Deathless Prose
Things have been a little serious around here of late, for understandable reasons, but I thought maybe a change of mood was overdue (plus I’m off to London via Bath in a couple of hours, so a quick post was called for…)
Hence this, which is an oldy -in internet terms- but a good one, pinched from SFawardswatch, with gratitude.
The winners of the 2010 Bulwer Lytton contest (for truly awful opening lines) have been announced. This year’s most horrible prose appears to have come from a romance novel, but winners were listed in genre categories as follows.
Fantasy
The wood nymph fairies blissfully pranced in the morning light past the glistening dewdrops on the meadow thistles by the Old Mill, ignorant of the daily slaughter that occurred just behind its lichen-encrusted walls, twin 20-ton mill stones savagely ripping apart the husks of wheat seed, gleefully smearing the starchy entrails across their dower granite faces in unspeakable botanical horror and carnage – but that’s not our story; ours is about fairies!
Rick Cheeseman, Waconia, MN
Science Fiction
t’Bleen and Golxxm squelched their way romantically along the slough beach beneath the three Sommodian moons, their eye-stalks occasionally touching, and tenderly belched sweet nothings like, “I don’t think I’ve ever had such a charming evening,” and, “Say, would you like to gnaw that hunk of suppurating tissue off my dorsal appendage—it really itches.”
Bryan Olive, Tustin, CA
The full list of winners (should you dare to look) can be found here.
I’m going to put together my entry for next year straight away…
