Bulwer Lytton 2002 Winners

For those not in the know, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University, running since 1982. The line that Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (EGBL), the Victorian writer after whom the contest is named, is most famous for is: It was a dark and stormy night, the opening line of Paul Clifford (a line oft-quoted by Snoopy in Peanuts). Triviamongers may note that EGBL came to public attention, in anonymity, in 1989 when his ancestral estate at Knebworth was chosen by Tim Burton as the setting for "stately Wayne Manor" in the movie Batman. The winners for this year seem to have earned their claim to infamy.