Son of It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

by Scott Rice

Book Overview

More of the best(?) from the bulwer-lytton contest This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140088393
• ISBN13: 9780140088397
• Release Date: May 1986
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

A MUST-BUY FOR PARODOPHILES

Beyond a doubt, this is one of the best ideas ever conceived. A University hosts a contest where the contestants try and come up with the most intentionally stupid opening lines for a novel. Needless to say, some of the results are downright hilarious. I spent a good part of a day pouring over the pages of this book. There are categories for science ficton novels, romance novels, plain-jane fiction, detective stories, "It was a dark and stormy night" stories, you name it, it's probably in here in some shape or form. Because the entrys are short, this is one book that can very easily be finished in one sitting, whether you're riding in the car, or flying your hang-glider. The artwork that goes along with the book is nice, too. If I were you, I'd hunt down these books with the same enthusiasm that a headhunter would go after Mr. Potatohead.

If you like wordplay, you just can't beat it.

"Son of 'It was A Dark And Stormy Night' " is the second of, to the best of my knowledge, five collections of entries in the annual "Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest". (The others being "It Was A Dark And Stormy Night", "Dark And Stormy Rides Again", "It Was A Dark And Stormy Night: The Final Conflict", and, I think, "Bride Of Dark And Stormy", if I'm not mistaken.) The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is a contest , named for Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose "Paul Clifford" (1830) opens with the immortal line "It was a dark and stormy night...", which is run by Scott Rice and sponsored by San Jose State University, in which contestants vie to write the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. Generally, the trick is to make the sentences as complex syntactically as it is possible to imagine, while violating as many rules of creative consistency as possible, and to be certain that no noun is without more than its share of purple-prose adjectives.This is not for everyone, but if this sounds like fun to you, it probably is. This is the third of the collections that I've read; I thought that "The Final Conflict" was better than the original; this is even better than that one.

A wonderful way to wile the hours away.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction competitions are simply great for light reading. Highly suggested. Great Gifts, too.