Bulwer-Lytton winners

This year's winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest --  which "challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels" --  have been announced.  This year's "sci fi" winner is Greg Homer of Placerville, Calif., with this:

Morgan "Bamboo" Barnes, Star Pilot of the Galaxia (flagship of the Solar Brigade), accepted an hors d’oeuvre from the triangular-shaped platter offered to him from the Princess Qwillia—lavender-skinned she was and busty, with two of her four eyes what Barnes called "bedroom eyes"—and marveled at how on her planet, Chlamydia-5, these snacks were called "Hi-Dee-Hoes" but on Earth they were simply called Ritz Crackers with Velveeta.

The runner-up is Elizabeth Muenster of Columbia, Pa., with this:

Sterben counted calcium bars in the storage chamber, wondering why women back on Earth paid him little attention, but up here they seem to adore him, in fact, six fraichemaidens had already shown him their blinka.

I quelled the urge to correct Muenster's comma splice, assuming it was part of the intentional badness.

One of the Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions is this, from Adrian McKinty, whose hometown isn't listed presumably for fear that James Cameron might find him:

"You're not in Kansas anymore, people!" the gruff Marine Captain bellowed as I wheeled myself along the tarmac of Planet Cliché, the only place in the Galaxy where you could mine Unobtainium, undergo the powerful Eywa ritual with a blue eight-foot-tall alien Princess, and discover a hunter-gatherer people who despite decades of human contact still hadn't developed the wheel, the composite bow, or toilet paper.

Another of the Miscellaneous Dishonorable Mentions is by one of my sf writer colleagues, Lawrence Person of Austin, Texas:

After five years as freelance writer, Greg finally managed to double his income, letting him add a processed cheese product slice to the baloney sandwiches he had for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Lawrence's entry reminds me of an old sf-convention joke: What's the difference between a science fiction writer and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family of four.

Thanks to Gregory Frost for passing this along.