# Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) significantly understates the problem **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 26, 2015, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401 "2015-12-26T17:40:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![botsgotme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@botsgotme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/botsgotme)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/21 "2015-12-27T14:10:23Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > No, it’s not because that percentage is higher than 90% (it’s impossible to calculate, though there is no doubt it’s high!). The law as commonly quoted implies that quality is the issue, whereas IMO quality _and_ redundancy are both huge limiting factors on the degree to which we can enjoy new works. In fact, redundancy is likely the bigger problem, since the more quality works that are “out there,” the fewer that can be created. > > My relevant posts on the issue: > > [Story saturation and fatigue: a new limit to pop culture?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=758275) (6/1/2015) > > [Stories are hard, so movies are hard (to do well)](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=749589) (2/18/2015) > > I think the latter post is especially applicable to this issue considering the big movie of the year: Star Wars Episode VII: > > It’s a goddamn remake/reboot/rehash/retread of Episode IV! Even people who like the movie are not denying this. > > They have all the money and talent in the world at their disposal, and they can’t come up with a really good story and an original villain. But new stories are hard to write. Redundancy is the great enemy. > > In our day and age, we tend to be picky about _originality._ We are IP-anal: you can find articles online about all manner of supposed ripoffs of riffs, lyrics, melodies, and whatnot. Sometimes, those ripoffs are absolutely real (cough, Led Zeppelin, cough). Sometimes they are merely plausible, and sometimes they are BS. > > But ripping off something from a bad work to use in a superior work may be an IP sin, but it doesn’t necessarily create bad art. For another Star Wars example, some accuse John Williams of ripping off a British TV theme for his Star Wars theme. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, but the former is not very good and the latter is a masterpiece. Most of Shakespeare’s plays do not have original stories, but we do not fault him for that. > > But once we have a quality work like Hamlet, that draws shadowy barriers that we may not cross, lest we be redundant. Redo the story of Hamlet? Better have a good excuse, do something really new. How about having the ghost of a murdered king implore his son to exact vengeance? Nope, that was effectively used in Hamlet. How about the image of pouring poison in the ear to murder someone? Probably not, unless we want our work to be compared to Hamlet. And so on. The plot, images, dialog, etc., become off-limits to us. > > But avoiding redundancy requires us to do much, much more than merely avoid “ripping off” other artists. The much more difficult task is not ripping off ourselves. My friend and I have been listening to the music of the Rolling Stones, going through all their albums. The redundancy issue is big. Perhaps any band is allowed a crack at the historically redundant 12-bar blues. Heck, it’s practically the same melody every time. But should a band do 50 12-bar tunes? Can they call be good? Distinct? And that’s just the start of the redundancy problem when listening to the Stones’ oeuvre. There are lyrical redundancies, instrumentation redundancies, melodic redundancies, tonal redundancies, and so on. Yes, 90% of it is “crap,” but large portion of that crap is crap because it’s redundant. > > Music, however, is one art form where it’s relatively _easy_ to avoid redundancy. Relatively. In stories, it’s very hard indeed. In fact, the point of my story saturation thread is that we have pretty much run out of broad strokes stories and are now just repeating ourselves to lesser effect. Mad but badass villain who wants to take over the world? Chosen one? Quirky sidekicks? Loveable rogues that get the girl? Macguffins out the wazoo? Been there done that a zillion times. > > It’s old. Tiresome. Worn out. And we’ve only had video entertainment for 120 years and novels for 230 or so. Nothing is going to make this stuff fresh in the millennia that lie ahead. > > More and more as time proceeds, Sturgeon’s Law is going to be less “hey man, that sucks” and more “hey man, that shit was _old_ a hundred years ago.” > > Thoughts?! And, as Francis Fukuyama tells us, history is over…evrything has been done…we are just repeating stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/22 "2015-12-27T14:24:13Z")
> [@botsgotme](#): > > And, as Francis Fukuyama tells us, history is over…evrything has been done…we are just repeating stuff. No need to quote the whole OP, mmkay? I think your response is an example of false templating. You are doing the same thing as the poster who templated what I said under “there’s nothing new under the sun.” It’s a type of straw man argument. There is lots of new stuff in the world right now. We’ve recently (in the scheme of things) been going through the whole cell phone/tablet revolution, and at the same time the whole social media revolution. These have created quite new types of activities, such as posting “memes” and whatnot. That’s new stuff! I am saying that redundancy has become an issue in specific areas. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/23 "2015-12-27T14:46:19Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > And thus we return to the issue of redundancy. We’ve had pretty much the same fashions with minor variations and several reduxes since the 1980s. Some parts and pieces, such as men’s suits and various women’s dresses could be worn nearly a 100 years ago, and vice versa. But clothing is a basic need, and we’ve settled upon some styles that “work.” I doubt things are really going to change very much over the next 50 years. And when you look at it in the really long run, the common peasantry was wearing variations on essentially the same shirt for five hundred years, “fashion” being something you saw among the court or bourgeois high society. Technology, resource availability, urban life and better communications made “mass” fashion possible but you are right, clothing’s nature as a basic necessity eventually forces a stabilization in the direction of what you can work and live in day-to-day. And with media/literature as mentioned we now have a magnified word-of-mouth system with online communications, as well as the loss of the editorial intermediaries that characterized 20th century publishing – editors used to be able to look at a manuscript/screenplay and say "oh come on this is just a thinly disguised bad rewrite of \_\_\_\_\_ " and send back the SASE with a note to not quit your day job. Now you just put it on your blog page. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/24 "2015-12-27T14:58:34Z")
are you planning on doing anything about it? Or are you one of those people who just sits back and criticizes everyone else? ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/25 "2015-12-27T15:09:03Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > are you planning on doing anything about it? Or are you one of those people who just sits back and criticizes everyone else? False templating alert. I’m not criticizing _anyone._ The trends I’m talking about are a virtual necessity based on the prevailing conditions, mostly technological. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/26 "2015-12-27T15:11:02Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > And with media/literature as mentioned we now have a magnified word-of-mouth system with online communications, as well as the loss of the editorial intermediaries that characterized 20th century publishing – editors used to be able to look at a manuscript/screenplay and say "oh come on this is just a thinly disguised bad rewrite of \_\_\_\_\_ " and send back the SASE with a note to not quit your day job. Now you just put it on your blog page. Right, it’s an example of a technological change that creates a trend. The gatekeepers have lost their power to a large extent, and those who are sufficiently motivated to get their art out there can do so. This in turn creates more redundancy and noise in the system. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/27 "2015-12-27T16:50:37Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Let me put it another way. There is always a noisy subset of the population that will point out how something is derived from something else or uses parts of it. I think the new Star Wars movie is a good example of this. The overall, un-picky reaction to the film has been, “10/10 on IMDb, best Star Wers EVAH!!!”, but there are also a _lot_ of 1/10 reviews up excoriating it for not having an original story. I am not a _Star Wars_ fan and haven’t been paying much attention to the new movie, but I suspect that no matter what it was like there would be some noisy subset of people on the Internet giving it terrible reviews. That’s just the way people (especially people on the Internet) are. And IIRC, many _Star Wars_ fans have spent the last sixteen years slamming the prequel trilogy for not being \*enough \*like the original trilogy. > [@](#): > > A couple years ago, the shitteyyy “Blurred Lines” was the song of the summer. Most didn’t care that the beat was derivative of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” (the beat was purposely imitated). But they got sued by Gaye’s estate anyway, even though it technically wasn’t a copyright violation. Copyright law is a murky area, and often the only way to be absolutely sure something isn’t a violation is to get sued and win. Or to put it another way, the Gaye estate probably couldn’t be certain that their copyright _wasn’t_ being violated until they sued and lost. They could of course have chosen to just turn a blind eye to “Blurred Lines”, but since Marvin Gaye isn’t producing new music these days and a victory in a case involving a major hit song presumably would have brought in a bunch of $$$ it’s not surprising that they went for it. That’s just business though, it has little if anything to do with what the public wants. > [@](#): > > If I were to write a new song and simply lift a catchy, iconic riff from another song without giving credit and paying to use it, I would catch both legal and critical hell for that. So we, as a species or culture or both, care about originality and IP in this way. Though yes, the vulgar masses typically don’t care or notice. The “vulgar masses” make up the majority of our species and culture, so if they don’t care or notice then this is not a species- or culture-wide issue. I don’t think it’s a given that even critics and lawyers would care, depending on the specifics of your new song. If the riff you copied was in the public domain or you could justify it under fair use (e.g. parody) then you’d be in the clear legally, and if your song was good then plenty of critics would be willing to defend it. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/28 "2015-12-27T18:05:36Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > I infer you are taking the optimistic stance that we will go on remixing forever, and it will be great! I’m saying, nope. Everyone alive has lived through an anomalous period, the dawn of modern pop-culture, in which a lot of stuff is truly new. And in which a lot of the potential remixing has been front-loaded. I don’t know if it’ll be great or not, but that’s what will happen, don’t you think? I might be more cynical since I’m not sure a lot of the new stuff is actually new at all. At least when it comes to fiction. From what I’ve seen a lot depends on how much of a lumper or splitter you are. Like if you think Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars are basically the same movie. Or Inception vs. The Matrix. I tend to be a reductionist when breaking down stories, but a lot of people aren’t, so they have a low bar for originality. Ultimately there’s only so many character types, relationships, and plot structures. On a smaller scale: every once in awhile I see a cartoon do a parody of the I Love Lucy chocolate conveyor belt scene. Now this is a famous gag, so a lot of people recognize it, but a lot of the younger generation doesn’t. I wonder how this will go in another 100 years, let alone less famous gags. Maybe it’ll hop around from work to work every couple years, maybe part of a library of gags, or maybe forgotten and independently re-invented. There’s already too much pop culture to know. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/29 "2015-12-27T20:40:59Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > I don’t know if it’ll be great or not, but that’s what will happen, don’t you think? I might be more cynical since I’m not sure a lot of the new stuff is actually new at all. At least when it comes to fiction. Well we basically agree. Fiction had a big head start over video entertainment, and I think it burned out its “broad strokes” ideas in advance. Even before Star Wars hit the big screen as a fresh sci-fi flick, sci-fi on the printed page had long passed its golden age. I mean, _Dune_ is from 1965. > [@](#): > > From what I’ve seen a lot depends on how much of a lumper or splitter you are. Like if you think Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars are basically the same movie. Or Inception vs. The Matrix. I tend to be a reductionist when breaking down stories, but a lot of people aren’t, so they have a low bar for originality. I’m quite forgiving of subtle difference but not very forgiving of broad tropes. When Star Wars came out, some critics were able to point to the fact that it was a bunch of pieces (Pauline Kael), but it hardly mattered to the public, since it all seemed fresh. And it should have. They (including 6-year-old me) had never seen its like, at least not done so well. No one was thinking in terms of tropes, cliches, etc., since pop culture still seemed relatively fresh. Now we have [www.tvtropes.org](http://www.tvtropes.org), in which every nuance of pop culture has been sliced and diced to intellectually satisfying effect. > [@](#): > > On a smaller scale: every once in awhile I see a cartoon do a parody of the I Love Lucy chocolate conveyor belt scene. Now this is a famous gag, so a lot of people recognize it, but a lot of the younger generation doesn’t. I wonder how this will go in another 100 years, let alone less famous gags. Maybe it’ll hop around from work to work every couple years, maybe part of a library of gags, or maybe forgotten and independently re-invented. There’s already too much pop culture to know. And my question is: to what degree will such repetition be palatable across the generations? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/30 "2015-12-27T21:13:48Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > . . . Robert Sheckley is a great sci-fi writer worth reading today, but he seems to have been pretty much forgotten since the 70s at the latest. . . . A delightful example! His short stories are the berries! “The Same To You Doubled” and “Cordle to Onion to Carrot” are true delights. One of his very best isn’t sci fi or fantasy at all, but just a “Rashomon” sort of treatment of a singular event as seen by three different persons: “Pas de Trois of the Chef and the Waiter and the Customer.” It’s acidly funny, and one of the best satirical insights into human nature anyone’s ever written since Mark Twain. And…yeah, he’s very little known today. “Life isn’t fair. I hope you didn’t think it was.” Alexei Panshin. (Himself not as well known as he deserves.) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/31 "2015-12-27T21:22:04Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > . . . If we weren’t social, we wouldn’t have a “collective appreciation” in the first place. But we’re _so_ social that we tend to elevate things above their worth because of their popularity itself. It’s tough to find that balance (and we’re not in control of it, anyway). There is actually one small tool in the toolkit that can help you, as an individual, seek that balance: a moderate degree of contrarianism. If you deliberately seek for material that is obscure or little-known, you will very likely find some of these forgotten gems. It’s like sifting through mine-tailings: occasional nuggets are to be found! Haunt those used-book bookstores! You’ll be amazed! (I discovered the works of Thomas Burnett Swann in a used-book store, and went on quite a binge. I adore his books! He isn’t “great” by any means, but he’s sweet, and comforting, and sentimental, and a tad sexy. George Barr did a lot of cover art for him.) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/32 "2015-12-27T21:29:17Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > . . . Time lies infinitely ahead of us. Are we just going to reboot Star Wars every 40 years for the next couple hundred years? Yep! 😃 > [@Aeschines](#): > > . . . And my question is: to what degree will such repetition be palatable across the generations? Highly! Just as every few decades we get a new Robin Hood, and a new Bible Epic, and a new Pirate tale, and a new Western. (I find it amusing that Al Capone and the gangster era has become mythologized into something very akin to Robin Hood. Capone is not a “hero,” but he has become an archetype.) We’ve set some very, very high bars. It’s going to be a DAMN long time before someone makes a “Lord of the Rings” movie that’s better than the ones we’re enjoying on DVD today, and it’s going to be a DAMN long time before someone does a better Sherlock Holmes than Jeremy Brett did. But both of these things will happen…and we, the audience, will pay to see them…and argue vehemently over how bad they are! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/33 "2015-12-27T22:04:56Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > I’m quite forgiving of subtle difference but not very forgiving of broad tropes. When Star Wars came out, some critics were able to point to the fact that it was a bunch of pieces (Pauline Kael), but it hardly mattered to the public, since it all seemed fresh. And it should have. **They (including 6-year-old me) had never seen its like**, at least not done so well. No one was thinking in terms of tropes, cliches, etc., since pop culture still seemed relatively fresh. > > Now we have [www.tvtropes.org](http://www.tvtropes.org), in which every nuance of pop culture has been sliced and diced to intellectually satisfying effect. > > And my question is: to what degree will such repetition be palatable across the generations? (Emphasis added) You’re missing something obvious here: if you were six years old today, it’s quite likely that you wouldn’t have seen anything like _Star Wars_ before either. I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that your own feelings about pop culture are universal, but there are babies being born every day who’ve never seen _Star Wars_. Few, if any, young children “think in terms of tropes, cliches, etc.” or read [TVTropes.org](http://TVTropes.org). I suspect that even among adults it’s a minority of people who are concerned about these things…and plenty of those who are (including TVTropes itself) [don’t consider them to be a bad thing](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropesAreTools?from=Main.TropesAreNotBad). I’m a librarian, and like most librarians I’ve read a lot of books. I’m currently reading _Ready Player One_ by Ernest Cline, which came highly recommended to me by two of my colleagues. The basic plot involves the characters trying to solve an online treasure hunt with a huge prize that was designed by a programmer who grew up in the '80s, and all the puzzles are based on '80s pop and geek culture. It’s not a particularly deep book or anything but I’m finding it quite entertaining, and if anything it would probably be _less_ fun if it weren’t full of familiar tropes and references to John Hughes movies and arcade games. ---
**Author:** ![lalaith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/96bed5/32.png) [@lalaith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lalaith)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/34 "2015-12-27T23:44:27Z")
I’ve always wondered exactly how he was defining “crap.” If his definition of “crap” is something that is not a classic destined to last the centuries, then, yes, he significantly understates the problem. If his definition of “crap” is simply something that is badly done, then, no, he significantly overestimates the problem. At least in my opinion, most of what I read is not “crap” – most of it has what I call craftsmanship. Not genius that’s going to last the centuries, but craftsmanship which serves the moment. (I believe Sturgeon was specifically referencing published written material with his statement.) I rarely read something and think that the writing was crap even if I didn’t think it was a classic. ---
**Author:** ![lalaith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/96bed5/32.png) [@lalaith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lalaith)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/35 "2015-12-27T23:55:24Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > (Emphasis added) > > You’re missing something obvious here: if you were six years old today, it’s quite likely that you wouldn’t have seen anything like _Star Wars_ before either. I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that your own feelings about pop culture are universal, but there are babies being born every day who’ve never seen _Star Wars_. Years back a boy who was in his tweens was telling me about the Twilight movies. He said to me with a kind of awe in his voice that Bella wanted to be turned into a vampire. I leaned into him and, in a whisper, imparted a secret. I told him (putting it in simplified terms) that always either the girl wants to be turned into a vampire or the vampire wants to be turned into a human. That was the difference of my decades of seeing vampire love stories compared to his single experience of vampire love stories. It was new and wondrous to him. To me it was old hat and boring. Just because I’ve seen it all my life doesn’t mean other people have. They’re entitled to their firsts too ------ just don’t ask me to watch. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2015, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/36 "2015-12-27T23:59:07Z")
> [@lalaith](#): > > . . . I believe Sturgeon was specifically referencing published written material with his statement. . . . Rather the opposite. Someone said, ninety per cent of science fiction is crap, and Sturgeon, off-handedly (and without any intent of crafting an eponymous law!) shot back, “Ninety per cent of everything is crap.” It wasn’t a considered opinion, just a zinger. As for science fiction, remember that this could include unpublished material, such as the thousands of stories that editors have rejected over the decades. 90% may be too generous! ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2015, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/37 "2015-12-28T03:50:37Z")
> [@lalaith](#): > > That was the difference of my decades of seeing vampire love stories compared to his single experience of vampire love stories. I read somewhere that Stephenie Meyer has said she wasn’t really a vampire fan and prior to writing _Twilight_ had read one Anne Rice novel and was otherwise just familiar with cliches. I thought that explained a lot, really. _Twilight_ isn’t all that similar to Anne Rice’s vampire novels, but it seemed to me like the work of someone who knew little enough about vampire fiction that she thought things like having vampires that weren’t killed by sunlight were original twists on old cliches rather than being a pretty old hat themselves.\* But as you say, a kid isn’t going to know the difference unless they’re a vampire fan already. And if they _are_ a vampire fan already then they’re probably eager for more vampire stories. So _Twilight_ becomes a massive hit despite not being especially original and IMHO pretty badly written. \*As has been discussed here before, vampires not being killed by sunlight is actually the older idea. Anne Rice’s vampires are vulnerable to sunlight, but in Bram Stoker’s _Dracula_ the Count can and does go out by day, although he generally prefers not to. In Le Fanu’s _Carmilla_ the title character has to sleep until after noon, but is up and about well before sunset. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2015, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/38 "2015-12-28T11:38:42Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > A delightful example! His short stories are the berries! “The Same To You Doubled” and “Cordle to Onion to Carrot” are true delights. One of his very best isn’t sci fi or fantasy at all, but just a “Rashomon” sort of treatment of a singular event as seen by three different persons: “Pas de Trois of the Chef and the Waiter and the Customer.” It’s acidly funny, and one of the best satirical insights into human nature anyone’s ever written since Mark Twain. > > And…yeah, he’s very little known today. Glad you appreciate Sheckley. He’s very readable and I think still fresh in many/most of his ideas, so I’m curious as to _why_ he was forgotten as early as he was. Although, I think it’s fair to say that most old-school sci-fi writers don’t have much of a following these days. Only the biggest. I wish someone would come out with a complete edition of his stories. I have read all of his story collections in paperback form but checked some out from the library, lent books to others, etc. I’d like to go through them all again. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2015, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/39 "2015-12-28T11:52:19Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Highly! Just as every few decades we get a new Robin Hood, and a new Bible Epic, and a new Pirate tale, and a new Western. > > […] > > We’ve set some very, very high bars. It’s going to be a DAMN long time before someone makes a “Lord of the Rings” movie that’s better than the ones we’re enjoying on DVD today, and it’s going to be a DAMN long time before someone does a better Sherlock Holmes than Jeremy Brett did. But both of these things will happen…and we, the audience, will pay to see them…and argue vehemently over how bad they are! 😉 I think this is the open question, but you have provided me a nice argument here. Fiction is one thing–it costs nothing but time to write a book. But movies on the scale of LotR are _very_ expensive to make, and you are right: no one is going to reboot LotR unless they are damn sure (or think they are) going to get their money back. So people are going to keep watching the old one. I think we are already seeing this phenomenon: there is a stock of fiction, music, and movies that reduces demand for new works. Heck, you have entire channels on cable rerunning old TV shows. I am going through old noir films on Amazon Prime. And ya know, 100 years from now, I think someone is still going to be watching Bonanza. In fact, I could turn the argument the other way 'round and say this: Hollywood is rebooting so much because putting out the new is so risky. I don’t think that is even a controversial statement. New would-be trilogies, such as Jupiter Ascending are flopping left and right. The weight of the past is so great that that’s the only safe bet these days. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2015, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/40 "2015-12-28T12:16:00Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > You’re missing something obvious here: if you were six years old today, it’s quite likely that you wouldn’t have seen anything like _Star Wars_ before either. I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that your own feelings about pop culture are universal, but there are babies being born every day who’ve never seen _Star Wars_. This is an argument in favor of my position! Because yes, they are born blank, and they can be just as satisfied with the Star Wars OT as a new movie. Young people today are often quite satisfied to listen to old music as well. They will listen to the Beatles, other 60s stuff, and demonstrate their own kind of nostalgia for the 70s and 80s. I was looking at a Quiet Riot video, and young people were saying, “Man it would have been a blast to live during the 80s!” Mmm, not really, but the music really did seem new then (often new and terrible, but new). So yes, kids being born in 2016 will have 120+ years of movies and recorded music and several centuries of fiction to enjoy. This doesn’t put downward pressure on creation of the new? This was true even when I was a kid. I listened to 50s rock collections and watched Brady Bunch reruns. The two big TV events of the year were watching Willy Wonka and the Wizard of Oz. Plus we had Disney stuff. And now, you have 40 more years of pop culture thrown on top of that plus–the real game changer–the Internet. Instant access to most if not all of it. > [@](#): > > I’m a librarian, and like most librarians I’ve read a lot of books. I’m currently reading _Ready Player One_ by Ernest Cline, which came highly recommended to me by two of my colleagues. The basic plot involves the characters trying to solve an online treasure hunt with a huge prize that was designed by a programmer who grew up in the '80s, and all the puzzles are based on '80s pop and geek culture. It’s not a particularly deep book or anything but I’m finding it quite entertaining, and if anything it would probably be _less_ fun if it weren’t full of familiar tropes and references to John Hughes movies and arcade games. I think there is infinite scope for new fiction, movies, music, etc. My point is that the _broad strokes_ have been done and done. You can write a zombie novel 1M ways, but the concept of the zombie itself is not going to be new and shocking to someone, as it probably was to the vast majority of people who saw Night of the Living Dead in 1968. The book you describe sounds like fun, and I understand your point about how it uses nostalgia. But it only marks off a small amount of territory that someone might want to use. Chosen One Wizard Boy in Magical School, however derivative it itself may have been, marks off a very large amount of territory. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401.md?page=3)