After 42 years, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is coming to a close.
If the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest doesn’t sound familiar, it’s the contest dedicated to the WORST openings for a novel.
“It was a dark and stormy night…” might be the best-known bad opening, but it is far from the worst in their archives.
2014 had a couple of spectacular entries in the Science Fiction category:
Continuing down the rabbit-hole, the amount of cringe in their archives is impressive.
Notable examples include:
1985 - Grand Prize - Martha Simpson; Glastonbury, CT
The countdown had stalled at T minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick, rubbery lips unmistakably—the first of many such advances during what would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my career.
2006 - Grand Prize - Jim Guigli; Carmichael, CA
The notorious stagecoach robber “Deadeye” Dan was as handy with a six-gun as he was with a bottle of rotgut whiskey, though neither had ever made him a particularly good lover.
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