# 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:** 3
**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, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/41 "2015-12-28T12:28:20Z")
> [@lalaith](#): > > 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. Let me put it to you this way, from my own perspective. I used to participate on poetry workshop boards, and I wrote an essay that both irked people and drew a measure of approval. It was entitled, “The Criticism That Dare Not Speak Its Name.” (It doesn’t exist online or at all any more, so anything you might google ain’t mine. A pity…) But anyway, the fantasy-serving perspective of such message boards is to see one’s (and therefore others’) works as masterpieces in the making, though sometimes they just need a little fixin’! Thus, that’s what one would do on the board: make suggestions for improvement. What one couldn’t do was simply say the criticism that dare not speak its name: this just isn’t good enough and can’t be fixed. And that’s my definition of “crap.” And something can be “just not good enough” because of a pure lack of quality in the form of good ideas, good dialogue, good characters, etc., or redundancy with other works. Neither is fixable. And I guess we need to enhance our Venn diagram to include works that would be good except for fatal flaws. ---
**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, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/42 "2015-12-28T12:36:49Z")
> [@lalaith](#): > > 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. Yes, you are quite right. We keep getting new people on the planet who will experience stuff we consider banal as amazing firsts. In other threads, people have tried to leverage this true point into, “And thus the future will be like the past, and pop culture will keep rolling along as always!!!” I agree with that argument to this extent: people are going to keep wanting pop culture to reflect the modern world. Even a 90s movie, which looks otherwise pretty much as a movie does today, seems weird if the plot revolves around someone not having access to a cell phone. This argument is diminished in large degree by the nostalgia factor: people, including young people, like 80s teen movies _because they are 80s teen movies._ Their appeal has increased with time _because_ they have become appealingly retro. Thus, in the year 2050, kids might be getting into the latest vampire novel in which all of the cars on the road are self-driving. Or they might be getting into those original Ann Rice novels and enjoying their retro appeal. Probably a mix of both. But there is a lot of territory that is not dependent on “modernity”: fantasy, sci-fi, etc. No one is going to be able to do a rehash, for example, of Harry Potter without people screaming “Harry Potter ripoffffff!!!” ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2015, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/43 "2015-12-28T15:57:23Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Thoughts?! Considering that Ep IV was a retread of Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress” in a whole lot of ways, it somehow seems less offensive that it’s being retreaded itself. I think there’s a lot of merit in being able to take something that exists and put your own spin on it- think about how many covers of some songs there are. Just because a song is a cover doesn’t mean that it de-facto sucks. Same thing about movies; how many Three Musketeers movies have there been? Ben Hur? Heaven Can Wait? Dracula? Frankenstein? Batman? Some of them are markedly better than the originals. Some aren’t. The only sketchy part with it in my mind is when it’s uncredited or unacknowledged in some way. ---
**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, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/44 "2015-12-28T20:13:07Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > 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. Or they might be _more_ satisfied with a new movie. I know people who’ve discovered (to their horror) that their children considered the original _Star Wars_ movies kinda boring but loved _The Phantom Menace_. Then there are those who just aren’t into _Star Wars_ and prefer _Harry Potter_, _Twilight_, _The Hunger Games_, or some other franchise that isn’t nearly 40 years old already. > [@](#): > > 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? Apparently not. Books sales have been declining, but at the same time the number of new titles published each year has increased – and that’s not counting self-publishing, which is easier now than ever. Writers want to write, it doesn’t seem to matter to them that lots of books have already been written. And while there’s _some_ money to be made off old media, the big bucks will go to the publisher or movie studio that lands the next hit. The majority of new books will of course never be hits, or find much of an audience at all, but a number of the [biggest selling books of all time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books) were published within the last 10-15 years. I have not, in either my personal or professional life, encountered even _one_ reader who has decided to stop bothering with new books altogether and just choose from the centuries of old books already out there. There are other reasons to be pessimistic about the future of publishing, but I see no reason to believe that the public is going to lose interest in new material or that media corporations are going to stop marketing new material anytime soon. > [@Aeschines](#): > > But there is a lot of territory that is not dependent on “modernity”: fantasy, sci-fi, etc. No one is going to be able to do a rehash, for example, of Harry Potter without people screaming “Harry Potter ripoffffff!!!” So what? Plenty of people have screamed “_Wizard of Earthsea_ ripoff!”, “_Books of Magic_ ripoff!”, “_Wizards Hall_ ripoff!”, and even “_Ender’s Game_ ripoff!” about _Harry Potter_. J.K. Rowling still has millions of fans and a huge pile of money. And while most fantasy stories aren’t dependent upon modern _technology_, outdated attitudes about morality, women, sexual orientation, race, etc., can still put people off. _Harry Potter_ is a product of its time in more ways than the brief depictions of Muggle tech. The casual portrayal of a racially integrated school and both literal and metaphorical interracial romance would have seemed shocking to many American readers not all that long ago. The depictions of Voldemort and the Death Eaters, or pure-blooded, blond-haired bully Draco Malfoy, would have been dangerously subversive in Nazi Germany. Yet by the later books in the series it was starting to seem a little old-fashioned to me that there were no openly gay characters at all (we have the Word of God that Dumbledore is gay and that’s arguably implied in the last book, but he wasn’t out), and it may seem stranger still to kids now, or in a few years. There are almost certainly other elements of the series that will seem outdated to future readers in ways we can’t even guess today. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2015, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/45 "2015-12-28T20:56:12Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > 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. . . . The same thing is happening, right now, in front of our eyes, with Jack Vance. Part of the reason may be that, in his later years, Vance produced less fiction, and some of it was not of the highest quality. His last couple of books were disappointing, and that might be part of why he isn’t as much on our minds as, say, Asimov, whose latest works were still brilliant. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2015, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/46 "2015-12-28T21:51:32Z")
> [@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?! Where are the objective standards for quality published? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2015, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/47 "2015-12-29T01:38:06Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Where are the objective standards for quality published? Joking, surely. There are no “objective” standards for aesthetic quality. That doesn’t mean that Brak the Barbarian (actual book) is “as good” as Lord of the Rings. There really are levels of quality, and some things really are better than others. (A guy I knew wrote to a major retail corporation and demanded their specific objective corporate definition of what “rudeness” meant. Good luck, chum!) ---
**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 29, 2015, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/48 "2015-12-29T13:50:15Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > The same thing is happening, right now, in front of our eyes, with Jack Vance. I don’t know him very well, just a short story or two. What would you recommend, so as to keep the fire burning? Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![galacticjourney](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f08c70/32.png) [@galacticjourney](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galacticjourney)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/49 "2015-12-30T01:33:21Z")
> [@lisiate](#): > > I’ve been following [Galactic Journey](http://galacticjourney.org/), a very entertaining blog which reviews the science fiction digests from 55 years ago, for a couple of weeks now. Sturgeon was an optimist. So nice to have a new fellow traveler! I would not say that 90% of what I read is crap. The average rating of the magazines I review hovers around “three stars,” which means an even mix of superlative, moderately enjoyable, and poor stories. Of course, anything that gets printed has a decent chance of being… decent. I’ve been told that I am too harsh, and too regularly harsh, on a few whipping boys (e.g. Randy Garrett and John Campbell), but I think I’m pretty objective. Of course, _I_ would! ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/50 "2015-12-30T02:52:53Z")
Randy Garrett as in Randall Garrett? You have anything other than praise for Randall Garrett? Thou beast! Begone from these environs, churl and varlet, and mayst scurrility and obloquy be upon thee! (I love the bloke!) ---
**Author:** ![galacticjourney](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f08c70/32.png) [@galacticjourney](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galacticjourney)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/51 "2015-12-30T03:37:53Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Randy Garrett as in Randall Garrett? > > You have anything other than praise for Randall Garrett? Thou beast! Begone from these environs, churl and varlet, and mayst scurrility and obloquy be upon thee! (I love the bloke!) Like, sorry man. Maybe he’ll get better. He’s all right when teamed up with Silverbob and Janifer, but by himself? [Feh](http://galacticjourney.org/?p=18). ---
**Author:** ![galacticjourney](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/f08c70/32.png) [@galacticjourney](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galacticjourney)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/52 "2015-12-30T22:21:28Z")
> [@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. > > “Life isn’t fair. I hope you didn’t think it was.” Alexei Panshin. (Himself not as well known as he deserves.) I’m hoping to bring him back. I’m very fond of his stuff. [http://galacticjourney.org/?tag=robert-sheckley](http://galacticjourney.org/?tag=robert-sheckley) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/53 "2015-12-31T10:49:10Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > 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. Then I find your position is hard to understand. Half the time you are complaining about how people are constantly wanting something new, and discarding any reference to the old as unoriginal. The other half of the time, you’re saying that people only want old stuff, and this is preventing the creation of the new material. These seem to be opposites to me. They cancel each other out. The desire for the new and for the old are in balance, and you’ve not given a reason why they’ve fallen out of balance. As more new stuff comes out, people forget about more old stuff. And thus the new stuff that is taking elements from the old seems new. That’s just how the cycle works. ---
**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 31, 2015, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/54 "2015-12-31T22:49:47Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > As more new stuff comes out, people forget about more old stuff. And thus the new stuff that is taking elements from the old seems new. That’s just how the cycle works. _Has worked until now._ That’s my whole point: we are at an unusual time in pop culture history. We are right at the beginning of that history. I am saying that we don’t have enough data (history) to assume that the future will be like the past. I could be wrong. I _know_ that there are countervailing trends that I have tried to note as well, such as the desire for works that reflect current technology and cultural trends ( **Lamia’s** points about Harry Potter already being behind the curve on gay rights/inclusion were very on target, I thought). But, all in all, I think we have tended to underestimate or rather not consider at all the effect of the accumulation of good pop culture that can, so long as civilization maintains it, be enjoyed forever. ---
**Author:** ![bowlweevils](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e5b9ba/32.png) [@bowlweevils](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bowlweevils)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2016, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/55 "2016-01-03T10:50:22Z")
> [@botsgotme](#): > > And, as Francis Fukuyama tells us, history is over…evrything has been done…we are just repeating stuff. Francis Fukuyama was wrong. I had the pleasure of hearing Mr Fukuyama do his speechified version of his thesis, the flaw of which quickly became obvious: history was over because the collapse of the USSR and the turn of China toward a market economy meant that it was clear that free market capitalism would be clearly seen as the _only_ choice for the future, and, as all people are rational, they would recognize this and then fuzzy bunnies w/super-cheap bunny chow all around the world. I, as a graduate student in cognitive psychology, asked Mr Fukuyama what evidence he had for the premise that people are rational. He stammered and said “if you can’t assume rationality, I don’t know where you would go…” I could have done a better job of making the argument that humans were rational than he did, despite all of history and 100+ years of careful research demonstrating they were not, and not having written a book premised on the “Mr Spock” model of humanity (he’s only _half_ human, dammit!). However, we knew quite well what the alternative was then. It was called “the Clash of Civilizations”. Some other guy was going around giving speeches about that. That’s the guy who was right. That guy or HP Lovecraft. I’m hoping it’s not all a bunch of tentacles and slow digestion by beings we can’t comprehend, but can only know they see us as snacks at best. (Yes, I know most of the tentacles, and even the paying attention to humans, was tacked on by later contributors to the mythos.) ---
**Author:** ![bowlweevils](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e5b9ba/32.png) [@bowlweevils](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bowlweevils)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2016, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/56 "2016-01-03T11:51:30Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > The same thing is happening, right now, in front of our eyes, with Jack Vance. > > Part of the reason may be that, in his later years, Vance produced less fiction, and some of it was not of the highest quality. His last couple of books were disappointing, and that might be part of why he isn’t as much on our minds as, say, Asimov, whose latest works were still brilliant. I have heard/read these types of comments about Jack Vance since I picked up my first RPG magazine and attended my first sci-fi con, which would be 1985 (I-Con IV). ---
**Author:** ![TheAllSeeingEye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/919ad9/32.png) [@TheAllSeeingEye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheAllSeeingEye)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2016, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/57 "2016-01-03T12:49:34Z")
Quality isnt the issue. relevance to the beholder is. As the world goes global less and less is relevant locally, yet it reaches us. some examples: black american ghetto music, peruvian pan pipes, russian classical compositions are Irrelevant and thefore stupid and therefore crap … from my point of view. yet i only get exposed to them because of american and european colonialism. back where these came from im sure they are relevany and true, and therefore High Quality. But to me, they are CRAP ---
**Author:** ![JR\_Brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JR\_Brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JR_Brown)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2016, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/58 "2016-01-04T22:36:34Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > 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. I don’t think this is true; you can still make something great while directly copying something great. For instance, there is a manga series called _Requiem of the Rose King_ (manga = Japanese comic books) which is being published in English now, which is very closely based on Shakespeare’s _Richard the Third_ as filtered through the aesthetic and thematic perspective of Japanese girl’s comics (so lots of gender issues and psychological torment), and it is outstanding. In general, I don’t think redundancy is the problem, quality is still the problem. Originality is great when well-executed, but a well-executed work that uses existing plot, character, and thematic elements can also be great. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2016, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/59 "2016-01-04T23:17:18Z")
> [@galacticjourney](#): > > I’m hoping to bring him back. I’m very fond of his stuff. > > [http://galacticjourney.org/?tag=robert-sheckley](http://galacticjourney.org/?tag=robert-sheckley) I’ll be visiting your site as soon as I retire and have the time ( a few more months.) I’m with you on Sheckley - I just found a few of his books I didn’t have at a used book store, and they go on the top of my thousand book list. Included was Journey of Joenes, which I had heard if but did not read. I’ve got an embarrassingly large number of 50s and 60s books and magazines (almost complete from 1960 on) in case you need to find something. By the way, I have the original of the Dillon illo you printed which I got at Noreascon in 1972. Amazing coincidence since I hardly have any art. PM me for my email. ---
**Author:** ![iljitsch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/77aa72/32.png) [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2016, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401/60 "2016-01-07T10:59:17Z")
I find it highly appropriate that the thread complaining that everything has done before has been done before twice, by the same OP (right?). (Very mild Star Wars 7 spoilers further below.) Of course at some point, all the broad strokes have been painted and something truly unheard of is going to happen less and less. That is not to say that within the confines of “someone wants something and either gets it or doesn’t get it” there’s no room for anything fresh or even unfamiliar. And I’m sure that if you go look for it, you’ll be able to find just that. Even in movies and on TV you can find some rather bizarre stuff. But I’m not so sure that’s what we want. “Boy meets girl / girl sprouts wings / boy barbecues wings” just doesn’t have the same appeal as that other type of boy meets girl story. There’s a balance to be struck between new and familiar. Also, certain genres require certain elements and care much less about certain other elements. That’s why I can rarely stand action movies. I do like comedies (although of course they have to be funny) even though the characters may be just as card board and the plot just as predictable. I just went to see the new Star Wars again yesterday. I never see movies in the theater multiple times. So I really liked it. During the first half I was thinking this could be my favorite Star Wars movie. Then the plot machinations started becoming rather deja-vu-y. That didn’t sink the movie for me, but it did knock off some points. Then again, what should they have done? The reason this movie made its first billion in its first week is that it’s Star Wars. There are plenty of movies with much more original concepts if that’s what you prefer. We go to the new Star Wars because we want to revisit something familiar. And given the concept, there’s only so many ways the conflict can play out. George Lucas learned to his detriment that different directions aren’t necessarily an improvement. Also, when you’re really familiar with something you start to appreciate more subtle differences. Classical music fans don’t get how people can listen to techno music: same beat over and over again with no variation in tempo or loudness. But if you like that kind of music the way the motifs change just at the right moments can be brilliant. To me, all indie music sounds the same but apparently it doesn’t to the people that like that kind of stuff. I love watching Survivor. After 30 seasons the anticipation of big moves is wonderful, especially as that anticipation often ends in frustration but when it plays out it’s the best. But I do understand that for someone who comes to it new it’s basically nonsense. I think the real criticism is that in many works, there’s no good faith effort to make _all_ the parts good. Romantic movies and dramas have the emotions. Block busters the explosions. Science fiction has the interesting technology and settings. Wouldn’t it be nice to have all of those in one movie? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sturgeons-law-90-of-everything-is-crap-significantly-understates-the-problem/741401.md?page=4)