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.
Interpretation
Science fiction has the unique ability to explore limitless possibilities beyond our current reality.
In this quote, Theodore Sturgeon expresses the boundless creativity found in science fiction, emphasizing that it allows for exploration of infinite worlds, time periods, and species. Unlike other literary genres, science fiction can delve into realms beyond our imagination, offering an expansive canvas for writers and readers alike to experience extraordinary scenarios and ideas.
In practice
A writer might use this quote to inspire creativity in a workshop about science fiction writing.
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.
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.
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.
The respect for a musical score must come from the director... If the director has no power and has to surrender to budgetary constraints, this is where we have the problem.
Don't worry about how pretty (the story) sounds, how lilting it is, and the imagery, and the metaphor, all that. Most readers don't care. It's the people in your book that matter.
I hope that my painting has the impact of giving someone, as it did me, the feeling of his own totality, of his own separateness, of his own individuality.
My rhymes are like shot clocks,_x000D_ interstate cops_x000D_ and blood clots,_x000D_ my point is your flow gets stopped.
Sometimes female characters start out as the wife or girlfriend, but then I realize, 'No, she's the book,' and she becomes a main character. I surrender the book to her.
Bring something incomprehensible into the world!
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