sturgeon’s Law Brit. /std()nz l/, U.S. /strdnz l/ Forms: 19- Sturgeon’s Law, Sturgeon’s law. [Sturgeon (1918-85, born Edward Hamilton Waldo), U.S. science fiction writer + LAW n.¹] A humorous aphorism which maintains that most of any body of published material, knowledge, etc., or (more generally) of everything is worthless: based on a statement by Sturgeon (see quot. 1958), usually later cited as ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’. Typically used of a specific medium, genre, etc., originally and esp. science fiction, and now freq. also of information to be found on the Internet. The aphorism was apparently first formulated in 1951 or 1952 at a lecture at New York University (letter to the O.E.D. from Fruma Klass, the wife of science fiction writer Phil Klass (‘William Tenn’), 5 Dec. 2001), and popularized at the 1953 WorldCon science fiction convention (see J. Gunn in N.Y. Rev. Sci. Fiction (1995) Sept. 20).

[1958 T. H. STURGEON in Venture Sci. Fiction Mar. 66/2 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 the attacks of people..whose conclusion was that ninety percent of s f is crud. The Revelation: Ninety percent of everything is crud. 1963 J. MERRIL in Proc. Chicon III 35, I think it was probably the final statement which sort of eliminates this discussion but we will go ahead with it anyhow and that was the memorable Sturgeon Law that 90 per cent of everything is crud; including, we regret to say, science fiction.] 1963 T. R. COGSWELL in Proc. Chicon III 38 Judy [Merril] mentioned Sturgeon’s Law; she was kind enough not to bring the new revisions which is that 9/10ths of all science fiction is bad enough to be written by Ted Cogswell. 1968 in T. Sturgeon Way Home (new printing) (preceding title-page), One exception to Sturgeon’s Law. Ted Sturgeon was once approached by a Sorehead who said, ‘Ninety percent of science fiction is crud.’ Sturgeon fixed him (good) with a steely glance, and replied: ‘Yes, ninety percent of everything is crud.’ 1977 Washington Post (Nexis) 29 Aug. B1 What we’re in for in movies and television is a deluge… If I may I’d like to quote (sci-fi writer Theodore) Sturgeon’s Law: ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’. Television seems to bear that out. 1984 Computer Magazines in net.flame (Usenet newsgroup) 3 Feb., Is anyone else disgusted with what is happening to the computer magazines? I realize that Sturgeon’s law is a strong force..but this is getting putrid! 1996 PC World (Nexis) Dec., ‘Ever heard of Sturgeon’s law?’ He shook his head. ‘“Ninety percent of everything is crap.” If that’s true of anything, it’s true of the Web. Ninety percent of everything on it isn’t even worth the time it takes to download’. …yes, just stuff.

and then i realized, i only have four…

from top left: bedroom closet drawer, shoe cabinet drawer, bedside table top drawer, bedside table bottom drawer. more stuff. (i forgot the fridge drawer, it’s empty, i never use it).

Posted by a | more »

what’s inside

from top left: desk central drawer, rolling cart third drawer, rolling cart fifth drawer, kitchen fourth drawer, rolling cart tenth drawer, rolling cart ninth drawer, rolling cart fourth drawer, kitchen sixth drawer, rolling cart sixth drawer, kitchen third drawer, desk bottom right drawer, bathroom drawer, rolling cart eightth drawer, bedside drawer, kitchen second drawer, rolling cart second drawer, rolling cart first drawer, kitchen fifth drawer, desk top right drawer, desk bottom left drawer, desk top left drawer, desk middle left drawer, desk middle right drawer, rolling cart seventh drawer. just stuff.

Posted by f | more »

backpacking beginner

imagine it’s just hours to go. you will finally put on a 10kg backpack and go real backpacking in daocheng. so excited you want to carry everything with you. but where to start? anyone have a suggestion on packing?

Posted by haxi | more »

more expensive DVDs

today there was a slight gasp to recognise the shop from the photograph she had shown me long ago; hiroyuki-san and she were working on a magazine for them, and i think it must have come out at some point, i think i saw it i am sorry if i don’t remember so well. but i did remember the image of the car coming out of the facade of the building, the plain cardboard brown textured cement type facade that looked like a compound. in real life today, i saw that they were rocks, a wall of rocks with a barbed wire-like fence over them, a bit scary, still looking like a compound. i had not wanted to go into any shops today, except the Saver’s because i needed to buy soap, but after the gasp i decided to go inside. a very nice bookshop. and the you like me book from jan family. right after a-chan had told me about it, maybe a few days ago (刚才？刚才？刚才是几分钟之前！几天不是刚才！！) －－her suggestion for www.janfamily.com. so yes, it does have something to do with this thing we are talking about, as what anyway says, ‘but i want to focus to the communication with people who is in front of us, public (not through the book). then it makes me think about shimabuku. maybe the way i want to work is something like janfamily and shimabuku. that’s what i thought laterly. my idea came up without thinking about them, but their works can be the examples of it…’ yes, so that link, and another, www.thingsthatfall.com, because at this moment we’ll let other people’s work say things for us, so much nicer that way. what is this all about? we try to make a communication, komuni kae shun, and i am also thinking very much about this relationship to commercialism, to product, the space between public good and private belonging, the relationships we have with eachother and the relationships we have with our things. i love everything that you do.

Posted by 丫 | reply »

Next Entries »

.	rss 2.0 | feedburner | del.icio.us
.	this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
.	site by orange 程康 and ourwork.is.
.	best viewed with your character encoding set to unicode utf-8.