Posted 5:05 PM by soundofsuburbia

2004 Results: "A 42-year-old software developer and former National Spelling Bee contestant is the winner of the 2004 edition of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Dave Zobel of Manhattan Beach, California, won with his timely entry.

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for 'The Last Days of Pompeii' (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression 'the pen is mightier than the sword,' and phrases like 'the great unwashed' and 'the almighty dollar,' Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the 'Peanuts' beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, 'It was a dark and stormy night.'"