A good science fiction story is a story with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its science content.
Interpretation
Science fiction addresses human issues through a lens of scientific possibilities.
This quote by Theodore Sturgeon emphasizes that the essence of a good science fiction narrative lies in its exploration of human challenges and solutions, while being deeply intertwined with scientific concepts. It suggests that the unique scenarios presented in science fiction are not merely fantastical but are essential to framing and solving real human dilemmas, showcasing the genre's ability to reflect on the human experience in the context of scientific exploration and innovation.
In practice
During a panel discussion on the impact of technology on society.
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 it is crud.
I sent The World Well Lost to one editor who rejected it on sight, and then wrote a letter to every other editor in the field warning them against the story, and urging them to reject it on sight without reading it.
Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called other, which is simply another universe, another planet, another species.
There are people who have tremendously important things to say, but they say it so poorly that nobody would ever want to read it.
Love's a different sort of thing, hot enough to make you flow into something, interflow, cool and anneal and be a weld stronger than what you started with.
We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
While I thought myself employed only in forming a nomenclature, and while I proposed to myself nothing more than to improve the chemical language, my work transformed itself by degrees, without my being able to prevent it, into a treatise upon the Elements of Chemistry.
Most Jupiter-sized planets orbit the mother star in a highly elliptical orbit. This means they will often cross the orbit of any Earth-like planet and fling it into outer space, making life impossible. But our Jupiter travels in a near-perfect circular orbit, preventing a collision with any Earth-like planet, making life possible.
I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.
Instead of planning the retirement of the Space Shuttle program, America should be preparing the shuttles for their next step in space: evolving, not shutting them down and laying off thousands of people.
But just as astronomy succeeded astrology, following Kepler's discovery of planetary regularities, the discoveries of these many principles in empirical explorations of intellectual processes in machines should lead to a science, eventually.
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