''90% of everything is crud.''

This is actually Sturgeon's Revelation, but common usage has it that this phrase is what is meant when the Law is cited. The actual quote for the Law is: "Nothing is always absolutely so."

The first reference to Sturgeon's Revelation appears in the March 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction, where science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon wrote: "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 SF is crud."

There is also a possibly apocryphal story that tells of Sturgeon making the above comment during a panel discussion at a science fiction convention. When the audience protested, Sturgeon reportedly blinked and replied, "90% of ''everything'' is crud."

Sturgeon's Revelation is sometimes expanded as follows:

* 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.
* Corollary 2: The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field. (It's clear this doesn't necessarily follow from the Revelation.)
* Our Corollary: The difficulty of getting a group of people to agree on ''which'' is the non-cruddy 10% exponentially approaches infinity as the size of the group increases. (Or, "Crud is in the eye of the beholder... so to speak.")
** Our Second Corollary: This is because the other 90% is further divided into "[[SobadItsHorrible Total Crud]]", "[[SoBadItsGood Crud You]] [[GuiltyPleasure Like Anyway]]", and "[[YourMileageMayVary Other Crud]]" The exact proportions of this division has never been researched, and, aside from Total Crud, most likely varies on the individual, for reasons mentioned above.
* Critic's Corollary: 90% of people lack the taste necessary to distinguish between crud and non-crud.
* TheTheoremOfNarrowInterests: The more constrained the thing you're looking for, the fewer good examples exist.
* If a video game has user-created content, a large amount of it will be based on the male genitalia.

Sturgeon's Law is particularly obvious when the barriers to entry -- the whims of publishers -- are removed. Thus, self-publishing, especially in the virtually cost-free environment of the Internet, makes this cruddy 90% visible to the public, rather than leaving it to languish in an aspiring writer's desk drawer. This often leads to the false impression that, for example, FanFic attracts poor writers; the fact is that the poor writers have ''always'' been out there, but until recently their poor writing had few outlets to the eyes of the public. As one writer (apparently among the 90%) put it, "flipping through [[FanFictionDotNet Fanfiction.net]] is like flipping through hell with an occasional slice of the heavenly cheesecake thrown in."

If we assume that the 90% figure applies only to published works, then about [[MillionToOneChance one in a million of all things out there]] is not crud. Most people, though, have seen more than one non-cruddy thing in their lifetime.

Often the phrase is followed by the even more cynical addendum, "... including the other 10%." Very rarely, a more optimistic second clause is added: "...but the remaining 10% is worth dying for."

A variation of this law employed by critic [[ZeroPunctuation Ben Croshaw]], known as the ''[[TakeThat Guantánamo Bay approach]]'', dictates "Everything is crud until proven otherwise", and another rule of his specifically in relation to game reviews dictates that even if declaring a game to be crud by its first few hours of gameplay is perfectly professional, [[XenSyndrome one should never assume that a game that starts out good will stay that way]]. A related law, popular among hackers, is ''[[MartianSuccessorNadesico Ruri]]'s Law,'' which dictates "The vast majority of people are idiots". Oddly enough, this is also [[TheSwordOfTruth Wizard's First Rule.]]

The NostalgiaFilter and ImportFilter can be considered both side effects of this and a major balancing factor.

In person, Theodore Sturgeon [[{{Bowdlerize}} didn't use the word 'crud']] when this subject came up, in 1979. According to the PortlandPatternRepository, however, the true story is the opposite: Theodore Sturgeon said "crud", but the law is quoted using the word "crap".

See also SturgeonsTropes.
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