When Snoopy isn't out stalking the Red Baron, he can usually be found atop his doghouse tapping out a novel that invariably begins, "It was a dark and stormy night." What most people don't realize is that those words are actually the first sentence of the 1830 novel "Paul Clifford" by the eminent Victorian Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Since 1982, Sir Edward has achieved eponymous infamy as the patron saint of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, an annual competition held by the English department of San Jose State University. The challenge is simple: "to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels." The Bulwer-Lytton contest, open to anyone, now attracts thousands of entries from around the world, competing not only for the top prize -- $250, a "pittance," the sponsors acknowledge -- but for dubious honors in such genres as romance and fantasy. Here is a selection from this year's winners and also-rans, announced this summer. THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

• Winner: Overall Through the gathering gloom of a late-October afternoon, along the greasy, cracked paving-stones slick from the sputum of the sky, Stanley Ruddlethorp wearily trudged up the hill from the cemetery where his wife, sister, brother, and three children were all buried, and forced open the door of his decaying house, blissfully unaware of the catastrophe that was soon to devastate his life. -- Dr. David Chuter, Kingston, Surrey, England
• Winner: Romance The oil made their skin glisten as their bodies moved in slow synchronous rhythm on the beach, the water gently flowing up around their legs, birds floating in the surf accompanying their moans with songs of pain and despair, otter and seal carcasses washing ashore around them, and it frightened her and exhilarated her at the same time that their love under the open sky might be discovered by a Sierra Club cleanup volunteer. -- Robert Chappell, Blanchardville, Wis.
• Winner: Science Fiction The remaining astronauts strung out on the long tether could only wonder at a universe full of eerie contrasts -- brilliant stars against the velvety blackness of space, the hot flare of their comrade's meteoric plunge into the atmosphere against the cool-blue ocean below, the man's frenzied screams on the radio as he was roasted by the heat of re-entry against the icy calm voice of mission control as they grilled the astronaut on the far end of the tether, and how hilarious it had all seemed when he first yelled "Crack the whip!" -- Roger Strong, Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Winner: Purple Prose Rain -- violent torrents of it, rain like fetid water from a God-sized pot of pasta strained through a sky-wide colander, rain as Noah knew it, flaying the shuddering trees, whipping the whitecapped waters, violating the sodden firmament, purging purity and filth alike from the land, rain without mercy, without surcease, incontinent rain, turning to intermittent showers overnight with partial clearing Tuesday. -- David Hirsch, Seattle
• Winner: Adventure The woods held danger at every dark, haunting corner, and Indiana Jones decided it was too risky to continue; he had already been attacked by a mound of fire ants, had a brush with poison ivy, and faced a terrifying encounter with the Forest Ranger's vicious beagle, Muffin. -- Christine Sullivan, Melbourne, Fla.
• Winner: Vile Puns Forced by rising costs and lagging demand to make their leading product out of a cheaper metal, Hoosier Love, Inc. found that a special treatment process was needed to clean and coat their Indy 500 memento, a tiny fake-jewel-studded replica of an Offenhauser engine on a jeweler's chain, to protect it from the corrosive effect of chlorine, a process that appeared in the ISO 9000 Manufacturer's Manual under the title, "The Dechloration of Indy Pendants." -- Tom Rohde, Minneapolis
• Winner: 'Dark and Stormy' Division When the Independent Counsel emerged each night from the adjourned closed-door proceedings, reporters assessed how zealously he was currently prosecuting from his facial expression, which on one night might be that familiar affably light smile, while on another night it could be a menacingly dark scowl; and so, as our story begins, they surmised he was playing hardball, for it was a dark-Ken Starr-mien night. -- Ronald Snow, Huntsville, Ala.
• The Also-Rans The runner-up in the overall category: He had the regal bearing of a TV weatherman, his hair twinkling like the crystals in Ivana Trump's chandelier, his teeth white and snappy like high-starch boxers, his jaw strong and sharp as a Canadian high-pressure system, and an El Niņo just itching to wreak havoc in her trailer park. -- Elayne Roman, West Caldwell, N.J.
• "Dishonorable mention" (third place) in the romance category: Maggie had become so very attached to Butch these last few years, not so much like a remora on the side of a shark, nor even handcuffs in the night, but almost, but not quite, like an inoperable, yet benign, tumor, crenulating and bifurcating in the love-struck center of his brain. -- Vance Atkins, Seattle
• The runner-up in the "dark and stormy night" category: "Just look, ya bloomin' idiot," Eleanor Rugglesby-Bobsyeruncle, the world-famous cockney art collector, screamed at her assistant, Ivan Ivanovich, illegitimate son of the Secret Czar, Ivanovichi, "ya packed me priceless Don Quixote paintin' in with a sack of bloody Spam, it was the darn cans tore me knight!" -- Allan D. Burrows, Mississauga, Ontario
• A miscellaneous dishonorable mention: Night was a mere threat on the quivering lip of the sky and the golden tongue of the sun still licked the recesses of the bridle path, when suddenly, an unnatural shriek emanated from the dark throat of the forest, causing stiff fingers of fear to march firmly down the spine of the motionless maiden. -- Annette O'Neill, Pacifica, Calif.
• And finally, the first line from a putative novel, "A Tale of Two Statisticians": It wasn't the best of times; it wasn't the worst of times; it was the times you'd get if you arranged all possible times (including even fictional times in which the nights were usually dark and stormy) in order from worst to best on the real number line from 0.0 inclusive to 1.0 exclusive and then used a really good uniform random number generator to pick a value in that range thus choosing the corresponding times -- that's the times it was. -- Dale Dellutri, Libertyville, Ill.
• Postscript: A "lyttony" with more tortured constructs is available at the Bulwer-Lytton Web site, www.bulwer-lytton.com <http://www.bulwer-lytton.com>. Penguin has also published five collections of dross from the competition, including "Bride of It Was a Dark and Stormy Night."