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.
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who can't attain it in anything.
When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.
My favorite flamenco singers, they're not trying to look pretty. They're trying to put truth in what they do, in the way they express themselves. Sometimes that's not beauty, but it's beautiful.
My writing is inspired by where I come from, where I am today, and where I hope to go some day.
There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting, and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.
There's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.