We have a long-standing tradition of apple-picking for my birthday. This year, for the first time since we started doing this, it rained. We got a little wet, a little muddy, and a lot of incredible apples.
The Science Fiction Book Club tells us that the R. L. Fanthorpe Write-Alike Contest is now open. I had never heard of Fanthorpe, or even any of his many pseudonyms; apparently he wrote at least 180 novels, including 89 in a three-year period.
Given the fame of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, the existence of a Write-Alike contest might give one the impression that Fanthorpe might be a memorably poor writer, but to draw such an impression on such scant evidence would be unjust; after all, there are or were, apparently, a Faux Faulkner Contest and a Bad Hemingway Contest, at the very least. Wait, instead, to make your determination until sampling some of his thesaurian prose – to think, he wrote these without any revision whatsoever!
Peltorro.com is the repository of all that is Fanthorpian.
“Everywhere was dark, dark darkness. Blackness. Black. Black blackness.”
A 1,000 Years On
Writing as John E. Muller
“He stood trembling like a bladder of lard…”
The Thing From Sheol
Writing as Bron Fane
“Chuck Mahoney was running, running wildly and blindly around the ancient Temple, tripping, stumbling, falling, scrambling to his feet again and falling once more. He was bruised, battered, breathless and bloodstained.”
The Last Valkyrie
Writing as Lionel Roberts
