"Create a world in which these things do or do not exist, or in which they are extended in some way. Test reality against this fiction. The reader will recognize the world that you're talking about, even though it may be another one altogether"
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Science fiction’s oldest magic trick is the disguise: tell the truth while pretending you’re making it up. Sturgeon is spelling out that sleight of hand with unusual candor. “Create a world” sounds like pure invention, but the real engine is the lab instruction that follows: “Test reality against this fiction.” The intent isn’t escapism; it’s verification. You build a controlled environment where one variable is changed - a norm disappears, a fear is amplified, a taboo becomes policy - and then you watch what the altered system reveals about the original.
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to “realism” as the default badge of seriousness. Sturgeon implies that so-called realistic stories often smuggle their assumptions in unexamined, while speculative fiction announces its premises and forces them into the open. By extending or removing “these things,” he gives the writer permission to make social rules visible by bending them. The result is recognition: the reader sees their own world more clearly precisely because it’s been refracted.
Context matters: Sturgeon wrote during the midcentury boom of genre magazines, when sci-fi was frequently dismissed as pulp gadgetry. His career, and his famous “Sturgeon’s Law” (that most of anything is crap), sits inside a larger argument that the genre’s best work is an ethical and psychological instrument, not a toy. The final twist - “another one altogether” - captures the genre’s sharpest irony: the farther you travel from reality in premise, the more ruthlessly you can corner it in practice.
The subtext is a quiet rebuke to “realism” as the default badge of seriousness. Sturgeon implies that so-called realistic stories often smuggle their assumptions in unexamined, while speculative fiction announces its premises and forces them into the open. By extending or removing “these things,” he gives the writer permission to make social rules visible by bending them. The result is recognition: the reader sees their own world more clearly precisely because it’s been refracted.
Context matters: Sturgeon wrote during the midcentury boom of genre magazines, when sci-fi was frequently dismissed as pulp gadgetry. His career, and his famous “Sturgeon’s Law” (that most of anything is crap), sits inside a larger argument that the genre’s best work is an ethical and psychological instrument, not a toy. The final twist - “another one altogether” - captures the genre’s sharpest irony: the farther you travel from reality in premise, the more ruthlessly you can corner it in practice.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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