a great deal of validity, and there are theoreticians who have tried to extend it beyond its bounds. It was meant to apply to literary works, not to the cosmos -- although certainly elements of that are, as Winston Smith might have said, double-plus ungood. But even the Zoroastrians and Manachees gave the continuum a 50-50 split. Steve Kallis, Jr.