[Ads-l] Earliest Use of "Live Long and Prosper" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Laurence Horn]

> On Feb 18, 2016, at 12:19 PM, Mullins, Bill CIV (US) <william.d.mullins18.civ at MAIL.MIL> wrote:
> 
> CLASSIFICATION: UNCLASSIFIED
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Geoffrey Steven Nathan <geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: Earliest Use of "Live Long and Prosper"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> According to my usual W-flavored source for this kind of trivia, it 
>> was used in the episode Amok Time, which was written by Theodore 
>> Sturgeon (a ranking SciFi writer of the fifties and sixties).
>> 
>> Geoffrey S. Nathan
> 
> Also creator of Sturgeon's Law:  "90% of everything is crap".
> 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__jessesword.com_sf_view_328&d=AwIFAg&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=ydSIynH7QSGcZdgmyXfQ0GDTmTkIpzYYFty7MSELz-A&s=VowIEIGktnEkS2L2qaTDZjcGTEJXADQXqufEVqC1oKg&e= 
> 

I was going to write on what prompted his formulation of the law, but I figured I should check to see if I already had.  And I had.  But that was so last century (June 23, 1999 to be exact), so I'll reprint it, and include the link to much more discussion on the list re Sturgeon's Law, Corollaries, etc., and to other more or less related principles

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/1999-June/000734.html

This is all quite interesting, but I seem to recall a different genesis,
via which it was originally a claim by Edmund Wilson, critically assessing
the appeal of popular mystery novels in a put-down called "Who Cares Who
Killed Roger Ackroyd?", that 90% of mystery writing (or was it mystery and
science fiction writing?  that would make more sense in the light of the
anecdote) was crud, crap, or some equipollent and more or less colorful
term.  It was then Sturgeon's reply that 90% of ALL writing (or of
everything? I don't recall how far the generalization went) was crap.   Can
anyone else either con- or disconfirm this version? (Of course "Sturgeon's
Law" has the same signification on either story, but I prefer mine.)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org