Sturgeon's Law, n.
Forms:
19– Sturgeon's Law, 19– Sturgeon's law. (Show Less)
Origin: From a proper name, combined with an English element. Etymons: proper name Sturgeon , law n.1
Etymology: < the genitive of the name of Theodore H. Sturgeon (1918–85, born Edward Hamilton Waldo), U.S. science fiction writer + law n.1
Compare the following earlier use of the term, referring to a different aphorism:
1957 T. Sturgeon in Venture Sci. Fiction Mag. July 78
One who has reduced the cosmos to Sturgeon's Law: Nothing Is Always Absolutely So.
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. 1957), 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 frequently 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).
[1957 T. Sturgeon in Venture Sci. Fiction Sept. 49
On that hangs Sturgeon's revelation. It came to him that s f is indeed ninety-percent crud, but that also—Eureka!—ninety-percent of everything is crud. 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.]
1960 P. Schuyler Miller in Astounding Sci. Fact & Fiction 162/2
Theodore Sturgeon once attacked it from the other side with what has become known as Sturgeon's Law: ‘Ninety per cent of everything is crud.’ The remaining ten per cent is what we call ‘good’ and ten per cent of that—one story in a hundred—is ‘really good’.
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’.
1960—1996(Hide quotations)