Sturgeon's Law

[Baker, John]

        Sturgeon's Law in its original form stated stated "90% of everything
is crud," but the last word is usually altered to "crap."  I had always
heard that it came up in a casual conversation between the science fiction
writer Theodore Sturgeon and some fans.  While that may be the case,
Sturgeon apparently made it available to the broader world in a talk to the
World Science Fiction Convention in 1953.  That's according to an account by
James Gunn in The New York Review of Science Fiction #85, September 1995.
According to the Theodore Sturgeon FAQ, Sturgeon then wrote about
"Sturgeon's Revelation" (as he then called it) in the March 1958 issue of
Venture Science Fiction.  The FAQ, with a link to the relevant portion of
the Gunn account, is available at

http://glinda.lrsm.upenn.edu/~weeks/misc/faq.html#slaw


John Baker <jbaker at stradley.com>