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Gah! Just perusing the article makes me want to submit it to the Bulwer Lytton contest.

Especially given today’s globalized culture, and the strategic and military advantages that emerging technologies can provide, it is highly unlikely that meaningful constraints on technological evolution, whether derived from cultural, competitive, or religious foundations, will be successful.

To misquote Mark Twain: When the author dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

It was a dark and stormy night, as it would be for the next 23 years on the world of Lo'soun, a lop-sided planet that rolls around its axis like one of those spinning tops kids have, and for the next 23 years the brave space colonists would have to live without light, warmth, or the screaming, car-sized cicadas that only come out in the summer. -- Matthew Hannum, Glen Burnie, MD

The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest has a sci-fi category as well.

(Although I must warn that the entries are quite groan-inducing)

...The master retributivist of eternal liberty sabotages human systems instead.

That's some sentence you have there. Have you considered entering this contest?

How do you tell a compelling story about IT infrastructure?

Once upon a time, there was a filing cabinet.

How about inspiration from last year's winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, such as this gem:

What the Highway Department's chief IT guy for the new computerized roadway hated most was listening to the 'smart' components complain about being mixed with asphalt instead of silicon and made into speed bumps instead of graceful vases, like the one today from chip J176: "I coulda had glass; I coulda been a container; I coulda been some bottle, instead of a bump, which is what I am."

How do you tell a compelling story about IT infrastructure?

Once upon a time, there was a filing cabinet.

How about inspiration from last year's winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, such as this gem:

What the Highway Department's chief IT guy for the new computerized roadway hated most was listening to the 'smart' components complain about being mixed with asphalt instead of silicon and made into speed bumps instead of graceful vases, like the one today from chip J176: "I coulda had glass; I coulda been a container; I coulda been some bottle, instead of a bump, which is what I am."

Try The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: Where “WWW” means “Wretched Writers Welcome”.

May I direct you towards the Bulwer Lytton Contest. http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ Such talent should be encouraged.

Wow !

Thanks for the link !!

I believe that Bulwer-Lytton is the canonical definition of purple prose. ;) ( http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ )

Obviously not a reader of HPL or Clark Ashton Smith. THAT is purple prose. The famous paragraph that started with "It was a dark and stormy night" was, in contrast, written as if by an Irish Setter with almost human intelligence and no thing about squirrels, stream of consciousness if thought by an ADHD sufferer on crack and LSD.

I believe that Bulwer-Lytton is the canonical definition of purple prose. ;) ( http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/ )

"Thirty days in space, and not a wench to be seen . . . grease up the monkey!"

Reminds me of the 1985 winner of the Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest:

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.
--Martha Simpson, Glastonbury, Connecticut (1985 Winner)

Do you get extra points if your essay begins with the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night."?

Yep! Another favorite is:

"I put on my robe and wizard hat..."

Do you get extra points if your essay begins with the phrase "It was a dark and stormy night."?

computings Mount Everest - the petaflops barrier

Two bad cliched metaphors in one! Its not a peak, and its not a barrier, just another arbitrary milestone. Who writes this crap?
Oh ... a "professional" writer from an industry magazine. That figures.
This guy should enter the The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

Priceless!! I had never heard of this contest before, but for those interested it is a contest to write the "worst possible opening sentence of a novel": http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

She had a set of divine proportions that could cause cardiac arrest in a Yeti.

A Bulwer-Lytton candidate to be proud of!

Yes. You forgot to mention that the writing sucks. I grabbed a coworkers copy and read the first page recently. I counted at least 6 cliches. "You shouldn't have run" is always good for a laugh, but to have it spoken by an albino with a gun... somebody please tell me this is a satire or parody of some sort? Also, the opening sentence should be entered in the Bulwer-Lytton contest.

... belongs in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

It was a dark and stormy night, and there was a nearly limitless pot of fun on to boil.

The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest

In 3010, the potatoes triumphed.

John, surfing, said to his mother, surfing beside him, "How do you like surfing?"

My first reaction after seeing the 2005 results pages is that if the people who run this thing want to keep it going, they might invest a little more design thought into their work. Yes, even though they only do it out of love and don't get a nickel for it.

My second feeling is, despite the burden of reading a lot more bad prose, they should go back to a paragraph rather than a sentence. Many of the entries of note were more silly than really horrible and I think requiring the writer to write a coherent paragraph would produce better (erm, I mean worse) results.

By the way, if you want more info on the history of the contest, go to the the Bulwer-Lytton home page .

Yes, I am one of the thirty-odd writers who collectively make up "Travis Tea," a pseudonym (and a pun -- say it outloud). :-)

Here is some background on this wacky collaborative sting project that we cobbled together.

Several months ago, in response to a claim by a certain publisher that writers working in the SF/F genre believe it "does not require believable storylines" or "does not need believable every-day characters," genre writer James D. Macdonald got approximately 40 mostly science fiction and fantasy writers to cobble together an intentionally horrendous monstrosity of a novel (read it here as an FTP download in RTF and PDF format) and then submit it, in order to display the less than discriminating tastes of that same certain publisher in regard to the kind of work they accept for publication.

Earlier last week, the sting has been revealed, the publisher fell for it (retracting the acceptance as soon as news spread, of course), and I proudly own up to having authored Chapter 13 of ATLANTA NIGHTS by Travis Tea .

Here's a bit of an excerpt from my chapter:

"Actually, I think I am ready to order now," said Isadore, firmly ignoring it all, flipping back his red forelocks out of his face and beyond the back to where the bulk of the abundant and suggestive ponytail rested against his wide strongly utterly virile back -- a back that could do the beast with two backs so well, when one of the two backs came into question and under scrutiny (but the other back of course depended on the woman writhing with him, under him and on top of him ah, the beasts they would make!).

Yes, you can even buy your own copy at Lulu.com to read for gut-wrenching hilarity and educational purposes (lessons on how not to write can be derived from the perusal of this book). Here is the stellar lineup of blurbs from the back cover. And that's just the ones that fit the back cover. There are twice as many additional blurbs inside the front matter of the book. Some of them are truly classic....

I predict this will replace THE EYE OF ARGON as midnight panel reading material at science fiction conventions. This book, is purely and genuinely bad. So bad that it's great. In all seriousness, The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest should give it a special achievement prize. :-)

For more detailed coverage, including a list of contributors, of the ATLANTA NIGHTS atrocity -- or should we say, travesty -- see the Cold Ground blog , and Tor Books editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Making Light . ..

Also, looks like the LA Times has picked up the story .

:-)

Vera Nazarian

Maynard Fimble was told that "you can't compare apples and oranges," but, he thought, they are both eatable, grow on trees, are about the same size, are good for you, have a peel, come in many varieties, and are approximately round in shape, thus, to his horror and guilt, he realized that he was comparing them and wondered what punishment awaited him and on whose order.

I still prefer "it was a dark and stormy night".

The Darwinian poetry can be pretty bad. But it doesn't hold a candle to the Bulwer-Lytton price winners given every year for the most gawdawful first sentence of an as-yet-and-we-hope-forever unwritten novel.

Does Slashdot have the equivalent of the Bulwer-Lytton Awards? Maybe we should.

Let's see... what was I doing at the cusp of the millenium? Oh, yeah, that's right... I was working, not figuring out ways to waste my employer's bandwidth downloading old Ace of Base singles. So much for my status as a "self-respecting culture maven" *snort*.

I enjoyed the memory trip and all, but did any body else find the writing... well, a canditate for The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest? I seriously had to stop, reread and just laugh at the way the sentences were phrased.

We began to compare notes: "You won't believe the code I am trying to fix". And: "Well you cannot imagine the brain damage level of the code I'm trying to fix". As well as: "It more than bad code, the author really had to try to make it this bad!"

After a few minutes we wandered back into my office where I posted a flame to net.lang.c inviting people to try and out obfuscate the UN*X source code we had just been working on.

(I had to post this typo correction :-). Thus began the tradition of putting typos in the contest rules and guidelines ... to make them more obfuscated of course! :-)

BTW: This posting was made back in the days when AT&T was the evil giant. Now, Microsoft makes AT&T look mild and kind in comparison. :-( (IMHO) ).

BTW: See the story about the ''Bill Gates'' award. :-)

OK, back to the story. We received a number of entries by EMail. When we began to receive messages from outside of the US, Larry and I decided to include International in the name. The 1st IOCCC winners were posted on 17 April 1984.

There were 4 winners in 1984.

1. <dis>honorable mention
2. 3rd place
3. 2nd place
4. 1st place

The <dis>honorable mention wished to remain anonymous. While many have asked who it was, we have continued to follow the author's wish to remain anonymous. A few years ago, we asked the author if they still wanted to remain anonymous. They said: "Yes, I want to keep my anonymity. But you can tell them that I am a well known for my connection to the C language". The only other anonymous winner occurred this year.

The 1984 winner remains one of my all time favorites.

The name used in the posting of the 1st IOCCC winner posting was International Obfuscated C Code Contest or IOCCC for short.

The posting said 1st annual, so in 1985 we held the 2nd IOCCC contest and the tradition continues as the longest running contest on the Internet.

P.S. Part of the inspiration for making the IOCCC a contest goes to the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest.

P^2.S. See the overall README for more details.

P^3.S. See also the IOCCC FAQ.

P^4.S. Please see my apology for the late posting of the 2001 winners.

"OLD?!? I'm not old, just experienced!" he said, swinging his sword hard left, only to be blocked by the other man's.

So the author's idea of an "active" interface is a flashing cursor? Linux has any number of these from the *shes to the various xterms.

I'm not sure I want my computer to be doing anything when I turn it on. Unless I have multiple power-on buttons like "Form of a Wordprocessor" and "Form of a Web Browser", how is this general purpose device to know what I want it to do? Instant-on would help a lot, but you still have to tell the box what you want it to do.

Perhaps a pseudo-command line is the way to go. Start typing first, and then have the box try to guess if this is a URL, an email, a shopping list or the Great American Novel. It would kind of suck to end up at ItWasADarkAndStormyNight.com, though.

And of course, let's not forget The Bulwer-Lytton Contest.

The 1996 Winner, my favorite sentence of all time:
"Ace, watch your head!" hissed Wanda urgently, yet somehow provocatively, through red, full, sensuous lips, but he couldn't you know, since nobody can actually watch more than part of his nose or a little cheek or lips if he really tries, but he appreciated her warning."

It sounds like an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

...the Bulwer-Lutton Fiction Contest, which consists of reader-submitted snippets of godawful prose.

That was a great post, we need a site that like the "It was a dark and stormy night" Bulwer-Lytton site that lets us post our favorite title-synopsis skits for Seinfeld.

• The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma of a piquant, ancho chili glaze enticingly enhanced with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him, coyly garnished by a garland of variegated radicchio and caramelized onions, and impishly drizzled with glistening rivulets of vintage balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic oil; yes, as he surveyed the body of the slain food critic slumped on the floor of the cozy, but nearly empty, bistro, a quick inventory of his senses told corpulent Inspector Moreau that this was, in all likelihood, an inside job.
  --Bob Perry, Milton, MA (1998 Winner)
• The moment he laid eyes on the lifeless body of the nude socialite sprawled across the bathroom floor, Detective Leary knew she had committed suicide by grasping the cap on the tamper-proof bottle, pushing down and twisting while she kept her thumb firmly pressed against the spot the arrow pointed to, until she hit the exact spot where the tab clicks into place, allowing her to remove the cap and swallow the entire contents of the bottle, thus ending her life.
  -- Artie Kalemeris, Fairfax, VA (1997 Winner)
• As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless tyrant that mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information superhighway.
  --Larry Brill, Austin, Texas (1994 Winner)

• The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma of a piquant, ancho chili glaze enticingly enhanced with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him, coyly garnished by a garland of variegated radicchio and caramelized onions, and impishly drizzled with glistening rivulets of vintage balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic oil; yes, as he surveyed the body of the slain food critic slumped on the floor of the cozy, but nearly empty, bistro, a quick inventory of his senses told corpulent Inspector Moreau that this was, in all likelihood, an inside job.
  --Bob Perry, Milton, MA (1998 Winner)
• The moment he laid eyes on the lifeless body of the nude socialite sprawled across the bathroom floor, Detective Leary knew she had committed suicide by grasping the cap on the tamper-proof bottle, pushing down and twisting while she kept her thumb firmly pressed against the spot the arrow pointed to, until she hit the exact spot where the tab clicks into place, allowing her to remove the cap and swallow the entire contents of the bottle, thus ending her life.
  -- Artie Kalemeris, Fairfax, VA (1997 Winner)
• As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless tyrant that mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information superhighway.
  --Larry Brill, Austin, Texas (1994 Winner)

Send that to the Bulwer-Lytton contest: Bulwer-Lytton contest

• The Elements of Style,
• the Obfuscated C contest, and even
• the Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.

Bravo to the amici curiae[?] for giving the court (or at least its clerks) such fine reading material!

The immortal words "It was a dark and stormy night.", straight out of Paul Clifford, formed one of the most amusing contests I've ever seen. A truly magnificent work of writing. ;) -- Patrick McCarthy, he who's three digit account got nukified