1998

San Jose State University One Washington Square San Jose, CA 95192

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest\
1998 Results

Tuesday, July 21, 1998 Contact: Prof. Scott Rice Department of English 408/924-4447 (W) 408/227-8159 (H)

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

Bob Perry, a 46-year-old corporate attorney from Milton, Massachusetts,
is this year\'s winner of the 17^th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
A self-described dabbler in writing and sloganeering, Perry was
runner-up in last year\'s detective category. This year he said he was
inspired by reading restaurant critics, being impressed (if that is the
correct term) by their meticulous detail and sumptuous prose. The
\"panel of undistinguished judges\" approved both the form and the
content of Perry\'s entry, several reporting that it made them hungry.

Conceived to honor the memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl
Bulwer- Lytton and encourage unpublished authors who do not have the
time to actually write books, the contest challenges entrants to compose
bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Bulwer was selected as patron
of the competition because he opened his novel \"Paul Clifford\" (1830)
with the immortal words, \"It was a dark and stormy night.\"

This year\'s competition attracted an even larger response than last
year, when the competition entered cyberspace with a Bulwer-Lytton
Fiction Contest Home Page (http://www.bulwer-lytton.com). After the site
attracted a number of awards, including selection as a Yahoo Pick of the
Year, electronic entries streamed in from such locales as Australia, New
Zealand, England, Ireland, France, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Israel,
India, Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and the People\'s Republic of
China.

In keeping with the stature and dignity of the competition, Mr. Perry
will receive a pittance.

Runner-Up

The international team of astronauts each had a salutary comment as they
paused before entering the troubled Mir spacestation: The German, upon
seeing the Russian tethered in his capsule, said, \"Bei Mir bist du
chained\"; the American, who had recently reviewed his collection of
Disney cartoons, spoke, \"Mir, mir off the wall, who will fix it, proud
and tall\"; but the Israeli astronaut just shook his head and, as he
entered, could be heard muttering, \"Oy vey is Mir!\"\

--Larry Sherman, Fremont, CA (650) 926-4276 (7 am - 3:30 pm days);\

$510$ 792-0204 (evenings, weekends)

Winner: Western

It was a majestic weapon, a masterpiece of form and function,
hand-crafted by master gunsmiths, accurate to a hundred yards, its
bright silver body and long barrel glistening in the sunlight, the
hand-carved ivory inlay warm against the palm, and mom got a good dollar
for it after my brother was shot in the back.\

--Terry Mayer, Oshawa, Ontario 905-434 - 1796

Winner: Romance

My heart skipped a beat as the bearded walrus gently nudged me in the
small of my back with one smooth, curved tusk, expelling a warm breath
of air into my upturned face, its smell of peanuts reminding me of that
precious night on Coney Island; the night when I became a woman . . . a
woman and a convict.\

--Alison M. Kelly, Vero Beach, FL (561) 234-6550

Runner-Up

Her toes tingled when she saw him�-mostly the two outer toes, the little
ones, whose nails had been ripped off by a lawnmower when she was
three-�and although it might have been the medicated fungal spray she
used for her athlete\'s foot that caused the sensuous shiver in her
digits, she thought it was probably him.\

--Brian Kinlan, New Haven, CT (203) 759-6098

Dishonorable Mention

Rita and Michael\'s passionate lovemaking was brought to an abrupt end
by an unfortunate emission of gas � which prompted Rita to wonder, with
more than a little irritation, why playing around with that stupid mask
was such a turn-on for her dentist fiancee.\

--Helaine R. Freeman, Little Rock, AR (501) 378-3511, work; (501)
375-1672, home

Winner: Science Fiction

While the technician finished his work, Elmodine Jaatrix reflected upon
how badly the evening was going: the ionizer on her Acme 2100 E-Z Klean
dishwasher had burnt out, the window-bot had developed an attitude, and
the Instafashion clothing dispenser would only produce athletic
supporters and Calvin Klein IX synthawool peasant blouses, and as she
stared at the gibbous moon slowly rising in front of her, she pondered
morosely, \"If they can build cities in the rings of Saturn, why can\'t
they make pants for repairmen that don\'t droop?\"\

--Dave Lyon, Overland Park, KS phone (913) 681-8416

Runner-Up

\"You will make an excellent meal for my slavering minions,
Earthwoman,\" gurgled Xardon The Conqueror as he slithered across the
floor, propelled by his scaled tentacles, while his quivering eye stalks
ogled the cowering form of his forlorn captive, \"because you have a
high protein content, lots of complex carbohydrates, the full B-vitamin
series, and a really nice set of ta-ta\'s!\"\

--Ross Borden, Victoria, British Columbia

Dishonorable Mention

Like an armadillo making love to a toaster, \"The Emperor\" shook
violently upon its launching pad before, after one last frenzied
assault, rising from a thick cloud of smoke and sailing into the
atmosphere that wrapped the planet like a thick Amish quilt handstitched
by loving hands while the menfolk labored in the hay fields.\

--Marx Prewett, Dallas, TX

Winner: Adventure

Sir Lyonnel Ondermappe (so famous for his discoveries of lost
civilizations that when people cited him they had only to say, \"Look,
it\'s Ondermappe!\") paddled silently up the frog-clogged tributary of
the Amazon when he spied first one, then a dozen old umbrellas stuck
like warnings on the bank next to picnic baskets ritually painted with
isobars and, as a frightened frog nearly croaked tripping a button on
one umbrella opening it into a blossom of water repellent fabric, he
knew that he had found, not the \'People of the Mist\', nor the \'People
of the Rainforest\', but the mythical \'People of the Partly Cloudy With
a Forty Percent Chance of Rain-forest.\

--Suzanne M. Arruda, Pittsburg, KS (316) 232-7015

Runner-Up:

Having committed to memory the route maps leading from Alaska to L.A.
and determined to avenge the more than 300 years of ridicule his people
had suffered for the popularly assumed whimsy of Eskimo naming
conventions, Robson Pollowow (\"He who moves mountains\") glanced one
last time into his hastily rigged rear view mirror before releasing the
hand brake on the Paw Whal Dee Glacier.\

--Philip D. Clark, Elgin, IL (847) 695-1392\

Dishonorable Mention:

He knew this was it: he was going to freeze to death on the Antarctic
tundra and it would take weeks to chip his body from the permafrost, and
as his thoughts turned spiritual he spotted a penguin, and with the last
of his energy he thought Do penguins resent nuns?\

Dave Fisher, Maumee, Ohio (419) 897-0502

Winner: Detective

In the ghastly rain driven by a mad El Nino, as Dr. Ann L. View,
forensic proctologist, arrived at the crime scene in her Ford Probe, it
was not initially obvious that the victim, a thirty-something, somebody,
had met his [or her, she could not be certain in that damnable El
Nino-driven rain] demise by impalement by a foreign object [imported,
that is] that had pierced his [or her] heart after being inserted
into his [or her] body in a region below and behind the stomach.\

--Bill Sanders, West Hartford, CT (860) 232-1142

Runner-Up

\"Uh, excuse me, but if you don\'t mind, I have just one more question I
forgot to ask,\" said Columbo hesitatingly as he vainly tried to get his
arm into the sleeve of his sleazy trenchcoat because he only had one eye
and had a real problem with depth perception.\

--Jim Sheppeck, Farmington, NM (505) 327-1362

Dishonorable Mentions:

The criminal justice system is composed of two separate but equally
important elements: the criminals who commit the crimes, and the victims
of these offenders; these are their stories -- except for crimes like
embezzlement and mail fraud, \'cause they just don\'t make for exciting
reading.\

--Dave Lyon, Overland Park, KS (913) 681-8416

There are a million torn scarves in the naked city, and this was one of
them, lying by the radiant body of Cloreta Plakstreak, two-bit movie
starlet whose body, ruptured by multiple nail gun wounds, was soft as
Detective Clayborn ran his sweaty hand up and down it until the Chief
came, and he had to stop.\

--Felix Gottdiener, East Amherst, NY (716) 688-3953

If Jenkins had taken the 6:15 train home from the Butlers\' Convention
as he claimed, then he could not have murdered Lord Albert at 6:41;
however, if Jenkins had gotten off the train at Ashford-on-the-Heath,
taken a speedboat down the river, and caught a hang glider off Dead
Man\'s Bluff, then he could have strangled Lord Albert with the garter
belt and escaped on his skateboard, showing up after the train arrived
at 7:12, the inspector surmised.\

--Laura Loomis, Alameda, CA (510) 251-2539

Winner: Purple Prose

It was a stark and balmy night, the sultry breeze occasionally
interrupted by the hot wind known as the Santa Ana sweeping across the
desert floor (for it is in Palm Springs that our story is set), whipping
violently past the cholla, the ocotillo, and the Joshua tree, moving
inexorably westward where it would push the low-lying smog of the San
Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys toward the ocean to hang like a brown,
toxic, gaseous imitation of The Shroud of Turin above the beach at Santa
Monica.\

--Erik Wilson, San Francisco, CA (415) 775-9429

Runner-Up: Purple Prose

Her eyes were green, lichen green, the kind that grows in fish tanks if
you don\'t clean them for several weeks, because you keep putting it
off--until you\'re not even sure if you have live fish in there, and
you don\'t bother anymore, that shade of lichen green.\

--Sharlini Nambiar, Kuala Terengganu, MALAYSIA. ++ 60 9 6223484

Dishonorable Mention:

After we made love, she clung to me ecstatically, like clean laundry
fresh from the dryer when you have forgotten to throw in one of those
fabric softener pads that you can pick up at Price Chopper, the
supermarket that uses an ax hacking off a part of George Washington\'s
head as a logo, for seventy-nine cents a dozen, when they\'re on sale.\

--Jon Reinhard, Corpus Christi, TX (512) 387-6995

Winner: Puns

Bound hand and foot, without an apple in her hand, Lady Elspeth could
only struggle fruitlessly as Sarak\'s evil face loomed over her, his
black eyes flashing evilly. \"Now,\" he sneered, \"the English memsahib
will feel the weight of my wrath!\" So saying he inserted the disk into
the CD player, and as the strains of \"Mountain Greenery,\" in the
mellow tones of The Velvet Fog, rang through the Khyber Pass, Lady
Elspeth knew finally that this was the dark Khan\'s Torme night!\

--Jack Stafford, Thorndale, Ontario (519) 461-1352

Runner-Up:

Detective Squires was happy with his work, after 48 hours of intense
questioning Moses had spilled the beans, the whole story, everything
there was to know about the \"Miracles\", how he did it, when he did it
and who his accomplices were, Detective Squire grabbed his phone
restlessly, \"Put an APB out on \'The Almighty\'\" he growled at the
helpless patrolman on the other end of the line, as he turned back into
the interrogation room and thought \'Any time you turn a prophet,
that\'s gotta be good\'.\

--David Howse, Toronto, Ontario (416) 250-5024

Dishonorable Mentions:

Bill hadn\'t laughed this much since that day he executed a quick prank
for his co-workers, a precise pratfall that amused him even while be
concocted it, making him laugh so hard that tears came to his eyes, a
fierce laugh that he had to let loose yet again, just as he had during
the thinking of the tight antic.\

--Jefferson J. George, Lexington, KY (606) 255-5353 (home); (502)
867-1354 (work)

Having been a total failure at Feng Shui, the ancient Oriental art of
arranging furniture to influence luck, health, and fortune, Sum Dum-Foo
nevertheless became proficient in Beng Shinn, the ancient universal art
of locating furniture in the dark.\

--Robert M. Quan, San Francisco, CA

Bafld the Barbarian was sore perplexed when he grasped his magical blade
and it spoke to him, saying thus, \"I see thou art perplexed . . . I\'m
Sword of Bafled myself.\"\

--Jeff Hawley, Los Angeles, CA (310) 649-4450

Winner: Historical Fiction

Hemlock wasn\'t all that bad, Socrates decided philosophically: no
aftertaste, a smooth finish, and (of course) no hangover in the
morning.\

--T. O. Carroll, San Jose, CA (408) 923-3273

Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions:

Yes, Jarvik had torn Colette\'s heart in two, but only after cracking
her heaving, alabaster sternum with the spreader of his infidelity, and
piercing the pericardium of her trust with his pernicious falsity, which
he then poised like the rusty, serrated Scalpel of Damocles over the
ascending branch of the aorta of her desire, threatening to sunder her
intercardial septum of hope, like so much myocardial butter.\

--Dr. Scott C. Hartsel, Eau Claire, WI (715) 836-4746

Across the moon-swept lawn Daphne fled his baleful stare from the
Conservatory window, her silken gown flowing behind her but catching on
the sumac sprouts and rabbit berry, the rose of Sharon and
wintercreeper, the milkwort and forsythia, the furze and genista, the
tamarisk and jute, the sisal, sand myrtle and yellowroot until its lacy
tatters gloried in the soft wind and she realized she was naked and cold
near the hothouse. (from \"Return To Magnolia Manor\")\

--Tom Hefferon, Schenectady, New York (518) 374-5760

He was more than an Israeli thief of the streets, more than the first
flautist in the Jerusalem Philharmonic Orchestra, more than the
illegitimate child of a Spanish nun; Jose had led a checkered life that
included wrestling and farm work on the kibbutz, a career that truly
made him a Haifa-lootin\', flutin\'-tootin\', son of a nun from
Barcelona, tag-team plowboy Joe.\

--Phil Arkow, Stratford, NJ (609) 627-5118

Cats bury their droppings with all the decorum of a state funeral, and
dogs revisit theirs with the fervour of a connoisseur, but cattle hardly
seem to commit to the whole process, wandering off with a truly bovine
indifference while the last soft plop is still echoing through the
pasture, and it was this last which inspired Angela\'s choice of
vocabulary when Kevin opened his mouth and let fall the words, \"I love
you.\"\

--Penny Downing, Scarborough, Ontario (416) 690-9703

As the robber looked away, the pharmacist pulled out a .38 revolver, and
shouted \"Take this three times a day!\", firing three rapid shots into
the upper left quadrant of the robber\'s chest, the bullets flying out
of the gun like large, ill-fitting, improperly inserted suppositories.\

--Wayne Wilson (Pharmacist), McKinleyville, CA 95519 707-839-0572

Scribner scratched himself again, took a drag on his drooping Old Gold,
coughed, popped the top on his last Fallstaff, turned back to his
ancient typewriter, and smiled to himself as he thought back to the day
when his mother had warned him that he had no future writing Children\'s
books.\

--Robert A. Arnold, Portage MI 49002-7135 (616) 833-5656 Work (616)
327-4849 Home

A shrill scream pierced the black night, and I clutched my Tickle-Me
Elmo doll close to my heaving bosom; it was the blood-curdling shriek of
the wajorcka lop - a vicious, exotic animal that is the cross of a
mallard duck and a cat, that is, if you can keep the cat from eating the
duck.\

--Vanessa Moore, Springfield, MO 65803 (417) 873-9743

I opened my Windows 95 users manual and fell into a magical world.\

--Greg Kluzak, Greenville MI 1-616-754-8257

Cletus was utterly innocent of six of the seven deadly sins, mostly
because committing them was just too much effort.\

--Michael J. Saxton, Davis, CA (530) 753-0675 (home); (530) 752-6163
(work)

\"The criminals out there are killing us - it\'s time to fight back\"
roared the excited leader at the midnight meeting of the Sink Drain
Chapter of the Neighbourhood Watch, \"and since they have begun this
latest campaign of terror of using chemical weapons on our webs and
eggs, we will retaliate by attacking their weakest, their most
vulnerable - let us away to the cradle, where we will repeatedly make
little tickling motions with our feet in the warm filament-lined aural
orifices of the humans\' pink, bald, squealing larva.\"\

--Carolyn Nightingale, Loganholme QLD, Australia 07 3801 1703

Dr. Charles Monroe wasn\'t the kind of guy who took it lying down,
because many years ago a Special Branch trainee bounced one time too
many on his impeccably groomed abdominal muscles and caused seven discs
to dislocate, the way a stack of CDs might dislocate if they were tied
together by string and then the middle ones were pushed out by a lateral
force.\

--Mark Booth, Basel, Switzerland +41 (0)61 2848109

It was doubly fortunate that Stanley \"Gorilla\" Gutowski, the state
weight lifting champion, was present to give his nephew the Heimlich
maneuver & that his hands were small enough to push the boy\'s stomach
back down his throat.\

--Michael Burkhart, San Diego (619) 276-3366

The delivery boy felt as though a thousand eyes were upon him after
taking a tumble down the courtyard stairs, but it was probably only
thirty or so, because that\'s how many he was delivering to the biology
lab for dissection; it just felt like more.\

--Laurie Franks, Biloxi MS (228) 436-9068

Herb suffered two maladies that tormented and infuriated him: profound
memory lapses, and something else.\

--Mark Watson, Cary, NC 27511 (919) 469-2502

Johnny Baggadonuts knew the game was getting stale; he was pretty sure
Jimmy Dareallibadone, the cruelest guy in the \"family\", knew what he
was up to, and whatever Jimmy knew, the Boss was sure to find out --
yet Johnny knew he couldn\'t crumble, because if they dunked him he\'d
have broken his promise to the beautiful if slightly underage Turkish
prostitute Alhava Anna, (whom everyone called \"Muffin\") and who wanted
nothing more than to be his wife, to finally be Alhava \"Muffin\" Anna
Baggadonuts: the name positively tripped off his tongue, then
accidentally lit a fire in his loins.\

--Tamar Gonen, Chicago, IL (773)772-1719

Cocking her pretty head coquettishly on one side, Miss Florence
Nightingale smiled, delicately stroked her latest lover\'s arising
aspirations, and to his scandalously indecent proposal returned the only
possible reply, \"Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, too-witta-woo!\"\

--Richard Raymond III, Roanoke, VA

Walking back to the hotel in the rain, Ernest Hemingway ducked into the
Louvre as the downpour intensified, but the beauty of its masterpieces
did not move him, for the was thinking about his almost-finished novel,
the one about his stint as an ambulance driver on the Italian/Austrian
front, of his wounding and recuperation, about his romance with a
British nurse that ended catastrophically, and then, standing before the
exquisite statue of Venus de Milo, the title he would give his opus
occured to him.\

--Tom Rohde, Minneapolis, MN 612/331-7880

\"What the bloody hell,\" I thought, puzzled, as the car lifted right up
off the Interstate and sailed toward the Big Dipper (or the Little
Dipper, who could think straight?), me at the wheel of course , while
Jill slept in the back seat, oblivious, veins thrumming with Tequila,
dreaming, no doubt, about Jack (tumbling, tumbling, all that shit) and
missing the whole thing as usual while I, good old codependent that I
am, had to cope.\

--Nancy Bauer, Philadelphia, PA 215-842-0619

\"No, no . . . a thousand times no,\" she moaned breathlessly, the milky
white mounds of her chest heaving as nimble hands quickly did their
work, and then she started counting the \"yes\" votes for the new sewer
system proposal.\

--Kristen Swaim, Garland TX 972/276-5337

Something is rotten in Denmark, thought Richard, the third time he
peered over his copy of the Globe to witness the Two Gentlemen from
Verona as they Leared Shrewishly at the young Desdemona, reminding him
of that Dreamy Midsummer\'s night years ago, when, in a Tempest he had
journeyed to that little Hamlet in upstate New York where the lawns were
green, the picket fences white, and nobody\'s windows were Bard.\

--Jason Allen, Calgary, Alberta 241-0249

His mind frapped by their final conversation, Master Chef Ralph tried
valiantly to deglaze the pan of his brain, reduce the scalding liquid of
his affair with Tiffany Creme-Kaake to approximately one-third its
original volume (or, better yet, boil it away entirely), strain and
discard the lumpy bits, and whisk the memories into a smooth, velvety
hollandaise, but it was no use; his heart had been brutally
shrink-wrapped and reduced to a hard rubbery mass by the microwave of
her indifference.\

--Allison Johnson, Calgary, Alberta

She sighed, not just any sigh, but one of those deep, deep sighs that,
emanating from the depths of your lower respiratory tract, works its way
upward, then explodes out of you, pervading the surrounding area,
ubiquitously drawing forth sympathetic sighs from those around you in
increasing concentrations, until finally you are surrounded by such an
intense miasma of wheezing and gasping that it sounds like the emphysema
ward in a geriatric hospital.\

--Neil Massie, Ridgefield, CT (203) 778-3686

Back at the badger ranch, Betsy had gone completely nuts; flinging down
the gauntlet of desperation (made from a very high-quality badger hide),
she vowed she would wait no longer and in a twinkling her bags were
packed, her house sold, and, armed with her cat, her cajones and her
capital gains, she left the provincial desolation of Minot and
tremblingly catapulted her life into the hot lights and fleshpots of
Fargo, City on the Edge.\

--Solveig Haugland, Lafayette, CO (303) 926-0613 (303) 272-7640

Myopic, gawky Herbert took up the martial arts to hone his balance,
dexterity, concentration, and coordination; the inner calm promised by
serene-yet-deadly Sensei Yawara; and immerse himself in the Asian
culture that had so mystified the high school sophomore ever since his
fourth-grade field trip paused briefly in Chinatown, but mostly to be
able to hang out with the school bullies and beat up other students.\

--Ernie Santilli, Drexel Hills, PA (610) 446-9453

One cold autumn morning when Elinor, Queen of the amphibians, arrived at
the fork in the road and saw that one of her subjects waas busily
clearing leaves on the right path, while another stood idly on the left,
she said to her consort, \"This really frosts me, Robert; the toad\'s
not raking!\"\

--Jean Madeleine Hughes, Lebanon, NH (603) 448-6544

Have a nice day,\" called Nadine to her engineer husband, who wondered
if she meant the remaining hours of daylight, a solar day (measured with
respect to the Sun) or a sidereal day (measured with respect to the
celestial sphere), \"I know I will,\" continued Nadine sotto voce, whose
day (however defined) would be nice because of Raoul, the tennis pro at
the country club.\

--Bob Trapnell, Huntsville, AL (205) 650-5354

Astronomer Lyman A. Fraunhofer reflected upon the forbidden lines of
poetry as he vainly tried to gauge the magnitude of his wife\'s
infidelity with Roy G. Biv, the young graduate assistant (with whom she
shared a Milky Way, even now, under the big telescope), yet fully
ignored his own weak interactions that had forced Andromeda to search
for naked singularities until she became smitten with Biv\'s work on the
Big Bang.\

--Dave Dooling, Huntsville, AL (205) 890-0972