2000

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

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest\
2000 Results

Tuesday, July 11, 2000 Contact: Prof. Scott Rice Department of English 408/924-4447 (W) 408/227-8159 (H)#

The heather-encrusted Headlands, veiled in fog as thick as smoke in a
crowded pub,

hunched precariously over the moors, their rocky elbows slipping off
land\'s end,

their bulbous, craggy noses thrust into the thick foam of the North Sea
like bearded

old men falling asleep in their pints.

Gary Dahl\
Los Gatos, CA\

The person with the pet rock hanging from his neck can now add the
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Gary Dahl, who launched the novelty gift
sensation in 1975, is the 19^th winner of the perverse competition that
asks entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. The
63-year-old owner of an advertising agency in Campbell, California,
admits to a 35-year career writing advertising copy, \"which,\" he says,
\"is why I am such an expert in bad writing.\"

Conceived to honor the memory of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl
Bulwer-Lytton and to encourage unpublished authors who do not have the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.\" Lytton is
also responsible for the line, \"The pen is mightier than the sword,\"
and the expression \"the great unwashed.\" His best known work is
probably \"The Last Day\'s of Pompeii.\"

As has happened every year since the contest went public in 1983,
thousands of entries poured in not just from the United States and
Canada but from such countries as England, Australia, Switzerland,
Germany, Japan, Ireland, and New Zealand. The response owed in part to
the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Web page
(http://www.bulwer-lytton.com), where all of this year\'s winners are
posted.

The prolific Dahl also penned another strong contender:

Gwendolyn, a world-class mountaineer, summoned the last of her strength
for

one more heroic haul on the nylon strap (for she was, after so many
failed

attempts, dangerously close to exhaustion) and looked heavenward with

resolve, aware that, in spite of her fatigue and anguish, she must
breach the

crevice in one well-coordinated movement, somehow cleave the smooth
fissure

with the flimsy synthetic strand even though she was chaffed raw by her

repeated efforts, or more sensibly, just give the heave-ho to this
new-fangled

(and painfully small) Victoria\'s Secret thong and slip into her
well-worn - and

infinitely more roomy - knickers.

In keeping with the stature and dignity of the competition, Dahl will
receive the traditional first prize award, a mere pittance.

Runner-Up#

Jack Maverick, ex-federal agent, burst through the window of the drug lord\'s palace with a sneer on his face and guns blazing, sending a sea of glass into the room that would take weeks for Hilda, the maid who came in every Tuesday and Thursday, to clean even if she worked unpaid overtime, which she didn\'t since in today\'s world it\'s a seller\'s market where maids who speak decent English are concerned.#

Nicolas Juzda\
Toronto, Ontario, Canada\

Winner: Romance#

Kevin Ruston\
Barnet, Hertfordshire, England\

Runner-Up:#

Raven Hall -- that gape-mouthed, gray gargoyle of County Cork -- loomed above the misty Irish vales (the spring rains having recently abated) as young Deidre, bound in servitude to its drooling master so her beloved Bryan would be freed upon disembarkation at Australia\'s prison colony where he was sent for theft of a twig to be used as kindling, approached.#

Mary Ann Unger\
Ewing, NJ\

Dishonorable Mentions#

His eyes bored into hers like the slowly turning bit of a 2.5 horsepower drill press set to slow speed to keep from scoring the surface of a priceless mahogany table being repaired for an estate auction that was not expected to bring in much, anyway.#

Martin M. Conrad II\
Colorado Springs, CO\

Sarah was a blue-blooded mistress of the Main Line, but she couldn\'t stop Jack from prowling the back streets and alleys of her mind, couldn\'t stop him from renting a cheap room in her remembrances, for he dwelled in the seamy underside of her soul, and yet the memory of his infidelities burned a scar on her heart like a bad tatoo.#

Patrick Burns\
Newton, N.J.\

It could be said that Martha and Isaac had chemistry, but Martha had never been good at chemistry, and sex with Isaac had been like an experiment wherein she had accidentally mixed ammonia and bleach, burned her eyebrows off, lost all sense of smell for weeks, and never saw the family cat again.#

Kelly Griffith\
Media, PA\

Winner: Science Fiction#

The night (like every night on Beta Forensis Epsilon (known to the members of the Star Guard ground station as BFE) where the 30-degree axial tilt, 12-hour rotation and ferocious radiation from Beta Forensis\' F5 perpetual thermonuclear blast churned the atmosphere like a rookie\'s stomach during zero-gee training) was dark and stormy.#

William D. Draper\
Manassas, VA\

Runner-Up#

The alien\'s single eye glowed on its stalk like the headlight of a police motorcycle pursuing a speeder on a dark highway on a stormy night, its ears protruding from its head like an old Garfield toy beginning to fall off the suction cups sticking it to the rear winsdhield of a battered Lincoln Towncar, and its lips, thick and rubbery like a spandex bathing suit on an overweight retired bodybuilder, struggled to form the words, \'I love you.\'#

Seth Miller and Cassandra Thomas\
Plano, TX\

Winner: Detective#

Becky Flatbush was the quintessential Girl Cop: wisecracking, shrewd, prone to PMS-inspired shooting \"mistakes,\" yet tender, compassionate, and actually very good with criminals when she was not feeling bloated and cranky and like she wanted to kill someone just to relieve her monthly depression.#

Laura Sebastian\
Miami, Florida\

Runner-Up#

How had he missed it, Detective Cali asked himself, when the signs were all there: the glazed look in his eyes, the tiny droplets of sweat that welled up on his forehead, the violent mood swings and of course the tell-tale white dust in his mustache--all pointed to his partner\'s ravenous addiction to powdered donuts.#

Michael Ferraro\
McKee City, NJ\

Winner: Purple Prose#

Jasper Tourmaline III was obsessed with thoughts of the lovely Coral Olivine--the toss of her amber hair and the sparkle of her sapphire eyes whenever she flashed her pearly whites through those pouting ruby lips that so starkly contrasted her opalescent skin--but her peerless beauty belied her diamond-hard heart, for Coral had told Jasper that she could never love a jeweler.#

Matthew Chambers\
Parsons WV\

Runner-Up#

Jo-Jo, grabbed his tom-tom, while Lulu, a former cancan, now go-go, dancer seized her muumuu as they, along with their loyal canine Tin Tin (son of Rin), fled flu-ridden from a yo-yo so-so existence in Paw Paw, heading, by away of Walla Walla, for their tropical paradise in Pago Pago where they hoped to munch mahimahi, nibble on a bit of couscous, and pay an occasional visit to Bora Bora, or maybe even Wagga Wagga, finally saying \"tata\" forever to their life among the rah-rah Michigan set.#

Bill Crowley\
Santa Rosa, CA\

Winner: Vile Puns (co-winners)#

\"We have created a monster, Doktor Frankenstein!\" screech Igor, the doktor\'s right and left hand man, his little body quivering with delight, and before the good doctor could stop him Igor waved various human limbs and organs in the patchwork face of the giant, howling, \"Tell me, stranger, are you from these parts?\"#

It was the night before Christmas when Santa Claus\'s sleigh team became one member short because of a sudden illness, and when an inflatable plastic reindeer was used to fill the void in the team so no one would take notice the missing animal, Regis, Chief of Elves, asked Santa, \"Is that your vinyl Prancer?\"#

John L. Ashman\
Houston, TX\

Runner-Up#

Sighing, the professor rapidly scanned the English 101 term paper on \"Early American Railways\" submitted by the class dunce, determined almost at a glance that large portions had been lifted verbatim and without attribution from Clemens\' \"The Gilded Age\" and \"Innocents Abroad,\" assigned a failing mark to the pathetic fraud, and scrawled in red across the cover sheet, \"Come, sir, this is TOO, TOO TWAIN.\"#

Richard Raymond III\
Roanoke, VA\

Dishonorable Mentions#

After twenty years, twenty years as head avian keeper at Fleishacker Zoo, Norman sat distractedly on his Ethan Allen post-colonial solid mahogany settee, pulling at his nose, and going over one more time the stupidity that had cost him his labor of love, because he knew that he was responsible for putting the locks on all the bird cages--the Bald Eagles, the tropical Toucans, the Marbled Godwits, all of them--but that miserable Thursday evening he had missed a cage for the very first time as he had daydreamed on by the Bay Gulls enclosure, and they had escaped, and there went his job--all because he forgot to put the locks on the Bay Gulls.#

Bill Crowley\
Santa Rosa, CA\

The sobbing, pregnant, kimono-clad bride, the sweaty groom with the odd shoes, the angry Japanese man with a look of nobility and a really big sword-all the makings of a shogun wedding.#

Rev. William F. Charles\
Birmingham, AL\

Lance Corporal Murphy stood in mute shock at his court martial for stealing a book of Shakespeare\'s works from the camp library, ignoring the advice of his fellow Marines that he couldn\'t take a Hamlet without breaking a few regs.#

Kevin P. Craver\
Streator, IL\

Plays on \"It was a dark and stormy night\": Winner#

Jesse rolled his eyes heavenward as Caleb, his neo-Amish cousin, nearly fainted as they passed by the mini-mall\'s Victoria Secret window display, explaining to Caleb that \"It was a stocking store, Mennonite!\"#

Matthew Chambers\
Parsons WV\

Runner-Up#

In late 19^th-century France, the Catholic Church leaders became increasingly uneasy that French sociologist Emile Durkheim\'s \"Formes �l�mentaires de la vie religieuse\" might be drawing priests and theologians away from the established church and faith, so the Church Fathers advised their clergy to, when reading Durkheim\'s work, concentrate on a simple mantra, so as to counter any dissuasive effect the sociologist\'s writing might exert on their faith: \"E. Durkheim, stir me not!\"#

Gordon Anderson\
Lawrence, KS\

Dishonorable Mention:#

It was a dark and stormy night . . . well, not too dark, actually, since the moon was full and shining brightly, the streetlights were all functioning for once; and as for stormy, I suppose the occasional, almost listless flash of heat lightning combined with a haze created by the steady, mist-like drizzle meeting the hot pavement underfoot could qualify, were one give to over-dramatization or hyperbole.#

Martha McBride\
Bloomington, IL\

Winner: Sword and Sorcery#

With mighty, gargantuan, and somewhat overdeveloped thews, the barbarian chieftan raised his titantic sword ever higher over his fallen, but unsubdued, adversary, and, with a grunt equal to his gigantic frame, reversed the course of his upwardly mobile blade to send it whistling its lethal four-foot, six-inch length through the body of his prostrate foe and into two feet of protesting soil, rock, and assorted particles of humus.#

Henry V. Taber\
St. Louis, MO\

Winner: Modern Romance Novel#

With killer apps, high-speed penetration rates, and a way with the customer premises equipment, she was no plain old telephone service provider, thought Bob, plugging and praying for a next-generation, real-time wireless connection.#

Elizabeth Schmidt\
Chicago, IL\

Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions:#

\"Genevieve ran toward the door as it slowly closed and grabbed Emil by the lapels of his rain-soaked camouflage jacket, drawing him into her warm embrace, burying her tear-streaked face in the nape of his neck and weeping uncontrollably, as might a mother clutching her son returned home from the horrors of the battlefield, a response Emil could scarcely recall receiving from other WalMart greeters.\"#

Randy Groom\
Visalia, CA\

Richard Chadwin\
Sonoma, CA\

\"Well, Mummy,\" replied little Felicity in response to her mother\'s chiding, \"I know for a fact you are lying to me and that I was not left on the doorstep by gypsies, as you are fond of telling me, for gypsies are not in the habit of abandoning infants on the twentieth floor of New York apartment houses, and furthermore there is absolutely no room on the street for them to park their horse and wagon, so-when you are old and in need of custodial care-we shall then see who has the last laugh as I abandon you in a substandard adult care facility.\"#

Becky Mushko\
Penhook, VA 24137\

Like her famous ancestor Hercules, Hercula always felt she carried the weight of the world on her sagging shoulders & so traipsed from doctor to doctor only to find one misdiagnosis after another - was it a tumor the size of a pumpkin? an enlarged nymph . . . er, lymph node? and to her IMMENSE relief, a correct conclusion came at last: it was merely the team of acrobats from the Cirque du Soleil practicing their balancing act for an upcoming world tour.#

Patricia Melnyk\
Chomedey, Laval, Canada\

It was a sultry August night in Seattle and I lay awake fitfully listening to the dew on the roof, shattering the skylights in the gazebo, whilst my beloved, Dr. Antonia Lippencott, lay in her thatched boma, given her by a grateful tribe, kept from her well-earned repose by the relentless puffing and adding of the puff adders.#

Douglass Keeslar\
Concord, Mich.\

Intoxicated, partly, but not altogether drowned, the cockroach made one last gallant attempt to reach the frothy surface of Paddy O\'Donnel\'s pint of Guinness clutched with stoic determination by the dejected and arguably oblivious pub patron who seconds later would send the roach hurtling down his oesophagus as if shooting the rapids in a cascading torrent of foam, observed silently, nay, reverently by the departing crowd responding to the publican\'s punctual and expected \"It\'s time, gentlemen.\"#

Stig R. Hokanson\
Loganholme, Queensland Australia\

\"I want some red roses for a blue lady,\" crooned Raoul, stopping at the florist\'s on his way to the morgue.#

David Hirsch\
Seattle WA\

Sedrick Whistlebottom the Third observed with some consternation and a modicum of dismay that no amount of adhesive tape could smooth out the pained look upon his latest impeccably laid out client\'s face whose body lay ramrod stiff through Sedrick\'s family\'s own \'secret\' method, a method which earned Sedrick not only much acclaim from his fellow morticians but also accounted for the numerous broomheads that the garbagemen found each week at the rear of the mortuary.#

Richard H. Weiner\
North Vancouver, BC\

As the tentacled creature placed its little sucker pads all over Stephanie\'s scantily clad, glistening, and moist body, the young girl shuddered both with fear and with anticipation of the pleasure she knew she would feel when those little sucker pads were peeled off, and she couldn\'t help but worry that it might ruin the tan she had fought so hard to maintain, not to mention how she would explain all the hickeys to her boyfriend after she returned home from spring break.#

Debi Newirth\
South Windsor, CT\

Someone later remarked that the day had flown by, but to Werner Davis, it had seemed an eternity, passing like a kidney stone- slowly and excruciatingly- through the ureter of his life.#

Kate Herr\
Aberdeen, SD\

Trish, lovely jelly fish of a girl, found herself floundering, drowning amid octopi and squid, her arms flailing, legs akimbo, sinking ever deeper, down to the bottom of \'Walleyed\' Dick\'s exotic saltwater aquarium, her ten-dollar admission ticket soggily clenched between her teeth, as though she knew what she was doing from the moment she ventured away from her group, now staring at her, wide eyed and disbelievingly, with their noses pressed tightly against the glass wall, making them look like the hog fish she\'d seen photos of in last month\'s Aquatic World.#

Valerie Elson\
Los Angeles, CA\

Jasper stared at the gleaming gem-like creature in his hands, a bejeweled piscine perfection magnificent beyond reason, its shining scales iridescent chips of lapis lazuli gleaming like the diamond-slick surface of its aquamarine world, its glistening crystalline gills heaving in time with the turquoise waves as it struggled to suck in precious oxygen, its opalescent eyes pearl-like sapphires of polished cubic zirconium filled with the long-lost secrets of ancient deep-sea treasure, and decided it was time to bash its head against a rock.#

Lisa Ryckman\
Denver, CO\