It is in this vein that I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against the attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of sf is crud. The Revelation:

Ninety percent of everything is crud.

Corollary 1: The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and it is regrettable; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere.

Corollary 2: The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.

— Theodore Sturgeon, “On Hand: A Book,” 1958

(In a 1953 speech he’d said, “When people talk about the mystery novel, they mention The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. When they talk about the western, they say there’s The Way West and Shane. But when they talk about science fiction, they call it ‘that Buck Rogers stuff.'”)

In the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” the narrator declares that “Holmes seldom laughed, but he got as near it as his old friend Watson could remember.”

Is that so? In 1960, Charles E. Lauterbach and Edward S. Lauterbach compiled this “Frequency Table Showing the Number and Kind of Responses Sherlock Holmes Made to Humourous Situations and Comments in His 60 Recorded Adventures”:

Smile	103
Laugh	65
Joke	58
Chuckle	31
Humor	10
Amusement	9
Cheer	7
Delight	7
Twinkle	7
Miscellaneous	19
Total	316

In a 1964 issue of the Sherlock Holmes Journal, A.G. Cooper claimed to have counted 292 instances of Holmes’ laughter. The Lauterbachs suggest that Watson may have been deaf.

(Charles E. Lauterbach and Edward S. Lauterbach, “The Man Who Seldom Laughed,” Baker Street Journal Christmas Annual 1960, 265–271.)