e2scifi

Theodore Sturgeon says, in his 1972 interview with David G Hartwell (later published in The New York Review of Science Fiction, March and April 1989):

"Sturgeon's Law originally was 'Nothing is always absolutely so.' The other thing was known as 'Sturgeon's Revelation'"

The first known reference to the revelation appears in the March 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction:

"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.

"The Revelation: Ninety percent of everything is crud².

"Corollary 1: The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and if 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."

This revelation has now become known as Sturgeon's Law, though the corollaries seem to have been lost in time. Sturgeon's Law was coined at a session of the World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia, which took place over the Labor Day weekend of 1953.¹

Sturgeon's Law came from a single sentence in the talk that Ted Sturgeon was presenting to the convention; the gist being that Science Fiction is the only creative genre that is judged on its worst content, not its best.

"When people talk about the mystery novel, they mention The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. When they talk about the western, they say there's The Way West and Shane. But when they talk about science fiction, they call it 'that Buck Rogers stuff,' and they say 'ninety percent of science fiction is crud.' Well, they're right. Ninety percent of science fiction is crud. But then ninety percent of everything is crud², and it's the ten percent that isn't crud that is important. and the ten percent of science fiction that isn't crud is as good as or better than anything being written anywhere."

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

Notes:

¹ An account of the coining of Sturgeon's Law is given in an addendum to James Gunn's review of The Ultimate Egoist : Volume 1 The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, which originally appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction, September 1995.

² I sincerely hope that considerably less than 90% of everything is crud, but I do wonder sometimes ;-).

Stupids = S = sucking mud

Sturgeon's Law prov.

"Ninety percent of everything is crap". Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, "Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That's because 90% of everything is crud." Oddly, when Sturgeon's Law is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to `crap'. Compare Hanlon's Razor, Ninety-Ninety Rule. Though this maxim originated in SF fandom, most hackers recognize it and are all too aware of its truth.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

On HR-8543:

There I was, merrily lighting up my little empty corner of the universe. Fine by me; sure I had no solar system to call my own, but one could say I was at peace. Never in a billion years did I think I'd ever feel a tug of attraction to or from anything.

But then, in two billion and a half, you drifted into view. And then closer. We could both feel that pull bringing us nearer, though I knew there were a million different directions you could still go. But for some insane reason you chose me. Closer and closer still we became, and then before we knew it, you became my companion star, and I yours. And togther we were two stars that became a binary, happily circling around each other. And nothing else in that backdrop of the universe ever mattered, for one + one + one + one + one + ... = you or me or you or me or....

And how to put it, we were flawless and perfect, which I never was before by myself. Rather than cultivate a zen-like affectionate indifference, I instead I grew to need you. Too excessively? In our bi-epochal star mass exchanges, was I taking too much from you? Does any of this matter now? Eventually, my orbit started to wobble, and though I was too slow to notice we were drifting apart all this time, I surely knew it by then. Inch by inch, you were sailing off into another part of the universe, leaving me behind.

My internal combution nuclear fusion engine started to splutter, and steam. Tried as I might, I tried to pull you back, but you shook off my gravitational pull and ignored my SOS sunspot signals. Finally, with a slight tilt in your axis as farewell, you were out of range. And there I was, with my heart streaming sparks through the spaces in between my fingers. And as the last tug of attraction you felt for me fell away, with a tremor and a shake, my heart exploded into a million little burning pieces cast all over the universe. And with an enormous crater in the center of my chest, I slowly floated downwards back to earth.

Bitterly, I pulled out the shrapnel of the heavier metals from my supernova, and hammered them into the needed shapes. Thus, I managed to fashion myself a furnace and fitted it where my heart used to be. And ever since, whenever there was a clear night, pressing my face the against sky I'd divide the night between my two eyes and quickly size up the 1, 2, 3, 4 thousand 7 hundred and 42 stars for the most likely possibilities of where to find my old self. Targets in sight, I'd push off the earth and swim through the velveteen darkness of space, headed for the smallest and dimmest of the stars out there. Once arrived, I'd press my ear to the fluorescent surface of the lantern satellites, and see if I could hear the shaky hearbeat pattern of my old heart from the stuttering light within. If it looks like a good match, what else is to be done? - shove it into that hole in my chest and dine on my heart.

Although once during my nightly cosmonauting, as I tried to drag away a star to save for later, I encountered the strong resistance of a much larger star at the center of a solar system trying to keep it put. It was a grandeur like nothing else I'd ever encountered before, but I saw a distinctly shaped sunspot I knew only HR-8543 could have. And as I looked away in embarassment, did I feel the warmth of your 3200 Kelvins touching the side of my face again?

Hmm...?

Hill's Fourth Harmony

Chapter 1

The needle entered my arm, wielded by a nurse with a less than interested smile on her face, and I sighed as I always do. Setting my mind at ease, I grew comfortable with its unyielding steel bite. Looking around at the others of my crew; they looked simultaneously uncomfortable yet serene, mirroring my own view on the matter. We were all laid out on hospital beds in a circular pattern in a room the size of an executive boardroom, although infinitely more sterile feeling (as if that were possible). Dawn, the woman nearest me shot me a knowing look with her blue eyes from behind wisps of autumn colored hair intertwined with the electrodes attached to her forehead. Dawn was my first officer and occasional pain in the ass.

We were the temporary crew of the space exploration vessel Harmony . Chase was next to Dawn in the circle of gurneys was our medical doctor, if you could call him that. He had already begun meditating and preparing his consciousness for what would be our 4th trip out. Winter, a white haired and wrinkled hipster, eyed the nurse with some skepticism, but met her with a warm smile as she was hooked up to an IV drip. It was hard to tell with Winter where the tubes and electrodes began and ended between all of her jewelry and crystal bangles.

I didn't get a chance to look at Sarge, Ellen, or Alex before the mechanical voice broke the near silence of the room and it's machines humming and blinking.

"Captain Hill are you ready" came the voice of mission command through the speakers hidden in the generic government drop celling.

"Yes" I croaked, my throat dry. It was the first words I spoke that day, I noticed.

Mission command asked around the room, and upon receiving the remaining five yesses went silent. A bowl mounted in the center of the room began softly ringing... a small automatic hammer the culprit. I closed my eyes and began meditating.

Focusing my mind first on the ringing, and then on the shape of a large violet crystal inside the ship. The ship came into focus, and my mind was transported there. My mind wandered around the bridge to each of the control stations, as well as the large purple crystal in the center of the room. Each station was adorned with a set of crystals in varying configurations. Medical, Helm, Observation, dual transcription, and dual command stations all laid out with different crystals and different configurations.

The crystals themselves were not too different than buttons, but each was a different color and made of a different substance. I took my place behind the first control station and began tuning my mind to the crystal buttons. I gave energy to the emerald one at the bottom right of the controls. It lit up in acknowledgment. Using my mind's eye, I looked around the rest of the ship, seeing the other emerald buttons lighting up, confirming our "arrival" on the ship, and our readiness to embark.

I was aware that the bowl in the room back at the hospice stopped ringing, and was replaced with the sound of an periodic chirp from the speakers. Five chirps and we would be off.

I focused on the purple crystal and began to turn it's shape around in my mind. I tuned my consciousness to it, and it, and I began to vibrate together. Words to describe what happened next fall apart at this point, it's like trying to describe an elephant using a glass of water and a jackhammer. Let's just say that when the time comes for the blink, a series of things occur in your own mind that make you feel like you are riding a tsunami through a Salvador Dali painting. It lasted only half an eternity or so, (objectively less than a second), as the computers finished all the calculations to bring us, or at least the ship, back into reality, only somewhere else thousands of light years away.

I risked thinking for a moment, and recalled the process of space exploration. Quantum entanglement and interstellar teleportation is much like a tuning process. Once the destination is tuned, it's a matter of pumping energy, and a shitload of it, into the system and the ship teleports instantly to another point in space. Communicating at these distances is, on the other hand, near impossible, as is sending a live crew to man the ship. After trying with a couple unlucky volunteers, who ended up on the other end as corpses, it was determined that the perpetual mystery that is the essence of life can't be reduced to simple transactions in matter.

The rather novel way to solve this involved, of all things; meditation, and astral projection. The crystal on the ship acted as a focal point we could mentally latch on to and make the journey. Human intervention was required on these trips, as AI didn't provide responses to the variables involved in exploration in a way that would yield meaningful data.

AI was frought with its own challenges. By the time the politicians were done with the laws and bylaws regulating the treatment of digital intelligences; AI essentially ended up being an omnipresent Labrador Retriver. Just as insistent, and just as dumb, relatively speaking. AI growth was controlled by restricting bandwidth and storage space, and like any one with a bad memory can tell you, what you don't remember, you don't do.

A single ring of the bowl reminded me that my mind was beginning to wander, a fatal mistake in this arrangement, as once the mind were to drift out and away from the purple crystal, there was little chance of making it back to the ship, or to my body.

The fraternal twins Ellen and Alex were working away at the transcription stations dutifully recording information as it emerged. Almost every transcription team employed by the agency were twins. It's very likely they made much more money than I, and it burned me at times. A fluke of birth, and a coincidence that they both possessed enough awareness to receive training in the art of out of body projection. Their energies were spiraling around their stations like an intertwined helix, I knew that they would be sharing information and forging the ships subjective log from their dual and yet unified perspectives.

Sarge's energy looked quite a bit like himself in person, with sharp definition and outlines. He was a good student all through projection training, following the lessons to the letter. I was glad to have him at the navigation helm, his precision and balance meant a smooth ride for all of us. I envied the sharpness of his existence. He was a man with no conflict.

We began our work. Hill's 4th Harmony - Chapter 2

1. Every year, a randomly chosen person on Earth is struck by lightning and gains superpowers.
2. Each new superhuman is twice as powerful as the previous one.
3. This has been going on for eleven years.

A desolate air base smack in the North American heartland, surrounded by a sixty-kilometre ribbon of electric fence and razor wire hung with intimidating red, yellow and white signs warding off photographers, trespassers and enemies of the state respectively, plus incomprehensibly secret experiments going on within? It's a little greener, vegetation-wise, but Kuang Ching-Yu thinks you might as well call it Area 51 and save yourself five pages of description.

As far as most of Ching's past colleagues know, he works at Google. He does not.

Ching's a faster-than-light communications engineer, one of about nine in the whole world. There are only nine FTLCEngs in the whole world because FTLC does not work.

Well, they should work in theory, but they don't, because, in a bitter twist of irony, they are blocked by a very loud repeating message explaining that very theory.

Ching is also an amateur photographer, so the red signs in particular drive him nuts. On bad days, the amount of stuff he has failed to commit to film makes him nauseous: sunsets, starfields, red-lit racks of fighter jets, white-lit files of soldiers, bleak, fluorescent-lit command buildings, oppressively black concrete bunkers and, of course, the impossible flying people. The latter, in particular, he feels a near-irresistible compulsion to take photographic record of. Even now, after all his experimentation, he cannot quite believe it.

It's just a coma fantasy, he tells himself. Surely, science still applies in the waking world.

*

Two F-22s hurtle from horizon to horizon. From ground level, with the aid of binoculars, Ching can just about make out two human figures keeping pace and formation with the jets. They're wearing dark blue, and using the position that the aerodynamics boys eventually figured out for them: nose-first, with the feet very slightly lower than the head to ease the neck, and the arms very slightly spread, providing just a little lift. He has no idea how fast they're going. Any of them. He does know that without their transponders neither individual shows up on radar alongside the jets. They have no heat signature-- at least, when they're not moving fast enough to set the air on fire behind them.

The aircraft peel off towards a landing strip. The humans lose altitude and speed and just curl around lazily down to the ground. They don't need landing strips. The smaller of the two figures spots Ching from the air, and the larger one follows in the same direction.

As they get closer the dark blue aerodynamic flight suits become visible in detail; buckled rubbery things laden with stiff attitude control fins along the arms and legs and neck and head and feet. The first aerosuits looked like living aeroplanes, but the fins are coming to look more and more like bird feathers with every revision the design team makes. There are goggles.

"The thing about these suits, you two," says Ching as they get within speaking distance, "is they're going for improved speed and manoeuvrability, but they won't improve your reactions or control. What good is being able to move twice as fast if you can't tell what you're doing at that speed?"

"They also look bloody stupid," says Arika, wrenching off her hood and goggles. "And they're too hot."

Jason lands, nods to Ching, who nods in return. Jason appears to concur on the heat issue. "It's better when you're moving at speed because of windchill. But they don't breathe."

"They don't want to put in holes because it'll ruin the airflow," says Ching.

"I say screw airflow," says Arika.

"That's what I'm saying," says Ching. "I think it's ridiculous. They should work on something approaching armour. Something which can take being punched through a mountain."

Jason Chilton (Nine) is a short, broad-shouldered, stubbly, just-a-little-overweight Brit. He is/was/may still be a project manager for a company whose purpose Ching was only dimly able to understand, even after Jason explained it with diagrams. Jason openly admits to being infinitely more at home wearing a work shirt in an office environment, and finds the aerosuit and, indeed, the entire notion of being superpowered nonsensical. He was, in fact, punched through a mountain once.

Arika McClure (Eight) is taller than either of them. She is a teenaged, mixed-race, Australian orphan whose parents died under tragic circumstances almost three years ago. She ticks all kinds of demographic boxes and looks a hell of a lot better in the suit than Jason does. She loves being superpowered, every minute of it. She has done some actual successful crimefighting in her home town. She is on an endless happy adventure.

Both of them have been flying for more than a year, and have grown to hate walking so much that they rarely bother touching the ground anymore. Ching finds it disconcerting to talk to them as they bob up and down unconsciously on the spot, looking down at him, but he, like many other people on the base, has given up trying to get them to disobey their instincts.

"Twenty-four hours left," says Ching. "Still haven't found Eleven. I said I should have gone with them to work the equipment. Morons're going to miss the deadline."

"That's not true at all," says Arika. "He's here. He arrived yesterday."

"You were told that?"

"No," says Jason. "Sixth sense. Woke us both up in the middle of the night. He's here."

"He's here? And you weren't told, and I wasn't told, and none of us have spoken to him?"

The two Powers shrug.

*

Ching encounters his boss in the corridor which runs around C Block and quickly matches walking speed with him. Both of them are en route to the same meeting room.

"Moxon."

"Kuang."

"I know Eleven arrived last night."

Captain Moxon slows down. "We were going to tell you today. This very meeting."

"Do you have any idea how much work we need to do in the next twenty-four hours? I should have been notified the second you took off from the Philippines en route here. I could have been preparing all of yesterday and working all night."

"Look, Kuang. We've been busy. The other guys on your team are following your instructions. It is in hand."

"You just don't need me, is that it?"

"Of course we need you. You have the overview and the notes and the designs. You can explain everything in plain English. You're the key."

They open the double doors to the meeting room, in which there is a wide oval boardroom table which seats thirty, but only one other man, a dark-haired airman who instantly snaps to attention. Moxon tells him to be seated. Ching circles the table and plonks down his sheaf of paperwork at the far end, nearest the white screens.

"Ching-Yu Kuang, Jerry Kavet. He's our translator."

Ching goes back over and shakes Kavet's hand before handing him a file of paper. "Tagalog, am I right?"

"Yes, sir, and some local dialects." Kavet is broad-shouldered and bronzed and apparently heavily jet-lagged.

"Tell him everything you know about this," Moxon says to Ching.

Ching spreads out his paperwork and gathers his thoughts for just a second.

"Once every year, somebody, somewhere on Earth, undergoes a metamorphosis. They remain physically and genetically human, but gain the ability to apply reactionless forces to their own bodies, which, in turn, permits superhuman feats of strength and unaided flight. They also gain the ability to dramatically accelerate their own perceptions, which allows them to think and react when moving at superhuman speeds; superhuman resistance to damage, which prevents them from tearing their own bodies apart when using their super-strength; and, finally, a sixth sense for other nearby Powers. We call them Powers, or members of the Line. Superhumans. Metahumans.

"Never 'mutants'. Never 'heroes'. Those are misnomers.

"Each one is more powerful than the last, and the man you're about to speak to-- it is a man, Captain Moxon?"

"Yes."

"What's his name?"

"Datu Dimasalang."

"Mister Dimasalang has been identified as soon to become the eleventh Power. As of 0820 hours tomorrow, he's going to become a superman more powerful than all the previous Powers put together."

"Right...?" Jerry Kavet is vaguely aware of the chaos which surrounded the events of last year's Birth, which nearly began a war, but has as few of the facts as the media sources which reported on it. Flying men are still predominantly fictional in this world - alongside UFOs, a new field of poorly-documented pseudoscience.

"This base was established to study the existing Powers and figure out how, if at all, this phenomenon can be controlled, harnessed, or, as a last resort, stopped entirely. The people here have been working on it since the first genuine superhuman was positively identified in Russia. We now believe this woman is the sixth Power. The five earlier Powers are assumed to have been of too little note, or too remotely located, to be noticeable on a global scale. The seventh Power was also Russian but is now dead. The eighth Power was Arika McClure, an Australian who is here at the base right now. The ninth was Jason Chilton, a Briton who is also here. The tenth was Tzu-Le Chang, Chinese, and also dead, as of almost precisely a year ago.

"I won't go into the scientific details of our studies," says Ching. Because there hardly are any, he adds to himself. "New Powers are born insane. There's a lead-up period of five to seven minutes of intense pain and then they go totally berserk for fifteen point eight seconds. For Dimasalang, at full perceptual acceleration, that time period will be equivalent to almost nine hours. In that time, at maximum speed, he could, from a standing start in this room, reach and exterminate everybody on this base and an additional five to ten thousand people in the towns of Fairview and Brooksburg, eighteen miles to the south-south-east and south respectively. He will be impervious to, and faster than, all conventional weaponry. A missile would be able to track the heat generated by air friction, but would never be able to catch up with something so fast and mobile, and certainly the explosion would not do more than stun him."

Ching pauses and waits for the question he knows, from reading Kavet's face, is coming. Kavet opens his mouth and Ching gestures that he can speak.

"Why don't you just kill him?"

"Because we're scientists."

 

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