NationStates Jolt Archive


The Bulwer-Lytton Awards Announced!

The Nazz
09-02-2007, 18:17
Given to the worst first line of fiction for the year. One day I hope to be able to write this badly. (http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2006.htm)

The winner in Adventure:
Christy, lounging in the gondola which slipped smoothly through the enveloping mist had her first inkling that something was afoot as she heard pattering hooves below (for our story is not in Venice but Switzerland with its Provolone and Toblerone) and craning her not unlovely neck she narrowed her eyes at the dozen tiny reindeer, pelting madly down the goat trail.
Irene Buttuls
Lytton, B.C

The winner in Fantasy Fiction:
It was within the great stony nostril of a statue of Landrick the Elfin Vicelord that Frodo's great uncle, Jasper Baggins, happened to stumble upon the enchanted Bag of Holding, not to be confused with the Hag of Bolding, who was quite fond of leeks, most especially in a savory Hobbit knuckle stew.
Camille Barigar
Twin Falls, ID

The winner in Romance:
Despite the vast differences it their ages, ethnicity, and religious upbringing, the sexual chemistry between Roberto and Heather was the most amazing he had ever experienced; and for the entirety of the Labor Day weekend they had sex like monkeys on espresso, not those monkeys in the zoo that fling their feces at you, but more like the monkeys in the wild that have those giant red butts, and access to an espresso machine.
Dennis Barry
Dothan, AL

And the Grand Prize winner:

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.
Jim Guigli
Carmichael, CA
New Burmesia
09-02-2007, 18:26
Inspired!
Drunk commies deleted
09-02-2007, 18:27
Monkeys on espresso?
Khadgar
09-02-2007, 18:30
Monkeys on espresso?

Red assed monkeys on Espresso! Much worse.
Catalasia
09-02-2007, 18:33
Science fiction:
"Send a message back to Command Central on Earth and ask for their advice, which we will be able receive immediately even at this great distance, thanks to the ingenious manipulation of coherent radiation through a Bose-Einstein condensate and the bizarre influence of the Aspect effect, which enables us to impart identical properties to remotely separated photons," Captain Buzz told the feathered Vjorkog at the comms desk, "and tell them our life-pod is going to explode in eight seconds."

Christopher Backeberg
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Western:
His mistake, Shut-eye McBlamaway reflected, was not in standing up to a gang of desperadoes and rustlers on the high country, but in standing up to a gang of desperadoes and rustlers who had just left the set of a Sergio Leone shoot, and were thus equipped with those guns that never run out of ammunition.

Samuel Goldstein
Los Angeles, CA

Assorted dishonourable mentions:
The goose waddled slowly, heavily, across the road, exactly the way my mother-in-law would if she were a goose.

Mary Montiel
Wichita, KS
Twas brillig, and the toves were not just slithy, they were stinking drunk.

Richard A. Polunsky
Houston TX
The day was like any other, except that this was a Wednesday so it was really only like 1/7th of the other days.

Randy Wilson
New Albany, IN

And some of the past winners:
The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
--Patricia E. Presutti, Lewiston, New York (1986 winner)
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit molding her body, which was as warm as the seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven--fueled by a single accelerant--and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road, a man like Alf Romeo.
--Rachel E. Sheeley, Williamsburg, Indiana (1988 Winner)
She wasn't really my type, a hard-looking but untalented reporter from the local cat box liner, but the first second that the third-rate representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of old Scotch, my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and, humming "The Twelfth of Never," I got lucky on Friday the thirteenth.
--Wm. W. "Buddy" Ocheltree, Port Townsend, Washington (1993 Winner)
A small assortment of astonishingly loud brass instruments raced each other lustily to the respective ends of their distinct musical choices as the gates flew open to release a torrent of tawny fur comprised of angry yapping bullets that nipped at Desdemona's ankles, causing her to reflect once again (as blood filled her sneakers and she fought her way through the panicking crowd) that the annual Running of the Pomeranians in Liechtenstein was a stupid idea.
Sera Kirk, Vancouver, BC (2001 Winner)

/iLike
Neesika
09-02-2007, 19:00
Oh god these are good...*wheezes*...integrating monkey feces into any mention of romance deserves some sort of medal...
Andaluciae
09-02-2007, 19:06
Those sound like the sentences one would expect a German to write...
Turquoise Days
09-02-2007, 19:10
"Send a message back to Command Central on Earth and ask for their advice, which we will be able receive immediately even at this great distance, thanks to the ingenious manipulation of coherent radiation through a Bose-Einstein condensate and the bizarre influence of the Aspect effect, which enables us to impart identical properties to remotely separated photons," Captain Buzz told the feathered Vjorkog at the comms desk, "and tell them our life-pod is going to explode in eight seconds."

Christopher Backeberg
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

The original can be found in the International Incidents forum.

And LOL at the monkey sex.
The Nazz
09-02-2007, 23:50
Oh god these are good...*wheezes*...integrating monkey feces into any mention of romance deserves some sort of medal...

And it should have this on it:

http://www.alansmind.com/feces.jpg