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.
Music that is born complex is not inherently better or worse than music that is born simple.
And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart
Art is the most beautiful of all lies.
I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am; the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974.
You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful, and before you know it, it's neither of those things, and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.
The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream.
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