Cherished Bulweriers,

In response to your innumerable solicitations (at least three or four), your lacrimonious importunities, and even your questions, I am pleased to inform you that another collection of entries to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is in the works. More particularly, it has moved from the back burner, where it simmered while I completed my manifesto on the commercial infestation of American education (Moneychanging in the Temple--like my title? I coined the phrase myself), to the front burner. Having completed my definitive contribution to the universal improvement of mankind, I am now going to hurl . . . Excuse me. Permit me to begin my thought anew. I am now going to throw myself into It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: the Second Coming. If they will be so kind, past winners from 1996 on (from the haughtiest Grand Prize Winner to the lowliest Dishonorable Mention) may assist me in the process by informing me of their whereabouts. The process, you see, requires that I secure your permissions to exploit your work for my own gain (albeit and regrettably a modest one). That is to say, whoever is privileged to be my publisher will demand signed release forms. No signed release, no prestigious appearance in another deathless classic. At any rate, given the nomadic character of our unstable populace and the common desire to keep at least one address ahead of creditors, my contact file, like my thinking, is sadly out of date. In sum and not to put too fine a point on it, many of your original addresses, as you well know and by your devising, are no longer current. So please, be helpful here.

To my knowledge, the previous five collections have fallen out of print, a testimonial to the End Of Life As We Know It. Annual response to the contest, howsomever, suggests that interest remains as perfervid as ever. The major newspapers and networks continue to cover the winners. The BBC and Australian Radio continue to run interviews. Parents continue to name their children Bulwer.

S.R., Grand Panjandrum, Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest