When you browse the new-release table at a bookstore or the recommendation list in a video app, you sometimes think, “There's nothing worth watching here.” Some people then jump to conclusions like “Web novels these days are all boring” or “That genre has always been low quality.” But is this really a problem unique to that genre? A witty answer to this question is “Sturgeon's Law.”
Put simply, Sturgeon's Law is the rule of thumb that “90% of anything in any field is crud.” It was coined by the American SF author and critic Theodore Sturgeon as he pushed back against people who belittled SF, and today it is quoted well beyond books and films, in research, software, and even writing on the internet.
In this article, we will look in turn at how Sturgeon's Law came about, what the saying really means, similar ideas that came before it, and how to use the law wisely in everyday life.
How to Find the 10% Amid the 90% of Mediocrity
A Remark Born of Defending SF
In 1950s America, SF was treated as cheap entertainment printed in pulp magazines. Critics picked out only the clumsiest works, full of space monsters and ray guns, to disparage SF as a whole, and Sturgeon had long fought back against these attacks.
- Lecture: Sturgeon is said to have first voiced this idea in a lecture at New York University around 1951 or 1952.
- World Science Fiction Convention: He said the same thing at the 1953 convention in Philadelphia, and the writer James Gunn, who was there, later put his words on record.
- Book Column: He first put it in writing in a book review in the September 1957 issue of the magazine Venture Science Fiction. It was the preamble to a review praising a novel by Philip K. Dick.
The core idea goes like this: it is true that 90% of SF is crud, but in fact 90% of everything is crud. Sturgeon added that cars, books, cheeses, and even hairstyles mostly look mediocre to a discerning expert's eye.
What the Law Really Means
Sturgeon's Law is often mistaken for a cynical jab at the world, but it was originally closer to a plea to judge a field fairly. In the March 1958 issue of the same magazine, Sturgeon called it “Sturgeon's Revelation” and added two corollaries.
(1) Lots of trash is natural
It is regrettable that SF has many clumsy works, but this is no more unnatural than the existence of trash in any other field. The mere fact that there are many mediocre works does not mean the field is especially inferior.
(2) Compare the best with the best
The best SF is as good as the best fiction in any other field. Comparing the bottom of one field with the top of another is unfair.
To be fair, the 90% figure itself is an exaggeration. The 90% is not a figure anyone actually counted, but a way of stressing “most.” The ratio may vary from field to field, but many people share the sense that good things are always in the minority.
Incidentally, in his July 1957 book review, Sturgeon also called a different saying, “Nothing is always absolutely so,” his law. Over the years, however, the 90% remark took the name “Sturgeon's Law,” and by 1974 Sturgeon himself acknowledged that it had come to be called that.
Similar Ideas That Came Before Sturgeon
The idea that good things are always in the minority appears in the writings of several authors before Sturgeon.
Laments of Fictional Characters
The British statesman and novelist Benjamin Disraeli, through one of his characters in the 1870 novel Lothair, said that nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense. Rudyard Kipling also wrote in his first novel, The Light That Failed (1891), that four-fifths of everybody's work must be bad, but the remnant is worth the trouble for its own sake.
A Book Reviewer's Confession
In his 1946 essay “Confessions of a Book Reviewer,” George Orwell admitted that in much more than nine cases out of ten, the only objectively truthful criticism would be “This book is worthless.” It is a remark that reveals the candid weariness of a reviewer who had to read a flood of books every week.
Using Sturgeon's Law in Everyday Life
In his 2013 book Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, the philosopher Daniel Dennett introduced Sturgeon's Law as a thinking tool. His advice is that if you want to criticize a field, you should not waste your time mocking the shoddy examples, but aim at the best.
(1) When criticizing, take on the best
When evaluating a claim or a field, you should face its strongest examples, not its weakest. Only then does criticism carry meaning, and in turn, the field's true value becomes visible.
(2) Train your eye for choosing
Now that writing, videos, and products pour out endlessly, filtering out the good 10% has become even more important. Trustworthy recommendations, careful comparison, and your own standards help you spend less time on the mediocre 90%.
(3) Apply it generously to your own work
When you first make writing or drawings, the fact that most of it doesn't satisfy you is not failure but a natural process. Those who make a lot and keep the good ones are the ones who eventually reach the shining 10%.
Sturgeon's Law may sound like the cynical claim that most of the world is mediocre, but in reality it is a fair request not to judge any field by its bottom alone. It also reminds us that good things, precisely because they are always rare, are all the more worth seeking out.
Rather than being disappointed by the mediocre 90%, setting out to find the shining 10% is the first step toward a good eye.
