The winners of The 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which honors writers who can create the absolute worst opening lines to non-existent novels, have been posted over at the San Jose State University website and the results are truly astounding. These are people who can mangle the language like no other (well, maybe Tom Clancy), who can slaughter a simile, mutilate a metaphor, and do something truly unspeakable to a poor, defenseless descriptive passage.

Personally, I liked some of the runners-up and dishonorable mentions more than the actual winner (which was, admittedly, quite good… er, bad), but most of the entries are fine examples of prose gone horribly, horribly wrong. Enjoy! Or not. I’m not really sure.