It’s snowing. It’s also the first day of December. Wonderful timing. I took a walk with Lucky this morning, and it felt like fairyland with the snow new on the trees, and the ground fresh and white. Cold, too, but it’s not bitter yet. I took a look – Wisconsin has gone sub-arctic. When I was in law school, I used to have a ten to fifteen minute walk up State Street from my apartment to the University, and on the coldest days of the year—which were plentiful and long-lasting—I’d get to my classes with the snot frozen in my nose, all feeling gone from my face, and my legs burning from exposure to the wind (because it never mattered how long the coat was, the cold air just crept up underneath). I never did understand why some people went out on mornings like that to jog. Crazy, crazy.
But it was still a nice walk.
Anyway, here’s a new contest from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction:
F&SF COMPETITION #71
“It was a dark and ion-stormy night.�”
This is not the Edward Bulwer-Lytton competition � it�s a genre version of it. Complete the sentence, “It was a dark and ion-stormy night,” give it an sf theme, and make it as outrageously bad as possible. The winners get nifty prizes; the losers can take comfort in knowing their writing just wasn�t execrable enough. Remember to keep your poor prose to 100 words or less, and submit no more than six entries.
Example: It was a dark and ion-stormy night on Planet Rogaine. The cyber-wolves howled and the hyper-trees shook. Princess Diflucan told the guard to rotate the planet a little left of the storm so the cyber-wolves would direct their processes elsewhere. The guard, who loved her, obeyed with a sniffle.
You can check out the website for more details.