[HN Gopher] Worst Opening Sentences of 2022
___________________________________________________________________
Worst Opening Sentences of 2022
Author : downweight
Score : 214 points
Date : 2022-12-16 07:53 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bulwer-lytton.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bulwer-lytton.com)
| defrost wrote:
| Dishonorable Mention (2019):
|
| > As they sprinted together down the echoing, looping ramp of the
| deserted Guggenheim Museum, closely pursued by three swarthy
| members of the resolutely vicious Cannelloni gang, square-jawed
| British Royal Marine art historian/world's deadliest sniper John
| Savage and his voluptuous young modern art critic/Navajo linguist
| Samantha Silver cursed architect/interior
| designer/writer/educator Frank Lloyd Wright for designing such a
| circuitous route out of the building.
|
| is both horrifying and a thing of wonder .. context is
| everything.
|
| It wouldn't be out of place in one of my all time favourite books
| [1].
|
| [1] http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/kleinz.html
| zimpenfish wrote:
| That is a) SUPERB, and b) a perfect example of the Dan Brown
| Code[1].
|
| [1]
| http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.h...
| [deleted]
| notahacker wrote:
| Ah, I'd forgotten that one of the world's best-selling
| novelists wrote like GPT-3 :D
|
| (Seriously, every time GPT-3 produces prose that passes the
| skim read test, you need this guy to go through it and point
| out that this is the third time it's mentioned the
| protagonists' profession in the paragraph and silhouettes
| don't stare)
| yesenadam wrote:
| I hadn't read any Dan Brown, gee that's really bad! So, the
| sentence maybe should've been rearranged so the book starts
| with _Square-jawed_ , getting right into the action.
| themadturk wrote:
| For someone who writes so badly (and he does), I have
| always found Dan Brown to be compulsively readable.
| Sometimes we just need trash, I guess.
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| For more on Dan Brown, see this hilarious parody:
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/dont-make-fun-
| of-r...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| You owe me a new keyboard and a fresh coffee.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this link! I read it eagerly on my laptop,
| with the text of the article presenting itself as a perfect
| companion to the soothing glow of the screen of my sleek (yet
| familiar, like an old friend you only just met) portable
| computing device.
| [deleted]
| darkerside wrote:
| I've not read any Hoban, but he sounds hilarious, if a taste
| acquired. Catch-22 levels of absurdity.
| defrost wrote:
| A very broad and versatile writer, _Kleinzeit_ is nth level
| absurdist, _Riddley Walker_ is a superb post apocalytic
| novel, _The Mouse and His Child_ is a simple yet deep
| childrens book about windup toys on the hunt for secret of
| becoming self winding, and that 's just a few off the top of
| my head.
|
| For more, see:
|
| http://www.ocelotfactory.com/hoban/index.html
|
| http://www.russellhoban.org/
| camoufleur wrote:
| Reminds me of last 30 minutes of the film Cremaster 3, in which
| a man scales the inside of the Guggenheim, rock-climbing style,
| stopping on each floor to confront some sort a challenge from a
| group (line dancers, hardcore punk bands, a famous sculptor) as
| an abstract retelling of a Masonic origin myth.
| astrange wrote:
| Don't forget to check the Lyttle Lytton, which is funnier (as
| it's shorter) and also makes you wonder how he got that domain
| name.
|
| http://adamcadre.ac/22lyttle.html
| ng12 wrote:
| Yes, I think this format is much better. Brevity, wit, etc. Too
| many of the originals just pack as much absurdity as they can
| into a run-on sentence.
| [deleted]
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Seconding this, I like that contest much better than the
| original.
|
| To anyone reading them and wondering why the funniest entries
| aren't necessarily the winners: Lyttle Lytton tends to prefer
| sentences that read like a bad first sentence of a serious
| novel, not a _good_ first sentence of a comedic or otherwise
| intentionally-absurd novel. The latter sort often make the list
| to some degree, but rarely end up at or near the top.
| kibwen wrote:
| I have complicated feelings about the Bulwer-Lytton fiction
| contest. On the one hand, from a lighthearted perspective, it's
| quite funny and I enjoy reading the absurdist entries. On the
| other hand, I can't help but sense an undercurrent of wannabe-
| elitism from people who doth protest too much about "It was a
| dark and stormy night", in the same way that beginner programmers
| will fixate on minutiae like indentation or naming conventions in
| an attempt to gain social status among their peers. Like, sure,
| it's not the most gripping opening sentence in history. But the
| fact remains that if you took a good author and forced them to
| use it, they could still write a good book. (That might be an
| interesting contest in its own right.) Be careful not to get
| overfixated on the meme.
| mkehrt wrote:
| But it's "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in
| torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked
| by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is
| in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops,
| and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that
| struggled against the darkness."
| themadturk wrote:
| Bulwer-Lytton was, in his time, a best-selling author, and one
| wonders how well he'd be remembered now if not for the opening
| words of Snoopy's ever-beginning novel in the Peanuts comic
| strip, which (if I am not mistaken, and it likely is I am, but
| I don't care because this my comment) served as one of perhaps
| many inspirations for the opening line contest, which is of
| course as far as Snoopy ever got, being a better Sopwith Camel
| fighter pilot, vulture imitator and serial doghouse-layer
| uponer than he was a novelist.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > I knew she was trouble the second she walked into my 24-hour
| deli, laundromat, and detective agency, and after dropping a load
| of unmentionables in one of the heavy-duty machines (a mistake
| that would soon turn deadly) she turned to me, asking for two
| things: find her missing husband and make her a salami on rye
| with spicy mustard, breaking into tears when I told her I
| couldn't help--I was fresh out of salami.
|
| Grand Prize winner? I would read that book in a heartbeat!
| chungy wrote:
| It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Awesome starting prompts for chatgpt.
| dbingham wrote:
| I think I have a taste for absurdist humor, because a lot of
| these read like openings to fantastically funny satire. At least
| to me.
|
| With the exception of the Sci-Fi category -- those all read like
| high school pornographic fan fic. Honestly, I'm pretty
| disappointed in the sci-fi category. Seems like low hanging
| fruit. Surely they could have done better!
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| hey, I liked the pornographic fan fic low hanging fruit pun.
| +1!
| mminer237 wrote:
| > These stories, my children, are about Prince Charming and his
| three girlfriends: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella.
|
| Netflix made a movie that is literally this exact plot.
| petecooper wrote:
| See also Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award [NSFW]:
|
| https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award
| keepquestioning wrote:
| This is annoying. I really hoped this would be the worst opening
| sentences in actual books published in 2022.
|
| Incredisappointing.
| frozenbit wrote:
| What does it say about my literary tastes, I'd actually read some
| of these books. The 2019 winner sounds fun, has a Douglas Adams
| vibe.
| azangru wrote:
| Yes, I also liked the 2019 winner.
| thriftwy wrote:
| And obvious trait of all those is too much postmodernism. Instead
| of trying to lay out a story about human beings, books start
| name-dropping or being smart from the line 1. Trying to claim too
| much context that they don't own but obviously going to exploit.
| teh_klev wrote:
| These aren't actual books. It's a competition open to all to
| submit what _would_ be the worst opening lines in an imaginary
| bad novel:
|
| _" Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California,
| the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to
| compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible
| novels."_
| rippercushions wrote:
| This is a contest where contestants _intentionally_ set out to
| write the worst opening sentence possible.
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| And what makes it even funnier is that they all sound like
| they could be from a real Dan Brown novel.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Or Charles Stross, or Peter Watts. A lot of modern prose
| starts with illusions of grandeur and name-dropping.
| hectorlorenzo wrote:
| Is Dan Brown a postmodernist author these days?
| barry-cotter wrote:
| I challenge you to find a sentence or paragraph from
| either author like these. Please cite the relevant book.
| cstross wrote:
| Received editorial wisdom these days is that you have _at
| most_ 100 words to capture the reader 's attention (and
| by "capture" I mean "drag it into the back of your serial
| killer van, sedate it, hog-tie it, then re-enact that
| classic scene from _A Clockwork Orange_ -- only in prose
| ") or they'll put the book down and never look at it
| again.
|
| FYI, a typical page in a paperback novel contains 300-400
| words: the preceding paragraph/sentence is 61 words long
| (per wc(1)).
|
| So starting with a bang is mandatory, if you want to get
| paid to write for a living.
|
| Welcome to the short attention span society!
| arethuza wrote:
| "So starting with a bang is mandatory"
|
| Maybe that explains two of my favourite opening lines
| that both include things blowing up:
|
| "It was the day my grandmother exploded"
|
| and
|
| "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent
| reason."
| gwd wrote:
| > Received editorial wisdom these days is that you have
| at most 100 words to capture the reader's attention
|
| What's weird about this is how I find Jane Austen's
| intros catch my attention, although they often have only
| tangential relation to the actual characters or plot of
| the book. The first chapter of Persuasion is about a
| vain, foolish, impoverished baronet whose primary comfort
| when he's down is to see his own name written in the
| massive tome of nobility. The main character is barely
| mentioned until the end of the chapter. But for some
| reason, I've always found it strangely engaging. Why do I
| care about this guy? But for some reason, I do -- at
| least, I'm hooked long enough to get to the actually
| interesting characters.
| thriftwy wrote:
| > Lenie Clarke lies on her bunk, listening. Overhead,
| past pipes and wires and eggshell plating, three
| kilometers of black ocean try to crush her. She feels the
| Rift underneath, tearing open the seabed with strength
| enough to move a continent. She lies there in that
| fragile refuge and she hears Beebe's armor shifting by
| microns, hears its seams creak not quite below the
| threshold of human hearing. God is a sadist on the Juan
| de Fuca Rift, and His name is Physics.
|
| Starts kinda OK but pretentiousness creeps in towards the
| end.
|
| Compare that to the best SF book I know to date, Pandem:
|
| > On the twenty-ninth of February, on the strangest of
| the days marked on the calendar, David Hammer, an
| employee of a respected city newspaper, was returning
| home a little later than usual.
|
| > It was a humid, almost spring evening. At Charing Cross
| Station, David boarded a train that was due to drop him
| off in East Croydon in half an hour. There was no one in
| the compartment for eight at that hour, except David and
| a guy of about eighteen, who, having fallen on the seat,
| immediately closed his eyes and gave himself to the power
| of music flowing from the flat box of the player into the
| black clips of headphones.
|
| Unfortunately I don't think it was ever translated to
| English :)
| lou1306 wrote:
| Wasn't there a similar yearly anthology of bad
| lines/paragraphs from _actual_ novels /stories? I am pretty
| sure such a thing existed but couldn't find it anywhere.
| rippercushions wrote:
| You may be thinking of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Here's
| the 2019 winner:
|
| _" Katsuro moaned as a bulge formed beneath the material
| of his kimono, a bulge that Miyuki seized, kneaded,
| massaged, squashed and crushed. With the fondling,
| Katsuro's penis and testicles became one single mound that
| rolled around beneath the grip of her hand. Miyuki felt as
| though she was manipulating a small monkey that was curling
| up its paws."_
|
| https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award
| lou1306 wrote:
| Yes, that was it! Thank you!
| tbossanova wrote:
| This comment is itself a beautiful example of postmodernism.
| Well, at least my incredibly naive idea of what postmodernism
| is. I do it that way, intentionally.
| ljlolel wrote:
| Ironically turning a non postmodernist comment into a
| postmodernist comment through context. Golf clap
| ramzez wrote:
| Looks like the link is wrong and points to 2019 rather than 2022
| dang wrote:
| Fixed now. Thanks!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018429
| TomK32 wrote:
| I came across this contest earlier this year when I read
| Money[0], a 1840 play by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Still fun to read
| and the basic stories of romantic comedies didn't change that
| much since the ancient greeks.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_(play) I have a 1891
| edition by Friedberg & Mode, Berlin, with only the German
| footnotes in fracture while the rest in a readable serif font.
| a_c wrote:
| Non-native english speaker here Why are these openings bad?
| enkid wrote:
| They are purposefully bad, as it's a contest where people send
| submissions. Most of these are "bad" because they try to pack
| too much into a single sentence, and the concepts are so over
| the top the reader would be having a hard time keeping up. Some
| of these are bad because of genre mismatch, for example, having
| gory details in a children's book.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| They seem bad to me, until this one:
|
| > If I wanted to fulfill my lifelong dream of being a dystopian
| YA's protagonist, I needed several things: missing or deceased
| parents (check), a complicated romantic life involving multiple
| partners and predictable behavior (check), a tough exterior that
| protected my sensitive inner workings (check), and finally, a
| life of danger, uncertainty, and constant struggle to survive
| (check); it turns out, turtles are well-equipped to star in YA
| adventures!
|
| This is brilliant!
| CydeWeys wrote:
| They're supposed to be bad. Terrible, in fact.
| Jackim wrote:
| GP is aware of that. They are pointing one out that they
| believe does not belong on the list.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yes by bad I meant bad (but good in the goal of aiming to
| be bad) until I saw the good one (bad at being bad) but so
| damn good I can forgive it for that.
| antihero wrote:
| I read this as YC protagonist in all fairness
| jjw1414 wrote:
| You were not alone.
| rubyron wrote:
| > All I can say is that I have never been so insulted (even by
| the likes of my moronic sister (who seems to delight in making me
| uncomfortable (and she is so good at it, knowing just how to push
| my buttons (which I think is a skill that all siblings possess to
| some extent (which I believe proves some sort of genetic link
| (despite the fact that I really enjoyed genetics in school
| (relating on so many levels to Gregor Mendel and his peas (but of
| course peas make me gag, since my throat swells when I eat
| them)))))))) as I was by someone suggesting that I have ADD.
|
| Brilliant.
| aantix wrote:
| Looks like the author has been writing Scheme code on the
| weekends..
| aripickar wrote:
| That sentence seems enough like some bastardized version of
| shakespeare[0] and Lisp that I bet you could get it to compile
| in some dialects.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_Programming_Langua
| ...
| mrexroad wrote:
| I tend to write with an excessive amount of parenthesis with
| context/tangents. I used to joke it was due to Lisp/Scheme
| being one of my first languages. Took me a few years to realize
| the ADD connection.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I do this to get it out, then I rewrite it to take all the
| parentheticals out.
| dang wrote:
| Lest anyone get triggered by the subject matter into actually
| trying to find this, it's from https://www.bulwer-
| lytton.com/2019. (We changed the URL (more at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018429).)
| teh_klev wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Peter F. Hamilton but hadn't read any of his
| Greg Mandel books, the first of which, and his first published
| novel, I finished the other week.
|
| Well...there's a quite a few nuggets of prose in Mindstar Rising
| that wouldn't be out of place in this list. Thankfully his
| writing improved quite a bit, and/or he employed better editors.
| cratermoon wrote:
| 2019
| eatonphil wrote:
| > "Hoist the mainsail ye accursed swine" shouted the Captain over
| the roar of the waves as the ship was tossed like a cork dropped
| from a wine bottle into a jacuzzi when the faucet is wide open
| and the jets are running full blast and one has just settled into
| the water with a glass of red wine to ease the aches and pains
| after a day of hard labor raking leaves from the front yard.
|
| > Sir Reginald Brimwater, Guardian of the Tome of Remembrance,
| Herald of the Immortal Word, Voice of the Histories Both Recent
| and Ancient, Archivist of the Eternal Ledger, and Memory of the
| Empire had forgotten his quill, but he was pretty sure he got the
| gist of what what's-his-face was saying.
|
| (From the actual 2022 page: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022.)
|
| Pretty good. :) These remind me of Terry Pratchett and Douglas
| Adams in style. I wish I knew more hilarious writers. Vonnegut is
| great though maybe not quite as hilarious. I've tried to read The
| Innocents Abroad and Confederacy of Dunces but I found myself
| only trudging slowly through both. I'd love your suggestions!
| teh_klev wrote:
| Robert Rankin author of The Brentford Trilogy is very much in
| the style of Pratchett and Adams:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brentford_Trilogy
| namdnay wrote:
| For anyone who likes steampunk, I strongly recommend the
| Witches of Chiswick!
| ttctciyf wrote:
| If you like Adams there's a good chance you'll appreciate some
| of Robert Sheckley - I recommend _Mindswap_ in particular.
|
| FWIW, my own favourite humorous sci-fi short is R.A. Lafferty's
| _Been a Long Long Time_ which can be read online:
| https://www.gwern.net/docs/fiction/humor/1970-lafferty.pdf
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > Confederacy of Dunces
|
| It's definitely a step up in terms of reader effort, but I
| found it worth it. It doesn't compare well to Pratchett and
| Adams who are more like a writer's variant of the stand-up
| comedian (a lot of the entries in this contest feel
| stylistically close to their writing). A Confederacy of Dunces
| instead shines in its portrayal of the comically pitiful
| characters within it, with John Kennedy Toole succeeding in
| making the cringe-worthy protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly one of
| the most loathsome characters I have ever come across in a
| novel.
| nicopappl wrote:
| I recommend Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad. The English translation
| has amazing prose and it is hilarious. I can't recommend
| anything else :) I like Charles Stross, good sci-fi with a
| satirical strike, but he's not as good with words as the
| authors you mention.
| tspike wrote:
| Check out Tom Robbins if you haven't already! Here's the
| opening to Jitterbug Perfume:
|
| > THE BEET IS THE MOST INTENSE of vegetables.
|
| > The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the
| radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion.
| Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an
| undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
|
| > Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from
| potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their
| seriousness from beets.
|
| > The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to
| suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...
|
| > The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime.
| The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the
| carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon,
| bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of
| the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial
| plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the
| Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.
|
| > The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it
| in his eyes.
|
| > In Europe there is grown widely a large beet they call the
| mangel-wurzel. Perhaps it is mangel-wurzel that we see in
| Rasputin. Certainly there is mangel-wurzel in the music of
| Wagner, although it is another composer whose name begins, B-e-
| e-t----.
|
| > Of course, there are white beets, beets that ooze sugar water
| instead of blood, but it is the red beet with which we are
| concerned; the variety that blushes and swells like a
| hemorrhoid, a hemorrhoid for which there is no cure. (Actually,
| there is one remedy: commission a potter to make you a ceramic
| asshole--and when you aren't sitting on it, you can use it as a
| bowl for borscht.)
|
| > An old Ukrainian proverb warns, "A tale that begins with a
| beet will end with the devil."
|
| > That is a risk we have to take.
| codq wrote:
| Jitterbug Perfurme, like most of Tom Robbins' novels, is just
| filled with gold nuggets on every page.
|
| Reading him is like eating mushrooms and strolling through
| the garden of eden.
| mayagerard0 wrote:
| I think the Usain Bolt one is pretty funny.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I was skeptical until I read the about us page and learned these
| sentences are crafted to be the worst.
| NBJack wrote:
| Perhaps my standards are just too low, but some of these are
| actually quite brilliant. I laughed at this one:
|
| > Realising that his symptoms indicated a virtually undetectable,
| fast acting neurotoxin, CIA coroner Quinn Abner frantically wrote
| up the details, lay on the floor and, as a professional courtesy,
| did his best to draw a chalk outline of himself.
| tgv wrote:
| It's almost a Dan Brown parody. But from a single sentence it's
| hard to judge how it is intended.
| lisper wrote:
| The link is actually to the 2019 winners. The 2022 winners are at
| the obvious extrapolation:
|
| https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
| dang wrote:
| Fixed now. Thanks!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34018429
| j_not_j wrote:
| The skill of John Hardi (three awards: one winner and two
| dishonorable) are not to be denied.
| jamessb wrote:
| The current title of this submission ("Worst Opening Sentences of
| 2022") is not quite correct: the about page [1] states that "the
| Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose
| opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels".
|
| The opening sentence of (what would be) the _worst novel_ is
| different to the _worst opening sentence_ of a novel.
|
| The Children's & Young Adult Literature Winner for 2022 [2] is
| actually a good opening sentence:
|
| > Three bears arrived at their den to discover a yellow haired
| girl sleeping, and as she was neither too hot nor too cold,
| neither too soft nor too hard, but just right, they ate her.
|
| [1]: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/about
|
| [2]: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
| bostik wrote:
| My all-time favourite is the dishonourable mention for 2004
| Children's Literature:
|
| As he entered the room within which so many a wild night of
| their sweltering love affair had been spent, the White Rabbit
| regarded her with benevolent eyes, her posture such that he
| suspected something was wrong, but before he could speak Alice
| unburied her face from her trembling hands and between her
| intense sobs he made out the words, "I'm late . . . I'm late."
|
| Perfect. Simply perfect.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Aerosmith's "You can't catch me 'cause the rabbit done died"
| seems apropos here
| enkid wrote:
| I mean, it doesn't leave much room for the rest of the novel,
| but maybe that's the point.
| sph wrote:
| It's very post-modern. You start with the ending, and then
| the rest of the book is how everything that happened led to
| her untimely demise.
| permo-w wrote:
| it's barely post-modern. it's a boring and overused tv plot
| technique that makes me groan whenever I come across it.
| build up excitement, tension, drama, create an interesting
| scene, then throw it all away with a "how did we get here"
| and a roll back in time
| BellsOnSunday wrote:
| Yep. That's me. I bet you're wondering how I got myself
| into this situation...
| sph wrote:
| Post-modernism is 50 years old, and refers to the
| modernity of the first half of that century. Of course it
| feels cliche and outdated in 2022.
| rintakumpu wrote:
| Yes. And I was so happy when Squid Game didn't do that.
| idontpost wrote:
| willi59549879 wrote:
| three weeks earlier... i don't like when stories start that
| way
| bearmode wrote:
| Maybe the novel's about the bears?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Sadly the girl was not just any wanderer in the woods, she
| was the daughter of the psychotic and vengeful huntsman,
| thus began a game pitting bears and man in a contest for
| supremacy that would change the enchanted forest - forever.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The bears being pursued by humans because they ate the
| girl, and therefore having to leave their nice home and
| live life on the run.
| viridian wrote:
| Makes for a good cold open where you want to inform the
| reader of some detail that the book's characters aren't privy
| to.
| GrayShade wrote:
| The link currently points to the 2019 winners, the correct one
| is:
|
| https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022
| senectus1 wrote:
| lol
|
| Honestly i think the 2019 grand winner is the best still
|
| >2019 Grand Prize
|
| >Space Fleet Commander Brad Brad sat in silence, surrounded by
| a slowly dissipating cloud of smoke, maintaining the same
| forlorn frown that had been fixed upon his face since he'd
| accidentally destroyed the phenomenon known as time, thirteen
| inches ago.
| sph wrote:
| I somehow missed he's called Brad Brad. More crap to add to
| the steaming pile this sentence is. Absolutely masterful.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| That is a work of art.
| pje wrote:
| Totally disagree!
|
| The structure is clunky, but the payoff at the end is
| actually really good! Also the dumbness of the name is funny
| enough to work in the right context. With a little bit of
| editing this would make a great piece of flash sci-fi on
| something like nanoism.
|
| https://twitter.com/nanoism
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Reads like opening to Stanislaw Lem's short.
| arethuza wrote:
| Does that qualify as a (very) short story?
| otikik wrote:
| Brad Brad. What a lad. It can't be that bad.
| pschuegr wrote:
| It can't be that bad bad.
| dang wrote:
| Fixed now. Thanks! Our software uses canonical URLs when it
| finds them and in this case the canonical URL was
| https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2019. I imagine someone making
| the new page by copy-pasting the old one for... perhaps about 3
| years now.
| p1necone wrote:
| Honestly, I'd read the first one. Trashy detective fiction
| that's kinda self aware sounds great.
| thom wrote:
| I don't know if this extends to full-on parody, but Fergus
| Craig's Roger LeCarre bits are quite enjoyable.
| aaronharnly wrote:
| ChatGPT gave me this very credible following sentence:
|
| "That's it," she wailed, "I'm doomed to a life of misery and
| despair without my dear Harold and a decent sandwich to keep
| me going."
| Sharlin wrote:
| This would be a great bad _opening_ sentence as well with
| some minor modifications.
| adalacelove wrote:
| It's so bad that I actually like it
| [deleted]
| einpoklum wrote:
| Well, one of my front-runners this year was:
|
| "I consider it necessary today to speak again about the tragic
| events in Donbass and the key aspects of ensuring the security of
| Russia."
|
| (https://theprint.in/world/full-text-of-vladimir-putins-speec...)
| adg001 wrote:
| I would never read a book with any such incipit - How the heck
| somebody can even think publishing one!
| mirekrusin wrote:
| They are fictional. But fear not, somebody will auto generate
| novels from those prompts with chatgpt sometime next week.
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