alt title(s): Sturgeons Law
90% of everything is crap.
This is 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. (Note: It is clear this doesn't necessarily follow from the Revelation.)
- Crawford's Corollary: Should you ever find that less than 90% seem to be crap, your standard is set too low and should be adjusted.
- Critic's Corollary: 90% of people lack the taste necessary to distinguish between crud and non-crud.
- Critic's Second Corollary: 90% of people will criticize 90% of what they see regardless of their ability to distinguish crud from non-crud.
- Tv Tropes 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.")
- Tv Tropes Second Corollary: The other 90% is further divided into "Total Crud", "Crud You Like Anyway", and "Other Crud." The exact proportions of this division has never been researched, and, aside from Total Crud, most likely varies by the individual for reasons mentioned above.
- The Theorem Of Narrow Interests: 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 or "LittleBigHolocaust."
Sturgeon's Law is particularly obvious when the barriers to entry — the whims of publishers — are removed. Self-publishing, especially in the virtually cost-free environment of the Internet, makes the cruddy 90% visible to the public; it no longer languishes in an aspiring writer's desk drawer. This often leads to the false impression that
Fan Fic 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 public. As one writer (apparently among the 90%) put it, "flipping through
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
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%." Rarely, a more optimistic second clause is added:
"...but the remaining 10% is worth dying for."
A variation of this law employed by critic
Ben Croshaw, known as the
Guantánamo Bay approach, dictates this:
"Everything is shit until proven otherwise."
Another rule of his specific to game reviews dictates this:
Even if declaring a game to be shit after its first few hours of gameplay is perfectly professional, one should never assume that a game that starts out good will stay that way.
A related law, popular among hackers, is
Ruri's Law, which dictates this:
"The vast majority of people are idiots".
Oddly enough, this is also
Wizard's First Rule.
The
Nostalgia Filter and
Import Filter can be considered both side effects of this and a major balancing factor.
In person, Theodore Sturgeon
didn't use the word 'crud' when this subject came up, in 1979. According to the
Portland Pattern Repository, however, the true story is the opposite: Theodore Sturgeon said "crud", but the law is quoted using the word "crap".
See also
Sturgeons Tropes.
